Dr. Akhlesh Lakhtakia, the Charles Godfrey Binder Professor of Engineering Science and Mechanics, delivered a lecture entitled Sculptured Thin Films, at the Institute of Physics, University of Belgrade, Serbia, on May 16, 2012. He was hosted by Dr. Zoran Lj. Petrovic.

Dr. Barbara Shaw, Professor in Engineering Science and Mechanics, will travel May 14 to Morgantown, West Virginia to attend the Appalachian Underground Corrosion Short Course. To learn more about the short course, please visit their web site.

Dr. Akhlesh Lakhtakia, the Charles G. Binder Professor of Engineering Science and Mechanics, will deliver on May 9 a
seminar entitled "Sculptured Thin Films" at Instituto de Ciencia de Materiales de Madrid, which is an organ
of the Consejo Superior de Investigaciones Científicas of the Spanish Government. Dr. Lakhtakia's visit
is sponsored by Banco de Santander. For more information, please visit their web site.

Dr. Osama Awadelkarim, Professor in Engineering Science and Mechanics, traveled to Portland, Oregon in early May as an invited speaker in the 2012 Workshop on Regional, State, and Local (RSL) Initiative in Nanotechnology. The workshop was sponsored by the U.S. Governments National Nanotechnology Initiative (NNI).

Dr. Steve Fonash, Bayard D. Kunkle Professor in Engineering Science and Mechanics and Director of the Nanotechnology Applications and Career Knowledge (NACK) National Center, has been mentioned in the April 2012 report to the President and Congress on the Fourth Assessment of the National Nanotechnology Initiative.

The President’s Council of Advisors on Science and Technology (PCAST) is an advisory group of the nation’s leading scientists and engineers, appointed by the President to augment the science and technology advice available to him from inside the White House, from cabinet departments and other Federal agencies. PCAST is consulted about and often makes policy recommendations concerning the full range of issues where understandings from the domains of science, technology, and innovation bear potentially on policy choices before the President.

With the support of the NSF’s Advanced Technology Education (ATE) program, Penn State and Professor Steve Fonash have developed a nation-wide partnership of research universities and community colleges that is bringing meaningful core-skills nanotechnology workforce education to technical community colleges across the nation. The partnership, the NSF NACK network fosters (1) resource sharing among community colleges and research universities for nanotechnology workforce development, (2) the availability of course materials, for web or in-class use, covering a core-set of industry recommended nanotechnology skills and (3) broad student preparation for careers in the wide spectrum of industries utilizing micro- or nanotechnology. NACK has been created and offers continually updated, free-of-charge core-skills course lecture and lab materials, web accessible equipment capability, and faculty development curricula. To learn more about the Penn State NACK center, please visit their web site.

Dr. Akhlesh Lakhtakia, Charles Godfrey Binder Professor in Engineering Science and Mechanics will travel in May to Serbia to present a keynote paper entitled “Surface Multiplasmonics for Optical Sensing and Solar-Energy Harvesting,” at the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE) conference on micro-electronics. To learn more about the conference please visit their web site.

Dr. Bernhard Tittmann, Schell Professor in Engineering Science and Mechanics, will travel in early May to Vienna, Austria. During his stay, he will present an invited paper at the Institute for Electrical and Electronic Engineers (IEEE) conference on International Instrumentation and Measurements Technology. To learn more about the meeting, please visit their web site.

Dr. Al Segall, Professor in Engineering Science and Mechanics, will travel to St. Louis in May to attend, present and chair session at the 2012 annual Society for Tribologist and Engineers meeting. To learn more about the meeting, please visit their web site.

Dr. Reginald Hamilton, Assistant Professor in Engineering Science and Mechanics will travel in early April to the spring meeting for Materials Research Society in San Francisco, California. To learn more about the conference, please visit their web site.

Dr. Akhlesh Lakhtakia, Charles Godfrey Binder Professor in Engineering Science and Mechanics, chaired the conference Bioinspiration, Biomimetics, and Bioreplication II, held March 12-14, 2012 in San Diego, CA. He also presented two papers. The first, entitled "Towards bioinspired parylene-C coatings of implant surfaces," was co-authored with Dr. Lai Wei, his former PhD student, who now works for Lam Research Corporation. The second, entitled "Toward pest control via mass production of realistic decoys of insects," was co-authored with ESM graduate student Drew Pulsifer, Drs. Raúl Martín-Palma (Adjunct Professor, Materials Science and Engineering), Thomas C. Baker (Distinguished Professor, Entomology), and Jayant Kumar (Professor of Physics & Applied Physics, University of Massachusetts Lowell). Moreover, Dr. Lakhtakia was a co-author of the paper entitled "Arrays of bioinspired compound lenses for solar cells," which was presented by Dr. Francisco Chiadini (University of Salerno, Italy) and also co-authored by Drs. Antonio Scaglione (University of Salerno) and Vincenzo Fiumara (University of Basilicata, Italy).