In May, 14 striking, larger-than-life photographic prints that are both comfortingly organic and starkly abstract will enable patrons of Mother Fool's Coffeehouse in Madison to visualize a scientific world that's rarely seen outside the laboratory. "Sights Unseen: Images of the Nanoscale" is an art exhibit featuring research images captured by faculty, staff and students in the University of Wisconsin-Madison National Science Foundation-funded Materials Research Science and Engineering Center on Nanostructured Interfaces and the NSF-funded Nanoscale Science and Engineering Center. The exhibit runs throughout May, with an opening reception from 7-9 p.m. on Sunday, May 4, at the coffeehouse, 1101 Williamson St. The coffeehouse hours are 6:30 a.m.-11 p.m. weekdays and 8 a.m.-11 p.m. weekends.  [MORE]

Pioneering University of Wisconsin-Madison stem cell scientist James Thomson was elected today to the National Academy of Sciences.  [MORE]

Chemical and Biological Engineering Professor James Dumesic and his team at UW-Madison announced an integrated process for creating chemical components of jet fuel using a green gasoline approach. While Dumesic’s group had previously demonstrated the production of jet-fuel components by combining separate catalytic steps, its current work shows that these steps can be integrated together and run sequentially, without complex separation and purification processes between reactors.  [MORE]

We are pleased to announce that Professor Laura Kiessling has been awarded a Guggenheim Award, by the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation. Guggenheim Awards provide fellowships to faculty and other advanced professionals in all fields of physical and social sciences, humanities, and the creative arts.

A team of UW-Madison engineers will work with researchers at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign and the University of Texas-Arlington for a multimillion-dollar Multidisciplinary University Research Initiative (MURI) from the Air Force Office of Scientific Research. MURIs provide long-term support for science and engineering research vital to national defense. Led by Erwin W. Mueller Professor and Bascom Professor of Surface Science Max Lagally (materials science and engineering), the team will investigate various photonic and electronic applications for silicon nanomembranes, flexible single-crystal sheets of silicon. The researchers will explore such applications as flexible electronics, sensors, NEMS, low-temperature systems, thermoelectric devices and 3D stacked electronics, for example. The UW-Madison team also includes Lynn H. Matthias Professor II in Electrical and Computer Engineering Robert Blick, Professor of Physics Mark Eriksson (also Materials Science and Engineering), Assistant Professor of Electrical and Computer Engineering Zhenqiang (Jack) Ma and Assistant Professor of Mechanical Engineering Kevin T. Turner.

Assistant Professors of Electrical and Computer Engineering Hongrui Jiang (also biomedical engineering) and Zhenqiang (Jack) Ma are among the 39 honorees to receive 2008 Young Faculty Awards from the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA). This is the second year the program has recognized non-tenured faculty who are rising leaders in microsystems technology. Jiang and Ma will receive $150,000 each to develop their projects over the next year. Jiang’s project, “Super Artificial Eyes,” aims to develop hemispherical arrays of microlenses, much like an insect’s eye, for military surveillance applications. These arrays of individually tunable lenses would offer a wider field of view than a traditional camera lens. Ma’s project, “Toward 3D Si Photonics,” will develop monolithically integrated ultracompact distributed-Bragg-reflector-free vertical-cavity surface-emitting lasers for practical on-silicon light sources using manufacturable semiconductor nanomembranes. The success could lead to high-density silicon-based 3D photonic-electronics systems.

The Engineering Mechanics Division of the American Society for Engineering Education (ASEE) awarded Assistant Professor of Mechanical Engineering Kevin T. Turner the Ferdinand P. Beer and E. Russell Johnston, Jr. Outstanding New Mechanics Educator Award. The award is given annually individuals who, though having five years or less of experience, have shown a strong commitment to mechanics education. Turner, in his third year of teaching at UW-Madison, was given the award for his outstanding instructor evaluations in two required undergraduate mechanics courses and the development of the upper-level course, “Design of Micro- and Nanomechanical Systems.” Turner will receive a cash prize and a plaque at the Mechanics Division Banquet at the ASEE Annual Conference in June.

BBC News quoted Assistant Professor of Electrical and Computer Engineering Zhenqiang (Jack) Ma in a March 27 story on flexible,
stretchable silicon chips. Ma commented on the development by Professor John Rogers at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, which
could expand the scope of his own work on flexible circuitry. "In some applications, such a form of stretchable and foldable integrated circuits may be the only choice," said Ma.  [MORE]

Dumesic joined the faculty in 1976 and has distinguished himself internationally in the field of heterogeneous catalysis, the science that has been the workhorse of the petrochemical field for the last century. His current work involving alternative fuels promises to form the foundation for a new biomass-to-chemical industry in the coming century.  [MORE]

With UW-Madison’s stem cell research making news around the globe, the man behind the breakthrough discoveries would just as soon stay out of the media’s glare.  [MORE]

At the University of Wisconsin-Madison, it's a challenge Greta Zenner faces every day. On campus, Zenner is in charge of outreach for the National Science Foundation-funded Materials Research Science and Engineering Center on Nanostructured Interfaces. She and her students devise ways to share nanotechnology — an emerging scientific area that deals in dimensions too small to see — with the world.

The public can get up close and personal with nanotechnology research during a series of free public nanotechnology events on campus during "Nano Days," Saturday, March 29-Sunday, April 6.  [MORE]

The March issue of "Nature Nanotechnology" highlighted work that Lynn H. Matthias Professor of Electrical and Computer Engineering Robert Blick and colleagues in Germany recently published in the journal "Physical Review Letters". Blick and his colleagues studied nanomechanical resonance by building a "bridge" of gallium arsenide suspended between acoustic transducers. They then introduced a two-dimensional electron gas which triggered not only harmonic motion but also mechanical oscillation in the bridge. Such properties could lead to further discoveries in superconductivity and nanoscale shock wave phenomena.  [MORE]

Writing in the March 16 Advanced Online Publication of Nature Materials, UW-Madison Chemical and Biological Engineering Professor Manos Mavrikakis and University of Maryland Professor of Chemistry and Biochemistry Bryan Eichhorn describe a new type of catalyst created by surrounding a nanoparticle of ruthenium (Ru) with one to two layers of platinum (Pt) atoms. The result is a robust room-temperature catalyst that dramatically improves a key hydrogen purification reaction and leaves more hydrogen available to make energy in the fuel cell.  [MORE]