Akhlesh Lakhtakia, the Charles Godfrey Binder professor of engineering
science and mechanics, delivered an invited lecture on "Sculptured
Thin Films" at Nanomec 06, a conference on materials science and materials
mechanics at the nanoscale, held at Politecnico di Bari, Italy, from
November 19 to 23, 2006. He also organized a special session on
nanofabrication, wherein

Lawrence H. Friedman, assistant professor
of engineering science and mechanics, delivered an invited talk
entitled "Origins of Order and Disorder in Self-Assembled Epitaxial
Quantum Dots".

Dr. Samia Suliman attended the national conference on Advancing the Status of Diverse Women in Science, Tehnology, Engineering, and Math (STEM) in Jackson, Mississippi, on November 10-12, 2006. The conference brought together colleagues from around the world to discuss issues that are specific to women of color in the STEM disciplines including collaborative research, teaching and service opportunities, leadership, learning, best practices and other issues.

Dinesh Agrawal, professor of engineering science and mechanical science, materials science and engineering, and director of Microwave Processing and Engineering Center, gave a keynote lecture at the Fifth International Symposium on Electromagnetic Processing of Materials, organized by The Iron and Steel Institute of Japan, held at Sendai, Japan. His talk was titled "Electromagnetic Field Processing of Materials at Microwave Frequency (2.45 GHz)." He also gave a plenary talk on "Application of Microwave Energy for Materials Processing: Global Trends and Commercialization" at the Sixth Symposium on Microwave Science and Applications to Related Fields in Ogaki-City, Gifu Prefecture, Japan.

FACULTY SPOTLIGHT: DR. JIAN XU
by Matthew Frank (Engineering Science senior)

Two of the driving forces that brought Dr. Jian Xu to the Penn State Department of Engineering Science and Mechanics were spectacular nanofabrication facilities and the freedom to conduct multidisciplinary research. Almost three years since his arrival in August, 2003 his lab is a reflection of those attractions. Dr. Xu is now working with semiconductor nanocrystal quantum dots to pioneer a new material-set, applicable to the next generation of optoelectronic devices and integrated circuits. Quantum dots are special semiconductor nanocrystals whose electrons occupy well defined discrete quantum states. This characteristic allows Dr. Xu to alter their energy structures.

Xu’s research focuses on modifying the structure of quantum dots to specifically tailor their emission and absorption properties to the needs of a wide array of applications which may include energy conversion, optical communications and biochemical sensing.