Current UCF student Rene Diaz is a winner of the National Science Foundation’s 2011 Graduate Research Fellowship Program (GRFP) competition. The fellowship will allow Rene to continue his education in engineering with UCF’s Materials Science Engineering graduate program. The NSF wrote that the selection was based on his outstanding abilities and accomplishments as well as…

Testing the effectiveness of new pharmaceuticals may get faster thanks to a new technique incorporating quantum dots developed at the University of Central Florida. Some drug testing can take a decade or more, but UCF associate professor Swadeshmukul  Santra and his team have created an electronic quantum dots (Qdots) probe that “lights up” when a…

Undergraduate student Ashton Lee and her faculty mentor Dr. Swadeshmukul Santra have been awarded UCF’s SMART Grant for spring 2012. Ashton and Dr. Santra will receive $1,000 each to help fund their research. As part of the SMART program, Ashton will participate in Directed Independent Research with Dr. Santra through the Burnett School of Biomedical…

University of Central Florida researchers, for the first time, have used stem cells to grow neuromuscular junctions between human muscle cells and human spinal cord cells, the key connectors used by the brain to communicate and control muscles in the body. The success at UCF is a critical step in developing “human-on-a-chip” systems. The systems…

Reprinted from MaterialViews.com, the leading news portal dedicated to materials science. by Carol Stanier Nanosized features can easily be printed accurately onto an already patterned surface, using a new technique called nanoimprinting by melt processing developed by US scientists. Commercial production of devices based on nanotechnology demands that tiny, complex components be fabricated on a…

University of Central Florida Associate Professor Lei Zhai’s work with “frozen smoke” has earned him a semifinalist spot in an international competition likened to the Nobel Prize. “I am quite surprised by all the attention,” said Zhai, who specializes in nanotechnology. “I don’t know where this competition will go, but I hope we can get…

On August 11, the NanoScience Technology Center and Advanced Materials Processing and Analysis Center hosted a K-12/Undergraduate/RET 2011 Summer Research Showcase. The event was organized by Professor Aman Behal (EECS & NSTC) and held in the atrium of the Engineering II building. Seventeen posters were on display at the showcase. Abstracts and participants for each…

Andrew Teblum, a senior studying Micro and Molecular Biology, has been been awarded the Undergraduate Researcher of the Month for July 2011. Andrew is mentored by Dr. Swadeshmukul Santra of the NanoScience Technology Center. Andrew was nominated and chosen for the award based on the overall merit of the research he is currently conducting at…

Associate Professor Lei Zhai has been named a Scialog Fellow by the Research Corporation for Science Advancement (RCSA) and will receive a grant for his research “Investigating Charge Transport and Recombination in Bulk Heterojunction Organic Photovoltaics with Conjugated Polymer Columnar Structures on Graphene.” Zhai is among the second group of recipients awarded through Scialog®, a…

We are very pleased to announce the success of the NanoScience Technology Center (NSTC) and Advanced Materials Processing and Analysis Center’s (AMPAC) 2011 External Advisory Board meeting. Eight experts in the field of Materials and Nanotechnology were invited to serve on the board this year and provide their input to enhance the quality of the…