The Institute for Electronics and Nanotechnology at Georgia Tech has announced the winners for the 2019 Spring Facility Seed Grants. The primary purpose of this program is to give first or second year graduate students in diverse disciplines working on original and un-funded research in micro- and nano-scale projects the opportunity to access the most advanced academic cleanroom space in the Southeast. In addition to accessing the high-level fabrication, lithography, and characterization tools in the labs, the students will have the opportunity to gain proficiency in cleanroom and tool methodology and to use the consultation services provided by research staff members of the IEN.  In addition, the Seed Grant program gives faculty with novel research topics the ability to develop preliminary data in order to pursue follow-up funding sources. This program is supported by the Southeastern Nanotechnology Infrastructure Corridor (SENIC), a member of the National Nanotechnology Coordinated Infrastructure (NNCI), which is funded by the NSF (Grant ECCS-1542174).

Over the course of six years, this grant program has seeded fifty-six projects with sixty students working in ten different schools in COE and COS, as well as the Georgia Tech Research Institute and 3 other universities.

The 6 winning projects in this round, from a diverse group of science and engineering disciplines, were awarded a six-month block of IEN cleanroom and lab access time. In keeping with the interdisciplinary mission of IEN, the projects that will be enabled by the grants include research in biomedicine, quantum computing, materials, and MEMS.

The Spring 2019 IEN Facility Seed Grant Award winners are:

Microfabrication of Lab-on-Chip Devices for Rapid Diagnosis of Bacterial Infections
PI: Kyle Allison
Student: Devina Puri
GT/Emory-Biomedical Engineering and Emory-Dept. of Medicine

Fully Wireless, Nanostructured, Hemodynamic Sensor System for Continuous Monitoring of Blood Pressure and Flow Rate
PI: Woon-Hong Yeo
Student: Robert Herbert
GT-Mechanical Engineering and Biomedical Engineering

The Cryogenic Behaviors of Non-volatile Memory for Quantum Computer's
Control Processor
PI: Shimeng Yu
Student: Panni Wang
GT-Electrical and Computer Engineering

CTD-on-a-chip: Enabling Polar In-Situ Ice-Ocean Data Collection
PI: Britney Schmidt
Student: Ben Hurwitz
GT-Earth and Atmospheric Sciences

Nanotensile Testing of Different Diameter 1D alumina (Al2O3) Nanowires by Means of Microelectromechanical System (MEMS)
PI: Gleb Yushin
Student: Fujia Wang
GT-Materials Science and Engineering

Fabrication of III-Nitride Cantilevers for Chem/Bio-Sensing Applications
PI: Goutam Koley
Student: Balaadithya Uppalapti
Clemson University-Electrical and Computer Engineering