McDowell is one 130 new members and 28 international members in the 2026 class. Election to the NAE is among the highest professional recognitions for engineers and an honor bestowed on just 2,900 professionals worldwide. New members are nominated and voted on by the Academy’s existing membership.

McDowell is Georgia Tech’s 50th NAE member. He is Regents’ Professor Emeritus in the George W. Woodruff School of Mechanical Engineering and the School of Materials Science and Engineering.

Read the full story about McDowell on the College of Engineering website.

At the Georgia Institute of Technology (Georgia Tech), researchers are working to expand their fundamental understanding of these hybrid electrolytes, the component that transfers charge between electrodes as the batteries power systems such as electric vehicles (EVs) – and are then recharged. Lithium-ion batteries widely used in today’s EVs rely on liquid electrolytes, which are susceptible to thermal runaway and fire if they are damaged.

“We’ve shown that we can fabricate these hybrid, solid-state electrolytes and put them into coin cells to demonstrate high performance and high stability,” said Ilan Stern, a principal research scientist who leads battery research at the Georgia Tech Research Institute (GTRI), Georgia Tech’s applied research organization. “We’ve laid the foundation to show that we can develop innovations in solid-state batteries based on these ceramic-polymer hybrids. Our next step is to integrate the technology into pouch cells, the type of batteries used in electric vehicles.”

The GTRI researchers are working with colleagues from Georgia Tech’s George W. Woodruff School of Mechanical Engineering, School of Materials Science and Engineering, and the Strategic Energy Institute on research into an electrolyte known as lithium aluminum germanium phosphate (LAGP). A polymer component known as poly DOL surrounds the LAGP electrolyte, providing internal ionic conductivity that goes well beyond existing ceramic electrolytes – without the disadvantages of flammable liquids. The fabrication team and academic collaboration are led by Jinho Park, a GTRI research scientist. Synthesis of the LAGP ceramic is led by Jason Nadler, a GTRI principal research scientist.

Advantages of Hybrid Ceramic-Polymer Materials

Stern describes traditional ceramic electrolytes as similar to hard candy – think M&Ms – poured into the space between the battery anode and cathode. The hard ceramics provide safety and energy storage advantages, but are limited in how much they contact the electrodes to transfer ionic charges. Adding the polymer dramatically improves the interfacial contact between the electrodes and electrolyte while maintaining most advantages of the ceramics.

“The electrochemical stability, thermal stability and mechanical stability will be the main differences between the liquid electrolytes and these hybrids,” he said. “We’re really taking the best of both worlds. As solid-state batteries enable the use of a Li-metal anode, the ceiling for capacity is significantly higher, so we should ultimately see a dramatic increase in energy density compared to the conventional Li-ion batteries based on the liquid electrolytes.”

The hybrid ceramic-polymer electrolyte looks like a hockey puck, but will be more resistant to damage than a pure ceramic. “It will certainly be much more forgiving than a ceramic,” Stern said. “Even if micro-cracks develop, the polymer will provide the scaffolding to ensure integrity, holding it together structurally.”

Moving Ahead with Solid-State Batteries

Solid-state batteries are not yet in commercial use, but at least one EV manufacturer plans to put them into vehicles within the next few years as battery manufacturers continue to make improvements. But the technology is far less mature than existing liquid-electrolyte systems, inviting innovations such as the hybrid system the Georgia Tech researchers are working on.

The research is being supported, in part, by a $1.1 million, three-year independent research and development commitment from GTRI. “With the unprecedented federal and state investment made in Georgia for electric vehicles, battery manufacturing, and recycling, GTRI continues to build strong collaborations to help identify gaps and new business models – and to forecast the number and types of recycling plants necessary to respond to future market demands,” Stern added.

Based on encouraging results with small, laboratory-scale batteries, the researchers plan to expand their work into batteries that could be fabricated by the hundreds or thousands for further development and testing – and, ultimately, large-scale manufacturing. “As we increase our efficiency with fabrication, manufacturing costs will come down, while supply chain integration and the sustainability goals of reusability and recycling will have a big impact,” Stern said.

Model-Based System Engineering Guides the Future

Beyond demonstrating the potential for this technology, the research team also is modeling the operation of the cells to help guide future technology development and assessing the potential life cycle of the hybrid electrolyte solid-state batteries. Among the future goals are integrating the technology into supply chains that would not rely on materials sourced from conflict areas of the world, and evaluating new electrode materials such as lithium metal and silicon to replace standard graphite.

“The objective of the model-based system engineering (MBSE) task is to model expert knowledge ranging from the fabrication level to the system integration to unveil opportunities for research as well as new business models,” said Paula Gomez, a GTRI senior research engineer, and the modeling team lead.

The research team is developing models in three main areas: (1) fabrication and performance; (2) manufacturing process; and (3) reuse, refurbish, and recycling. Integrating these models involves evaluating battery efficiency and stability, cost of production, and energy consumption, as well as return on investment of recycling materials.

Though the advantages of solid-state electrolytes are very attractive, there are challenges ahead. A hybrid electrolyte system is more complicated to manufacture, and the electrical, mechanical, and chemical interactions between the materials must be thoroughly studied. “The more complexity you have, the more issues you have to understand,” Stern said.

Military and Economic Development Applications

GTRI is known for its support of national security through research sponsored by U.S. Department of Defense agencies. Stern expects the improved solid-state battery technology will ultimately find its way into military gear carried by soldiers and future generations of electrically powered military vehicles.

The work also supports economic development for the state of Georgia, which is rapidly becoming a hub for electric vehicle and battery manufacturing.

“Georgia is becoming the epicenter of the electrification revolution with vehicle makers such as Rivian and Hyundai, battery companies such as SK, FREYER Battery, and recyclers such as Ascend Elements,” Stern said. “Georgia Tech is contributing to the state’s economic development by helping drive that innovation.”

Battery Day Demonstrates Interest

A recent “Battery Day” held March 30 at Georgia Tech highlighted the broad research collaborations already underway. Led by Matthew McDowell, associate professor in the George W. Woodruff School of Mechanical Engineering and the School of Materials Science and Engineering, the event attracted more than 230 energy researchers and industry participants.

Beyond those already mentioned, the hybrid battery project includes Michael Shearin, Richard Wise, John Hankinson, Matthew Swarts, Khatereh Hadi, Milad Navaei, and Jack Zentner from GTRI.

Writer: John Toon (john.toon@gtri.gatech.edu)
GTRI Communications
Georgia Tech Research Institute
Atlanta, Georgia

The Georgia Tech Research Institute (GTRI) is the nonprofit, applied research division of the Georgia Institute of Technology (Georgia Tech). Founded in 1934 as the Engineering Experiment Station, GTRI has grown to more than 2,900 employees, supporting eight laboratories in over 20 locations around the country and performing more than $800 million of problem-solving research annually for government and industry. GTRI's renowned researchers combine science, engineering, economics, policy, and technical expertise to solve complex problems for the U.S. federal government, state, and industry.

A team of Georgia Tech researchers brings us one step closer to understanding those properties. Their new study, published in Science Advances, for the first time brings tracking and measurement to organic semiconductor photoexcitations: particles put into “excited” or energized quantum states by light.

The semiconductors’ primary photoexcitations, called Frenkel excitons, dictate the optical qualities in those semiconductors. They can, in principle, form bonded pairs called biexcitons, but these have never been identified unambiguously. Quantifying those reactions will help researchers learn more about their properties to unlock future uses, such as more efficient and sustainable batteries and solar cells, biosensors, and new types of lasers.

“It’s a window into the basic electronic structure and properties of these materials,” says study co-author Carlos Silva Acuña, a professor with joint appointments in the School of Chemistry and Biochemistry and School of Physics, “but also into these tech applications we care about. How do we convert electrical energy to light? Or in photovoltaic applications, how do we convert solar light into electrical power? It’s more about understanding and discovering the very basic fundamental properties of materials that will allow the design of tailored materials that optimize a particular function.”

Silva Acuña and Natalie Stingelin, a professor with joint appointments in the School of Materials Science and Engineering and the School of Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering, led a team of researchers that tweaked traditional spectroscopy — how light or any other form of radiation is emitted and absorbed by materials — to track and measure the energy coming from Frenkel biexcitons. The researchers wanted to know how those photoexcitations form “bonds” between each other, how excitons find the right partners to form biexcitons, and how stable those exciton partners are.

The scientists used different spectroscopy techniques such as non-linear and coherent versions, which give researchers more flexibility in determining the energies flying back and forth between pairs of excitons. “The idea is an advanced spectroscopy that allows us to dissect interactions between excitations,” Silva Acuña says. “It’s designed to measure or resolve the interaction energy between different photoexcitations,” adding that the researchers can dissect with more detail where light from the biexcitons falls on the spectrum.

Those interactions are the foundation for any future quantum (atomic and subatomic) science applications for organic semiconductors, “because all the quantum phases we might want to induce are all governed by their interactions, and the interactions between photoexcitations are key.”

The global organic semiconductor market is expected to grow by $90.8 billion between 2020 and 2024, according to Berkshire Hathaway company Business Wire. Yet while composite semiconductors have well-studied and defined optical signatures, that’s not quite the case for organic semiconductors. “We could not find a clear optical signature of biexcitons,” Silva Acuña says. “That’s what has made them more challenging. There is a lot of theoretical prediction and calculation, but not really any experimental measurement” preceding the new Georgia Tech research, he explains.

“We can for the first time unambiguously identify bound excitons and characterize their nature. They’re attracted to what energy, repulsed by what energy, and why? How do those details relate to molecular structure?” he says. “What would we need to change to change those properties? How do we discover new materials with tailored properties?”

Silva Acuña also notes an unexpected finding in the research: Excitons that interact with each other in different polymer chains attract each other to form biexcitons — while excitons in the same polymer chain repel each other. “It’s a little bit counterintuitive that you can have two excitons repel each other, and yet they bind,” he says.

If the interaction energy between excitons is strong, a lot of excitons will end up as bound biexcitons, Silva Acuña adds. If science decides that can help add more functions to those materials, “Maybe we can design them to be even more strongly bound.” Or if it’s decided that those bonds need to be weaker for certain functions, “How can we turn them off? It’s all about material discovery.”

***

DOI: science.org/doi/10.1126/sciadv.abi5197

Authors: Along with Silva-Acuña (C.S.-A.) and Stingelin (N.S.), co-authors of the study include: Elizabeth Gutiérrez-Meza, Ravyn Malatesta, and David A. Valverde-Chávez (all of the School of Chemistry and Biochemistry at Georgia Tech), Hongmo Li and Seong-Min Kim (both of the School of Materials Science and Engineering at Georgia Tech), Ilaria Bargigia and Ajay Ram Srimath Kandada (Department of Physics and Center for Functional Materials at Wake Forest University), Eric R. Bittner and Hao Li (Department of Chemistry at University of Houston), and Sergei Tretiak (Theoretical Division and Center for Nonlinear Studies, Los Alamos National Laboratory). C.S.-A. acknowledges support from the School of Chemistry and Biochemistry and the College of Sciences at Georgia Tech.

Funding: The work at Georgia Tech was funded by the National Science Foundation [DMR-1904293 (to C.S.-A.) and DMREF-1729737 (to N.S. and C.S.-A.)]. C.S.-A. acknowledges support from the School of Chemistry and Biochemistry and the College of Sciences at Georgia Tech. The work at the University of Houston was funded in part by the National Science Foundation (CHE-1664971 and DMR-1903785) and the Robert A. Welch Foundation (E-1337). This work was also conducted in part at the Center for Integrated Nanotechnologies, a U.S. Department of Energy and Office of Basic Energy Science user facility.

***

The Georgia Institute of Technology, or Georgia Tech, is a top 10 public research university developing leaders who advance technology and improve the human condition. The Institute offers business, computing, design, engineering, liberal arts, and sciences degrees. Its nearly 44,000 students representing 50 states and 149 countries, study at the main campus in Atlanta, at campuses in France and China, and through distance and online learning. As a leading technological university, Georgia Tech is an engine of economic development for Georgia, the Southeast, and the nation, conducting more than $1 billion in research annually for government, industry, and society.

Eid received the Best Student Paper Award at APS/URSI 2021. She also received the Mojgan Daneshmand Grant, awarded to only six women across six continents, with Eid representing North America. She is a member of the ATHENA Research Group, which is led by Manos Tentzeris, the Ken Byers Professor in Flexible Electronics in the School of ECE. 

The title of Eid’s award-winning paper is "UHF Tags Array for Holographic Target Localization and Wireless Health Monitoring.” Her co-authors are Tentzeris; Jimmy Hester, a Ph.D. alumnus of the ATHENA Research Group who now works with Atheraxon, Inc.; Luzhou Xu of Google, LLC; and Jinan Zhu, who worked with Google at the time of submission, but who is now with Facebook Reality Labs. 

This paper represents work that Eid did while on an internship that was conducted remotely with the Mountain View, California location of Google from June-December 2020. The work described in this paper uses an array of low-cost batteryless stickers (RFID tags) to create a hologram of a patient sitting in a room. 

The team combined beamforming techniques with holography to construct the image of targets and gathered information about their location and vital signs. Using this technology, a patient's vital signs can be wirelessly monitored as he or she waits in the emergency ward and can be sent to the staff to assess the urgency of the patient’s visit and to provide useful information prior to examination.

Eid was also awarded the Mojgan Daneshmand Grant, which recognizes the achievements of women engineers in master’s and doctoral programs and in industry. She was recognized for developing unconventional printed structures to enable batteryless devices with breakthrough wireless capabilities by combining knowledge in electromagnetics, antennas, RFIDs, signal processing, and materials science.

Some of Eid’s key achievements, done in collaboration with her colleagues, that led to her receiving this grant include:

• Development of the first 5G/mm-wave printed, flexible structure capable of harvesting mm-wave energy with high gain and wide angular coverage and promising to power Internet of Things (IoT) devices at 100+m range. This work, published in Scientific Reports, Nature, reached 110,000 reads in less than one year, received six awards (including five from the Microwave Engineering Society), and was featured in more than 40 news outlets.
• Development of a low-power backscattering communication RFID tag, capable of communicating at km-ranges while fully-powered by a compact flexible solar cell. This work was published in the IEEE Antennas and Wireless Propagation Letters (AWPL) and used the same passive beamforming network—the Rotman lens—used in the previous work.
• Development of the first fully-tunnel diodes-based, fully-passive backscattering RFID tag. The tag features an ultra-long communications range while requiring a very low voltage (88 mV) and power consumption (20 μW). This work was published in the 2020 IEEE/MTT-S International Microwave Symposium (IMS).
• Development of the first holography-based contactless health monitoring and target localization technique based on UHF tags arrays. The work was published in the IEEE Internet of Things Journal and received the best paper award in the 2021 IEEE International Symposium on Antennas and Propagation (APS), as described in the first part of this article.

Both Eid and Gazi were chosen to participate in the NextProf Nexus Workshop. This event was held October 4-7 at the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor and was sponsored by Georgia Tech, the University of Michigan, and the University of California, Berkeley. NextProf Nexus is part of a nationwide effort to strengthen and diversify the next generation of academic leaders in engineering, and it is designed to give participants the opportunity to explore and prepare for faculty positions in academia.

Eid was also selected to take part in MIT EECS Rising Stars 2021, which is open to graduate students and postdocs of underrepresented genders. This event was held October 14-15 in a virtual format. Rising Stars was launched in 2021 to identify and mentor outstanding electrical engineers, computer scientists, and artificial intelligence and decision-making engineers and scientists interested in academic careers.  

Eid has been enrolled in the ECE Ph.D. program since 2017, when she joined the ATHENA Group, led by Manos Tentzeris, who is the Ken Byers Professor in Flexible Electronics. She received her B.Eng. and M.S. degrees in Electrical and Computer Engineering from Notre Dame University, Louaize, Lebanon and the American University of Beirut, Lebanon, in 2015 and 2017, respectively.

Eid's research is centered around harvesting 5G energy to wirelessly power ultra-low power devices. She was the first to propose unconventional fully-printed structures to enable batteryless devices with breakthrough wireless capabilities, by combining knowledge in electromagnetics, antennas, RFIDs, signal processing, and materials science. Eid has received more than 12 awards and is an inventor on 4 patents. She has been featured in more than 40 news outlets, and is an author/co-author of more than 35 conference and journal papers and book chapters. 

Gazi has been enrolled in the ECE Ph.D. program since 2018. He has been a member of the Inan Research Lab since summer 2019, and he joined the Sensory Information Processing Lab this past summer. Gazi is co-advised by Omer Inan, who is the Linda J. and Mark C. Smith Chair in ECE, and ECE Professor Christopher Rozell. He graduated in May 2018 with his B.S. degree in Electrical Engineering from the University of Texas at Dallas.

Gazi’s research revolves around the monitoring, modeling, and modulation of stress by keying into the responses of the "fight or flight" and "rest and digest" branches of the autonomic nervous system. He specifically leverages multimodal physiological sensing and biosignal processing; dynamical systems, machine learning, and feedback control; and non-invasive vagus nerve stimulation (nVNS). His Ph.D. efforts will culminate in algorithms that estimate and react to an individual's latent "stress state" using a diverse set of observable physiological measures, such as heart rate and respiratory timings, to enable closed-loop nVNS to attenuate hyperarousal accompanying panic attacks and trauma recall. 

Gazi received the National Science Foundation Graduate Research Fellowship in 2020. He has also won several best paper and presentation awards at conferences, and he has received several honors for his work as a graduate teaching assistant.

NANOSTRUCTURED MATERIALS

Plasmonics in Nanocomposite Materials 2022

Plasmonic nanocomposites and are an emerging class of materials that integrate the most widely utilized building blocks, namely metallic nanoparticles as a plasmonic component, with an assortment of other similar/dissimilar nanostructures leading to new multifunctional systems with improved functionalities and properties that offer enormous potential for new applications.

This symposium will cover the recent achievements in the design, fabrication, and application of plasmonic nanocomposites in different fields of science including material science, medicine, and industry, and it will cover their significant impact on global society. We expect to have sessions that focus on the design and development of nanoparticle-based materials that have applications ranging from sensing, and optics to bio-diagnostic and therapeutic implications.

ORGANIZERS

Nasrin Hooshmand, Senior Research Scientist, School of Chemistry and Biochemistry, Georgia Institute of Technology
Simona E. Hunyadi Murph, Savannah River National Laboratory
Hagar I. Labouta, University of Manitoba
Max Anikovskiy, University of Calgary
Patrick A. Ward, Savannah River National Laboratory

Functional Nanomaterials: Functional Low-Dimensional (0D, 1D, 2D) Materials 2022

Low-dimensional (0D, 1D, 2D) materials are a broad class of materials with emergent properties originating from their reduced physical dimensions and (sub)nanoscale structures and morphologies. These low-dimensional materials offer exciting new opportunities for innovations in the technological frontiers critical for the sustainable future advancement of society, such as nano-optoelectronics, sustainable energy, high-performance sensors, and advanced environmental and healthcare technologies. The 2022 Symposium on Functional Nanomaterials will address all aspects of low-dimensional nanomaterials, encompassing: two-dimensional (2D) nanofilms, nanosheets, and monolayers, one-dimensional (1D) nanofibers, nanotubes, and nanowires, zero dimensional (0D) nanoparticles and quantum dots, as well as their hierarchical assemblies, heterostructures, frameworks, and organic-inorganic hybrids.

ORGANIZERS

Michael Cai Wang, University of South Florida
Yong Lin Kong, University of Utah
Sarah Ying Zhong, University of South Florida
Surojit Gupta, University of North Dakota
Nasrin Hooshmand, Senior Research Scientist, School of Chemistry and Biochemistry, Georgia Institute of Technology
Woochul Lee, University of Hawaii at Manoa
Min Kyu Song, Washington State University

More details and complete conference information: www.tms.org/TMS2022

A multi-institutional, international team of researchers led by the lab of Woon-Hong Yeo at the Georgia Institute of Technology combined wireless soft scalp electronics and virtual reality in a BMI system that allows the user to imagine an action and wirelessly control a wheelchair or robotic arm.

The team, which included researchers from the University of Kent (United Kingdom) and Yonsei University (Republic of Korea), describes the new motor imagery-based BMI system this month in the journal Advanced Science.

“The major advantage of this system to the user, compared to what currently exists, is that it is soft and comfortable to wear, and doesn’t have any wires,” said Yeo, associate professor on the George W. Woodruff School of Mechanical Engineering.

BMI systems are a rehabilitation technology that analyzes a person’s brain signals and translates that neural activity into commands, turning intentions into actions. The most common non-invasive method for acquiring those signals is ElectroEncephaloGraphy, EEG, which typically requires a cumbersome electrode skull cap and a tangled web of wires.

These devices generally rely heavily on gels and pastes to help maintain skin contact, require extensive set-up times, are generally inconvenient and uncomfortable to use. The devices also often suffer from poor signal acquisition due to material degradation or motion artifacts – the ancillary “noise” which may be caused by something like teeth grinding or eye blinking. This noise shows up in brain-data and must be filtered out.

The portable EEG system Yeo designed, integrating imperceptible microneedle electrodes with soft wireless circuits, offers improved signal acquisition. Accurately measuring those brain signals is critical to determining what actions a user wants to perform, so the team integrated a powerful machine learning algorithm and  virtual reality component to address that challenge.

The new system was tested with four human subjects, but hasn’t been studied with disabled individuals yet.

“This is just a first demonstration, but we’re thrilled with what we have seen,” noted Yeo, Director of Georgia Tech’s Center for Human-Centric Interfaces and Engineering under the Institute for Electronics and Nanotechnology, and a member of the Petit Institute for Bioengineering and Bioscience.

New Paradigm

Yeo’s team originally introduced soft, wearable EEG brain-machine interface in a 2019 study published in the Nature Machine Intelligence. The lead author of that work, Musa Mahmood, was also the lead author of the team’s new research paper.

“This new brain-machine interface uses an entirely different paradigm, involving imagined motor actions, such as grasping with either hand, which frees the subject from having to look at too much stimuli,” said Mahmood, a Ph. D. student in Yeo’s lab.

In the 2021 study, users demonstrated accurate control of virtual reality exercises using their thoughts – their motor imagery. The visual cues enhance the process for both the user and the researchers gathering information.

“The virtual prompts have proven to be very helpful,” Yeo said. “They speed up and improve user engagement and accuracy. And we were able to record continuous, high-quality motor imagery activity.”

According to Mahmood, future work on the system will focus on optimizing electrode placement and more advanced integration of stimulus-based EEG, using what they’ve learned from the last two studies.

This research was supported by the National Institutes of Health (NIH R21AG064309), the Center Grant (Human-Centric Interfaces and Engineering) at Georgia Tech, the National Research Foundation of Korea (NRF-2018M3A7B4071109 and NRF-2019R1A2C2086085) and Yonsei-KIST Convergence Research Program. Georgia Tech has a pending patent application related to the work described in this paper.

Citation: Musa Mahmood, et al., “Wireless Soft Scalp Electronics and Virtual Reality System for Motor Imagery-based Brain-Machine Interfaces.” (Advanced Science, July 2021)

Links

Woon-Hong Yeo

“Wireless Soft Scalp Electronics and Virtual Reality System for Motor Imagery-based Brain-Machine Interfaces.”

Center for Human-Centric Interfaces and Engineering

Petit Institute for Bioengineering and Bioscience     

George W. Woodruff School of Mechanical Engineering

Khan is receiving this award for his research on ferroelectric field-effect transistors for embedded non-volatile memory applications. Ferroelectric field-effect transistors is one of the most-promising device technologies for artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning (ML) hardware, due to its energy efficiency and compatibility with high-volume semiconductor manufacturing. The project will focus on solving the critical voltage problem of this device technology, by identifying and implementing new strategies for interface defect reduction in and the downscaling of the ferroelectric gate-dielectric stack. 

Khan works on advanced semiconductor devices that will shape the future of computing in the post-scaling era. His research group currently focuses on ferroelectric devices in all aspects ranging from materials physics, growth, and electron microscopy to device fabrication, all the way to ferroelectric circuits and systems for AI/ML/data-centric applications.

His early career work led to the first experimental proof-of-concept demonstration of a physical phenomenon, namely the negative capacitance, in ferroelectric materials, which can reduce the power dissipation in electronic devices below the “fundamental” thermodynamic limit. Negative capacitance is currently a vibrant research area in materials science, condensed matter physics, and electrical engineering, and it is being pursued by all major semiconductor companies for advanced transistor technologies.

In the past, Khan has received multiple awards, including the NSF CAREER Award (2021), the Intel Rising Star Award (2020), Qualcomm Innovation Fellowship (2012), TSMC Outstanding Student Research Award (2011), and the University Gold Medal from Bangladesh University of Engineering and Technology (2011). He was also named to the Center for Teaching and Learning Class of 1934 CIOS Honor Roll for his outstanding teaching in ECE8863 Quantum Computing Devices and Hardware in Fall 2020.

Khan’s group currently consists of seven graduate students and two research staff members. They publish in flagship microelectronics conferences, such as the International Electron Devices Meeting (IEDM) and the Symposium on VLSI Technology, and in journals including IEEE Electron Device Letters, IEEE Transactions on Electron Devices, Nature Electronics, Nature Materials, and Nano Letters. His students received multiple international and Institute-level awards, including the IEEE EDS Masters Student Fellowship (Prasanna Ravindran, 2020) and the Georgia Tech ECE's Colonel Oscar P. Cleaver Award (Nujhat Tasneem in 2018 and Zheng Wang in 2017) for achieving the highest score on the ECE Ph.D. preliminary examination, which was the criteria for the award up to 2018.

Mengkun Tian, Ph.D. - Research Scientist II; Institute for Electronics & Nanotechnology, Georgia Institute of Technology

Abstract: In-situ heating experiment performed in the scanning/ transmission electron microscopes (STEM/TEM) allows us to directly observe the dynamic behaviors of the materials with sizes ranging from micron- to atomic level in real time. The Materials Characterization Facilities (MCF) at IEN currently has two microscopes (FEI Tecnai F30 and Hitachi HD2700) with in-situ heating capabilities. The TEM techniques including (large-scale or atomic) imaging, phase/elemental analysis and diffraction that we could perform in those facilities for in-situ heating will be introduced briefly. A few examples made by the users and manufactures will be given to show how useful the in-situ heating experiments can help us to understand the structural evolution of materials fundamentally. Finally, it will be discussed a strategy to deal with preparation of TEM samples for high temperature heating.

Bio: Dr. Mengkun Tian received his Ph.D. degree in the department of Materials Science and Engineering at University of Tennessee, Knoxville (UTK) in 2015, supervised by Prof. Duscher (UTK) and Dr.Geohegan (Oak Ridge National Laboratory). His dissertation is related to structural evolution of photocatalytic TiO2 made by ultra-small amorphous building blocks. During 2015 and 2018, he worked as a post-doc research associate in Dr.Zawodzinski’s group at UTK to fabricate and investigate the corrosion resistant cathode materials for solid acid fuel cell. He was a visiting scientist at Oak Ridge National Laboratory from 2011 to 2018. He joined Georgia Tech as a post-doc in May, 2018 and was promoted to research scientist II last October. His current research interests include in-situ corrosion testing on metals, electron beam induced phase transformation, and phase transformation of high entropy alloys.

Who should attend: Faculty, scientists, engineers, researchers, and technical staff from university, company, or government labs who use, or are interested in learning about material characterization toolset, in particular, SEM/TEM as part of their research efforts.

David Tavakoli, Research Scientist II & MCF/IEN PANalytical XRD Facilities Manager, School of Material Science & Engineering @ Georgia Tech

Researchers at the Georgia Institute of Technology have developed, in a new study, a method of making gecko-inspired adhesive materials that is much more cost-effective than current methods. It could enable mass production and the spread of the versatile gripping strips to manufacturing and homes.

Polymers with “gecko adhesion” surfaces could be used to make extremely versatile grippers to pick up very different objects even on the same assembly line. They could make picture hanging easy by adhering to both the picture and the wall at the same time. Vacuum cleaner robots with gecko adhesion could someday scoot up tall buildings to clean facades.

“With the exception of things like Teflon, it will adhere to anything. This is a clear advantage in manufacturing because we don’t have to prepare the gripper for specific surfaces we want to lift. Gecko-inspired adhesives can lift flat objects like boxes then turn around and lift curved objects like eggs and vegetables,” said Michael Varenberg, the study’s principal investigator and an assistant professor in Georgia Tech’s George W. Woodruff School of Mechanical Engineering.

Current grippers on assembly lines, such as clamps, magnets, and suction cups, can each lift limited ranges of objects. Grippers based on gecko-inspired surfaces, which are dry and contain no glue or goo, could replace many grippers or just fill in capability gaps left by other gripping mechanisms.

Drawing out razors

The adhesion comes from protrusions a few hundred microns in size that often look like sections of short, floppy walls running parallel to each other across the material’s surface. How they work by mimicking geckos’ feet is explained below.

Up to now, molding has produced these mesoscale walls by pouring ingredients onto a template, letting the mixture react and set to a flexible polymer then removing it from the mold. But the method is inconvenient.

“Molding techniques are expensive and time-consuming processes. And there are issues with getting the gecko-like material to release from the template, which can disturb the quality of the attachment surface,” Varenberg said.

The researchers’ new method formed those walls by pouring ingredients onto a smooth surface instead of a mold, letting the polymer partially set then dipping rows of laboratory razor blades into it. The material set a little more around the blades, which were then drawn out, leaving behind micron-scale indentations surrounded by the desired walls.

Varenberg and first author Jae-Kang Kim published details of their new method in the journal ACS Applied Materials & Interfaces on April 6, 2020.

Forget about perfection

Though the new method is easier than molding, developing it took a year of dipping, drawing, and readjusting while surveying finicky details under an electron microscope.

“There are many parameters to control: Viscosity and temperature of the liquid; timing, speed, and distance of withdrawing the blades. We needed enough plasticity of the setting polymer to the blades to stretch the walls up, and not so much rigidity that would lead the walls to rip up,” Varenberg said.

Gecko-inspired surfaces have a fine topography on a micron-scale and sometimes even on a nanoscale, and surfaces made via molding are usually the most precise. But such perfection is unnecessary; the materials made with the new method did the job well and were also markedly robust.

“Many researchers demonstrating gecko adhesion have to do it in a cleanroom in clean gear. Our system just plain works in normal settings. It is robust and simple, and I think it has good potential for use in industry and homes,” said Varenberg, who studies surfaces in nature to mimic their advantageous qualities in human-made materials.

^{[Ready for graduate school with social distancing? Here's how to apply to Georgia Tech.]} 

Gecko foot fluff

Behold the gecko’s foot. It has ridges on its toes, and this has led some in the past to think their feet stick by suction or some kind of clutching by the skin. 

But electron microscopes reveal a deeper structure – spatula-shaped bristly fibrils protrude a few dozen microns long off those ridges. The fibrils make such thorough contact with surfaces down to the nanoscale that weak attractions between atoms on both sides appear to add up enormously to create overall strong adhesion.

In place of fluff, engineers have developed rows of shapes covering materials that produce the effect. A common shape makes a material’s surface look like a field of mushrooms that are a few hundred microns in size; another is rows of short walls like those in this study. 

“The mushroom patterns touch a surface, and they are attached straightaway, but detaching requires applying forces that can be disadvantageous. The wall-shaped projections require minor shear force like a tug or a gentle grab to generate adherence, but that is easy, and letting go of the object is uncomplicated, too,” Varenberg said.

Varenberg’s research team used the drawing method to make walls with U-shaped spaces in between them and walls with V-shaped spaces in between. They worked with polyvinylsiloxane (PVS) and polyurethane (PU). The V-shape made in PVS worked best, but polyurethane is the better material for industry, so Vanenberg’s group will now work toward achieving the V-shape gecko gripping pattern in PU for the best possible combination.

Also read: Lung-heart super sensor on a chip tinier than a ladybug

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Writer & Media Representative: Ben Brumfield (404-272-2780), email: ben.brumfield@comm.gatech.edu

Georgia Institute of Technology

The quartet are among the 11 Georgia Tech professors from across campus appointed to named faculty positions this month, and they represent each of the College’s three schools:

• Seymour Goodman, a joint professor in the School of Computer Science and the Sam Nunn School of International Affairs

• Surya Kalidindi, a joint professor in the School of Computational Science & Engineering and the George W. Woodruff School of Mechanical Engineering

• Elizabeth Mynatt, a Distinguished Professor in the School of Interactive Computing and the executive director of the Institute for People and Technology

• Haesun Park, a professor in the School of Computational Science & Engineering

“These appointments are worthy recognition of Sy, Surya, Beth, and Haesun and the significant research contributions each has made – and continues to make – to their respective fields,” said Zvi Galil, the John P. Imlay Jr. Dean of Computing at Georgia Tech.

[RELATED: Professor Recognized by USG With Top Academic Honor]

A Regents’ Professorship is the highest academic and research honor given to faculty members by the USG Board of Regents. With the addition of Goodman, Kalidindi, Mynatt, and Park, there are now 11 Regents’ Professors in the GT Computing community.

Muhannad S. Bakir, a professor in the Georgia Tech School of Electrical and Computer Engineering (ECE), was one of the book’s editors. His fellow co-editors are Paul D. Franzon, the Cirrus Logic Distinguished Professor in the Department of ECE at North Carolina State University, and Erik Jan Marinissen, principal scientist at IMEC in Leuven, Belgium and part-time visiting researcher at Eindhoven University of Technology in The Netherlands. 

The first part of the book provides an overview of the latest developments in 3D chip design, including challenges and opportunities. The second part focuses on the test methods used to assess the quality and reliability of the 3D-integrated circuits, while the third and final part deals with thermal management and advanced cooling technologies and their integration.

To learn more about the book, published by Wiley-VCH, visit the book’s web page.

The school has a purpose “to provide a platform for knowledge exchange and for academics as well as training for graduate students interested in the area of Computational Materials Science across multiple scales of space and time as well as the latest advances in materials informatics for materials discovery and design” (https://cms3.tamu.edu). The event will take place at TAMU campus (College Station, Texas, USA) during July 22 – Aug. 3, 2018.

Sezen, congratulations on the acceptance and best wishes for this school!

The Vannevar Bush Faculty Fellowship program is sponsored by the Basic Research Office, in the Office of the Under Secretary of Defense for Research and Engineering, and administered by the Office of Naval Research. This program seeks outstanding researchers to conduct transformative basic research in topic areas of interest to the DoD.  Through the program, select university researchers and students learn about DoD’s current and future challenges, and are introduced to some of the ongoing critical research.  The program fosters long-term relationships between DoD and university researchers, and prepares them for possible entry into the defense and national security workforce.  

Fellows are currently conducting basic research in the areas of quantum information science, neuroscience, nanoscience, novel engineered materials, applied mathematics and statistics that could revolutionize a wide variety of DoD capabilities such as artificial intelligence, position-navigation-timing in denied environments, autonomous system design, decision support tools, and sensor development.  In addition to conducting this innovative, “blue sky” research, the Fellows have opportunities to directly engage with the larger DoD research enterprise and to share their knowledge and insights with DoD military and civilian leaders, researchers in DoD laboratories, and the national security science and engineering community.  Surya Kalidindi’s project is titled “Fusion of inherently incomplete and uncertain multiscale multiphysics materials knowledge in pursuit of novel engineered materials.”

Agenda Topics:

Atom Probe Tomography (APT): Operational Theory
Introduction to APT Data Reduction
Introduction to APT Sample Preparation
APT Applications

• Metals: Integration with Advanced Modeling
• Ceramics, high performance materials
• Semiconductor Devices: Planar and finFET, LED Devices, III/V
• Geological Materials and Biominerals

Correlative synergy

• t-EBSD
• TEM
• EPMA

Atom Probe Tomography Instrumentation

Lunch will be provided.

Attendance is free of charge but space is limited!
To register, please complete the registration form by August 8th 2017
Register Here

The remainder of the events centered around the theme “Micro/Nano-Enabled Electronics for Global Challenges” and featured topical lecture sessions with prominent Georgia Tech faculty speakers, facility tours, and a student poster session.

IEN congratulates the four winners of the session for their excellent presentations.

Potentiometric Biosensing for Rapid, On-Site Disease Diagnostics - Eleanor Brightbill (MSE), Eleanor Brightbill graduated from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill with a B.S. in Chemistry before beginning her Ph.D. work in Materials Science and Engineering at Georgia Tech.  As a member of the Vogel Lab, Eleanor is researching field-effect transistor-based potentiometric biosensing, specifically for serological disease detection. 

Enabling the Next Generation of Ultrafast Integrated Optical Links - Amir Hosseinnia (ECE), Amir H. Hosseinnia is an ECE PhD candidate and research assistant with the Photonics Research Group (PRG) at Georgia Institute of Technology. During his PhD, he has been working on the design, fabrication and characterization of integrated nanophotonic devices, systems, and platforms. He has successfully developed various heterogeneous material platforms to realize ultra-low-loss, high-speed and high-efficiency integrated devices. His efforts to demonstrate high quality micro-resonators, high-efficiency interlayer couplers, and high-speed modulators on hybrid platforms has paved the path to realize the next generation of silicon photonic systems and devices, which he is working on.

His research interests include the design, optimization, and fabrication of integrated photonic devices, heterogenous optical platforms and novel optical materials. He also serves as the president of OSA Student Chapter at GT aimed to boost the science of optics through various events and conferences.

Ultra-Low Programming Voltage and Time Flash Memory Devices Using CVD Graphene - Ramy Nashed (ECE), Ramy Nashed received the B.Sc. degree in electronics engineering from Loughborough University, U.K., in 2010, and the M.Sc. degree in electronics engineering from American University in Cairo, Egypt, in 2013. He is currently pursuing the Ph.D. degree in electrical and computer engineering with Georgia Tech, USA. His research interests include the design, fabrication, and characterization of post-CMOS devices and interconnects. He recently joined Intel Corporation, Hillsboro, USA, as an Intern to study the reliability of the 14 nm-node FinFET transistors."

A Low Temperature Sacrificial Layer Based CMUT Fabrication Process for Improved Reliability - Amirabbas Pirouz (ECE), Amirabbas Pirouz was born in Amol, Mazandaran, Iran, in 1989. He received the B.S. degree in electrical engineering from University of Tehran, Tehran, Iran in 2012. He has completed an M.S. degree in 2015 and is continuing to pursue a Ph.D. degree in electrical engineering from the Georgia institute of Technology. His current research interests are in designing, modeling, fabricating, and characterizing capacitive micromachined ultrasound transducers (CMUTs) for catheter based CMUT imaging devices and especially intracardiac-echocardiography (ICE).

This workshop will conduct a SWOT (strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, threats) analysis of the Georgia Tech scientific community to assess core and potential strengths and identify growth opportunities, and areas of synergy between groups that may not have collaborated previously.

Topics to be addressed during the workshop include:

» Future opportunity areas with scientific/engineering impact (external RFPs, or our own internal initiatives).
» Research opportunities and specific proposals to engage the PV industry
» Areas of technical strength (core strengths, area coverage, critical mass of core faculty and infrastructure, leadership for large scale proposals, gaps/weaknesses).
» Desirable teaming arrangements (internal/external) for developing initiatives, including areas of leadership versus areas of joining teams.
» Opportunities to extend leadership position in PV research

Mr. Clark was named Novelis' Senior Vice President, Chief Technical Officer in 2012. Bringing more than 30 years of industry experience, Clark leads a team that is responsible for delivering world-class performance in operations, engineering, research and development, and environment, health and safety. His mission is to drive the Novelis strategy of innovation, technology and engineering excellence in products and processes.

He previously served as Vice President, Operational Excellence at Novelis. Prior to joining Novelis in 2010, Mr. Clark held roles of increasing responsibility at Alcoa Inc. in North America, Europe and Asia concluding with his role as Vice President of Operations for Alcoa China Rolled Products.

Mr. Clark holds a Bachelor of Science degree in mechanical engineering from Purdue University.

Atlanta-based Novelis Inc., is the world's largest aluminum products manufacturer and recycler.

The materials data scientist will use a diverse set of skills for data management, feature identification, feature representation/parametrization, data modeling, and reporting. The materials data scientist will understand reduced order modeling, statistics, algorithms, and coding.  The materials data scientist will also need to be social in order to  enable the next generation of bi-directional structure-property-processing linkages that are required to discover and develop advanced materials.

In this talk, a few early case studies in data-driven methods for solving materials science problems will be explored.  Emerging spatial statistics tools will be explored that enable an objective comparison of static and evolving 3-D material volumes from molecular dynamics simulation, micro-CT, and Scanning Electron Microscopy.  Also, the statistics will provide a foundation to create improved bottom-up homogenization relationships in fuel cell materials.  Lastly, applications of the Materials Knowledge System, a data-driven meta-model to create top-down localization relationships will be explored for phase field model and finite element model information.  Lastly, this lecture will touch on how to ensure subsequent generations of materials scientists are increasingly collaborative.

Georgia Tech’s expertise in materials and systems for Energy Harvesting (EH), which spans several entities at the University, is widely recognized as innovative and at the front of the pack. Georgia Tech has pioneered and coined a few key areas in EH, positioning us at the frontier of building self-powered systems for IoT.

In parallel, GT is in the process of launching an Internet of Things Center (Center for the Development and Application of Internet of Things Technologies or CDAIT) to harness GT’s expertise in various IoT dimensions (EH being one of them) and present a complete value proposition, making it easier for potential partners interested in addressing the whole IoT value chain to interface with GT.  Collaboration with CDAIT should facilitate access to potential partners and also provide broader context to any IoT-related EH initiative.

The goal of this workshop is to discuss and explore potential areas and approaches for EH materials research leadership and associated funding opportunities associated with IoT.  We aim to design a path to set up a group exclusively centered on “self-powered systems for the Internet of Things” (SPS/IoT) composed of faculty and researchers from academic units, colleges, and institutes across Georgia Tech.
Specific goals of this workshop are to:

• Advance understanding and interest by the Georgia Tech scientific community in SPS/IoT challenges and opportunities.
• Identify future opportunity areas with scientific/engineering impact (external RFPs, or our own internal initiatives).
• Identify potential research opportunities and specific proposals to engage SPS/IoT industry.
• Assess areas of technical strength (core strengths, area coverage, critical mass of core faculty and infrastructure, leadership for large scale proposals, gaps/weaknesses).
• Identify desirable teaming arrangements (internal/external) for developing initiatives, including areas of leadership versus participation.
• Determine opportunities to extend Tech’s leadership position in SPS/IoT research.

The goal of this conference is to provide a forum for industry, government, and university stakeholders to discuss the goals, scope, and key elements of the collaborative network, and to establish a practical path forward in building the necessary infrastructure.

Workshop includes plenary speakers on major MGI-related themes, poster presentations from major MGI initiatives, materials specific breakout sessions to discuss approaches, as well as group discussions.

For additional information and registration, visit acceleratornetwork.org

Abstract:
In the last several years, natural gas extracted from shale rocks has grown to become a major factor in the world’s energy supply. This is a result of improved extraction methods and the exploration of previously neglected areas. Unlike conventional oil and gas deposits, where the rock-fluid interactions are well understood, our understanding of the physics of gas encapsulation and flow in shale is evolving. As a result, the production rates of wells within the same geologic formation can vary significantly and, perhaps there is opportunity to seek efficiencies in the number of wells drilled. Understanding the pore structure and how they are interconnected is the goal of this work, a challenging goal because pores in such rock can range from nm to mm in size. Exxon studies this using a multi-technique approach utilizing small-angle scattering, mercury injection capillary pressure (MICP) measurements and Helium ion microscopy. Small-angle neutron scattering (SANS) measurements are used to characterize the pore size distribution. This work is providing new insight into the hydrocarbon source and storage mechanisms in unconventional shales that will be used to optimize reservoir production.

Biography:
Dr. Aaron  Eberle is a Senior Research Scientist with ExxonMobil Research and Engineering Company in Annandale, New Jersey. He joined ExxonMobil Corporate Strategic Research after completing post-doctoral research at the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NRC fellowship), and at the University of Delaware. He earned his B.S. degree from the University of Rochester in 2003, and his Ph.D. from Virginia Tech in 2008, both in the field of Chemical Engineering. At ExxonMobil, Aaron utilizes scattering techniques to study polymers, catalysts, and reservoir rocks.

The hackathon will be held on Friday, December 11 from 9am to 6pm in the IPST Bldg, room 114 and again on Monday, December 14 from 9am to 4pm in the Marcus Nanotechnology Bldg, room 1117-1118.

Dr. Rakesh Kumar

The role of polymers in the electronics and medical arenas, particularly in miniaturized devices and electronic components, continues to grow rapidly. As the number of medical devices and electronics are growing to enhance human life, the challenges to make them safe, effective, and to find protection solutions for components are also increasing. For a number of years, conformal coatings have offered a level of protection to components, but many simply do not offer the level that is required for today and tomorrow's complex technologies.

This presentation will provide an overview of recent advances in Parylene technologies, including microRESIST® Antimicrobial Parylene Technology, and will discuss how currently available Parylenes differentiate themselves from other available conformal coating and polymeric materials. This presentation will address the latest advances in adhesion technologies and Parylene's role in nano- and micro- technologies. Examples of applications that have benefited from the properties of Parylene include circuit card assemblies, MEMS, LEDs, sensors, lab-on- a-chip devices, pacemakers, stents, electrosurgical tools, cochlear implants, neurostimulation devices and elastomers.

As applications and materials continue to evolve, Parylenes, used as conformal coatings as well as structural materials, enhance the performance and reliability of critical components and devices.

Speaker Bio: Dr. Rakesh Kumar is currently the Vice President of Technology for Specialty Coating Systems, Inc., overseeing Parylene R&D activities worldwide. With more than 27 years of extensive experience in polymeric materials, Dr. Kumar is currently involved with the application of Parylenes in the fields of medical devices, electronics, MEMS, sensors and nanotechnology. Dr. Kumar earned his doctoral degrees in Chemistry from India, and completed his post-doctorate work at the University College London, United Kingdom. He is co-author of a book and has authored several published papers and patents.

Now Mark Losego of Georgia Institute of Technology, in collaboration with Elizabeth Paisley from Sandia National Laboratories and the team of J.P. Maria from North Carolina State University, have recently reported the development of a new selective area epitaxy (SAE) method for growth of dielectric MgO thin films on gallium nitride (GaN) surfaces using surface chemistry modification.

GaN-based materials are excellent candidates for use in advanced microelectronic devices because of their ability to operate at high frequencies, high powers, and high temperatures. The growth of atomically smooth MgO epitaxial layers onto GaN is one route to forming gate dielectrics for these devices.  However the selective growth of oxides on semiconductors is uncommon.  “Our demonstration of using MBE [molecular beam epitaxy] to selectively grow MgO on GaN surfaces is one of the few examples of selective area epitaxy of an oxide by physical vapor deposition [PVD],” Losego says.

Selectivity is generally easier to achieve with a chemical vapor deposition (CVD) process, than with PVD. “The reason for this is the use of elemental precursors in MBE. Atomic precursors ‘stick better’ to the underlying surface than molecular species, so we had to modify the surface chemistry to alter the sticking coefficient,” Losego explains.

Treatment with hydrochloric acid had been previously shown to chlorinate GaN surfaces, but the effect of this surface chlorination on atomic adsorption had not been previously studied. Losego and colleagues found that treating GaN surfaces with hydrochloric acid impeded MgO film growth under certain conditions, and regions of “growth” or “no growth” could be readily patterned on GaN surfaces. A monolayer of Cl adatoms–the only detectable difference in surface structure–was identified as the source for adsorption impediment (a macroscale example of the results of this process are shown in the photograph).

The inset of this figure demonstrates that higher resolution features can also be replicated when photolithography is used to pattern the surface chlorination.

The group’s work is described as “a nice example of scientific creativity” by Raffaella Calarco, senior scientist at Paul Drude Institute for Solid State Electronics in Berlin. Calarco was not involved in the study. “Instead of the most common approach using a hard mask, here a simple change of surface chemistry due to an appropriate Cl-termination is employed,” she says.

Stephen J. Pearton at the University of Florida, who was also not involved in the study, adds: “It is a clever approach that avoids the need for more complex masking steps in order to achieve selective area growth. The next steps forward will need to expand the range of oxides that can be deposited in this fashion.”

According to Losego, the researchers are now exploring extending this understanding of surface chemistry to other materials and to CVD processes.

 Allen co-authored the manuscript with Professor Surya Kalidindi in the George W. Woodruff School of Mechanical Engineering, Drs. Konstantin Kornev and Maryana Nave from Clemson University and Yu-chen Karen Chen-Wiegart and Dr. Jun Wang from Brookhaven National Labs.

This project began in the Materials Informatics class taught by Professor Kalidindi in Fall 2015. This class is a part of the core curriculum in the NSF funded IGERT program FLAMEL. In this project Jason Allen provided the data science expertise for analyzing the large x-ray nanotomography datasets produced by materials domain experts at Clemson University and Brookhaven National Labs. In this project, computational approaches were taken not only to validate a hypothesis proposed by the researchers, but also to find new and interesting features of the data sets.  “Large data sets are a daunting task for many researchers and by utilizing data science methods we can mold the data into a form that is much more manageable,” says Jason.

“It’s quite impressive this was done within one year,” said Dr. Surya Kalidindi, co-PI of FLAMEL. This provides evidence for the high productivity of e-collaborations through MATIN. And it’s just one example. I am looking forward to many more such success stories as we move forward.”

Read the entire article here.

FLAMEL is a doctoral student training program designed to develop innovations in computing, mathematics, material science, and manufacturing in order to accelerate the creation of new high performance materials for applications. The goal is to develop and employ advances in areas such as machine learning algorithms and modeling and simulation for materials applications in an emerging field known as materials informatics. The program was designed to bring together computing researchers, materials scientists, engineers and mathematicians to quantify the microstructures that comprise materials and develop new algorithms and software for their design.

Scientific Reportsis an online, open access journal from the publishers of Nature. SR publishes scientifically valid primary research from all areas of the natural and clinical sciences. Scientific Reports articles are hosted on nature.com, which receives an average of more than 8 million unique visitors each month. Weekly round-ups of all published papers, and subject-specific e-alerts, brings further attention to papers.

Establishing these linkages presents a major challenge because of the need to cover unimaginably large dimensional spaces. “Hierarchical Materials Informatics” addresses objective, computationally efficient, mining of large ensembles of experimental and modeling datasets to extract this core materials knowledge. Furthermore, it aims to organize and present this high value knowledge in highly accessible forms to end-users engaged in product design and design for manufacturing efforts.

As such, this emerging field has a pivotal role in realizing the goals outlined in current strategic national initiatives such as the Materials Genome Initiative (MGI) and the Advanced Manufacturing Partnership (AMP).

“The key to good properties and performance characteristics of most materials lies in tailoring their internal structures, referred to as microstructures,” Kalidindi said.  “Although this has been known for some time, there has not been a practical approach to quantifying the connections between the material microstructure and its properties. Materials Informatics presents a rigorous data-driven approach for addressing this challenge.”

Kalidindi said he hopes his book will have a transformative effect on the materials engineering community.

“This book introduces a paradigm in how one might organize materials knowledge in forms that can be readily utilized by product design and advanced manufacturing experts,” he said.  “As such it can help establish tightly knit connections between the materials community and the design and manufacturing community.”

Kalidindi has joint appointments in the School of Computational Science and Engineering and in the School of Materials Science and Engineering. His research efforts during the past two decades have made seminal contributions to the fields of crystal plasticity, microstructure design, spherical nanoindentation, and materials informatics. His work has already produced about 200 journal articles, four book chapters, and a new book on Microstructure Sensitive Design. He is well cited by peer researchers as reflected by an h-index of 52 and current citation rate of about 1000 citations/year (Google Scholar).

He was recently awarded the Alexander von Humboldt award in recognition of his lifetime achievements in research. He has been elected a Fellow of ASME, ASM International, TMS, and Alpha Sigma Mu.

The honor of Fellow represents recognition of Dr. Garmestani’s distinguished contributions in the field of materials science and engineering, and develops a broadly based forum for technical and professional leaders to serve as advisors to the Society. 

The Materials scientist was named "for significant contributions in developing relationships between processing and microstructural control in crystalline materials, leading to materials design methodologies that address texture in a range of materials systems,” according to the citation.

His primary research and teaching interests include microstructure/property relationship in textured polycrystalline materials, composites, superplastic, magnetic and thin film layered structures. He uses phenomenological and statistical mechanics models in a computational framework to investigate microstructure and texture (micro-texture) evolution during processing and predict effective properties (mechanical, transport and magnetic). His present research interests are processing of fuel cell materials and modeling of their transport and mechanical properties.

This honor will be conferred at the October Convocation of Fellows in Columbus, OH.  The 2015 Class of Fellows will also be featured in the September issue of ASM News. 

ASM International was founded in 1913 as the American Society for Metals. Today, ASM is the world's largest association of metals-centric materials scientists and engineers with over 30,000 members worldwide. ASM is dedicated to informing, educating and connecting the materials community to solve problems and stimulate innovation around the world.

For more information, visit www.asminternational.org.

As the project abstract says, paper grocery bags, which were largely supplanted by commodity polyethylene bags in the late 20th century, are once again rising in popularity due to increasingly strict regulation, as well as rising interest in sustainability and environmentally benign products. Accordingly, in their study, students examined and tested an existing Trader Joe's paper bag design as a foundation for the development of new commodity paper bag concepts, with the intent of producing a more durable bag. The initial hypothesis was that the point of attachment of handle to bag was the failure point; however, students found that the strength of the handle itself was the issue. Students recommend further testing to determine the true strength of the conceptual attachment methods, as well as width improvements to the existing control bag, in order to achieve a more ideal product.

Carl Landegger, a former chair of the IPST board of trustees, provided a donation to fund the project. Norman Marsolan sponsored the project, and Dr. Meisha Shofner in the School of Materials Science and Engineering led the five-member team. Other resources assisting the students included Dr. Roman Popil of RBI-Georgia Tech, Debbie Hammack of KapStone Paper, and Dr. Robert Moon of USDA-Forest Service.

This article is the next in a series of Q&As to introduce the Tech community to the nine IRIs and their faculty leaders. In this installment, Executive Director David McDowell answers questions about the newly launched Georgia Tech Institute for Materials (IMat).

What is the impact of materials research?

Many of the technological advances that have transformed our world over the past 20 years have been founded on the developments of materials research. The benefits of these advances are evident in many of the products and technologies that have become so much a part of our everyday lives: our vehicles; the machines and efficient products in our homes, offices, and schools; the computers and phones we can’t live without; lifesaving medical technology; and much more. Materials research is focused both on discovering new materials as well as understanding how existing materials behave in new and enhanced products. Improved understanding enables us to better leverage the capabilities of known materials to make them safer, more convenient, efficient, cost-effective, and sustainable. This knowledge is critical to our continued growth in a competitive global economy and to addressing the 21^st century’s grand challenges in energy, sustainability, health, security, mobility, communications, and other areas.  

The Obama administration’s 2011 launch of the Materials Genome Initiative (MGI) further underscores the importance of materials research and is helping to drive increased focus and innovation within materials research and education. Designed to facilitate greater collaboration across the advanced materials workforce – including federal agencies, industry, professional societies, and academia – the MGI aims to double the rate and halve the cost of discovering, developing, and deploying new and improved materials into products. As a leading materials research university, Georgia Tech will play an integral role in the MGI.

Describe some areas of Georgia Tech materials research.

Materials research at Georgia Tech is comprehensive, addressing the major technologies that can improve our lives in the next century and beyond. It ranges from advances in polymers and macromolecules, to nanostructures and materials for nano-engineered devices, to functional photonic and electronic materials, to composites and advanced structural materials.

How is Georgia Tech helping to advance materials research?

Accelerating the rate of discovery and development of new and improved materials requires unprecedented levels of coordination between materials processing and synthesis, characterization, experimental methods for structure-property relations, computational materials science, physics and chemistry, design and information, and data sciences.  

The Georgia Tech Institute for Materials (IMat) was launched in June 2013 to foster the collaborative interdisciplinary linkages necessary to achieve this level of coordination. This includes developing the partnerships with national labs, industry, and other academic institutions that are essential for success in today’s large-scale materials research and development environment. Operating as an Interdisciplinary Research Institute (IRI) under the umbrella of the Executive Vice President for Research at Georgia Tech, IMat supports and connects materials-related research across all colleges and academic units at Georgia Tech, as well as at the Georgia Tech Research Institute, while fostering a network of industry, government, and academic research laboratories across the nation. Through this collaborative network, IMat aims to facilitate information sharing, build on existing knowledge, and move materials innovation beyond the experience of single investigators to the broader materials research community where advances can be more rapidly applied to product design and manufacturing. IMat will also serve as an Institute-wide bridge organization that will connect materials research with important application domains such as energy, manufacturing, bioengineering and biosciences, and nanotechnology.

How is IMat furthering Georgia Tech’s education mission?

The level of integration required to achieve the goals of the MGI and the next generation of materials research and development will demand corresponding evolution in the way materials-related courses are taught in various disciplines. In addition, new modes of education collaboration that bring together elements of design, informatics, and data sciences with the materials sciences will become increasingly important to support innovation – a Georgia Tech hallmark.

Innovation isn’t just about generating ideas. It is also about engaging a broader community in the materials discovery and development process. IMat was designed with this vision in mind. Connecting distinguished faculty, renowned research centers, and state-of-the-art laboratories and facilities across Georgia Tech, IMat emphasizes an integrated, multidisciplinary approach to problem solving. One way IMat will engage the materials community is through the development of exploratory Web-based collaboration tools for materials. IMat will also support engagement in materials research and education both within Georgia Tech and the broader research community through a variety of educational, social, and networking opportunities.

IMat will host a series of workshops for students and faculty throughout the year, as well as selected workshops that will engage industry, national laboratories, and other universities in high-opportunity areas of large-scale, collaborative research. In addition, as a southeastern ambassador for the MGI, IMat will host MGI-related workshops in the coming academic year that will bring together academia, industry, and government. To learn more about upcoming events, visit IMat’s website at: www.materials.gatech.edu.

What do you envision for the future of IMat and materials-related research?

Future economic competiveness demands that we better marshal our collaborative forces in preparing materials, quantifying their structure, measuring properties and responses to various stimuli, predicting their structure and properties, creating digital representations (or “fingerprints”) of materials from the atomic level up, and engaging information and data sciences to facilitate their implementation into high performance, sustainable products. Materials research in the future will increasingly transcend traditional disciplinary silos. It will engage faculty and students from various engineering disciplines, materials science, chemistry and physics, creating a more comprehensive research framework that will also include computing and information sciences, manufacturing, public policy, and other complementary areas. Strengthening these connections with an eye on the future is a major focus of IMat.

“There has been a long history with our alumni going out to be leaders in the PTFE field,” said Griffin. “Their work and accomplishments have continued to assure us that the school has consistently been one of the best in the country. While the school name will change, the importance that these alumni have in working with our faculty and students will continue.”

Students will still be able to study textile and fiber engineering under the new school. The new school will be the largest MSE program in the country with more than 55 faculty members and will serve as the hub of materials-related research at Georgia Tech. MSE is currently nationally ranked seventh in the undergraduate programs and eighth in graduate programs by U.S. News and World Report.

“The new school will be able to produce graduates who are well-rounded in the fundamentals of materials science and engineering, and who are prepared to meet the related needs of industry and government,” said Snyder. “They will be able to do this by specializing in tracks in virtually all areas of material types, functions, and phenomena.”

“We applaud the efforts of the faculty from both the schools to move in a direction that will respond to industry, academic and research needs and trends of the future,” said Don Giddens, Dean of the College of Engineering. “By merging the two schools, the opportunities for students and faculty alike will be broadened and go far beyond what is currently available.”

Andrei G. Fedorov for the Class of 1934 Outstanding Interdisciplinary Activity Award

Hang Lu and Valeria Tohver Milam for the CETL/BP Junior Faculty Teaching Excellence Awards

Cheng Zhu for the Georgia Tech Chapter Sigma Xi Faculty Best Paper Award

Congratulations to them all!

The Marder laboratory designs, builds, applies, and understands molecules that control the movement of electrons in nonlinear optics materials, organic electronics, and surface coatings. To do this, they combine sophisticated methods of organic and polymer synthesis with analytical methods, surface science, design, and computation, in collaboration with groups at Georgia Tech and worldwide.

MRS is honoring Marder for, “…establishing fundamental relationships between the chemical structure of organic molecules and their optical and electronic properties thereby profoundly impacting how the scientific community designs optimized molecular structures for use in nonlinear optical applications.”

Liu's research is in simulating the complex phenomenon of natural human movement by applying optimization and machine learning algorithms. Her work aims to expand computer-generated character animation from a visualization tool to an interdisciplinary research area focused on autonomous control and realistic human motion.

"Dr. Liu's highly regarded work simulating human movement will be key to Georgia Tech's contributions to the field of digital entertainment," said Aaron Bobick, chair of the School of Interactive Computing at Tech. "She has just started her career here after moving from the University of Southern California, and we couldn't be more pleased that she is already making such an impact."

Wang is a research scientist working in Zhong Lin Wang's group at the School of Materials Science and Engineering. His research focuses on self-assembling aligned piezoelectric nanowires and developing their novel applications. He received his PhD in Materials Science and Engineering at Georgia Tech in 2005.

In 2004, Wang developed an effective and low-cost method for growing large-area patterned, and vertically aligned ZnO nanowires, which can be directly applied for nanodevices integration. Recently, based on these vertical aligned ZnO nanowires, Wang and his co-workers developed a piezoelectric nanogenerator that converts ambient wave/vibration energy into electricity. This is a new concept for scavenging mechanical energy from the ambient environment, such as vibration, air/liquid flow and pressure fluctuation. Development of such nanogenerators sets the foundation for eliminating batteries to realize self-powered electronic devices from integrated nanosystems to implantable biomedical devices to portable electronic devices.

"This is a major step toward a portable, adaptable and cost-effective technology for powering in-vivo nanosensors, MEMS and wireless nanosensors," said Professor Zhong Lin (Z.L.) Wang. "Xudong has been very creative in developing this prototype and demonstrating its potential applications, which is the most remarkable advance in my group's research in the last few years. He is very deserving of this honor."

Liu, Wang and the other TR35 winners for 2007 will be featured in the September issue of Technology Review magazine and honored at the Emerging Technologies Conference, to be held at MIT September 25-27.

"The TR35 honors young innovators for accomplishments that are poised to have a dramatic impact on the world as we know it," said Jason Pontin, editor-in-chief and publisher of Technology Review magazine. "We celebrate their success and look forward to their continued advancement of technology in their respective fields."

Institute for Materials Executive Director David McDowell will present during this webinar with Cyrus Wadia, assistant director for Clean Energy & Materials R&D with the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy. The event is free but registration is registration is required.

NMR Structural Dynamics of Membrane Proteins Involved in Muscle Contraction and Relaxation

For more information contact Dr. Bridgette Barry (404-385-6085).