Jim Dumesic honored
Jim Dumesic is the winner of the 2008 Hilldale Award in the Physical Sciences in recognition of excellence in teaching, research and service. The UW awards, which have been given annually since 1987, honor top professors in each of the four university divisions: biological sciences, physical sciences, social studies and arts and humanities. Jim (third from the right) is pictured with past Hilldale Award winners from the department: Harmon Ray, Bob Bird and Ed Lightfoot.
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FACULTY NEWS
Nick Abbott reported in Physical Review Letters a new mechanism that couples the ordering of films of thermotropic liquid crystals to phospholipids and surfactants adsorbed at the interfaces of the liquid crystals. Because liquid crystals can be manipulated using weak fields, these results suggest new ways to actively control biomolecular interfaces. In a second study published as an Accelerated Article in Analytical Chemistry, Nick reported on the use of twisted nematic liquid crystals to image surfaces patterned with chemistries that are widely used to create protein and nucleic acid microarrays. This work has led to several patents that are licensed to local start-up Platypus Technologies LLC. Nick has also presented a number of invited talks over the past few months, including talks at an ECI conference on separations in Costa Rica, a Gordon Research Conference on Colloids, Macromolecular and Polyelectrolyte Solutions, the spring meeting of the Materials Research Society in San Francisco, and the International Conference on Nanotechnology held in Melbourne, Australia. He recently stepped down as chair of the Nanoscale Science and Engineering Forum of the AIChE, and stepped up to be co-chair of the International Conference on Bionanotechnology to be held in Dublin, Ireland during the coming summer.
In the November issue of Physical Review Letters, Robert Riggleman, a graduate student working with Juan de Pablo, demonstrated that when a glassy polymeric material is subject to compressive or tensile deformations, the molecular relaxation (or “rejuvenation”) of the glass is greatly accelerated. Rob showed that the key variable that determines the speed of rejuvenation is not necessarily the force that is applied on the material, but the actual strain rate at which it is deformed. Rob’s findings have important implications for the “ageing” of polymeric glasses, a process through which the properties (and performance) of polymeric glasses evolve over extended periods of time.
Jim Dumesic has been named to the 2007 Scientific American 50 (SciAm50). The magazine annually publishes a list paying tribute to individuals and organizations who, through their efforts in research, business and policy-making, are driving advances in science and technology that lay the groundwork for a better future. Jim and his group were cited for their development of a two-stage process for turning biomass-derived sugar into 2,5-dimethylfuran (DMF), a liquid transportation fuel with 40 percent greater energy density than ethanol. Jim was named to the SciAm50 in 2003 for his work pioneering economical catalysts for turning sugars into hydrogen fuel.
Alpha Chi Sigma, a national fraternity which promotes chemistry and chemical engineering, has inducted Bob Bird, Warren Stewart (posthumously) and Ed Lightfoot into its Hall of Fame for their efforts in promoting chemistry as both a science and profession and for their contributions to the success of generations of chemical engineers. |
Mike Graham has received two grants from NSF totaling nearly $500,000 over three years to study transport and collective dynamics in suspensions of swimming particles, and nonlinear traveling waves as a framework for understanding turbulent drag reduction. Mike also presented plenary lectures at the International Conference on Computational Fluid Dynamics in the Oil and Gas, Metallurgical and Process Industries in Trondheim, Norway, and at the International Symposium on Applied Rheology in Seoul, South Korea.
Dave Lynn has been promoted to the level of associate professor with tenure effective with the beginning of the next academic year. Dave recently received a $1.4 million grant from the NIH National Institute of Biomedical Imaging and Bioengineering to continue his studies of the controlled release of DNA from surfaces. The major goals of this project are to develop ultrathin films that provide spatial and temporal control over the release of DNA from surfaces and thus enable broad and tunable control over surface-mediated cell transfection in vitro and in vivo.
Manos Mavrikakis has been appointed to the editorial boards of Surface Science and Annual Review of Chemical & Biomolecular Engineering. He was invited to talk at the 2007 Gordon Conference on Fuel Cells and the 2008 Gordon Conference on Inorganic Chemistry, to present the keynote lecture at the October American Vacuum Society meeting, and he presented two invited talks in Japan earlier this year.
Regina Murphy recently won a UW-Madison Chancellor’s Distinguished Teaching Award. The award recognizes her excellence in teaching as well as her leadership in education locally and nationally, curricular change within the department, her textbook authorship, and for her work with two Madison elementary schools.
In a recent issue of Physical Review Letters, Huiman Kan and Francois Detcheverry, two postdoctoral fellows working with Paul Nealey, and Juan de Pablo, demonstrated the controlled positioning of nanoparticles in ordered block copolymer thin films. Huiman and Francois showed that by depositing the polymer films on nanopatterned substrates, it is possible to interrogate nanocomposite materials with an unprecedented level of detail, thereby addressing questions that will facilitate development of improved materials for a number of applications, including fabrication of nanoscale devices.
A team led by John Yin was recently awarded a two-year $600,000 Small Business Technology Transfer (STTR) grant from the National Institutes of Health to develop new ways to measure the infectivity of viruses, with a focus on influenza A virus. Such measures will have applications in clinical diagnostics, screening drugs for anti-viral activities, and epidemiological testing for exposure of patient populations to viruses that cause disease. The study initiates a collaboration with David Beebe in the Department of Biomedical Engineering and with Bellbrook Labs LLC, a Madison company that specializes in microscale biological testing.
