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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.