Nano Materials News

The research of Dr. Lei Zhai’s group at the NanoScience Technology Cen-ter has been featured as the 2009 Cov-er of the Year for the Macromolecu-lar journal by Wiley Interscience, a

journals. In their paper published in Macromolecuar Rapid Communica-tions (MRC, 2009, 30, 1837) Dr. Zhai

and his postdoctoral fellow, Dr. Jianhua Liu, reported a non-invasive bottom-up approach that provides intrigu-ing carbon nanotube based composites for energy conver-sion and storage devices and nanoscale electronics. Their eye-catching cover was selected from the front and back (a total of 109) covers within the six journals of the Mac-romolecular journal family in 2009.

2010 Research Incentive Award (RIA) award winners

Dr. Saiful Khondaker and Dr. Jiyu Fang

Dr. Khondaker (pictured left) is looking at electron transport mea-surements from a carbon nanotube device. His group studies transport properties of nanoelectronic devic-es consisting of carbon nanotubes, graphene and organic polymers.

Dr. Jiyu Fang (pictured right) devel-oped the application of Atomic Force Microscope indentation in studying nanomechanics of self-assembled lipid nanotubes.

Masahiro Ishigami, a joint appoint-ment at NSTC and Department of Physics, has won the prestigious NSF Career Award in 2009, titled “Intrinsic Transport Properties of Graphene: Ap-proaching the Elusive Ground State on Crystalline Substrates.”Graphene, a single layer of graphite,

possesses unique electronic properties important for both fundamental and applied nanoscale materials phys-ics research. Charge carriers in graphene behave much like light. This unusual property of intrinsic disorder-free graphene can be exploited to explore the consequences of relativistic Quantum Electrodynamics on a chip, mak-ing graphene important for increasing our understand-ing of fundamental physics. The utility of graphene for electronic applications is demonstrated by the observed

Yet, because graphene is composed of only surface at-oms, its intrinsic properties are sensitive to adsorbates and substrate-induced disorder. Adsorbate-induced disorder can now be eliminated, but so far substrate-induced dis-order has not been controlled. Thus, the graphene remain unknown. This Faculty Early Career Award supports projects seeking to uncover the intrinsic properties of graphene and pave a way for the exploration of Quantum Electrodynamics by utilizing crystalline substrates. Such substrates are expected to eliminate substrate-induced disorder, and create “perfect” graphene. The studies will also elucidate the intrinsic limitation of graphene-based devices. Thus, they have the potential to have a broad impact on electronic applications of graphene.

COVER OF THE YEAR

RESEARCH INCENTIVE AWARD

NSF CAREER AWARD

Cover of the Year 1 Research Incentive Award 1 NSF Career Award 1 Messages from the Director 2

Faculty Promotions 2-3 4

Student News 5-7 Staff Spotlight 8

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Nano Materials News

First of all, let me take this oppor-tunity to wish you all a wonderful spring season. With spring here, I would like to highlight some ex-citing news of this eventful semes-ter. We have seen many notable achievements and I am very proud of the progress we are making in our centers.

Hearty congratulations to all who were promoted and tenured. Kudos to Saiful, Helge and Lei for their promo-tion to Associate Professor. Similarily, both Yong Ho and Kevin joined the Hall of Fame by getting promoted to

duly noted.Dr. Masa Ishigami, a joint appointee of NSTC and Phys-ics, brings home another CAREER award for us. This is

These are some major milestones ahead of our joint AMPAC and NSTC center, as we move forward.

In other news, a very well done to Saiful and Jiyu as they both win the Research Incentive Awards at UCF. More exciting news comes from Dr Zhai whose nanotubes make the 2009 Cover of the Year for the Macromolecular journal, a high-impact publication.Our students in materials and nano continue to make great

-gratulations to all students who have won fellowships or awards, or graduated this year. You are the light of our institution and in turn will bring fame to the centers.I would like to make a special mention of Cindy and Josh, who have been highlighted in our newsletter this semes-ter. Cindy continues to coordinate the Materials program, while Josh keeps all of us out of trouble. Thank you for all your hard work.In conclusion, faculty, staff and students, please accept my thanks for your continuing support in striving to make the joint AMPAC and NSTC a world class institution.To learn more, please enjoy the Spring 2010 newsletter.

Dr. Kevin R. Coffey has been pro-moted to a full professorship in the Advanced Materials Processing and Analysis Center and the Depart-ment of Mechanical, Materials, and Aerospace Engineering at UCF. He received his B.A. in Physics from New College in Sarasota, FL in 1975, and after an early industrial research career in electro-photog-

raphy and magnetic recording he continued his studies earning a M.S. in Physics from Northeastern University in 1985 and a Ph.D. in Materials Science and Engineer-ing from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in 1989. After receiving his doctorate he initially returned

IBM. He joined UCF in 2002, where he continues his research interests in the materials science and electronic

materials and nanoscale metals. Dr. Coffey’s research excellence is evidenced by over 60 journal publications and 21 issued U.S. Patents, with several additional patent applications pending and in progress. Dr. Coffey is very

IEEE Magnetic Society, APS) and is currently serving as the Program Co-Chair for the 56th Conference on Magne-tism and Magnetic Materials. He also serves as the gradu-ate faculty coordinator for the Materials Science and Engineering Program.

MESSAGE FROM DIRECTOR SUDIPTA SEAL

CONGRATULATIONS TO KEVIN COFFEY FOR PROMOTION TO FULL PROFESSOR

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Dr. Yongho Sohn has been promoted to a full professor with AMPAC and the Department of Mechanical Materials & Aerospace Engineering (MMAE) and continues to serve as the Associate Direc-tor of the Materials Characterization Fa-cility at University of Central Florida. He

received his B.S. with honors and M.S. from Worcester Polytechnic Institute, Worcester, MA in mechanical and materials engineering. He graduated in 1999 with a Ph.D. in materials from Purdue University and spent two years as a research scientist at the University of Connecticut. He joined University of Central Florida in 2001 as an As-sistant Professor. His research and teaching interests in-cludes multicomponent intrinsic and interdiffusion in mul-

barrier coatings and protective metallic/ceramic coatings, oxidation, hot corrosion and environmental degradation, thermotransport and irradiation-enhanced diffusion in nu-clear fuels and claddings, light-weight metallic alloys and metal-matrix composites, and materials characterization. Dr. Sohn’s research activities have been funded by vari-ous federal agencies and industry. He has published over 90 journal papers and over 35 proceeding papers. He has given over 250 presentations including over 60 plenary/keynote/invited lectures at conferences around the globe. He is a recipient of a CAREER award from the Nation-al Science Foundation, UCF’s 2006 Research Incentive Award, and UCF’s 2007 Teaching Incentive Award. He

committees in professional societies and at UCF.

Dr. Lei Zhai obtained his Ph.D. degree in 2002 from Carnegie Mellon University as Professor Richard McCullough’s doctoral student. He worked with Professors Mi-chael Rubner and Robert Cohen at Massa-chusetts Institute of Technology as a post-doctoral research associate before joining

the NanoScience Technology Center and the Department of Chemistry at the University of Central Florida in 2005. He was a recipient of the prestigious NSF Career award in 2008. His research focuses on conductive polymer su-pramolecular structures and carbon nanotube composites for sensors, nanoelectronics, and energy conversion and storage devices.

Dr. Saiful I. Khondaker received his Ph.D. degree in 1999 from the Cavendish Laboratory of the University of Cam-bridge. During 2001-2003, he completed a postdoctoral fellowship at the University of Texas, Austin. From 2003 to 2005, he worked as an assistant director at the cen-

ter for nano and molecular science and technology at the University of Texas at Austin. He joined UCF as an assis-tant professor at the NanoScience Technology Center and Department of Physics in 2005. Dr. Khondaker’s research focuses on the fabrication and electron transport proper-ties of nanoscale electronic devices. He was a recipient of the prestigious NSF CAREER Award in 2008 and the 2009-10 UCF Research Incentive Award.

Helge Heinrich joined AMPAC and the Physics Department at the University of Central Florida in December 2003. Since he received his M.S. degree in Physics at the Technical University Braunschweig (Germany) in 1990, his main research tool has been transmission electron mi-

croscopy. For his masters thesis, he studied the evolution of dislocations during deformation of a Cu-Mn alloy. Dr. Heinrich received his Ph.D. in Physics in 1994 from ETH Zurich (Switzerland) in the area of structural and chemi-cal analysis of high temperature superconductors. He then worked as a postdoctoral researcher and lecturer at ETH Zurich. From 1996 to 2003, he was a research associate and lecturer in Physics and in Materials Science at ETH Zurich and co-organized two international conferences. In 2002, he received a stipend from the Department of Materials Science and Engineering at the University of Pittsburgh to work as visiting scholar. At UCF, his main research areas are in the characterization of metallic ma-

-materials. Since 2009, he has been serving as the graduate coordinator in Physics. In 2009, Dr. Heinrich was chair elect for the joint symposium of the Florida Chapter of the

-croscopy. He has published over 60 peer-reviewed papers and two book chapters.

CONGRATULATIONS ON TENURE AND PROMOTION TO ASSOCIATE PROFESSORS

CONGRATULATIONS TO YONG HO SOHN FOR PROMOTION TO FULL PROFESSOR

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Nano Materials News

Dr. Qun (Treen) Huo received her Ph.D. degree in Chemistry from the University of Miami in 1999. She joined the NanoScience Technology Cen-ter and the Department of Chemistry at UCF in 2005. Prior to this position, she was an assistant professor at North Dakota State University from 2001 to 2005. During her faculty career, she re-

ceived the National Science Foundation CAREER award (~$500K) and Nanoscale Interdisciplinary Research Team (NIRT) award (~$1.2 million) as a principal investigator. She recently received a Florida Department of Health Bankhead-Coley Foundation Bridge grant. She has also been a Co-PI in several other federal and internal grants. She supervised and graduated four Ph.D. and three M.Sc. students in the past several years. She has so far published 65 papers in peer-reviewed journals. She is also an associ-ate editor for an Elsevier journal - Colloids and Surfaces B: Biointerfaces.

While at NDSU, Dr. Huo mainly taught graduate level courses. Since Dr. Huo joined UCF, she has focused her efforts in teaching the undergraduate level courses Or-ganic Chemistry I and II for the Department of Chem-istry. Organic Chemistry is one of the most challenging topics for the undergraduate students. Dr. Huo very much enjoyed her teaching experiences from these courses by helping the students to overcome their fear in learning or-ganic chemistry.

Dr. Huo’s research has been related to two areas: poly-mer nanocomposite materials and gold nanoparticles. In

-cused on polymer nanocomposites. Her group developed gold nanoparticles and carbon nanotube-based polymer composite materials for various application studies. One of her works, published and featured in Advanced Mate-rials, used the photothermal effect of gold nanoparticles embedded in polymer matrix for microstructure fabrica-tion. In collaboration with colleagues Dr. Lei Zhai and Dr. Saiful Khondaker at NSTC, they developed a new method for carbon nanotube dispersion using conjugated conduct-ing polymers. This work was also published in Advanced Materials.

In recent years, Dr. Huo’s research has been more focused on gold nanoparticles and their applications for biomolec-ular detection and analysis. Dr. Huo has made two unique

is the development of a solid phase synthetic methodology to make gold nanoparticles with a single chemical func-tional group on the surface. Since its publication in 2004, there have been many citations on this work. There are also many derivative works based on this methodology developed by Huo’s group. A second major contribution from Huo’s group is the development of a new biomo-lecular assay technology using gold nanoparticles coupled with dynamic light scattering detection. This technology

it has perhaps the broadest applications among all exist-ing bioanalytical techniques. It can be used for protein de-tection and analysis, to study protein-protein interactions for protein complex/aggregate analysis, and the detection of other chemical and biological species. The market po-tential for this technology is estimated to be around the billion-dollar range. Using this technology, they have re-

-agnosis, and treatment of prostate cancer. This technol-ogy has received extensive media attention including Dis-covery Channel, WESH Channel 2, and was featured in a special issue of J. Am. Chem. Soc. This technology is currently being commercialized through Nano Discovery, a spin-off company from UCF, cofounded by Dr. Huo.

Dr. Jiyu Fang

Associate Professor

Dr. Fang received his Ph.D. degree from Southeast University (China) in 1992. From 1993 to 1997, he was a research associate in DOE Ames Laboratory and a postdoctoral fellow at University of California at Los Angeles. From 1998 to

2000, he was a research scientist in the center for biomo-lecular science and engineering at Naval Research Labo-ratory. He is currently an associate professor at University of Central Florida with appointments in the Advanced Ma-terials Processing and Analysis Center and Department of Mechanical, Materials, and Aerospace Engineering.

Dr. Fang’s research interests include biomolecular mate-

drug delivery, and biological interfaces with over 70 publi-cations. His work is currently supported by NSF-Nano and biomechanics, Catalysis and Biocatalysis, and Interfacial-Processes and Thermodynamics programs.

FACULTY PROFILE : QUN (TREEN) HUO & JIYU FANG

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UCF Knight Working at Protein Biophysics

Dr. Abhilash Vincent received his Ph.D. (2010) in Materials Science and En-gineering from University of Central Florida. His dissertation entitled “Probing the Nanoscale Interaction Forces and Elastic Properties of Organic and Inor-ganic Materials Using Force-Distance (F-D) Spectroscopy” was supervised by Dr. Sudipta Seal with AMPAC and MMAE. From February 2010 onwards Dr.

(headed by Dr. Michael Woodside) at the National Institute for Nanotechnology (NINT) situated at University of Alberta Campus. Using Laser-based optical trapping techniques that can explore protein drug molecular interaction forces

in piconewton scales and high sensitive spectroscopic probes that can observe the motions of individual protein mole-

(Proteins assembled themselves into 3-dimensional aggregate structures) that can lead to neurodegenerative diseases like Mad Cow disease in bovines and Parkinson’s disease in humans.

Ms. Barabara Franke and Dr. Prabhakar Mohan received their B.S./M.S. (2005) and Ph.D. (2010), respectively, in Materials Science and Engineering from University of Cen-tral Florida. Barbara’s thesis entitled “Non-Destructive Evaluation of Thermal Barrier Coatings by Thermal Wave Imaging and Photo-Stimulated Luminescence Spectrosco-py,” and Prabhakar’s dissertation, entitled, “Environmental Degradation of Air Plasma Sprayed Yttria-Stabilized Zirconia Coatings,” were supervised by Dr. Yongho Sohn with AMPAC and MMAE. Barbara spent the last three years with Materials and Processes in the Surface Engineering Group with primary responsibilities in aluminide coatings and harsh environment applications. Recently she has been promoted to a new position as 6-Sigma Black Belt in Complex Machining and Assembly. At Solar, the 6-Sigma Black

In this new role, Barbara will run projects with cross-functional teams to improve quality, cost, velocity, and safety in a manufacturing environment. Prabhakar started with Solar in 2010 as a materials engineer in Materials & Processes Engineering Department of the Product Development Division. Dr. Mohan will be developing advanced materials,

advanced turbine applications. He will also support the materials failure analysis team and participate in the materi-

California.

Dr. Coffey’s doctoral student, Andrew Warren, has received the 2010 Ludo Frevel Crystallography Scholarship Award from the International Centre for Diffraction Data.

Suresh Babu Krishna Moorthy, a postdoctoral researcher with Prof. Sudipta Seal, is joining as an Associate Profes-

be pursuing research and teaching nanoelectronics and nanophotonics. He gained valuable experience in nanotechnol-ogy working with Dr. Seal at UCF.

STUDENT NEWS & AWARDS

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Nano Materials News

Anindarupa Chunder (Dr. Lei Zhai’s group) received fellowships funded by the National Science Foundation (NSF) and the US Department of Energy (DOE) to attend Faraday Discussion 146: Wetting Dynamics of Hydrophobic and Structured Surfaces and Faraday Discussion Graduate Research Seminar (FD-GRS). Students were selected by

graduate and postdoctoral students will be invited to present their work orally, with ample time for group discussion after each talk.

SBMRI Project Summary

Dr. Hickman’s student John Rumsey graduated from UCF in 2009 and is currently employed as a post-doctoral re-search associate at Burnham Institute, Florida. His project at the SBMRI focuses on the role of the PGC-1 family of

-ditionally, he is looking at the role of dysregulated PGC-1 coactivator signaling pathways in type II diabetes pathogen-esis. The PGC-1 family transcriptional coactivators are inducible coregulators of a wider variety of cellular processes involved in mitochondrial biogenesis and energy metabolism. They are normally upregulated in oxidative tissues in-

dysregulated PGC-1 pathways contribution to type II diabetes. Ultimately, this research will aid in the development of exercise mimetics and therapeutics for patients with type II diabetes.

Kerry Wilson graduated from UCF in Fall 2008 under the tutelage of Dr. James Hickman, head of the Hybrid Systems Lab at the NanoScience Technology Center. He is currently doing his post-doctoral research at the London Centre for Nanotechnology, University College London. His research interests lie in the design, fabrication, and use of micro-

in vitro systems that not only mimic the in vivo environment, but also allow the systematic interrogation of cells and tissues in real-time and in a high-throughput manner while allowing stringent control of experimental variables.

-idic devices. Cellular migration on planar substrates has been extensively studied and published on. It is now coming to light, however, that the way cells migrate on 2D substrates is fundamentally distinct from migration in 3D environ-

to migrate up a chemotactic gradient in microchannels with a cross-section of 4 x 5 microns. In this way, it is possible to observe the dynamics of the actin cytoskeleton and associated protein complexes under normal conditions or in the

Previous projects Kerry has worked on involve the construction of a Bio-MEMS device based on microfabricated silicon cantilevers for studying skeletal and cardiac muscle physiology (Wilson et al, Lab Chip 2007; and PLoS ONE 2010) and the application of a Whispering Gallery Mode biosensor for studying protein adsorption to alkylsilane self-assembled monolayers.

STUDENT NEWS & AWARDS (continued)

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Shruba Gangopadhyay won the Supercomputing Award from the ACS COMP Division, IBM-Zerner Graduate Stu-dent Award in Quantum Chemistry, Graduate Student Research Award for CACS2010, LANL Student Support Award for CNLS conference, and GSA Graduate Studies Fellowship at UCF.

Iffat Nayyar won the APS Division of Chemical Physics Research Excellence Award, McCammon Graduate Student Award in Quantum Chemistry and LANL Student Support Award for CNLS conference.

Pansy Patel won the Chemical Computing Group Graduate Student Excellence Award, IBM-Zerner Graduate Student Award in Quantum Chemistry and LANL Student Support Award for CNLS conference.

Workalemahu Berhanu, an NSTC Fellowship Awardee, won Graduate Student Research Award for CACS2010, LANL Student Support Award for CNLS conference and Student Award to attend NRBSC workshop at Pittsburgh Supercomputing Center.

Satyender Goel is selected by National Who’s Who organization for Who’s Who among Students.

Congratulations to Dr. J. Manuel Perez for graduating two students Atul Asati, who joined Dr. Perez’s lab in the Summer of 2006 as a doctoral student and successfully graduated in December 2009 with a Ph.D. in Chemistry, and Charalambos (Bambos) Kaittanis, who joined in the summer of 2006 and successfully graduated in May 2010 with

nanotechnology (Small and Angewandte Chemie) and two other papers are in preparation and will be submitted soon. He received multiple awards such as (1) Best Poster Presentation at the 2008’s UCF Research Week, (2) the National Biotechnology Graduate Symposium Award from the American Association of Pharmaceutical Scientist in 2009 (only

Society in 2009 (Only 3 students received this award in 2009) and (4) the Best Poster Prize, 2nd Place at NanoFlorida Symposium 2009 at UCF. Charalambos’s research focused on the development of magnetic nanosensors to detect bacteria in clinical samples; in particular, nanoparticle based assays to detect the presence of Mycobacterium avius paratuberculosis (MAP). Bambos’s work has resulted in publications in JACS, and Chemistry of Materials. In addi-tion, he contributed to a review article about his work in Advanced Drug Delivery Reviews and to other manuscripts published in Small, Langmuir, Analytical Chemistry, Angewandte Chemie, and Applied Physical Letters. He received an award from the American Federation for Aging Research.

STUDENT NEWS & AWARDS (continued)

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Nano Materials News

Spring 2010 began on a sad note with the passing of our beloved colleague and friend, Mr. Paul

Alman (63). Paul is survived by his spouse and two children. Paul was a one-of-a-kind colleague who went out of his way to help any one in need. He was instrumental in the build-outs of the vari-

Paul is missed very much, and we keep his family in our prayers.

Joshua Hallam is the HR Coordinator for the NanoScienceTechnology Center. He has worked for UCF since 2008, having worked with the Records Department in Human Resources prior to joining NSTC. Josh serves the 100+ employees of the NSTC as a liaison to the HR department and International Ser-

and immigration. He also helps coordinate the various position searches for the department as well as assists faculty in recruiting research staff and students. Josh was instrumental in coordinating the the NSTC and AMPAC director search, and the annual faculty recruitment processes. Having also graduated from UCF in 2007, Josh says he still enjoys being connected to his alma mater, “I’m proud to say that I went to UCF, and it was truly a wonderful experience for me. To be able to now work for UCF and still be a part of the university is something I truly enjoy.”

Cindy Harle

She handles travel and purchases for various AMPAC faculty and graduate students. Cindy received her undergraduate degree in English from Rollins College, where she worked in their Registrar’s of-

Clarion University this summer. Because education is so important to her, she thoroughly enjoys assisting with the Materials Science and Engineering graduate program. The Materials Science and Engineering program currently has

and seeing them thrive during their academic careers here at UCF.If you would like additional information about the Materials Science Engineering graduate program, please feel free to contact Cindy by phone at (407) 882-1466.

12424 Research Parkway Suite 400 Orlando, Florida 32826 Phone: (407) 882-1578 Fax: (407) 882-2819 www.nanoscience.ucf.edu

Engineering Building 1, Suite 381 Box 162455 4000 Central Florida Boulevard Orlando, Florida 32816 Phone: (407) 882-1455 Fax: (407) 882-1462 www.ampac.ucf.edu

STAFF SPOTLIGHT