Paul Stokes was selected as one of only 60 participants from the U.S. to attend the upcom-ing Lindau Nobel Laureate Meeting for Physics in Germany in June. Paul is a graduate student in the Department of Physics and is a Ph.D. student of Dr. Saiful Khondaker (joint Physics appointment). Dr. Khondaker initiated Paul's nomination to the Nobel Laureate Meeting which was formally nominated by the VP of Research, Dr. M.J. Soileau. As part of this process, Paul attended the meeting in Germany, listened to the Nobel prize winners' lectures,

and took part in various networking experiences during this week long event from June 29th to July 4th. Paul and his mentor’s work is represented in an upcom-ing article in Nanotechnol-ogy titled: “Local-gated single-walled carbon nano-

tube field effect transistors assembled by AC dielectro-phoresis”.

We congratulate Paul and are happy to play a role in this rich educational experience! Read more about Paul on page 4.

NanoScience Center Student Attends Nobel Laureate Meeting in Germany

Dr. Perez to Receive NIH R01 Grant

Dr. Perez (joint Chemistry appointment) just received word that his NIH R01 proposal titled An integrated NMR/magnetic nanosen-sor system for detection of bacteria and toxins will be awarded. Over a 4 year period this will provide over $800,000 to address this

crucial topic. It will explore the creation of a point-of-care, field-based system to ana-lyze water and food for diseases and toxins.

NanoScience Technology Center 12424 Research Parkway

Suite 400 Orlando Florida 32826 Phone: (407) 882-1578 Fax: (407) 882-2819

http://www.nanoscience.ucf.edu

The Director’s Corner 2

Nano Faculty News 2

Nano Faculty Profile: Dr. Michael Leuenberger 3

Nano Student News 4

Nano Student Profile: Paul Stokes and his Nobel Laureate Visit 5

Upcoming Nano Events 5

Inside this issue:

Volume 1, Issue 2

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Dr. Perez (back row, middle) and his research group.

Paul Stokes is in the front row, second from the right in a white shirt

The nano-initiative at UCF began in 2002 when the state of Florida granted UCF recurring fund-ing in the tar-

geted area of nanoscale science and tech-nology. All metrics suggest that the NanoScience Technology Center and other campus-wide nano-initiatives have been a wise investment in terms of at-tracting external funding, creating indus-trial partnerships, and gaining interna-tional recognition. External research funding resulting from the nano-initiative totaled over $6.4 million in 2006 while it exceeded $8.5 million in 2007. Recent award activity this year suggests that our research funding will exceed that of 2007!

At the NanoScience Technology Center we have had other significant accom-plishments and events since publishing our last Nano News. This includes: se-curing new funding from NSF, DARPA, and NIH; a new and improved web site (www.nanoscience.ucf.edu); and we have received international visitors from Japan, Vienna, Turkey, China, Jordan and else-where. Currently we are actively in-volved in the planning of the inaugural student-run NanoFlorida 2008 conference that will occur Sept 26th – the 27th. We held successful internal and external ad-visory board meetings where our peers had a chance to look at what we are doing and provided useful guidance for the future. And speaking of the future, our search for the Director of the NanoScience Technology Center and the Advance Materials Processing and Analysis Center (AMPAC) is in high gear and we have attracted excellent candi-dates.

We have a diverse and growing student and post-doc population. This fall, we expect 40 new undergraduate students, graduate students, and post docs, in addi-tion to our current 80. Our faculty and students are publishing in the best jour-nals (including recent cover stories in Chem Comm and Advanced Materials). Faculty and students have also been re-ceiving praise from their peers in the form of international awards for their papers and research. You can read more about faculty and student activities else-where in our newsletter.

The smooth operation of the NanoScience Technology Center requires a hard working and dedicated administra-tive staff to operate efficiently. In sup-port of these activities I am happy to an-nounce that Raji Natarajan has been pro-moted to Assistant Director. I would also like to welcome Joshua Hallam as our new HR coordinator.

Debra R. Reinhart, Ph.D., PE

Page 2

Nano Faculty News

The Director’s Corner

NANO NEWS

Dr. Artem Masunov Wins the ACS’s HP Outstanding Junior Faculty Award Dr. Artem Masunov (joint Chemistry appointment) has received the prestigious American Chemical Society’s Hewlett Packard Outstanding Junior Faculty Award. The HP Faculty Award is ex-pected to provide recipients with revolu-tionary research ideas that are critical to future technology developments. This grant is designed to assist new faculty members in career development. We congratulate Dr. Masunov in this achieve-ment!

Florida Innovation Caucus visits the Nano Center The NanoScience Technol-ogy Center was visited recently by the members of Florida’s Innovation Caucus. The visit was prompted by the perceived economic value that the NanoScience Center will bring in spin-off companies.

Drs. Saiful Khondaker & Andre Ges-quiere were awarded prestigious NSF grant Congratulations to Drs. Khon-daker & Gesquiere for their new NSF grant titled: Planar gated organic photo-voltaic devices.

Kudos to Dr. Ming Su for Two Grants Awards from NSF & UT Corp

Dr. Ming Su was awarded a grant from NSF titled Encapsulated phase change nanoparticles for heat transfer & one from the Universal Technology Corp titled: High-heat-capacity poly-alpha-olefin based nanofluid using encapsu-lated phase change nanoparticles.

Joint NSF/Romania Workshop Funded! In a collaboration between the NSTC & the Florida Solar Energy Center (FSEC), a group of researchers from both institutes will travel to Romania in May 2009 to participate in a 5-day workshop exploring new developments in nanoscience. The goal is to give direction to future research collaborations between Romanian and UCF research teams.

This will be led by Dr. James Hickman, the Founding Director of the NSTC, in the U.S., while Professor Alexander Stancu, the Director of CARPATH, will coordinate this project in Romania. Hickman will receive assistance from Romanian nationals at UCF Dan Marinescu, a professor and prominent researcher, and Nicoleta Sor-loaica-Hickman, an assistant professor at FSEC and former student of Stancu.

Dr. Quo “Treen” Huo ’s Article Se-lected for ChemComm Cover

Congratulations to Dr. Quo "Treen" Huo for her new cover article in the July 7th, edition of ChemComm titled "Surface modification of gold nanorods through a place exchange reaction in-side an ionic exchange resin."

VOLUME 1, ISSUE 2

Dr. Michael Leuenberger is originally from Switzerland and he completed three postdoctoral fellow-ships (UCSD, University of Basel, & University of Iowa) in preparation to explore the complex realm of Quantum Information Science. Michael is using this approach to improve the security of satellite communication. He is currently exploring this possibility from both a theoretical perspective with high end computer clusters, and an experimental approach using the International Space Station. This approach has the potential of providing unconditionally secure quantum communication between land-based stations and satellites. Quantum communication has tremendous potential; however, there are current roadblocks to overcome to solve real world problems such as creating a system that can function at distances greater than 10 km. Quantum communication is based on a phenomenon called "quantum entanglement” which occurs when two quantum-information carriers, such as photons, are

aware of each other's existence and know each other's particular quantum state, i.e. they are quantum-mechanically correlated, despite being physically separated at long distances. It is one peculiar effect of the strange, mysterious world of quantum physics.

Currently, photon channels, such as fiber-optic cables, are the only realistic choice for quantum communication. However, creating high-fidelity quantum entanglement between photons at two distant locations becomes exponentially more difficult as the distance between them increases, seriously impeding the real-life implementation of quantum communication. Extending the range to practical distances remains a challenge on many levels. However, an upcoming experiment illustrated below will test Michael’s innovative approach to this problem.

Page 3

Nano Faculty Profile: Dr. Michael Leuenberger

An illustration of an upcoming experiment created by Dr. Leuenberger in which a Quantum Information Science encryption method will be tested utilizing two base stations in Spain and a mobile quantum station located in the International Space Station.

Paul Stokes visits Nobel Laureate Meeting in Ger-many

Paul Stokes was selected as one of only 60 partici-pants from the U.S. to attend the upcoming Lindau Nobel Laureate Meeting for Physics in Germany in June. Paul is a graduate student in the Department of Physics and is a Ph.D. student of Dr. Saiful Khon-daker (joint faculty appointment NanoScience center & Physics).

Paul grew up in New Jersey and surprisingly he was originally an accounting major at West Virginia Uni-versity. He wasn’t enjoying his coursework and then he took a couple of science courses, really enjoyed them, and eventually decided to transfer to Physics. When he graduated with a B.S. in Physics he applied to many large, well known Physics graduate pro-grams, but he is very pleased he came to UCF be-cause of the 1-on-1 guidance he receives from his mentor, Dr. Khondaker. After graduation Paul is considering a position in the developing nanoelec-tronics industry in either a startup or with an estab-lished company such as Intel.

We congratulate Paul and wish him great success in the years to come!

NanoScience Stu-dents create Suc-cess for UCF’s Re-search Week

Thanks to our un-dergraduate students Carl Irani (see page 5) and Mercedes Gonzalez for serving as student ambassa-dors during our re-cent UCF Research Week. Everyone had a terrific time, see http://

ww.nanoscience.ucf.edu/news/multimedia.php for more information.

Nano student wins ACS Graduate Award

Congratulations to Satyender Goel for receiving the Graduate Student Excellence Award—Chemical Computing Group from the 236th American Chemi-cal Society’s National conference to be held in Phila-delphia this August. See www.acscomp.org/Awards/ccg.html for more information. It is a terri-fic accomplishment and the ACS conference is a great networking opportunity to review the most recent breakthroughs in chemical research methods.

Page 4

Nano Student News

NANO NEWS

Pictures from Paul Stokes recent visit to the Nobel Laureate Meeting in Germany.

NanoScience undergraduate student Mercedes Gonzalez.

Carl was born in Queens, New York, but grew up in Orlando, Florida. Carl is a 20-year-old Junior at UCF and is enrolled in our unique undergraduate Nano Track program. "This is a really great interdisciplinary program, it is the only nanoscience undergraduate program in the state of Florida and there are only a handful of these nano programs across the country. I became interested in nanoscience because my uncle, who works at Johnson &. Johnson, told me I should look into this field. He said there were some new and exciting things happening, it’s expanding and growing and now is the time to get into this area. I took his advice and ran with it."

Right now Carl is working with Dr. Lei Zhai, a faculty member at the NanoScience Technol-ogy. "I am working on lots of projects now, improving the fabrication of nanofibers for drug delivery systems using organic polymers and I am also working on the fabrication of an anti-bacteria nanofiber filter that could be used to filter polluted water. I like to see what the other labs are doing as well, because it's always changing. You can learn a lot of things here, even if you don't have that much knowledge in the field of the lab you are working . The people are really friendly and able to help you out. You have to be a quick learner in nanotechnol-ogy, or any science for that matter. When you do learn things, you learn it and you remember

it because you are doing the projects yourself."

After Carl graduates he plans to continue his education. "My plan is to go to obtain a Master's of Business Administration (MBA) and combine my interest in nanoscience with business, it's perfect for me."

Page 5

Nano Student Profile: Carl Irani

NANO NEWS

Carl participates in many events at the center. This is a recent photograph from the Summer UCF Research Week in which the NanoScience Technology Cen-ter was a favorite site for students. Carl is in the back row wearing sunglasses.

VOLUME 1, ISSUE 2

Raji Natarajan promoted to Assistant Director

Congratulations to Raji Natarajan for her well-deserved pro-motion to Assistant Director, Research Programs & Services. (see profile below).

New Human Resources Coordinator Arrives!

Congratulations to our new Human Resources Coordinator-Joshua Hal-lam who comes to us from UCF’s Office of Research.

Kudos to our Nano Staff for their Expert Service

On Administrative Week we collectively thanked our Nano Staff for all their hard work on budgets, proposals, complex purchase orders and bringing good cheer into the lives of busy academics. We welcome back Diane Maldonado after a long and well de-served vacation in Puerto Rico. Diane looks after depart-ment’s purchase and administrative tasks.

Page 6

Nano Staff News

NANO NEWS

Our new Assistant Director, Raji Natarajan, MBA.

Raji Natarajan is a strong advocate for our University and is a living example that UCF Stands for Opportunity. Raji has been at the NanoScience Tech-nology Center since its inception and was recently promoted to Assistant Director, Research Programs & Services. In this role, Raji has a wide vari-ety of responsibilities; she has substantial human resources (HR) and budg-etary responsibilities that are an important part of running a large research center. Raji has a role in all of the ongoing projects here.

Raji was born and raised in Chennai (formerly known as Madras) in the southeast coastal region of India. At the University of Madras, she com-pleted a bachelor's degree in Business with a focus in International Finance. She studied business because she was fascinated with economics although that was a controversial choice in a society that encourages the pursuit of law, medicine or engineering degrees. After she graduated she completed a year-long internship at an international bank in the foreign exchange de-partment while pursuing a post graduate diploma. She enjoyed her experi-ence, but she became interested in opportunities to pursue her Masters in the United States because she perceived that there was a glass ceiling for a female in the male-dominated business community in India. Another reason for her interest in pursuing a Masters degree in the U.S. is that Raji’s brother completed his education in the United States and was encouraging her to

explore options in the US. Raji’s brother was already living in the Orlando area, UCF has a Master’s in Business Administration (MBA) with a focus on Management Information Systems, and therefore she included UCF in her MBA search. She is very happy she did. “Business is perceived to be a very mechanical process, but translating an organization’s mission into a tangible strategy and then motivating people to pursue this vision, that’s key. People are your most valuable resource and therefore HR management interests me to a great deal. I have been here since the beginning of the center and I enjoy using my business skills to help manage this now multi-million dollar operation. This role has helped me to grow professionally and personally.” In the future, Raji would like to pursue a doctoral degree that combines her interest in human resources and information systems. “I like the interface between the two, how information passes between people to accomplish strategic goals.” The Nano Center is very thankful that Raji calls UCF home.

Members of our Nano Staff. From L-R:Cara Roesner, Ushaben Lal, Diane Maldonado, Raji Natarajan, & Debbie Fry.

Debbie Fry is our tireless accountant, Michelle Shirzad our ever-diligent receptionist, Ushaben Lal, a new immigrant from Australia is our Travel Coordinator and she organizes trips, seminars and confer-ences. Cara was an ever cheerful member of our team, but recently accepted a position that was closer to her home. Thank you one and all! Nano Staff Profile: Raji Natarajan, MBA

The UCF NanoScience Technology Cen-ter will describe new discoveries in the world of nano on Sept 26th—27th (see page 8) in this free, trans-Florida event.

NanoTxUSA Conference

This will be held October 2-3rd in Dallas, TX to review nanotechnology commer-cial potential.

EPA’s International Environmental Nanotechnology Conference

This will be held October 7-9, 2008. Hyatt Regency Chicago, Chicago, IL.

IEEE Nano 2008

8th International Conference on Nanotechnology will be in Arlington, TX from Aug 18-21

Micro Nano Breakthrough Conference

The Micro Nano Breakthrough Confer-ence will be held Sept 8-10 in Vancouver, WA to explore Science to Commerciali-zation for the Micro/Nanotechnology Economy.

Nano Florida 2008

AVS 2008

The American Vacuum Society will hold their annual conference on Oct. 19-24 in Boston, MA. Many argue that the AVS is the birthplace of the nano movement starting in 1953 to explore developments in vaccum test environments.

NASA National Nano Engineering Conference NNEC 2008

NASA’s Tech Brief’s will hold their annual conference on Nov. 12-13 in Bos-ton, MA.

Page 7

Upcoming Nano Conferences

NANO NEWS

Upcoming NanoScience Technology Center Seminars

VOLUME 1, ISSUE 2

Speaker When Location

Dr. Jersy Leszcynski -Jackson State Univ Sept 4 2008 NanoScience Technology Center Room 475 12424 Research Parkway

Dr. Bryan Huey, Univ of Connecticut Sept 18 2008 NanoScience Technology Center Room 475 12424 Research Parkway

Dr. John Grey – Univ of New Mexico Sept 25 2008 NanoScience Technology Center Room 475 12424 Research Parkway

Dr. Oleg Prezhdo - Univ of Washington Oct 3 2008 NanoScience Technology Center Room 475 12424 Research Parkway

Dr. Rao Y. Surampalli - EPA Oct 13 2008 NanoScience Technology Center Room 475 12424 Research Parkway

Dr. Gonzalo Cosa -McGill University Oct 14 2008 NanoScience Technology Center Room 475 12424 Research Parkway

Dr. Amanda Haes - University of Iowa Nov 6 2008 NanoScience Technology Center Room 475 12424 Research Parkway

Dr. Chongwu Zhou – University of Southern California

Nov 2008 NanoScience Technology Center Room 475 12424 Research Parkway

Dr. Ken Wynne – Virginia Commonwealth Uni-versity

Nov 21 2008 NanoScience Technology Center Room 475 12424 Research Parkway

Dr. Abdou Hussainen—National Institute of Ad-vanced Industrial Science and Technology (AIST), Japan

Dec 2008 NanoScience Technology Center Room 475 12424 Research Parkway

Please consider becoming one of the founding members of UCF’s Nano/Materials Industrial Affiliates Program. This program has been created to meet the needs of your com-pany and to provide our faculty members with an interface with the commercial world.

The NanoScience Technology Center has 18 faculty mem-bers; in 2008 we received three prestigious NSF CAREER awards and one DARPA Young Faculty Award. We seek to leverage our core state line funding of over $4M annually into exciting research findings and commercializable IP.

Founding membership costs are a modest $1k/yr. Feel free to call us at 407 882-1189 or E-mail us at an-derj@mail.ucf.edu if we can answer any questions about this program.

See http://www.nanoscience.ucf.edu/industry for more information.

Jeffrey M. Anderson, Ph.D.

Associate Director / Industrial Affiliates Liaison

Nano/Materials Affiliates Program Open Faculty Position

The University of Central Florida is seeking tenured full or associate professors in the NanoScience Technology Center (www.nanoscience.ucf.edu) to build on existing interdisciplinary expertise in nanoscale science in energy, photonics, imaging, quantum computing, nanomaterials and biomolecular science.

The Center is emphasizing the recruitment of senior faculty but exceptional candidates who are theoreticians will also be considered for tenure-track posi-tions. Candidates who have an interest in commercial applications of their work or existing commercial ventures are encouraged to apply.

Review of candidates will be ongoing. Please send application with curricu-lum vitae, summary of research plans, and three or more references to: Ms. Rajeswari Natarajan, Assistant Director, 12424 Research Parkway, Suite 400, Orlando, FL 32826 (rnataraj@mail.ucf.edu).

UCF is an Affirmative Action Employer. Women and minorities are encouraged to ap-ply. UCF makes all application materials, including transcripts, and all search materi-als available for public review upon request, as provided by Florida's open records law.

NanoFlorida 2008

Free Event—Everyone is welcome!

Come hear Harry Kroto, Nobel Laureate from Florida State University deliver a live streaming talk and Bill Appleton Director of the Nanoscience Institute for Medical & Engineering Technology @ the University of Florida will provide the keynote address!

Orlando, FL Sept 26th & 27th, 2008