Download - And the winner is
PEOPLE & PLACES UPDATE
Elementary award
Sherlock Holmes has been
awarded an Extraordinary
Honorary Fellowship from the UK
Royal Society of Chemistry.
According to the society,
Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s creation
was “the first detective to exploit
chemical science as a means of
detection.” A modern Dr John
Watson, a Fellow of the Society,
was present at the ceremony in
Baker Street.
For your information
Neal Bertram of the University of
California, San Diego has won the
2003 IEEE Reynold B. Johnson
Information Storage Award. He is
cited for “fundamental and
pioneering contributions to
magnetic recording physics
research.” His work focuses on
modeling the instability that
occurs as more information bits
are packed into smaller areas.
Innovative firm
The chairman and founder of
nPoint, Inc., Max Lagally, has
been awarded a 2002 Tibbetts
Award. The award goes to firms
that exemplify the very best in
the Small Business Innovation
Research program, administered
by the US Office of Technology.
nPoint, formerly Piezomax
Technologies, was founded in
1997 and produces
nanopositioners for nanoscale
research and manufacturing.
Effective enterprise
A company that uses a newly
patented process to produce
designer polymers has won the
Enterprise Launch Pad award at
the Cambridge Enterprise
Conference. Warwick Effect
Polymers, a spin-out from
Warwick University, is developing
the process for cheap and easy
production of polymers to fit
different applications.
Innovative chemistry‘Innovations in sol-
gel chemistry to
create
nanostructured
materials that have
applications to
energy,
manufacturing,
defense, and
medicine’ are
recognized by the
US Department of Energy’s E. O. Lawrence
Award. Jeffrey Brinker of Sandia National
Laboratories and the University of New Mexico
has been named the winner in the award’s
materials research category, bringing with it a
prize of $25 000.
Brinker’s research has included the creation of
nanocomposites that mimic the construction of
seashells, to produce tough, lightweight
structures. He has demonstrated the direct writing
of functional self-assembled nanostructures with
computer-driven pens and ink-jet printers. Brinker
has also incorporated conjugated polymers into
nanostructured hosts, enabling control of charge
and energy transport in organic electronics.
Leading lightsIsamu Akasaki and Hiroshi Amano of Meijo
University, Japan, and Shuji Nakamura of the
University of California, Santa Barbara, receive the
2002 Takeda Award for the development of the
blue light-emitting diode (LED) and laser diode
(LD). They share a prize of $800 000.
“Akasaki, Amano, and Nakamura overcame
difficult challenges that required a creative
approach,” explains The Takeda Foundation, which
administers the annual prize. “Moreover, they
contributed to the commercialization of blue LD-
and LED-based devices.”
Blue light-emitting semiconductor devices have a
wide range of applications, from displays and
traffic signs to DVDs. Blue LEDs have also enabled
the development of white LEDs, whose efficiency
and long-life is expected to lead to the
replacement of conventional tungsten or halogen
bulbs in the home and office.
And the winner is...The winners of the 2003 American Physical
Society (APS) Awards have been named and will
be presented with their the awards at various
meetings throughout next year. Full details can be
found on the APS web-site (www.aps.org).
The David Adler Lectureship Award for materials
physics goes to Ivan Schuller of the University of
California, San Diego, for research in metallic
heterostructures and superlattices. Helmut Strey
of the University of Massachusetts receives the
John H. Dillon Medal for research on biopolymers
and polyelectrolytes. Charles Lieber’s work on
functional nanomaterials at Harvard wins the
James C. McGroddy Prize. Ruud Tromp and
Phaedon Avouris, both of the IBM T. J. Watson
Research Center, receive the Davisson-Germer and
Irving Langmuir Prizes, respectively.
Feynman’s foresightIn honor of Richard P. Feynman’s vision of doing
science at the atomic scale, this year’s Foresight
Institute Feynman Prizes for Theoretical and
Experimental Molecular Nanotechnology go to
Don Brenner and Chad Mirkin, respectively.
Brenner’s work at North Carolina State University
includes atomistic modeling of polycrystalline
materials, nanoscale devices, and fullerenes. On
the experimental side, highlights of Mirkin’s
research at Northwestern University include the
development of a soft-lithography technique for
nanopatterning.
Sun shines on ColoradoThe Solar Decathlon, in which 14 universities built
homes entirely powered by the sun, was won by
the University of Colorado at Boulder. The
competition, run by the US Department of Energy,
required students to use solar energy to supply all
the energy needs for an entire household,
including transport and a home-based business.
Each house was judged on ten criteria to
determine which most efficiently employed solar
power for heating, cooling, hot water, lighting,
appliances, computers, and charging an electric
car. “The Solar Decathlon proves that solar energy
is practical today,” says Secretary of Energy,
Spencer Abraham.
December 200260