Mengqian Lu, graduate student in Engineering Science and Mechanics under the advising of Professor Tony Huang, traveled to Japan in late October to attend and present at the 16th International Conference in Miniaturized Systems for Chemistry and Life Sciences (uTAS). uTAS is the premier forum for reporting and exchanging research results in microfluidics, microfabrication, nanotechnology, integration, materials and surfaces, analysis and synthesis, and detection technologies for the life sciences and chemistry. Mengqian will give a presentation entitled "Shape-Controllable Synthesis of Nanocomposites by Three-Dimensional Hydrodynamic Focusing."

Koray Sekeroglu, graduate student in Engineering Science and Mechanics, will travel to Boston in late November to present his research at the Materials Research Society meeting. While on travel, Koray will make a presentation entitled "Bioinspired Directional Surfaces-From Natural to Engineered Textured Surfaces." To learn more about the conference, please visit their website.

Dr. Melik Demirel, Associate Professor in Engineering Science and Mechanics, will travel to Boston, MA at the end of November to attend the Materials Research Society (MRS) fall meeting. Professor Demirel serves as one of the organizers and presenters at the meeting, where he and five of his students will present their research. To learn more about the conference, please visit their website.

Penn State will receive $4.2 million over the next three years from the National Science Foundation to continue the work of the Nanotechnology Applications and Career Knowledge Network (NACK Network), founded at the Unviersity with a four-year grant from the NSF in 2008. The NACK network provides national coordination of workforce development programs and activities on behalf of NSF in an effort to meet industry needs for skilled micro- and nanofabrication workers. To learn more, please visit Penn State Live.
*Source: Penn State Live

Dr. Akhlesh Lakhtakia, Charles Godfrey Binder Professor of Engineering Science and Mechanics, delivered an invited talk entitled "Bioinspiration, biomimetics, and bioreplication for harvesting solar energy," at the OSA Frontiers in Optics Conference, held in Rochester, NY, USA, October 14-18, 2012. His co-author was Raul Martin-Palma, adjunct professor in the department of materials science and engineering.

Postdoctoral opening is available in the Mechanical Properties and Mechanics Group, Materials Science and Technology Division, Oak Ridge National Laboratory.

For more information, access the link:


http://www.esm.psu.edu/students/graduate/extopps/pdf/475-Postdoctoral-Ad-computational-solid-mechanics-FY12.pdf

Dr. Akhlesh Lakhtakia, Charles Godfrey Binder Professor in Engineering Science and Mechanics, was a plenary speaker at the Nanoscience Symposium organized in early October. The symposium was held at the Unviersity of Nebraska, Lincoln. His presentation was entitled "Sculptured Thin Films: Nanoengineered Metamaterials." For additional information about the symposium, please visit their website.

In early October, ESM hosted alumni, Brian Piccione and Fei Wang at the University Park campus to celebrate their accomplishments and present them with the 2012 Early Career Recognition Award. The ESM Alumni Society has implemented such award for alums that are within ten years out of college, who have distinguished themselves at work and in their community.

Brian Piccione is a postdoctoral research fellow at the University of Pennsylvania. After graduating from Penn State in 2005, Piccione attended Purdue University for his M.S., followed by a PhD in Materials Science and Engineering from the University of Pennsylvania under advisor Ritesh Agarwal. His research interests currently include optical, electrical, and thermal transport in nanostructures. His work on light-matter coupling in semiconductor nanowires has been published in PNAS and Nano Letters, and his most recent article on all-optical switching in Nature Nanotechnology has been covered by multiple media organizations, including TIME.

Fei Wang received his Ph.D. from the ESM department in 2005 wining the Alumni Dissertation Award, and then joined Micron Technology, Inc. as an engineer. The same year, he went to work in Research and Development on projects of developing advanced memory chips. Having been working in the industry for over 7 year, Fei really like the job that he is doing and has the real opportunity of seeing how the technology advances while physical size shrinks continuingly.

ESM Congratulates Brian and Fei for their career accomplishments thus far and look forward to hearing more about their bright futures in the years to come.

Abdalla Nassar, graduate research assistant in Engineering Science and Mechanics, traveled to Pittsburgh in early October to attend the Materials Science and Technology (MS&T) 2012 conference. While in attendance, he presented his research to an audience of fellow material scientists and attended meetings for the ASM International Volunteerism and Emerging Technologies Awareness committees.

Dr. S. Ashok, Professor in Engineering Science and Mechanics, traveled in early October to France to visit the Center for National Science Research (CNRS) in Orleans France. While on travel, Dr. Ashok presented an invited seminar at the Unviersity of Versaille.

Amber Black, graduate research assistant in Engineering Science and Mechanics, traveled to Pittsburgh in early October to attend the Materials Science and Technology (MS&T) 2012 conference. While in attendance, she presented her research to an audience of fellow material scientists and attended meetings for the ASM International Volunteerism and Emerging Technologies Awareness committees.

Charles Smith, graduate student in Engineering Science, was announced recently by the National Science Foundation (NSF) that he has been awarded an NSF Graduate Research Fellowship for 2012-13. The NSF program supports outstanding graduate students in science, technology, engineering, STEM education and learning research, and mathematics disciplines who are pursuing research-based master's and doctoral degrees. Congratulations Charles!

Dr. Barbara Shaw, Professor in Engineering Science and Mechanics, traveled to Hawaii in early October to attend the 2012 Electrochemical Society meeting. While at the meeting Professor Shaw gave a poster presentation on "Microelectronic Device for In-vivo Corrosion Rates" and attended the executive committee meeting for Corrosion.

Dr. Mirna Urquidi-Macdonald, Professor in Engineering Science and Mechanics, is organizing a symposium for the Electrochemical Society in Hawaii beginning in early October. From Hawaii, Dr. Urquidi-Macdonald will travel to Taiwan to serve as a keynote speaker at the 16th Annual Asian Pacific Corrosion Control Conference. Finishing her travels, Dr. Urquidi-Macdonald will present a paper at the International Conference and Expo on Military and Marine Applications (IWCEM) 2012 conference in Singapore.

A technique that uses acoustic waves to sort cells on a chip may create miniature medical analytic devices that could make Star Trek's tricorder seem a bit bulky in comparison, according to a team of researchers.

The device uses two beams of acoustic -- or sound -- waves to act as acoustic tweezers and sort a continuous flow of cells on a dime-sized chip, said Tony Jun Huang, associate professor of engineering science and mechanics, Penn State. By changing the frequency of the acoustic waves, researchers can easily alter the paths of the cells.

Huang said that since the device can sort cells into five or more channels, it will allow more cell types to be analyzed simultaneously, which paves the way for smaller, more efficient and less expensive analytic devices.

"Eventually, you could do analysis on a device about the size of a cell phone," said Huang. "It's very doable and we're making in-roads to that right now."

Biological, genetic and medical labs could use the device for various types of analysis, including blood and genetic testing, Huang said.

Most current cell-sorting devices allow the cells to be sorted into only two channels in one step, according to Huang. He said that another drawback of current cell-sorting devices is that cells must be encapsulated into droplets, which complicates further analysis.

"Today, cell sorting is done on bulky and very expensive devices," said Huang. "We want to minimize them so they are portable, inexpensive and can be powered by batteries."

Using sound waves for cell sorting is less likely to damage cells than current techniques, Huang added.

Xiaoyun Ding, graduate student in Engineering Science and Mechanics, under the advising of Professor Tony Huang, will travel to Germany in early October to present at the 2012 IEEE International Ultrasonics Symposium annual meeting. This meeting will bring together the community of ultrasonics around the world in the center of Europe for discussion and cooperation and to stimulate the research and development in the widespread field of ultrasonic theories and applications.

Dr. Ivi Smid, Associate Professor in Engineering Science and Mechanics, will travel to Pittsburgh in early October to attend and present at the Materials Science and Technology (MS&T) conference. While in attendance, Professor Smid will present two talks entitled "High-Strain-Rate Tensile Property Determination Using Finite Element Analysis and Experimental Methods" and "Composite Ni-Encapsulated Particles for Cold-Spray: hexagonal Boronitride, Aluminum, Nickel, and Copper." Additionally, Professor Smid is the vice chair of the "TMS Refractory Metals Committee" and assisted with organizing the semi-annual meeting. To learn more about the conference, please visit their website.