NEWS ARCHIVE

Mercouri Kanatzidis (IRG 2) has been awarded the 2015 ENI Award for the “Renewable Energy Prize” category. More>

Richard Van Duyne (IRG 3), Chad Mirkin (IRG 3), and Mercouri Katnazidis (IRG 2) have received prestigious honors from the Royal Society of Chemistry in the U.K. More>

Mark Hersam (IRGs 1, 3), Lincoln Lauhon (IRG 1), and Tobin Marks (IRGs 1, 2) have accomplished a new step forward in electronics that could bring brain-like computing closer to reality . More>

The Materials Science Exhibit, an outreach initiative with Chicago Musuem of Science and Industry, opened on March 19, 2015. More>

Danna Freedman (SEED) has received a prestigious Sloan Research Fellowship for 2015 from the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation. More>

Derk Joester (SEED) deciphered the material composition and structure of enamel, leading to better understanding of tooth decay process and early detection. More>

NU-ACCESS collaboration reveals new details of Gauguin’s creative process. More>

2014 REU participant, Edward Peng, awarded Churchill Scholarship. More>

Works from MRSEC REU student’s project, in collaboroation with NU-ACCESS, are on display at the Art Institute of Chicago. More>

MRSEC Director, Mark Hersam (IRGs 1 and 3) and UTSA PREM partners, Arturo Ponce and Miguel Jose Yacaman, report a new process for isolating atomically thin transition metal dichalcogenides in Nature Communications. More>

MRSEC Director, Mark Hersam (IRGs 1 and 3) was named a 2014 AAAS Fellow. More>

NU-ACCESS materials scientist studies blue’s invention and reinvention throughout history. More>

MRSEC core facility, NUCAPT, was featured in the C&EN cover story “Microscopy Method Goes Deep” on atom-probe tomography. More>

MRSEC Director, Mark Hersam (IRGs 1 and 3) was named a 2014 MacArthur Fellow. More>

MRSEC Educational Outreach Director, Kathleen Stair, was selected to the NU 2013-14 Associated Student Government Faculty and Administration Honor Roll.

Center Director, Mark Hersam (IRGs 1, 3) testified about nanotechnology before Congress and called for “coordinated, predictable, and sustained federal funding” for research”. More>

The Jerome B. Cohen X-ray Diffraction Facility, along with the latest NU-MRSEC materials education outreach initiative, Materials iLab, have been featured in The Bridge – Rigaku materials analysis newsletter. More>

Published in Nature, Vinayak Dravid (IRG 2) and collaborators discovered surprising material best at converting waste heat to electricity. More>

Jiaxing Huang (Superseed) has been named a 2014 Guggenheim Fellow. More>

Monica Olvera de la Cruz (IRG 3) and Chad Mirkin (IRG 3) developed a new method of building near-perfect single crystals out of nanoparticles and DNA. More>

Nano Letters features in their December cover article a new templating method of oxide nanostructures on graphene proposed by Bedzyk (IRGs 1, 2), Hersam (IRGs 1, 3) and their Argonne collaborators. More>

Peter Voorhees (IRG 2) led a Chicago-based consortium that has been awarded $25 million over five years by the National Institute of Standards and Technology to establish a new center of excellence for advanced materials research and to help anchor Chicago to become high-tech hub. More>

Center Director, Mark Hersam (IRGs 1,3), represented MRSEC in a roundtable discussion on the State of the Illinois innovation economy chaired by US Congressman Dan Lipinski and attended by NU President, Morton Schapiro, and Argonne National Laboratory Director, Eric Issacs. More>

Mark Hersam (IRGs 1,3) discovered a new method of growing graphene on silver that can enable improved interfacing of graphene with other 2D materials. More>

NU-MRSEC, in collaboration with University of Texas, San Antonio, hosted the 2013 PREM symposium on Friday, November 15. More>

NU-MRSEC co-sponsored the Ceradrop Materials Printing Workshop on Wednesday, November 13, 2013. More>

Mark Hersam (IRGs 1,3), Lincoln Lauhon (IRG 1), and Tobin Marks (IRGs 1,2) have taken a significant step towards fabricating complex nanoscale electronics by integrating two atomically thin materials to create a p-n heterojunction diode. More>

Chad Mirkin (IRG 3) has been named a 2013 Thomson Reuters Citation Laureate in the annual pre-Nobel Prize “Thomson Reuters Predicts Nobel Laureates” study. More>

Mark Hersam (IRGs 1 and 3) has been selected as the ACS:PMSE Arthur K. Doolittle Award recipient. More>

Published in Nature Nanotechnology, Bartosz Grzybowski (Seed) and MRSEC Fellow, David Walker, tested a new method for achieving the molecular properties they seek by changing the geometry of the surface to which molecules are bound. More>

Published in Phys. Rev. Lett., Matthew Grayson (IRG 2) leads breakthrough in thermoelectrics. His former REU student, Karen Heinselman, is a co-author of this work. More>

Chad A. Mirkin (IRG 3) has been selected to receive the 2013 Linus Pauling Medal Award from the Oregon, Portland and Puget Sound local sections of the American Chemical Society. More>

Tobin Marks (IRGs 1 and 2) is ranked among top local inventors by Crain’s Chicago Business. More>

The Hamburg Centre for Ultrafast Imaging (CUI) has awarded Tamar Seideman (SEED) the 2013 Mildred Dresselhaus Award for her outstanding work in theoretical and numerical research. More>

The Royal Society of Chemistry’s (RSC) Analytical Division will award Rick Van Duyne (IRG 3) the 2013 RSC Sir George Stokes Award. It is awarded for identifying the origins of Surface Enhanced Raman Spectroscopy and for making pioneering contributions based on localized surface plasmon resonance spectroscopy.

The Royal Society of Chemistry’s (RSC) Faraday Division will award George Schatz (IRG 3) the 2013 RSC S. F. Boys-A. Rahman Award. It is awarded for his seminal work on the quantum theory of chemical reactions, computational electrodynamics and molecular self-assembly.

The Royal Society of Chemistry (RSC) will award Chad Mirkin (IRG 3) the 2013 Chemistry World Entrepreneur of the Year Award. This award recognizes an individual’s contribution to the commercialisation of research. More>

Published in Nature, researchers collaborated with MRSEC shared facility, NUCAPT, to get an atom-level view of Silicon nanowire doping as a promising nanotech materials More>

Laurence Marks (IRG 3) and collaborators produced 3-D images and videos of a tiny platinum nanoparticle at atomic resolution that reveal new details of defects in nanomaterials that have not been seen before. More>

A set of experiments by Peter Voorhees (IRG 2) was launched into space this month on the SpaceX Drage vessel. His crystal formations will undergo a series of carefully regimented tests that cannot be conducted on Earth. More>

In the fight against cancer, Monica Olvera de la Cruz (Seed) developed a mathematical model that sheds light on the defect in misshapen cell nuclei are frequently observed in the cells of people with cancer and other diseases. More>

Vinayak Dravid (IRG 2) and partners in India recently developed a new method for amplifying signals in graphene-based electrochemical sensors, a step that could make the sensors more sensitive at lower detection ranges. More>

Chad Mirkin (IRG 3) received the Walston Chubb Award for Innovation from the Sigma Xi Scientific Research Society.

Matthew Grayson (IRG 2) was named Scientist of the Month for November by the Chicago Chapter of the Association for Women in Science.
MRSEC Graduate Fellow, David Walker, has been has been awarded the 2012 Distinguished Student Award by the Foresight Institute, a leading think tank that advances transformative technologies. More>

Michael Bedzyk (IRGs 1 & 2) has been elected fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) for innovative experimental and theoretical contributions to the physics of materials, using novel synchrotron X-ray scattering and spectroscopy techniques impacting several scientific and technological fields. More>

Jiaxing Huang (IRG 3) received the 2013 Outstanding Young Manufacturing Engineer Award from the Society of Manufacturing Engineers. More>

Science highlighted the research work of Derk Joester (Seed 3) on “Recombinant Sea Urchin Vascular Endothelial Growth Factor Directs Single-Crystal Growth and Branching in Vitro”. More>

REU alum Spencer Wells wins speaking contest at MS&T based on summer work with research group of Tom Mason (IRG 2). Spencer’s work was an investigation of “Mixed Equilibrium Solid Solubility of Ga2O3 and SnO2 in In2O3”.

Peter Voorhees (IRG 2) has won the 2013 J. Willard Gibbs Phase Equilibrium Award. The citation is for “numerous fundamental contributions that have advanced the theories of phase equilibria to incorporate stress and capillarity-related phenomena”.

Mark Hersam (IRGs 1 and 3) has been namd as a 2012 Fellow of AVS for his “outstanding contributions to the science and technology of nanoscale carbon”. More>

Chad Mirkin (IRG 3) has been appointed as the Honorary Professor at Hunan University, one of the highest academic honors in China.

The Jerome B. Cohen X-ray Diffraction Facility has been chosen for the 2012 Outstanding Core Facility Award by Northwestern University.

Former MRSEC Undergraduate Researcher, Zack Nicolaou, who worked with Prof. Adilson Motter, designed the first materials to exhibit longitudinal negative compressibility at zero frequency. More>

Peter Voorhees (IRG 2), has been named co-Director of the new Northwestern-Argonne Institute. More>

MRSEC Director, Monica Olvera de la Cruz (Seed 2), has been elected to the National Academy of Sciences. More>

Matthew Grayson (IRG 2) received the Humboldt Alumni Award 2012 for Innovative Networking Initiatives from the Alexander von Humboldt Foundation. More>

Nature published a special Outlook section on graphene, featuring the research of Jiaxing Huang (IRG 3), on crumpled graphene balls. More>

The research group of Mark Hersam (IRGs 1 and 3) and coworkers in France have developed a process for making flexible graphene transistors. More>

Mark Ratner (IRG 1) and Chad Mirkin (IRG 3) are featured in a special issue of National Geographic titled “100 Scientific Discoveries That Changed the World.” More>

Derk Joester (Seed 3) hosted a high-school outreach student, Haley Sproull, who has been named a finalist in 2012 ISEF (Intel International Science and Enginnering Fair). More>

Tobin Marks (IRG 1) has been elected as a member of the National Academy of Engineering. More>

Mark Hersam (IRGs 1 and 3) has been elected as a Materials Research Society Fellow.

NPR’s Eight Forty-Eight – “The Perfect Hard-boiled Egg”- featuring Monica Olvera de la Cruz (SEED) and William Kung, makes top-25 most popular WBEZ stories of 2011. More>

Chad Mirkin (IRG 3) joins world leaders, including President Barack Obama and Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton, at the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) CEO Summit in Honolulu this weekend to discuss the changing technologies in energy and nanotechnology that are likely to transform business and markets in the Asia-Pacific region. More>

Matthew Grayson (IRG 2) produces the celebrated Caryl Churchill play, “A Number,” for 2011 Engineering Transdisciplinary Outreach Project in the Arts (ETOPiA), with support of NU-MRSEC outreach. More>

Mark Hersam (IRGs 1 and 3) and Tobin J. Marks (IRGs 1 and 2) use carbon nanotubes to make solar cells affordable and flexible. More>

Tobin J. Marks (IRGs 1 and 2) receives the 2011 Dreyfus Prize in the Chemical Sciences, awarded by the Camille and Henry Dreyfus Foundation. More>

Tobin J. Marks (IRGs 1 and 2), a world leader in the fields of organometallic chemistry, chemical catalysis, materials science, organic electronics, solar energy, photovoltaics and nanotechnology, has received the 2011 Dreyfus Prize in the Chemical Sciences from the Camille and Henry Dreyfus Foundation. More>

Mark Hersam (IRGs 1 and 3) will be more interested than most Americans when the space shuttle Endeavour lifts off for the last time Friday, April 29. His carbon nanotube and graphene thin films will spend at least six months mounted on the outside of the International Space Station to see if they degrade in the harsh environment of outer space or are stable. More>

Emilie Ringe, MRSEC graduate student of Richard Van Duyne (IRG 3) and Laurence Marks (IRG 3), has been selected for the 2012 Iota Sigma Pi Anna Louise Hoffman Award for Outstanding Achievement in Graduate Research. More>

Monica Olvera de la Cruz (IRG 2) and William Kung will be featured on WBEZ’s”Eight Forty-Eight” to share the science of egg boiling. This episode is scheduled to air on 4/21 between 9am and 10am (see www.wbez.org). More>

Vinayak Dravid (IRG 1) has been elected a fellow of the American Physical Society. He is being honored for seminal contributions to the materials physics of functional materials through the use of state of the art electron microscopy techniques. More>

Emilie Ringe, Richard Van Duyne (IRG 3) and Laurence Marks (IRG 3) describe the use of the modified Wulff construction to determine shape of alloy nanoparticles based on size and composition. Their work has been featured by Editors’ Choice in Science. More>

Monica Olvera de la Cruz (IRG 2) and David Seidman (NUCAPT) have been inducted into the American Academy of Arts and Sciences along with NU President, Morton Schapiro. More>

Monica Olvera de la Cruz (IRG 2) and her group was highlighted in PNAS for their work on faceting of membranes. PDF Available>

Tobin J. Marks (IRG 1 & IRG 4) has been elected an honorary fellow of the Indian Academy of Sciences. One of only three honorary fellows elected in 2010, Marks is being recognized for his outstanding contributions to science. More>

NU-MRSEC Fellow Emily Ringe received the Northwestern Presidential Fellowship. The Presidential Fellowship is funded by the President of the University and awarded by The Graduate School. This highly competitive award is the most prestigious fellowship awarded by Northwestern. More>

Jiaxing Huang (SEED) along with NU-MRSEC Graduate Student Kwon Nam Sohn and NU-MRSEC Student Ken C. Pradel have been featured in Chemistry Views for coming up with a “novel way to purify nanowires”. More>

Emily Weiss (SEED) has been awarded the Presidential Early Career Award for Scientists and Engineers (PECASE) and will be invited to the White House to meet President Obama and to attend the awards ceremony. More>

NU-MRSEC Graduate Students Gali Baler, Jonathan Emery, Chya Yan Liaw and, David A. Walker presented at the Fifth Annual Upper Midwest MRSEC Symposium. More>

Michael Bedzyk (IRG 1 & 4) co-chaired the 11th International Conference on SXNS. New Photos available. More>

Chad Mirkin, a leader in nanotechnology, has been elected to the prestigious Institute of Medicine. He is the first at Northwestern and in the Midwest and the 10th in the world to be elected to all three branches of the National Academies. More>

Chemists Tobin Marks and Richard Silverman and chemical engineer Harold Kung recently received honors from the American Chemical Society. More>

Jiaxing Huang’s (SEED) paper, “Seeing graphene-based sheets” is one of the Top 25 Hottest Articles in Materials Today. More>

Bartosz Grzybowski (IRG 2) has been awarded the 2010 AlChE Nanoscale Science and Engineering Forum (NSEF) Young Investigator Award.

Samuel Stupp (IRG 2) in collaboration with Monica Olvera de la Cruz (IRG 2) and their students and associates have found novel cell wires. More>

Vinayak Dravid (IRG 1) and Justin Notestein (Seed) made the cut for 2010 Faculty Honor Roll. More>

Ben Myers of NU-MRSEC shared facilities EPIC/NUANCE, has been selected to receive the Microscopy Society of America (MSA) Professional Technical Staff Award (PTSA) for 2010. More>

Monica Olvera de la Cruz (IRG 2) has been elected fellows of American Academy of Arts and Sciences. More>

Chad Mirkin (IRG 3) and Richard Van Duyne (IRG 3) have been elected members of the National Academy of Sciences. More>

Chad Mirkin (IRG 3) has been elected an Einstein Professor of the Chinese Academy of Sciences. More>

Zachary Nicolaou has received an NSF Graduate Research Fellowship. Zachary’s work in Adilson Motter’s lab is funded by a MRSEC Academic-Year Undergraduate Research Internship. More>

Jiaxing Huang (SEED) has been awarded an NSF CAREER grant More>

Chad Mirkin (IRG 3) has been named number one-cited chemist in the world. More>

Vinayak Dravid (IRG 1)has been selected as a Fellow of the Materials Research Society.

Mark Hersam (IRG 4) has been named the 2010 MRS Outstanding Young Investigator. More>
MRSEC program partner University of Texas at San Antonio (PREM) receives New JEOL TEM that quickly breaks into picoscale territory. More>

Lawrence Marks (IRG 3) and collaborators have produced a new approach for understanding surfaces, particularly metal oxide surfaces, widely used in industry as supports for catalysts. More>

Samuel Stupp (IRG 2) and his group have discovered new ways to grow cartilage using new nanoscopic materials. More>

Samuel Stupp (IRG 2) and his group have discovered the formation of crystals driven by X-ray.. More>

Monica Olvera de la Cruz (IRG 2) has been selected as one of 11 distinguished university faculty scientists and engineers forming the 2010 class of the Department of Defense National Security Science and Engineering Faculty Fellowship (NSSEFF) program. More>

Monica Olvera de la Cruz (IRG 2) has been named a Lawyer Taylor Professor. More>

The University of Texas at San Antonio receives Partnership for Research and Education in Materials (PREM) grant for collaborative work with NU-MRSEC and the University of Texas Health Science Center at San Antonio. More>

Tobin Marks (IRG 1 & 4) receives the 2010 William H. Nichols Medal from the American Chemical Society. More>

Chad Mirkin (IRG 3) Leads a team that developed new nanotechnology-based tools that are 300 times more sensitive than commercial tests and define a new PSA “zero”. More>

Chad Mirkin (IRG 3) delivers the Fred Kavli Distinguished Lectureship in Nanoscience at the 2009 Materials Research Society (MRS) Fall meeting”. More>

The University of Texas at San Antonio receives Partnership for Research and Education in Materials (PREM) grant for collaborative work with NU-MRSEC and the University of Texas Health Science Center at San Antonio. More>

Tobin Marks (IRG 1 & 4) wins the 2009 MRS Von Hipple award. More>

Michelle Mok (IRG 2) wins the 2009 Akzo-Nobel Award of the American Chemical Society for her work on gradient copolymers.

Alexander Flowers (REU 2002) receives the Distinguished Service Award from the National Society of Collegiate Scholars. More>

George Schatz (IRG 3) receives two honors from the American Chemical Society. More>

Tobin Marks (IRG 1 & 4) receives the 2010 William H. Nichols Medal from the American Chemical Society. More>

Jiaxing Huang (Seed) develops an “evolutionary tree” of nanoparticle synthesis to control particle morphology. Abstract> Press Release>

Tobin Marks, Mark Hersam and Lincoln Lauhon (IRG 4) receive Nanoelectronics Research Initiative grant from the Semiconductor Research Corporation. More>

Sir Fraser Stoddart (Seed) will receive an honorary doctorate from Trinity College Dublin. More>

Chad Mirkin (IRG 3) is awarded the Lemelson-MIT Prize for invention. More>

Tobin Marks (IRG 1,4) receives Nelson Taylor Award from Penn State University. More>

Mark Hersam’s (IRG 4) work on functionalizing graphene is featured as a cover article in Nature Chemistry. Abstract> Press Release>

Molecular semiconductor work of Mark Ratner (IRG 4) and Tobin Marks (IRG 1,4) appears as cover article in Chemistry – A European Journal. Abstract>

Review article on molecular self-assembled monolayers and multilayers by Mark Ratner (IRG 4) and Tobin Marks (IRG 1,4) is featured in Advanced Materials. Abstract>

Chad Mirkin (IRG 3) named as member of President Obama’s Science and Technology Advisory Council. More>

Vinayak Dravid (IRG 1) named Fellow of the Microscopy Society of America.

Ken Shull (IRG 2) has received a Fulbright Senior Scholar Award and will spend the next academic year at the Insituto de Física at the Universidad Autónoma de San Luis Potosí, Mexico.

Michael Bedzyk (IRG 1 and 4) measures atomic structure of ferroelectric strontium titanate grown directly on silicon. Journal Article> Press Release>

Lincoln Lauhon (IRG 4) uses atom probe tomography to view dopant distribution in semiconducting nanowires. Journal Article> Press Release>

Sam Stupp (IRG 2) and Lincoln Lauhon (IRG 4) develop hybrid organic-inorganic lamellar photoconductors with environmentally friendly ZnO. Journal Article> Press Release>

Tobin Marks (IRG 1 and 4) is named winner of the 2009 Herman Pines Award for his work on homogeneous and heterogeneous catalysis. More>

Tobin Marks (IRG 1 and 4) and Samuel Stupp (IRG 2) are named Fellows of the Materials Research Society. More>

Adilson Motter (Seed) is named Sloan Fellow. More>

Teri Odom (IRG 3) wins the Outstanding Young Investigator award from the Materials Research Society. More>

Chad Mirkin (IRG 3) is elected as a member of the National Academy of Engineering. More>

Monica Olvera (IRG 2) describes the electrostatic origins of chiral patterns in nanofibers in a cover article of Soft Matter. Journal Article> Press Release>

Mark Hersam’s (IRG 4) work on Nanoscale Conducting Oxide Writing appears as cover article in Advanced Materials. Christopher Chen, a 2007 REU, and 2007-2008 URI participant, is coauthor on the paper. More>

Chad Mirkin (IRG 3) receives the Esselen Award for Chemistry in the Public Interest from ACS, and the Havinga Medal 2009 from the University of Leiden in the Netherlands. More>

Samuel Stupp (IRG 2) is awarded honorary doctorate by the Eindhoven University of Technology in the Netherlands. More>

George Schatz (IRG 3) receives the 2008 Foresight Institute Feynman Prize for theoretical work in nanoscience. More>

Mark Hersam (IRG 4) uses density gradient ultracentrifugation to separate double-walled carbon nanotubes from single-walled and multi-walled nanotubes. More>

Adilson Motter (Seed) finds that cells only use a small fraction of available biochemical reactions in metabolic optimization. More>

Samuel Stupp (IRG 2) shows that biologically active nanofibers can help mice paralized from spinal cord injury regain movement. More>

Katherine Faber (Seed) from Northwestern University and Francesca Casadio from the Art Institute of Chicago jointly organize a symposium on collaborative art conservation projects. More>

Tobin Marks (IRG 1 and 4) is elected as Honorary Fellow of the Chemical Research Society of India. More>

NU-MRSEC receives a Student Development and Achievement Grant from the Japanese Chamber of Commerce and Industry of Chicago Foundation to support the science clubs at Chute and Nichols middle schools in Evanston. Article> JCCC Newsletter (page9)>

Teri Odom (IRG 3) receives NIH Director’s Pioneer Award. More>

Lincoln Lauhon (IRG 4) named Dreyfus Teacher-Scholar. More>

Mark Hersam’s (IRG 4) Gallium nanocluster experiments appear as cover article in Small. More>

Thomas Mason’s (IRG 1) Nano-Grain Composite Model is featured in the Journal of the American Ceramic Society. More>

Tobin Marks (IRG 1 & 4) receives Spanish award for creating ‘Revolutionary Materials’. More>

George Schatz (IRG 3) named Ver Steeg Distinguished Research Fellow. More>

Mirkin (IRG 3) selected as member of the DOD National Security Science and Engineering Faculty Fellows (NSSEFF) program. More>

2007 summer MRSEC REU research contributes to Nature Physics paper on granular materials. More>

Paper of Olvera de la Cruz (IRG 2) receives PNAS prize. More>

Motter (Seed) studies the control and recovery of cellular function. More>