The Camille & Henry Dreyfus Foundation has named Michael Filler as a Camille and Henry Dreyfus Environmental Chemistry Mentor for the Foundation's Postdoctoral Program in Environmental Chemistry. The award will provide funding over two years to appoint a postdoctoral fellow to carry out research in environmental chemistry. Filler, an assistant professor in the School of Chemical & Biomolecular Engineering, is one of nine recipients of the 2011 award.

By providing a principal investigator with an award of $120,000 over two years to appoint a postdoctoral fellow in environmental chemistry, the Camille and Henry Dreyfus Foundation seeks to further the development of scientific leadership in the field of environmental chemistry.

Projects that are receiving funding involve innovative fundamental research in the chemical sciences or engineering related to the environment, including chemistry associated with the climate, the atmosphere, aquatic or marine settings, toxicology, soil or groundwater, and new or green approaches to chemical synthesis and processing, with a clearly stated relation to the environment.

Filler’s project proposes to investigate nanowire-based twinning superlattices as a new route to engineer the band structure of Si and achieve a direct band gap in this earth-abundant materials system. He anticipates that the appointed postdoctoral researcher will study superlattice synthesis with in-situ infrared spectroscopy.

After receiving his PhD from Stanford University in 2006, Filler completed a postdoctoral appointment in applied physics at the California Institute of Technology. He joined the faculty at Georgia Tech in 2009, where he focuses on the atomic-level engineering of nanoscale semiconductors for next generation energy conversion, electronic, and photonic applications.