BU Division of Materials Science & Engineering 2015-2016 Annual Report

Boston University College of Engineering Division of Materials Science & Engineering 2015-2016

CONTENTS

HIGHLIGHTS .................................................................................................................................... 3 Faculty Honors and Awards...................................................................................................................................................4 Highlighted Honors....................................................................................................................................................................7 New Addition To MSE Faculty............................................................................................................................................ 18 Faculty Promotions................................................................................................................................................................. 18 Highlighted New Grants........................................................................................................................................................ 19

FACULTY AND STAFF..................................................................................................................... 24 Faculty .......................................................................................................................................................................................... 24 Affiliated Faculty ...................................................................................................................................................................... 29 Division Administration........................................................................................................................................................ 34 Division Committees .............................................................................................................................................................. 34

GRADUATE PROGRAMS ............................................................................................................... 35 Enrollment .................................................................................................................................................................................. 36 Graduate Student Funding................................................................................................................................................... 37 Degrees Awarded..................................................................................................................................................................... 38 Recruitment................................................................................................................................................................................ 40 Curriculum Enhancements .................................................................................................................................................. 42 Community-Building Activities ......................................................................................................................................... 42 Graduate Student Professional Societies....................................................................................................................... 43 Graduate Student Accomplishments............................................................................................................................... 44 MSE Colloquium Student Hosts ......................................................................................................................................... 44

RESEARCH ..................................................................................................................................... 49 Research Highlights ................................................................................................................................................................ 50 Materials Science & Engineering Colloquium Series................................................................................................ 77 Research Laboratories........................................................................................................................................................... 79 MSE Shared Core Research Facility ................................................................................................................................. 96 Visiting Committee Members ............................................................................................................................................. 98

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HIGHLIGHTS

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FACULTY HONORS AND AWARDS MSE Faculty are highly successful and internationally recognized researchers.

Here are a few of the awards and honors received in 2015-2016: ENRICO BELLOTTI • National Defense Science and Engineering Graduate Fellowship awarded to PhD Student A.Wichman, 2015 THOMAS G. BIFANO • R&D100 Award Finalist, The Microelectromechanical Systems (MEMS)-Based Adaptive-Optics Confocal Microscope JAMES C. BIRD • Office of Naval Research (ONR) 2016 Young Investigator Program (YIP) Awardee SCOTT BUNCH • Finalist, SwissLitho's Young Researcher Idea Competition, 2015 DAVID CAMPBELL • Phi Beta Kappa Visiting Scholar • Visiting Scholar, Cohen Center for the Study of Technological Humanism JAMES COLLINS • Allen Distinguished Investigator, Paul G. Allen Frontiers Group, 2016 • Promega Biotechnology Research Award, American Society for Microbiology,2016 • Cell Plenary Lecturer, Society for Experimental Biology, 2016 • Bagrit Bioengineering Lecturer, Imperial College London, 2016 • Distinguished Lecturer in Engineering, Uni versity of Miami, 2016 • Jefferson Lecturer, University of Delaware, 2016 • Duncan and Susan Mellichamp Lecturer, UC Santa Barbara, 2016 • Breakthrough Award, Kenneth Rainin Foundation, 2015 ALLISON DENNIS • Finalist, Beckman Young Investigator Award JILLIAN GOLDFARB • Nominated by the American Chemical Society (ACS) for 2016 NSF Waterman Award • Finalist, TECO Green Technology International Competition, Taiwan with Co-PI Emily Ryan and two undergraduate students • Agilent Academic Technologies Award

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MARK W. GRINSTAFF • Named Affiliate Faculty, Department of Clinical Sciences, College of Veterinary Medicine & Biomedical Sciences, Colorado State University, Fort Collins, CO MAXIM FRANK-KAMENETSKII • Doctor Philosophiae Honoris Causa, Bogolyubov Insti tute for Theoretical Physics, Ukraine National Academy of Sciences, Kiev DOUGLAS P. HOLMES • NSF CAREER Award, NSF CMMI - Mechanics of Materials and Structures CAREER award on Understanding and Controlling the Deformation of Thin Rods within Soft and Fr agile Matter • Invited to the National Academy of Engineers Frontiers of Engineering Education workshop to present an engineering education innovation entitled "Viral Videos" on the Mechanics of Materials ELISE F. MORGAN • 100 Inspiring Women in STEM, Insight into Diversity HAROLD S. PARK • Named Associate Editor, ASME Journal of Applied Mechanics UDAY PAL • American Institute of Mining, Metallurgical and Petroleum Engineers (AIME) James Douglas Gold Medal, 2015 • The Minerals, Metals and Materials Society (TMS) Extraction and Processing Division Distinguished Lecturer Award SIDDHARTH RAMACHANDRAN • Program Chair, 2015 CLEO, Optics & Photonics Community EMILY RYAN • Finalist, TECO Green Technology International Competition, Taiwan with Co-PI Jillian Goldfarb and two undergraduate students SAHAR SHARIFZADEH • Awarded 1 million computer hours on the Department of Energy’s National Energy Research Scientific Computing Center (NERSC) machine for propos ed research project, First Principles Modeling of Organic and Wide Band Gap Inorganic Semiconducting Materials BELA SUKI • Invited plenary lecturer, Brazilian Physiological Society Meeting, Augas de Lindoia, Brazil, August, 2015 OPHELIA K.C. TSUI • Lecturer of the Polymers and Advanced Materials (PAM) Lecture series, University of Akron • Invited to Editorial Advisory Board (EAB) of Macromolecules and ACS Macro Letter

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M. SELIM ÜNLÜ • Charles DeLisi Award and Distin-guished Lecture Recipient, 2016 JOYCE Y. WONG • National Science Foundation I-CORPS Participant • Selected to be 1 of 4 Volume Organizers, 2017 Materials Research Society (MRS) Bulletin MUHAMMAD H. ZAMAN • Elected Fellow, American Institute for Medical and Biomedical Engineering (AIMBE), 2015 • Cambridge Science Festival Curios Scientist Award, 2015 LAWRENCE ZIEGLER • Delivered Distinguished Alumni Commencement Address at the Department of Chemistry Commencement, SUNY at Stony Brook, May 22, 2015 XIN ZHANG • Elected Fellow of the Optical Society (OSA) • Elected Fellow of the American Institute for Medical and Biological Engineering (AIMBE) • Named Director of NSF REU in Integrated Nanomanufacturing • First Schlumberger-BU Research Fellowship, 2016

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HIGHLIGHTED HONORS Morgan Recognized as One of 100 Inspiring Women in STEM

By Mark Dwortzan

Professor Elise Morgan (ME, BME, MSE) Professor Elise Morgan (ME, BME, MSE) was selected as a recipient of INSIGHT Into Diversity magazine’s 100 Inspiring Women in STEM Award. INSIGHT Into Diversity is the oldest and largest diversity magazine and website in higher education.

This award recognizes 100 women whose work and achievements as researchers, teachers and mentors encourages women currently engaged in science, technology, engineering and math fields, and inspires a new generation of young women to consider STEM careers. Boston University recipients Morgan and Cynthia Brossman, director of the Learning Resource Network, will be profiled in the magazine’s September issue along with 98 other Women in Stem honorees.

“I’m extremely honored to receive this recognition, pa rticularly alongside people like Cynthia who exemplify tireless commitment to lighting a spark in the next generation of women in STEM,” said Morgan. “I always hope that I am making an impact through the research that my group does and by connecting with y oung people. It’s absolutely critical to help everyone around us understand the importance of STEM for society.” Since joining the College of Engineering faculty in 2003, Morgan has worked to advance understanding of the role of the mechanical function of tissues and organs in skeletal health, repair and development, with the ultimate goal of pinpointing causes and treatments for osteoporosis, osteoarthritis and poor bone healing.

As director of the Orthopaedic and Developmental Biomechanics Laboratory, Morgan studies the interplay among the mechanical behavior, structure and biological function of tissues. Drawing on methods from engineering mechanics, materials science, and cell and molecular biology, and combining experimentation and computational modeling, Morgan’s lab investigates how mechanical factors contribute to the development, adaptation, failure and regeneration of bone and cartilage. Current projects include the use of mechanical stimulation to promote bone regeneration, the biomechanics of spine fractures and bone healing, non-invasive diagnostics of bone healing, and inflammatory bone loss. This work has been funded by the National Institutes of Health, the National Science Foundation, private foundations and industry sponsors.

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Zhang Elected Optical Society Fellow Recognized for MEMS work

By Michael G Seele The Optical Society — the leading professional association in optics and photonics — elected Prof. Xin Zhang (ME, MSE) as a Fellow of the Society at its October meeting.

Zhang was recognized for outstanding achievement and contribution in terahertz metamaterials, biophotonics and energy-using microelectromechanical systems. Less than one half of one percent of the society’s members are elected Fellows in any one year, and Fellows make up less than 10 percent of the society’s 19,000 members.

“I am deeply honored and humbled to have been elected as an OSA Fellow,” said Zhang.

A Boston University faculty member since 2002, Zhang leads an interdisciplinary team of researchers focused on micro- and nanoelectromechanical systems (MEMS/NEMS or micro/nanosystems), from their fundamental materials and mechanics aspects to their application to real world applications. Her research group –the Laboratory for Microsystems Technology–seeks to understand and exploit fundamental and interesting characteristics of micro/nanomaterials, micro/nanomechanics, and micro/nanomanufacturing technologies with forward -looking engineering efforts and practical applications ranging from energy to health care to homeland security.

Prof. Xin Zhang (ME, MSE) Zhang’s research spans across several areas in science and technology of optics and photonics, advancing optomechanical cell sensing platform technologies, electromagnetic metamaterials at terahertz frequencies, and chemical detection and wireless communication in harsh environment. In particular, Zhang has applied MEMS techniques to develop novel, highly functional electromagnetic metamaterials, arrays of engineered structures that act like artificial atoms and exhibit unusual properties such as negative refractive indices and invisible cloaking. She has focused on creating metamaterials in the terahertz range (wavelengths between optical and microwave frequencies) that may ultimately be used for imaging, chemical detection, surveillance and high -speed electronic circuits.

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In 2009 Zhang was named the Coll ege’s inaugural Distinguished Faculty Fellow, a five-year appointment given to tenured ENG faculty on a clear trajectory toward an exemplary career in all dimensions of science and engineering.

She has received numerous awards for research excellence, incl uding the National Science Foundation Faculty CAREER Award, and has participated in both US and international National Academy of Engineering symposia. She has published 128 papers in interdisciplinary journals. In addition, among the 14 Ph.D. students who have graduated from Zhang’s lab at Boston University, three have received tenure-track faculty positions at major research universities (UT-Austin, Virginia Tech and Ohio State), and the rest in national labs and industry including Analog Devices, Charles Stark Draper Laboratory, General Electric, and Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory.

This is Zhang’s second election to fellow status in a major professional organization this year. In the spring, she was elected as a Fellow in the American Society of Mechanical Engineers in recognition of her interdisciplinary MEMS research.

Morgan, who was inducted this year as an American Institute for Medical and Biological Engineering ( AIMBE) Fellow, has received a Ruth L. Kirschstein National Research Service Award for Senior Fellows from the National Institutes of Health, a Young Investigator Research Award from the International Osteoporosis Foundation and Servier Research Group, the 2013 Kappa Delta Young Investigator Award from the American Association of Orthopaedic Surgeons, and an Early Career Research Excellence Award and Distinguished Faculty Fellow Award from the College of Engineering. She has published more than 50 peer -reviewed articles in major engineering journals and has delivered more than 40 seminars and invited talks. She is also the co-founder of a successful outreach program, Summer Pathways, which engages high school girls in a week-long sequence of activities in science, engineering and math.

Zhang Elected to AIMBE College of Fellows

By Sara Elizabeth Cody Prof. Xin Zhang (ME, MSE) has been elected to the American Institute for Medical and Biological Engineering (AIMBE) College of Fellows. The College of Fellows is comprised of the top two percent of medical and biological engineers in the country, including engineering and medical school chairs, research directors, professors, innovators, and successful entrepreneurs. Zhang and Damiano were nominated, reviewed, and elected by peers and members of the College.

A faculty member since 2002, Zhang leads an interdisciplinary team of researchers focused on micro - and nanoelectromechanical systems (MEMS/NEMS or micro/nanosystems), from their fundamental materials and mechanics aspects to their application to real world applications. Her research group—the Laboratory for Microsystems Technology—seeks to understand and exploit fundamental and interesting characteristics of micro/nanomaterials, micro/nanomechanics, and micro/nanomanufacturing technologies with fo rward-looking engineering efforts and practical applications ranging from energy to health care to homeland security. Zhang was elected to the College of Fellows for pioneering contributions in expanding the toolset for measuring cellular behavior through the development of optomechanical and impedance-based sensing platforms.

This is Zhang’s third election to fellow status in a major professional organization in the past year. In the spring of 2015, she was elected as a Fellow in the American Society of Mechanical Engineers in recognition of her interdisciplinary MEMS research. Last fall, , she was elected as a Fellow of the Optical Society for her for outstanding achievement and contribution in terahertz metamaterials, biophotonics and energy -using microelectromechanical systems.

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Announcing the Winners of the 2016 MSE Innovation Grants The Division of Materials Science & Engineering is pleased to announce the winners of the 2016 MSE Innovation Grants. They are: Harold Park, ME and David Campbell, Physics “Novel Memory Effect Materials: the Monolayer Group-IV Monochalcogenides” The discovery of two-dimensional graphene and the recognition of its many exotic electronic properties have led to intense interest in other two-dimensional (2D) materials that can be isolated into single layers through exfoliation. The hope is these exotic properties —including the existence of multiple “valleys” in momentum space, which essentially confer another spin-like degree of freedom to electrons in these materials —can be used to make novel electronic devices. To date, however, any putative “valleytronic” devices have lacked the ability store information in non-volatile memories. We propose to study a class of materials in which the “valleytronics” are coupled to structural phase changes in the material, so that the bit value corresponds to a distinct structural phase of the material. As prototypical materials we will use SnS and GeSe, which belong to the family of group -IV layered monochalcogenides MX (M=Ge or Sn, and X=S or Se) and are known to undergo structural phase changes under mechanical strain. We will use computational studies to demonstrate that mechanical strain, and potential phase transformations in the monochalcogenides, can excite electrons from the valence band to the conduction band at the X or the Y-valley separately, using appropriately polarized light. The success of this research project could have a transformative effect on the field of 2D electronics and specifically lead to an entirely new class of nanosc ale electronic devices based on non-volatile valleytronics.

Keith Brown, ME “Imaging with Cantilever-free Scanning Probes” The atomic force microscope (AFM) is a tool that images surfaces with extremely high resolution by detecting miniscule forces acting on a sharp tip. Conventionally, these instruments require the use of a flexible microscopic cantilever in order to detect these forces; a fact which makes AFM probes difficult to manufacture and operate in parallel. Here, we propose to detect forces acting on probes that are directly mounted on a rigid support coated with a compliant film. Since these cantilever-free probes can easily be manufactured in massively parallel arrays, using them to image would transform AFM into a tool that can accommodate centi meter-scale, rather than microscopic, samples. This capability is expected to enable advances in diverse fields including biomedical engineering, hierarchical materials, and nanoelectronics. Bjorn Reinhard, Chemistry “Photonics Molecules for Enhanced Optical Forces for Chiral Trapping” Chemical chirality refers to a phenomenon that occurs when a molecule does not superimpose with its own mirror image. Importantly, the chemical properties of the so-called enantiomers can differ even though the molecules have the same formula. The concept of chirality is, however, not limited to stereochemistry but also applies to some electromagnetic fields. The goal of this project is to take advantage of the chirality of electromagnetic fields to develop new strategies for separating chemical enantiomers. In particular, the design criteria and fundamental working principles of nanoscale antennas that generate strong gradients in the optical chirality as needed for strong enantiomer-selective forces will be explored.

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Michelle Sander, ECE “Multi-dimensional Photothermal Vibrational Infrared Spectroscopy” Infrared spectroscopy in the mid-infrared fingerprint region has emerged as a powerful tool to determine molecular structure. However, for characterization in crowded and overlapping vibrational spectral bands, unique material identification can be challenging. Thus, the combination of spectral characterization with additional thermal material-specific properties can provide critical information for the detection of hazardous materials or chemical analysis. Similarly, spectral signatures of proteins (amide-bands) combined with variations in thermal properties across a sample could provide a novel way to systematically differentiate healthy from diseased tissue.

The overall goal of this project is to develop a mid-infrared multi-dimensional vibrational spectroscopy system with high sensitivity that combines photothermal and characteristic thermal material measurements in one label -free, contactless configuration at eye-safe wavelengths, utilizing a fiber laser probe.

Xin Zhang, ME and Stephan Anderson, Radiology, BUSM “Marrying MEMS with Acoustic Metamaterials to Realize Ultrasound Applications” Metamaterials composed of sub-wavelength unit cell can exhibit extraordinary behaviors that do not exist in the nature. Achieving negative permeability and permittivity in electromagnetic metamaterials (EMM) has been widely reported with a range of phenomena such as negative index materials and cloaking having been realized in this area. With regards to acoustic metamaterials (AMMs), the design of these sub-wavelength unit cell structures enables acoustic wave manipulation and many promising acoustics applications have been explored. Despite the promise of AMMs, one of the fundamental li mitations include their relatively low working frequency as the majority of proposed acoustic metamaterials are effective in the range of Hz-kHz. Overcoming this common limitation of AMMs would enable their practical application in ultrasound imaging, whic h requires operation in the MHz regime. During this project, we seek to design and fabricate AMMs in the micron-scale using MEMS fabrication approaches, thereby achieving operating frequencies in the MHz regime, appropriate for biomedical ultrasound imaging. Achieving functional AMMs in the frequency regime optimal for ultrasound imaging enables a host of applications that may dramatically potentiate this powerful medical imaging modality.

ENG Prof Wins Young Investigator Award

Professor James Bird (ME, MSE)

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James Bird, an ENG assistant professor of mechanical engineering, whose research in fluid dynamics focuses on the capillary dynamics of drops and bubbles, is among the awardees. Photo by Vernon Doucette The Office of Naval Research (ONR) has announced awards of $25 million to 47 scientists —including a College of Engineering mechanical engineer—whose exceptionally creative research holds promise across a range of naval relevant science and technology areas, from robotics to solar cells.

James Bird, an ENG assistant professor of mechanical engineering and materials science & engineering, whose research in fluid dynamics focuses on the capillary dynamics of drops and bubbles, is among the awardees.

The awards are granted through the ONR’s 2016 Young Investigator Program (YIP), one of the oldest and most selective scientific research advancement programs in the country. Its purpose is to fund early -career academic researchers—called investigators—whose scientific pursuits show outstanding promise for supporting the Department of Defense, while also promoting their professional development.

For awardees, the funding supports laboratory equipment, graduate s tudent stipends and scholarships, and other expenses critical to ongoing and planned investigational studies. Typical grants are $510,000 over a three-year period with additional funds available for equipment.

This year’s candidates were selected from 280 highly qualified applicants based on past performance, technical merit, potential scientific breakthrough, and long-term university commitment. All are college and university faculty who have obtained tenure-track positions within the past five years.

Awardees represent 34 academic institutions across the country, in disciplines including optoelectronics, corrosion, biofilms, organic semiconductors, structural dynamics, combustion, ocean-atmospheric interaction, metamaterials, energetic materials, active flow control, efficient computing, foodborne diseases, and warfighter training.

“The YIP Program is in its 31st year at ONR and the award is still very competitive,” says Larry Schuette, director of research at the Office of Naval Research. “We are fortunate to be able to attract the top researchers to the fundamental science that underpins the Navy and Marine Corps of today, tomorrow, and the future.”

See the list of 2016 Office of Naval Research Young Investigator awardees .

Ünlü Delivers Delisi Distinguished Lecture

By Sara Elizabeth Cody On Thursday, April 14, Professor M. Selim Ünlü (ECE, BME, MSE), recipient of the 2016 Charles DeLisi Award and Distinguished Lecture, presented “Optical Interference: From Soap Bubbles to Digital Detection of Viral Pathogens” to a packed room of students, faculty and researchers.

The first named endowed lecture in the history of the College of Engineering, the Charles DeLisi Award and Distinguished Lecture recognizes faculty members with extraordinary records of well -cited scholarship, and outstanding alumni who have invented and mentored transformative technologies that impact our quality of life.

When Ünlü arrived at BU in 1992, he was inspired by the collegial interdisciplinary environment, which led him to apply his background in electrical engineering and electromagnetic waves to developing innovative methods for biological imaging and sensing. His presentation, peppered with video and audio messages from past students and mentors who have contributed to his work, chronicled his career path from graduate school to present day and

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centered on his current research in optical sensing and developing new bioimaging technologies that address the obstacles that currently plague the field of diagnostics.

Professor M. Selim Ünlü (ECE, BME, MSE)

“When you are trying to look at pathogens, the most distinguishing thing is to look at its genome, but obstacles like logistics and cost are prohibitive and drive scientists to find more compact and affordable ways that have the same functionality,” said Ünlü. “Single particle detection has been the physicist’s dream of addressing these issues, so that’s what we set out to explore.”

Synergy between Engineering and Medicine In developing his optical detection technology, he drew inspiration from, of all places, a soap bubble. Specifically, the patterns of colors that develop on the surface when light is being reflected through it. According to Ünlü, the same interference phenomenon that gives rainbow colors to soap bubbles can also provide extremely high sensitivity as illustrated by the recent news on detection of gravity waves by optical interferometry.

“Most people don’t realize that just by calling out a certain color, you are making a measurement in the order of nanometers,” said Ünlü. Ünlü extended this idea to develop his optical detection technology for single nanoscale par ticles, where the interference of light reflected from the sensor surface is modified by the presence of nanoparticles, producing a distinct signal that reveals the size of the particle that is otherwise not visible under a conventional microscope.

Using this technology, Ünlü and his research team demonstrated label -free identification of some of the most deadly viruses in the world, including hemorrhagic viruses like Ebola, Lassa and Marburg, at a high sensitivity on par with state-of-the-art laboratory technologies. They have even been able to detect particles as small as individual protein and DNA molecules by labeling them with gold nanoparticles to provide sufficient visibility.

“Proteins are too small. We can’t see them directly so we decorate them wi th gold nanoparticles, which are not much bigger than the proteins themselves,” said Ünlü. “Decorating them with gold nanoparticles increases visibility of the molecules bound on the sensor surface, and we are able to count them in serum or whole blood.”

The resulting technological development in biomarker analysis that Ünlü has spearheaded is digital detection, an approach that counts single molecules, which provides resolution and sensitivity beyond the reach of ensemble measurements. Digital detection for medical diagnostics not only provides very high sensitivity, but also has the potential of making the most advanced molecular diagnostic tools broadly accessible at low cost.

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Digital detection captures images of individual viruses in real time “Optical interference is a very powerful sensing technique,” summed up Ünlü. “With this biological imaging technology, we can detect single particles if they are large enough on the nanoscale, such as viruses, and see them directly. If they are proteins or DNA molecules we have to label them with a small, metallic nanoparticle to see them.”

In terms of next steps, Ünlü and his team will continue to refine the technology for commercialization, including applying some of these findings to produce microarray chips that provide calibration and quality control in industry. His laboratory will continue to work on advancing the technology further and gaining a deeper understanding of the theoretical basis in order to enhance the methodology. In particular, they are look ing into applying the technology to such areas as real -time DNA detection, rare mutations, and most recently a project to characterize viruses that target cancer cells.

To conclude his presentation, Ünlü expressed his appreciation of the support he receiv ed from the College to foster collaboration, and to his students, mentors and family who helped him along the way.

“I’m very thankful to Boston University for providing an incredibly rich environment for research because there are no barriers between disci plines,” said Ünlü. “Multidisciplinary innovation is the driving force of discovering new things and making society better, and ultimately that is my motivation.”

The DeLisi Lecture continues the College’s annual Distinguished Lecture Series, initiated in 2008, which has honored several senior faculty members. The previous recipients are Professors John Baillieul, (ME, SE), Malvin Teich (ECE) (Emeritus), Irving Bigio (BME), Theodore Moustakas (ECE, MSE), H. Steven Colburn (BME), Thomas Bifano (ME, MSE), Christos Cassandras (ECE, SE) and Mark Grinstaff (BME, MSE, Chemistry, MED).

John Straub Named 2016 United Methodist Church Scholar/Teacher of the Year

By Susan Seligson

2016 United Methodist Church Scholar/Teacher of the Year John E. Straub, a CAS associate professor of chemistry, is a born introvert who battled his shyness to become one of the most beloved teachers at CAS as well as a leading researcher. Photo by Jackie Ricciardi

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John E. Straub (Chemistry, MSE) never planned to be a teacher. “I have known natural, gifted teachers,” he says. “I am not one.” A born introvert, Straub has learned that much of what makes a good teacher is enthusiasm for one’s subject, and that’s something he has in abundance. The College of Arts & Sciences associate professor of chemistry has been on the BU faculty for 25 years. He has been named the 2016 United Methodist Church Scholar/Teacher of the Year, given to outstanding scholars who are dedicated and gifted educators.

The award follows a 2005 Metcalf Award for Excellence in Teaching, one of the University’s highest teaching accolades, and the Gitner Award for Distinguished Teaching in 2003.

Straub says he cultivated a sense of wonder and love for science and math as a chi ld poking around the natural world, trying to make sense of things. Through his long, distinguished career he has never lost that passionate curiosity, and after combating his initial terror of public speaking, he grew to love teaching and has proven to be a classroom innovator. “John Straub is a remarkable colleague,” says Lawrence Ziegler, a CAS professor and chair of chemistry. “His impact in chemistry raises the quality of the department’s productivity in all phases of our core missions: research, teaching, and outreach/service, and his input on important University initiatives is highly sought and valued.”

Straub will be presented with the United Methodist Church Scholar/Teacher of the Year Award at a private ceremony this evening. The award, established by the General Board of Higher Education and Ministry of the United Methodist Church and conferred at colleges and universities historically affiliated with the United Methodist Church, recognizes outstanding scholars for their dedication and contributi ons to the learning arts and to the institution.

An Alfred P. Sloan Research Fellow from 1995 to 1997, Straub “explores protein dynamics and thermodynamics using theoretical and computational methods, with a particular focus on elucidating pathways for conformational change associated with protein energy transfer, signaling, folding, and aggregation,” his website says. If that makes little or no sense to lay readers, it is also a reflection of Straub’s gifts as a translator of arcane subject material to students of varying STEM (science, technology, engineering, and math) backgrounds.

“My scholarship is in the field of theoretical and computational chemistry and biophysics,” Straub says. “Usi ng the principles of physics as applied to atoms and molecules, we develop detailed, atomic level simulations of the molecular world that allow us to address fundamental questions related to the properties of complex matter (including novel materials) and biological systems (related to human health). Based on our observations, we have formed novel hypotheses related to the nature of energy flow in molecular machines, factors controlling the rates of chemical reactions, the fundamental mechanisms controlling molecular self-assembly, and the etiology of Alzheimer’s disease.” He describes his research, which draws on collaboration with scientists around the world, as curiosity-driven. His lab’s explorations have been wide-ranging and the findings have been publ ished in journals of chemistry, physics, computational science, and applied mathematics.

“When I was a young person, I had this enormous enthusiasm for science and loved mathematics,” he says. “But situations like having to stand up in front of a class and deliver a book report, or be in a play, absolutely terrified me. I never thought I’d be in a position where I’d be presenting ideas in front of large groups of people.”

Straub says the life of a researcher was a good fit for him, “but I didn’t ever think of myself as a teacher, even through graduate school and as a postdoc, and then when I was hired as a professor as well as a research scientist, I had to think a lot about teaching and work very hard at it,” he says. “I feel teaching is very personal thi ng. Success as a teacher involves personality; you can’t just copy someone else’s style.”

He was motivated (and heartened), he says, in large part by an essay by Noam Chomsky about teaching that said 80 percent of good teaching is sharing your enthusiasm with your students. “What you can do beyond that is come to know your students and what inspires them,” says Straub.

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An important feature of his teaching style is his innovative grading system, influenced by a mentor he worked with while a postdoc at Harvard. “I want the students to be judged by their best work,” Straub says. “As such, I use a grading system that counts only the student’s best performance, on an hour exam or the corresponding section of the comprehensive final, as their topical assessment. This allows students entering the course with a strong background to demonstrate mastery at the outset, and students that struggle at first but meet a high standard in the end to be graded without penalty for a slow start. In these many ways, my teaching is informed and enriched by the culture of scientific scholarship.”

Straub says he wants his students to feel his enthusiasm for scientific exploration of the natural world, to “find beauty and inspiration in the expression of truly great ideas, to enjoy the rewards that come from solving hard problems.” This, he adds “is what being a scholar-teacher means to me.

“It’s a pleasure to be a teacher.”

ENG’s Gerald Fine Wins Gitner Award for Classroom Tech Use

By Rich Barlow Almost 30 years in business left engineer Gerald Fine (ME, MSE) troubled as he spied the horizon of his profession.

Too many young colleagues were good with a computer keyboard, but all thumbs when it came to something you’d expect to be as instinctive as breathing for engineers: working with equipment. New technologies, coming fast as Ferraris in the discipline, flummoxed them.

During close to 30 years in business, Gerald Fine was surprised that young engineers were uncomfortable with new technologies. Photo by Cydney Scott

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After joining the College of Engineering faculty in 2012, Fine, director of the Engineering Product Innovation Center (EPIC), designed ENG’s first new course in 40 years that’s mandatory for all students, with the goal of getting students’ hands dirty, as it were. The course has won him this year’s Gerald and Deanne Gitner Family Award for Innovation in Teaching with Technology.

Introduction to Engineering Design, required of all sophomores, employs what Fine calls hybrid learning. Students watch online videos before coming to class, and in class they practice what they’ve learned from the videos, working with state-of-the-art technology: WiFi and Bluetooth radios, fiber optics, open-sourced microprocessors, and more. They use this technology to reverse-engineer (dismantle and examine) actual engineering products.

They also build prototype products to address real problems given them by engineerin g companies.

Fine, a professor of the practice of mechanical engineering, says the award is a great honor, but points out that the course was a collaborative effort: several colleagues made vital suggestions, and its basic structure was suggested

by Solomon Eisenberg, ENG’s senior associate dean for academic programs and a professor of biomedical engineering and of electrical and computer engineering.

Moreover, says Fine, “we couldn’t teach the course without EPIC.” In addition to the center’s technology and space, “the real key is the staff…and the student workers there. We serve in excess of 700 students per semester there now, including 200-plus” taking his Gitner-winning course.

In his letter nominating Fine for the award, Kenneth Lutchen, dean of ENG, wrote, “For the first time in our college history, all undergraduates join together in multidisciplinary teams for real -world engineering design problems.

They practice conceptual design, modeling, and communication skills that are essential to modern en gineering practice. They interact with real clients from real industries, and make working prototypes of their design solutions using state-of the-art machine shop facilities, 3-D printing, integrated electronics, and sophisticated microprocessor controls.

“The experience reinforces and extends for our undergraduates the core meaning of what it is to be a societal engineer, by giving them experience in how ideas are converted into real produc t design that society can benefit from.”

Fine’s industry contacts come from years in leadership jobs at technology companies such as Schott and Corning.

He is also the chairman of fiber optics company Emcore. He earned a bachelor’s degree from Amherst College and a PhD from the California Institute of Technology.

The Gitner Award is conferred by the Office of the Provost and the Center for Teaching & Learning. The winner receives $10,000 by developing, using, or adapting technology in ways that enhance BU’s undergraduate learning.

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NEW ADDITION TO MSE FACULTY Professor Malika Jeffries-EL focuses her research interests on the development of organic semiconductors – materials that combine the processing properties of polymers with the electronic properties of semiconductors.

Prior to joining the Department of Chemistry in 2016 she was as Associate Professor at Iowa State University, most recently serving as a Martin Luther King Jr. Visiting Professor at MIT.

FACULTY PROMOTIONS Polkovnikov, Reinhard, and Stamenovic Promoted to Full Professors Excerpt from an article by Joel Brown

Anatoli Polkovnikov, CAS professor of physics and ENG professor of materials science & engineering Polkovnikov studies nonequilibrium systems, merging atomic, molecular, optical, and condensed matter physics, and quantum information science to better understand various properties of interacting many -particle systems. He has published dozens of widely cited papers in journals such as Nature and PNAS and has been named a Sloan Research Fellow and a Simons Fellow in Theoretical Physics. His research is funded by the NSF and the US Army Research Laboratory.

Björn Reinhard, CAS professor of chemistry and ENG professor of materials science & engineering A specialist in plasmonics research, Reinhard has discovered new applications at the interface of nanotechnology and biological systems to help profile tumor cells, manipulate optical energy, and enhance the understanding of biological systems at the cellular level . The recipient of an NSF CAREER Award, Reinhard has served as a principal or coinvestigator on numerous grants funded by the NSF, the National Institutes of Health (NIH), and the Army Research Laboratory, and his research has been cited nearly 3,400 times.

Dimitrije Stamenovic, College of Engineering professor of biomedical engineering and professor of materials science & engineering Stamenovic specializes in theoretical cell mechanics, focusing on the biomechanics of the lung, as well as development of a pneumatic knee brace capable of relieving symptoms of osteoarthritis. He holds a patent for his research and has secured substantial grant funding. He is the author of 8 book chapters and more than 90 frequently cited journal articles. He received the ENG biomedical engineering department’s Teacher of the Year Award in 2004.

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HIGHLIGHTED NEW GRANTS Gut Reactions New grants put software to work on bioenergy and human microbiome

By Suzanne Jacobs Daniel Segrè (BME, MSE) studies very unusual microbes. They don’t live in petri dishes, guts, or on dirty kitchen countertops. In fact, they don’t live in the real world at all. They live in a simulated world on Segrè’s computer.

Genetically identical to their living counterparts, these digital organisms look like a bunch of red, blue, and green blobs on a computer screen, and they feed on virtual nutrients, grow, excrete waste, and die just as they would in the real world. Segrè also works with living microbes, but the advantage of virtual organisms is that he can monitor how nutrients and energy flow among species —something that’s difficult to do in the real world.

Segrè, an associate professor of bioinformatics at Boston University, says that the ability to mathematically model the underlying behavior of these communities could ultimately help scientists understand not only existing microbial ecosystems but also engineer new ones to fight antibiotic-resistant pathogens or develop new drugs.

In summer 2014, Segrè received a $1.4 million grant from the Department of Energy to model the ways communities of microbes could transform plant matter into a kind of oily biodiesel fuel. Other scientists have been trying to do the same thing using single organisms, Segrè says, but they haven’t had much success. Making biofuel requires breaking down plant matter into simple sugars and then building fatty acids, a multistep process that might be better suited to a team of microbes that each metabolize different compounds, rather than just one all purpose organism. Segrè is the principal investigator on the project. He shares the grant with researchers at the University of Idaho and Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory.

Another major focus of Segrè’s research has to do with the trillions of microbes that live in and on the human body. Collectively, these ecosystems are known as the human microbiome.

Every one of us contains about ten microbial cells for every one human cell, and Segrè, like a growing number of researchers around the world, suspects that these microbes play a crucial role in our health. When these communities get out of whack due to poor nutrition, species imbalances, or pathogenic invaders, for example, they could make us sick. Problems with the microbial communities in our guts, for example, might contribute to the onset of intestinal diseases, and problems with our skin microbiomes might lead to acne. Now, with advan ces in genomics technology, scientists can use DNA sequencing to determine the compositions of these communities and begin studying such connections.

“Now everybody’s talking about the human microbiome,” says Segrè, who is also an associate professor of bi ology at BU’s College of Arts & Sciences and holds a joint appointment in biomedical engineering in the College of Engineering. “It’s very exciting. People are just starting to figure out what’s happening, how that interacts with our body and how that affects our health, and so on.”

But even with complete genetic information that reveals, for example, which nutrients these microbes feed on and which ones they excrete, it can be difficult to understand how these communities behave as ecosystems. After all, one swab of a Q-tip could contain ten or even hundreds of species that all rely on one another in different ways to survive.

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That’s where Segrè’s computer simulations might come in handy. “You can use these models and start asking, ‘What if organism A secretes something that organism B can use and vice versa? What happens? And can you understand these interdependencies in nature?’” Segrè says.

Together with his research team, Segrè has already begun to answer these questions. They’re especially interested in the oral microbiome and how individual microbes in that ecosystem contribute to the onset of periodontal disease. Many of the 700 microbes that live in our mouths are unculturable, meaning they won’t grow in a petri dish. Segrè suspects that some of these microbes are unculturable because they rely heavily on interactions with other species. In that case, a microbe might only grow if, for example, it gets a chemical nutrient produc ed nearby by another kind of microbe. With computer models, Segrè and his team can test these dependencies and perhaps help laboratory researchers figure out what molecules to put in a microbe’s environment to make it grow in isolation.

In a partnership with the Forsyth Institute, a research center in Cambridge, Mass., Segrè and his colleagues are trying to learn the roles that these individual microbes play in the larger microbiome, and in the onset of oral diseases. The work, which builds on other research Segrè has done on the oral microbiome, is part of a $7.3 million National Institutes of Health grant awarded in 2014 to BU, the Forsyth Institute, Massachusetts General Hospital , and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Segrè is a co-principal investigator on the project.

This and other microbiome research is still in the very early stages, Segrè says, so there are plenty of opportunities to use these computer simulations to demystify microbial communities, whether in our mouths or elsewhere.

The minutia of how organism A interacts with organism B is not, in Segrè’s mind, minutia. He’s used to getting lost in the mathematical theories behind larger phenomena. Before getting hooked on the fundamental laws of biology, Segrè studied the fundamental laws of the universe.

Originally from Italy, Segrè earned his master’s degree in theoretical particle physic s from the University of Trieste.

It was only after a dinner conversation with a visiting professor from the Weizmann Institute of Science in Israel named Doron Lancet, who was studying the origins of life, that Segrè became fascinated with the idea of mathematically explaining the origins of life the way a physicist might mathematically explain the fundamental particles and forces in the universe.

After graduating from Trieste, Segrè joined Lancet’s research group at the Weizmann Institute and earned a PhD in life sciences there. He went on to do a postdoctoral fellowship at Harvard Medical School, where he studied the chemical reactions that make life possible. That’s where he began working on microbial metabolism. Segrè is now in his tenth year at Boston University and is focused on modeling microbes with the open source simulation software that was developed in his lab—COMETS (Computation of Microbial Ecosystems in Time and Space).

With COMETS, a user “uploads” organisms by feeding their genetic information into the software and then placing those organisms at particular points in the grid-like virtual world. After specifying what virtual nutrients are available to the microbes, they can sit back and watch how the community behaves over the course of a few hours or an entire day, depending on the simulation.

It’s kind of like playing with LEGO, Segrè says. But instead of building castles and battleships, he and his colleagues are building synthetic ecosystems. Segrè and his team published a paper on COMETS earlier this year in the journal Cell Reports. Researchers who are interested in experimenting with COMETS can download it for free from the Segrè lab website.

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So far, the group has tested the software on simulations of only two and three species of microbes —Escherichia coli, Salmonella enterica, and Methylobacterium extorquens. In collaboration, researchers at other universities have experimented with living microbes to verify that, at least for simple communities with only a few species, the simulations correctly predict what happens in the real world. Scaling up to accommodate the hundreds of species in a complex ecosystem like the oral microbiome is years off, Segrè says, but there’s plenty to learn from these early, small-scale simulations.

Take, for example, what Segrè calls “shadowing,” or the eclipse effect: If colony A and colony B are alone in the virtual world, and the microbes in A excrete a molecule that the microbes in B feed on and vice versa, then the two colonies will coexist in a happy partnership. But suppose another B colony pops up between them. Segrè and his collaborators hypothesized that the microbes in the new B colony would eat up all the molecules coming from A and consequently eclipse or shadow the old B. But to their surprise, the original B thrived in the new arrangement because A was being fed so well that it produced enough food for both B colonies.

“In nature, there are a lot of structured communities with these relative positions that could affect how species interact,” Segrè says. “We’re barely scratching the surface in terms of understanding all of this, but I find it extremely exciting.”

It’s been about 20 years since Segrè left physi cs, but he says he doesn’t miss it.

“I don’t see them as two separate things,” he says. “I think one of the interesting aspects (of biology) is to understand living systems as a physical and chemical system, and I think that’s one of the biggest open questions in science.”

A version of this article originally appeared on BU Research.

Holmes, Stepp Receive NSF CAREER Award Thin rod study has potential for smart needles, robotic arms

By Mark Dwortzan ENG’s Douglas Holmes will receive $500,000 over the next five years to study the mechanics of how thin rods move through tissue and other soft, fragile media. Photo courtesy of the College of Engineering Douglas Holmes, an assistant professor of mechanical engineering and materials science & engineering, and Cara Stepp, assistant professor of biomedical engineering and speech, language and hearing sciences, have received the 2015 National Science Foundation (NSF) Faculty Early Career Development (CAREER) award in recognition of their outstanding research and teaching capabilities. Collectively, they will net more than $1 million over the next five years to pursue high-impact projects that combine research and educational goals.

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ENG’s Douglas Holmes (ME, MSE) will receive $500,000 over the next five years to study the mechanics of how thin rods move through tissue and other soft, fragile media. Photo courtesy of the College of Engineering Holmes will study the mechanics of how thin rods move through soft and fragile media such as tissue and granular materials. Knowledge gained from the study could enable the construction of advanced, autonomous structures capable of navigating around obstacles in such media. Thin rods and other active materials that can bend and fold on command are essential to the engineering of smart needles, soft robotic arms, and other flexible devices.

“The results of this award will help predict the deformation and buckling of slender structures within complex media, while providing a general framework for designing structures that can actively and controllably bend within soft and fragile matter,” says Holmes.

Part of the funding will be used to develop open, online course content designed to improve the general public’s understanding of mechanical engineering.

Stepp will use her NSF CAREER award funding to develop new technology to empower severely paralyzed individuals to communicate as quickly and reliably as people with normal speech and motor functioning. The technology could dramatically increase their independence.

“The problem of low information transfer rates (ITR) is a critical one for people with severe speech and motor impairments, who must rely on augmented and alternative communication (AAC) to interact with other people,” said Stepp. “The CAREER award will enable me to develop hardware and software to boost ITR by optimizing human-machine interfaces that support AAC.”

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Stepp will also use the funding to create an organization for communication sciences and biomedical engineering students at Boston University in which teams will develop custom solutions for individuals with communication impairments.

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FACULTY AND STAFF FACULTY KAREN ALLEN Professor, Chemistry Protein structure and function through X-ray diffraction and enzyme kinetic studies PhD, Brandeis University, 1989

RAMA BANSIL Professor, Physics Polymers, Soft Materials and Biological Gels • PhD, University of Rochester, 1975

SOUMENDRA N. BASU Professor, ME; Associate Division Head, MSE Thin films for energy, photonic, electronic, and superconducting applications: thermal barrier and environmental barrier coatings for gas turbine and fuel cell applications, environmental degradation of materials at elevated temperatures, structure and stability of interfaces, and characterization of structure and phase transformations in materials using electro n microscopy techniques • PhD, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, 1989

ENRICO BELLOTTI Professor, ECE Computational electronics, semiconductor materials and device simulations, power electronics, parallel computing • PhD, Georgia Institute of Technology, 1999

DAVID BISHOP Professor, ECE, Physics; Division Head, MSE; Acting Associate Dean for Research and Graduate Programs, College of Engineering Low temperature physics; mechanical properties of materials at low temperatures; MEMS and NEMS; MEMS in lightwave networks; all-optical switching; superconductivity and superfluidity; magnetic vortices in superconductors and their phase transitions; nanotechnology; Casimir effect and Casimir oscillators; VLSI cooling using nano -patterned structures; energy efficient networking; electron coherence effects in metallic nanostructures at low temperatures; cybersecurity and protecting critical infrastructure • PhD, Cornell University, 1978

KEITH BROWN Assistant Professor, ME; Nanoscale transport processes that span nanophotonics, biomaterials, electronics, and heat. Advanced scanning probe techniques for imaging and manipulating nanomaterials

SCOTT BUNCH Assistant Professor, ME Experimental Nanomechanics of 2D Materials, Molecular Transport through Porous Graphene, Graphene Adhes ion, Mechanical Properties of 2D Materials, Graphene Balloons and Atomic Drums • PhD, Cornell University, 2008

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DAVID CAMPBELL Professor, Physics General nonlinear phenomena and complex systems; novel electronic materials, including conducting polymers and organic and high tc superconductors; electron transport in semiconductor superlattices • PhD, Cambridge University, 1970

LUCA DAL NEGRO Associate Professor, ECE Nano-optics, optical materials, light in complex media, nanoplasmonics, computational electr omagnetics • PhD, University of Trento, Italy, 2003

ALLISON DENNIS Assistant Professor, BME Semiconductor quantum dots as nanoscale sensors • PhD, Georgia Institute of Technology, 2009

LINDA DOERRER Associate Professor, Chemistry Synthetic inorganic chemistry • PhD, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, 1996

KAMIL EKINCI Associate Professor, ME Nanomechanics, nanofluidics, nanophotonics, applications of MEMS and NEMS • PhD, Brown University, 1999

SHYAMSUNDER ERRAMILLI Professor, Physics, BME Biological materials • PhD, University of Illinois, 1986

GRETCHEN FOUGERE Associate Dean of Outreach and Diversity, Engineering • PhD in Materials Science and Engineering (Nanotechnology), Northwestern University, 1995

MICHAEL GEVELBER Associate Professor, ME, SE Development of control and sensing systems for electrospinning of nanofibers, plasma spray, ebeam deposition, crystal growth, CVD, and intelligent building HVAC systems • PhD, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, 1988

RUSSELL GIORDANO Associate Professor and Director of Biomaterials, Department of Restorative Sciences and Biomaterials, GSDM Fabrication of multiple-phase interpenetrating ceramic composites • DMD, CAGS, DMSc, Harvard School of Dental Medicine, 1991

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BENNETT GOLDBERG Professor, Physics, BME, ECE; Director, Center for Nanoscience and Nanobiotechnology; Director Nanomedicine Initiative Nano-optics of semiconductors and biological systems; Raman studies of materials including graphene; single nanoparticle and virus imaging and detection; nanomedicine • PhD, Brown University, 1987

JILLIAN GOLDFARB Research Assistant Professor, ME Chemical Thermodynamics, Chemical Kinetics, Pyrolysis and Combustion, Renewable Energy, Novel Materials for Energy and Environmental Applications, Materials Characterization and Environmental Degradation • PhD, Brown University, 2008

SRIKANTH GOPALAN Associate Professor, ME Fuel cells, chemical thermodynamics, kinetics , and transport phenomena to model the behavior of electrochemical systems • PhD, University of Utah, 1997

MARK GRINSTAFF Professor, Chemistry, BME Polymers, biomaterials, nanomaterials, wound repair, tissue engineering • PhD, University of Illinois at Urbana -Champaign, 1992

RAMESH JASTI Assistant Professor, Chemistry Synthetic organic chemistry, materials, nanotechnology • PhD, University of California, Irvine, 2006

MALIKA JEFFRIES-EL Associate Professor, Chemistry Development of organic semiconductors -materials that combine the processing properties of polymers with the electronic properties of semiconductors • PhD, The George Washington University

CATHERINE M. KLAPPERICH Associate Professor, BME, ME Diagnostics for the developing world, microfluidics, bio-micro electromechanical systems (BioMEMs) • PhD, University of California, Berkeley, 2000

KARL LUDWIG Professor and Chair, Physics Surfaces, real time x-ray studies during thin film processing, phase transitions • PhD, Stanford University, 1986

MALAY MAZUMDER Research Professor, ECE Solar energy systems, particle engineering, material science, electrostatic processes, self-cleaning solar panels, respiratory drug delivery • PhD, University of Arkansas, 1971

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ELISE MORGAN Associate Professor, ME, BME Mechanical behavior of biological materials, mechanical stimulation of tissue differentiation, micromechanics of multiscale media, damage mechanics • PhD, University of California, Berkeley, 2002

THEODORE MOUSTAKAS Professor Emeritus, ECE, Physics Growth, properties and applications of wide bandgap semiconductors of the GaN family; the materials are grown by Molecular Beam Epitaxy (MBE) and Hydrate Vapor Phase Epitaxy (HVPE) Device applications include optoelectronic devices covering the spectral range from deep UV to terahertz (LEDs , Laser Diodes, Optical modulators, Detectors) • PhD, Columbia University, 1974

ROBERTO PAIELLA Associate Professor, ECE Optoelectronic devices based on semiconductor quantum-confined systems and photonic nanostructures • PhD, California Institute of Technology, 1998

UDAY B. PAL Professor, ME Energy conversion and storage, green manufacturing, high temperature electrochemistry • PhD, Pennsylvania State University, 1984

TYRONE PORTER Associate Professor, ME, BME; Associate Director, Center for Nanoscience and Nanobiotechnology Development of novel stimuli -responsive colloidal micro- and nano-particles for diagnostic imaging, targeted drug delivery, and theranostic applications • PhD, University of Washington

SIDDHARTH RAMACHANDRAN Professor, ECE Optical physics of guided waves, Micro- and nano-structured optical fibers, High-power fiber lasers and fiber sensors, Biomedical imaging and microscopy with optical fibers, Classical and quantum communications • PhD, University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign, 1998

EMILY RYAN Assistant Professor, ME Computational modeling of energy systems, pore scale phenomena, porous media, reactive transport, fluid mechanics, heat transfer, thermodynamics, fuel cells, electrochemistry, competitive adsorption and multi -scale systems.

• PhD, Carnegie Mellon University, 2009

VINOD K. SARIN Professor, ME Materials science, surface modification, physical and chemical vapor deposition, consolidation of ceramics/composites, structure/property consolidations, and transparent optical ceramics • ScD, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, 1971

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SAHAR SHARIFZADEH Assistant Professor, ECE Predicting the functional behavior of novel materials using first-principles electronic structure methods • PhD, Princeton University, 2009

KEVIN SMITH Professor, Physics, Chemistry Electronic structure of materials • PhD, Yale University, 1988

DIMITRIJE STAMENOVIC Professor, BME Cellular mechanics, rheology of soft tissues and cells, respiratory mechanics, mechanics of foam-like structures • PhD, University of Minnesota, 1983

JOHN E. STRAUB Professor, Chemistry Theoretical and computational chemistry and biophysics • BS, University of Maryland, 1982 • PhD, Columbia University, 1987

ANNA K. SWAN Associate Professor, ECE, Physics Development of nanoscale optical self-interference microscopy, optical properties of carbon nanotubes • PhD, Boston University, 1993

OPHELIA K.C. TSUI Professor, Physics Synthetic and biological macromolecules • PhD, Princeton University, 1996

SELIM ÜNLÜ Professor; ECE, BME, Physics; Associate Dean for Research and Graduate Programs, College of Engineering Photodetectors, nano-optics, high resolution and solid immersion lens microscopy, subsurface imaging of semiconductor devices and circuits, biophotonics: biosensor fabrication and biological imaging techniques • PhD, University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign, 1992

ALICE WHITE Professor, Chair of ME Nanofabrication, optical materials, optoelectronic integration and packaging, thermal management, 3D printing • PhD, Harvard University, 1982

JOYCE WONG Professor, BME Biomaterials, nanomaterials, biointerfaces for diagnostic imaging, therapeutics, tissue engineering • PhD, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, 1994

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MUHAMMAD ZAMAN Associate Professor, BME Systems biology of cancer, cell adhesion and migration in 3D environments, cellular mechanics, applications of BME in the developing world • PhD, University of Chicago, 2003

XIN ZHANG Professor, ME Fundamental issues and applications of Micro- and Nanoelectromechanical systems (MEMS/NEMS or micro/nanosystems) • PhD, Hong Kong University of Science and Technology, 1998

AFFILIATED FACULTY PAUL BARBONE Professor, ME Theoretical and computational (bio) mechanics and (bio) acoustics, medical (ultrasound) imaging • PhD, Stanford University, 1991

THOMAS G. BIFANO Professor, ME; Director, Photonics Center Deformable mirrors, microelectromechanical systems (MEMS), adaptive optics, biophotonic microscopy, astronomical telescope instrumentation, laser wavefront control • PhD, North Carolina State University, 1988

JAMES BIRD Assistant Professor, ME Interfacial fluid dynamics, fluid-solid interactions, microfluidics, electrohydrodynamics, drops and bubbles • PhD, Harvard University

JOHN CARADONNA Associate Professor, Chemistry Mechanism of action of non-heme iron metalloenzymes and synthetic complexes involved in oxygen activation and catalytic substrate oxidation processes • PhD, Columbia University, 1985

CLAUDIO CHAMON Professor, Physics Strongly correlated quantum matter and out-of-equilibrium dynamics of classical and quantum systems • PhD, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, 1996

CHRISTOPHER CHEN Professor, BME Application of microfabrication and nanotechnology to cell and tissue engineering, and regenerative medicine • MD, Harvard Medical School, 1999 • PhD, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, 1997

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XIN CHEN Assistant Professor, Chemistry Physical surface chemistry of soft materials • PhD, Stanford University, 2005

LAISHENG CHOU Professor of Biomaterials; Professor and Director of Oral Medicine, GSDM Molecular biocompatability of implant materials • DMD, Shanghai No.2 Medical University, 1977 • CAGS in Oral Pathology, University of California San Francisco, 1988 • CAGS in Oral Medicine, University of California San Francisco, 1989 • PhD, University of British Columbia, 1997

DAVID COKER Professor, Chemistry; Director, Boston University Center for Computational Science Theoretical and computational chemistry, excited state dynamics in condensed phase complex systems • PhD, Australian National University, 1986

JAMES COLLINS Professor, BME, SE Synthetic biology, systems biology, noise enhanced sensorimotor function • DPhil, University of Oxford (England), 1990

CHUANHUA DUAN Assistant Professor, ME Micro/nanofluidics, energy conversion and storage, phase change heat transfer • PhD, University of California, Berkeley

MICHAEL EL-BATANOUNY Professor, Physics Magnetism at surfaces • PhD, University of California, Davis

GERRY FINE Professor of the Practice, ME Product design and innovation, manufacturing/operations strategy and mana gement, formation and management of technology ventures, advanced manufacturing techniques • PhD, California Institute of Technology

MAXIM FRANK-KAMENETSKII Professor, BME DNA structures, DNA topology, triplex DNA, DNA functioning, PNA (peptide nucleic acid), DNA detection • PhD, Moscow Physical-Technical Institute, 1967 • DSci, Institute of Chemical Physics, Russian Academy of Science, 1971

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DOUGLAS HOLMES Assistant Professor, ME Elasticity, geometry, structural stability, mechanics PhD., University of Massachusetts, Amherst, 2009

GUILFORD JONES Professor Emeritus, Chemistry Photochemistry and photophysical properties of dyes, dye probes, and chromophore conjugates of polymers and proteins, design of photosynthetic models (photoactive peptides) that are capable of charge transport • PhD, University of Wisconsin, 1970

WILLIAM KLEIN Professor, Physics Statistical physics of materials, phase transitions and kinetics of phase transitions • PhD, Temple University, 1972

J. GREGORY MCDANIEL Associate Professor and Associate Chair, ME Structural acoustics, automotive brake squeal, biological vibrations, and ocean wave energy • PhD, The Georgia Institute of Technology, 1992

AMIT MELLER Associate Professor, BME and Physics Nonpore force spectroscopy of RNA folding kinetics, DNA switches and transcription initiation kinetics, RNA helicases activity, mapping transcription factors interaction with DNA, ultra -fast DNA sequencing, novel optical methods for single molecule detection • PhD, Weizmann Institute of Science (Israel), 1998

PRITIRAJ MOHANTY Professor, Physics Nanoscale materials, mechanical properties • PhD, University of Maryland, 1998

THEODORE MORSE Professor, ECE Photonic material processing, optical fiber fabrication, lasers, and sensors, high power double clad fiber lasers • PhD, Northwestern University, 1961

DAN NATHANSON Professor and Chair, Department of Restorative Sciences and Biomaterials, GSDM Biomaterials with emphasis on esthetic restorative materials • DMD, Hebrew University in Jerusalem, 1972 • Advanced Restorative Dentistry, Harvard School of Dental Medicine, 1975 • Research Fellowship in Dental Materials, Harvard School of Dental Medicine, 1976 • MSD, Dental Public Health, Boston University School of Dental Medicine, 1985 • Advanced Prosthodontics, Boston University School of Dental Medicine, 1990

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HAROLD PARK Associate Professor, ME Surface effects on the mechanical properties of nanoelectromechanical systems, coupled physics (thermomechanical, optomechanical, electromechanical) analyses of nanomaterials, mechanics of graphene, multiple scale modeling of solids, atomistic modeling of metal nanowires • PhD, Northwestern University, 2004

RICHARD POBER Research Associate Professor, GSDM Ceramics engineering, interpenetrating phase materials, mechanics of materials, materials design, process design, and equipment design • ScD, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, 1971

ANATOLI POLKOVNIKOV Professor, Physics Quantum dynamics of interacting systems, phase space methods, cold atoms, strongly correlated systems • PhD, Yale University, 2003

CLAUDIO REBBI Professor, Physics Computational methods applied to the study of quantum chromodynamics (QCD, the theory of interacting quarks and gluons), of theories of electroweak symmetry breaking, and of graphene • PhD, Università degli Studi Torino, Italy

BJÖRN REINHARD Professor, Chemistry Photophysical properties of nanoparticles and the applications of these nanoparticles to biological sensors and devices • Dr. rer. nat., Technical University Kaiserslautern, Germany, 2003

MICHELLE SANDER Assistant Professor, ECE Femtosecond lasers; ultrafast photonics and nonlinear processes; fiber and integrated optics; frequency combs; infrared spectroscopy and biomedical applications • PhD, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, 2012

ANDERS SANDVIK Professor, Physics Computational research on interacting quantum many-body systems • PhD, University of California, Santa Barbara, 1993

AARON SCHMIDT Assistant Professor, ME Nanoscale energy transport, ultrafast laser metrology, and laser -material interaction • PhD, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, 2008

DANIEL SEGRÈ Associate Professor, BME, Bioinformatics Program, Biology Evolutionary adaptation and dynamical regulation of metabolism in microbes and microbial communities • PhD, Weizmann Institute of Science, 2002

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ANDRE SHARON Professor, ME; Director, Fraunhofer Center for Manufacturing Innovation Electromechanical machine design, control, automation, biotech/biomedial instrumentation and devices, and rapid microdiagnostics platforms • PhD, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, 1988

MICHAEL SMITH Associate Professor, BME Mechanotransduction via the extracellular matrix, fibronectin, engineered cell culture platforms for regulating and measuring cell behavior in vitro • PhD, University of Virginia, 2004

H. EUGENE STANLEY Professor, Physics, BME Statistical physics of materials, including liquids, networks and financial systems • PhD, Harvard University, 1967

BELA SUKI Professor, BME Biomechanics of tissues and extracellular matrix, the ensemble behavi or of complex biological systems, nonlinearities in biological systems • PhD, Jozsef Attila University (Hungary), 1987

JOE TIEN Associate Professor, BME Vascularization of biomaterials; quantitative physiology of engineered tissues; biomaterials for mic rosurgical applications; lymphatics; interstitial transport; inverse problems in vascular imaging; vascular biophysics; thermodynamics of complex systems • PhD, Harvard University, 1999

KATHERINE YANHANG ZHANG Associate Professor, ME, BME Mechanobiological behavior of soft biological tissue and extracellular matrix, cardiovascular mechanics, multi -scale modeling of biological composites, micro and nano- mechanics of thin film devices • PhD, University of Colorado at Boulder, 2003

LAWRENCE ZIEGLER Professor and Chair, Chemistry Ultrafast femtosecond laser measurements in a variety of materials, femtosecond carrier relaxation dynamics and optical properties of wide range of materials, which includes liquids, supercritical fluids, photo diss ociative molecules, biologically important species and wide band gap semiconductors. Nanostructured plasmonics resonances are exploited for biosensing applications of pathogen, cancer, and body fluid detection • PhD, Cornell University, 1978

PETER ZINK Lecturer and Research Assistant Professor, ME Novel materials development for electrochemical applications • PhD, Boston University, 2010

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DIVISION ADMINISTRATION DAVID BISHOP Division Head

SOUMENDRA N. BASU Associate Division Head

RUTH MASON Division Director

ELIZABETH FLAGG, Ed.M. Graduate Programs Manager

CHERYL STEWART Communications Manager

DIVISION COMMITTEES Leadership: David Bishop, Chair Soumendra Basu Theodore Moustakas Linda Doerrer Srikanth Gopalan Ruth Mason

Scheduling: Soumendra Basu, Chair Ruth Mason Elizabeth Flagg

MSE Innovation Grants: David Bishop, Chair Soumendra Basu Linda Doerrer Ted Moustakas Larry Ziegler

Graduate Programs/ Admissions Committee:

MSE Colloquium: Ophelia Tsui, Chair Ruth Mason Cheryl Stewart

PhD Qualifying Exam:

Soumendra N. Basu, Chair David Bishop Scott Bunch Allison Dennis

Srikanth Gopalan Siddharth Ramachandran Elizabeth Flagg

Materials Workshop: Tyrone Porter, Chair Ruth Mason Cheryl Stewart

Srikanth Gopalan, Chair Soumendra N. Basu

David Bishop Elise Morgan Uday Pal Sahar Sharifzadeh Ophelia Tsui Elizabeth Flagg

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GRADUATE PROGRAMS Doctor of Philosophy (PhD) Programs Post-bachelor’s PhD Post-master’s PhD Through coursework, collaborative training projects and dissertation research, MSE PhD students learn to apply analytic and advanced computational methods and the latest techniques to current problems in biotechnology, nanotechnology, electronic and photonic devices, energy processing and more. Research areas include clean energy, solid-state lighting, photonics and fiber optics, biomaterials and soft tissues, and MEMS and bioMEMS applications.

Master of Science (MS) The Master of Science (MS) degree in Materials Science and Engineering offers thesis and non -thesis tracks that prepare students for a research-focused career creating ground-breaking applications for new materials and modifications of existing ones. A variety of fields are open to well -trained materials science researchers, including energy, health care, information technologies and homeland security.

Master of Engineering (MEng) The non-thesis Master of Engineering program is suited to industry professionals who wish to further their careers by acquiring deep technical knowledge, supplemented with business fundamentals and critical management skills.

The degree program can be completed in as little as one year of full -time study (part-time study is also an option), and students may concentrate in biomaterials; materials for energy and environment; electronic /photonic materials; or nanomaterials.

Master with Engineering Practice Any master student interested in the With Engineering Practice option must apply and complete an approved internship integral to their program of study. This degree option allows a s tudent to develop additional technical and professional skills.

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ENROLLMENT 65 | Number of students enrolled in the MSE graduate programs, 201 5-2016.

Table 1: GRADUATE STUDENT BREAKDOWN US

International

Total

Female

Male

Female

Male

PhD

5

10

4

9

28

MS

3

2

5

13

23

MEng

1

1

2

6

10

11

28

65

LEAP TOTAL

4 9

17

Table 2: STUDENT POPULATION BY PROGRAM, 2009 TO 2016

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GRADUATE STUDENT FUNDING Table 3: GRADUATE STUDENT FUNDING FOR AY 2015-2016 MEng

PhD

Total

Dean's Fellows

3

3

Graduate Teaching Fellows

6

6

Division Fellows

2

2

Research Assistants

16

16

22

0

32

5

1

6

27

28

65

Independent

10

Tuition Scholarship TOTALS

10

MS

Table 4: RESEARCH ASSISTANT FUNDING BY AGENCY

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DEGREES AWARDED 26 | Number of PhDs awarded since the Division was founded in 2008-2009 7 | Number of students awarded their PhD degrees this year (Table 5) 48 | Number of MS degrees awarded since the Division was founded in 2008 -2009 12 | Number of students awarded their MS degrees this year (Table 6) 36 | Number of MEng degrees awarded since the program was offered in Fall 2011 8 | Number of students awarded their MEng degrees this year (Table 7) 1 | Number of Masters with Practice degrees awarded since the program was offered in Fall 2014 5 | Number of students awarded their undergraduate minor since the program was offered in 2011 -2012 Table 5: DEGREES AWARDED

TABLE 6: PHD DEGREES AWARDED AY 2015-2016 Student Advisor Dissertation Title Eriksen

Ryan

Gopalan

Jiang

Yihong

Pal

Katevatis

Constantinos

Klapperich

Lu

Qing

Straub

Rainville

Meliha

Ludwig

Su

Shizhao

Pal

Yu

Yang

Basu

Applications of Rare Earth Doped Complex Oxides in Potentiometric Sensors, Solid Oxide Fuel Cells, and Thermoelectrics Solid Oxide Membrane (SOM) Process for Ytterbium and Silicon Production from Their Oxides Solid Phase Extraction of Low Concentration Nucleic Acids for Point of Care Diagnostics Studies of Phase Change in Complex Systems Using the Generalized Replica Exchange Method Real-Time X-Ray Studies of Fundamental Surface Growth Processes Zero-Direct-Carbon-Emission Aluminum Production by Solid Oxide Membrane-based Electrolysis Process Surface Segregation in Strontium Doped Lanthanum Cobalt Ferrite: Effect of Composition, Strain and Atmospheric Carbon Dioxide

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TABLE 7: MS DEGREES AWARDED AY 2015-2016 Last Name

First Name

Advisor

Chen

Yue

Pal

Hubbard

Taylor

Bellotti

Li

Qingtian

Pal

Liu

Keli

Gopalan

Liu

Mu

Gopalan

Liu

Yu

Pal

Meng

Fanyu

Ludwig

Mo

Boshan

Pal

Newman

Anna

Pal

Toufanian

Reyhaneh

Basu

Xu

Yifan

Pal

Zhang

Yuhui

Pal

Thesis

Stress Development and Relaxation During Sputter Deposition Film Growth

TABLE 8: MENG DEGREES AWARDED AY 2015-2016 Last Name

First Name

Advisor

Glasmann

Andreu

Bellotti

Huang

Kuo-Yang

Basu

Li

Yuanzheng

Pal

Liu

Dong

Pal

Lu

Ryan

Pal

Teng

Chong

Pal

Xiakeba

Bilayiding

Gopalan

Zhang

Cheng

Pal

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RECRUITMENT In academic year 2015/2016 the MSE program received 287 applications of which 108 were admitted, and 28 matriculated.

For Fall 2016 we received 279 applications, 116 were admitted and of those offers of financial aid were made to 38 students, including fellowships and half tuition scholarships. We expect 32 students to matriculate in Fall 2016.

The BU MSE program competed directly with top programs in materials science.

Of the 32 students expected in Fall 2016, all nine PhDs are fully funded and three MS students have partial tuition scholarships. The new students come from strong programs, including Beijing Institute of Technology Boston University City University of Hong Kong College of William and Mary Cornell University Delhi College of Engineering Dong Hua University East China University of Science and Technology Fudan University New York State College of Ceramics - Alfred University Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute Sabanci University Shanghai Jiao Tong University Sharif University of Technology Iran Sichuan University Smith College Tsinghua University University College London University of Massachusetts - Amherst University of Pennsylvania University of San Diego University of Science and Technology of China Wentworth Institute of Technology Worcester Polytechnic Institute

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The entering PhD class has a mean undergraduate GPA of 3.5.

TABLE 9: ADMISSIONS RESULTS FOR 2015-2016

Matriculants

Admissions

Applicants

Degree

Domestic Female Male

International Female Male

Totals

MEng

3

6

11

28

48

MS

10

16

21

66

113

PhD

10

30

30

53

123

Totals

23

52

62

147

284

MEng

0

4

5

17

26

MS

4

8

13

36

61

PhD

3

9

1

6

19

Totals

7

21

19

59

106

MEng

0

1

1

2

4

MS

4

4

4

5

17

PhD

1

3

0

3

7

Totals

5

8

5

10

28

Table 10: ADMISSION PROJECTIONS FOR FALL 2016

Stud. Accepts

Admissions

Applicants

Degree

Domestic

International

Female

Male

Female

Male

Totals

MEng

2

3

6

15

26

MS

5

14

39

72

130

15 22

30 47

28 73

51 138

124 280

MEng

2

2

4

6

14

MS

2

9

19

40

70

PhD

8

15

3

6

32

12

26

26

52

116

MEng

1

1

2

0

4

MS

2

4

6

8

20

PhD

1

3

2

3

9

Totals

4

8

10

11

33

PhD Totals

Totals

CURRICULUM ENHANCEMENTS NEW COURSES The Division voted to adopt the following courses as Elective or Practicum courses as indicated.

• • • •

MS MS MS MS

900 Research is renamed MS 900 PhD Research 901 Thesis is retired, replaced by MS 954 MS Thesis 954 MS Thesis replaces MS 901 Thesis 991 Dissertation is renamed MS 991 PhD Dissertation

GRADUATE OUTCOME EVIDENCE AND TIMING The Provost’s Office requested that all College of Engineering programs prepare Graduate Outcome documents for annual review, due in October of each year. Each Materials Program document outlines Learning Outcomes, the URL where the outcomes are published, Evaluation methods, Program Reviews, Curricular Changes Due to Assessment, and Annual Program Assessment Schedule. The Division submitted the report and documentation by the deadline in October 2015. http://www.bu.edu/provost/planning/program-learning-outcomes-assessment/learning-outcomes-byprogram/#eng

COMMUNITY-BUILDING ACTIVITIES MSE facilitated social events and supported the BU student chapters of ASM International and the Materials Research Society professional societies.

SOCIAL INTERACTION ASM and MRS Student Chapters were given a budget to enhance their outreach and to organize several studentonly activities. Their activities are outlined in the Graduate Student Professional Societies section.

Students were invited to the following events and meetings in AY 2015 -2016: August 31, College of Engineering Orientation August 31, LEAP Orientation August 31, ISSO Orientation September 1, Division Welcome Lunch, Sichuan Gourmet September 1, MSE PhD Orientation September 1, MSE Masters Orientation September 25, BU Materials Day 2015 October 23, BU Graduate & Professional School Open House November 30, BU-MRS Reception, 6:30-8:30, Sheraton Boston Hotel, Co-sponsors: Physics, and CNN December 14, Physics Holiday Party December 21, MSE Division Holiday Lunch Buffet

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February 22, ASM Planning Meeting February 25, Open House Welcome Dinner February 26, Open House Graduate Student Lunch February 26, Open House Graduate Student Social at Jillian’s Lucky Strike March 15, Alternate Open House, Student Lunch March 17, Alternate Open House, Student Dinner March 18, Alternate Open House, Student Lunch April 11, BU Graduate Research Symposium May 5, Fifth Annual Cinco de Mayo Graduate Student Lunch & Graduation Celebration May 16, ASM Materials Experience for High School Students All Student Association of Graduate Engineers (SAGE) events (at least 2 monthly) MSE Colloquium Series Career Development Office Seminar Sessions and Speaker Series

GRADUATE STUDENT PROFESSIONAL SOCIETIES BU MATERIALS RESEARCH SOCIETY (MRS) STUDENT CHAPTER Officers and Advisors President – Tom Stark Vice President – Erin Roberts Secretary – Deniz Cetin Treasurer – Gozde Erdem Faculty Advisor – Soumendra N. Basu Faculty Advisor – David Bishop

BU ASM INTERNATIONAL STUDENT CHAPTER ASM Officers President – Paul Gasper Vice President – Scott Gillard Treasurer – Thomas Villalon Jr. Secretary – Thomas Villalon Jr. Faculty Advisor – Soumendra N. Basu The main outreach effort of the ASM Student Chapter is to provide volunteers and logistical help for the BU Materials Day, co-organized by ASM-Boston Chapter and the ASM BU Student Chapter. ASM Boston has helped organize the BU Materials Day (formerly known as the Materials Experience) at Boston University for the past 4 years and this year was the 5 th. This year it was hosted on May 16 th. It is a one-day program to excite and encourage high school students to pursue careers in materials science and/or applied science and engineering disciplines.

A total of 58 local high school students from twelve local and regional high schools atten ded the event. The event featured lectures and interactive demonstrations at the Engineering and Product Innovation Center (EPIC) and also gave the high school students tours of the College of Engineering.

The involvement of BU chapter consisted of arranging the facilities as well as gathering volunteers to assist in eight educational modules. There were 16 industry volunteers, 15 graduate student volunteers who helped prepare and present the modules and guided student groups and 3 undergraduate volunteer s who served as tour guides of the BU campus. Associate Dean Gretchen Fougere officiated and 2 staff provided administrative help.

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GRADUATE STUDENT ACCOMPLISHMENTS MARGARET CHERN was selected by the Henry Luce Foundation to receive a Clare Boothe Luce Fellowship starting in Summer 2015. The Clare Boothe Luce Fellowship is awarded for a period of two academic years to a highly qualified woman who is a doctoral candidate (in some cases, candidates for a masters or other specialized graduate or professional degree will be considered) in the sciences and engineering. The Fellowship is awarded solely on the basis of merit. (Advisor: Dennis) SHIZHAO SU presented “A High Accuracy Technique to Measure the Electrical Conductivity of Highly Conductive Molten Salts,” “Experiment and Modeling of Aluminum Production by Solid Oxide Membrae Based Electrolysis Process,” and “A Novel Method to Measure the Solubility and Diffusion Behavior of Ceramics in Molten Salt” at theTMS 2016 145th Annual Meeting & Exhibition, Nashville, TN, 2016. (Advisor: Pal) YANG YU was selected to receive the Division of Materials Science & Engineering Outstanding PhD Dissertation Award for his dissertation, “Surface Segregation in Strontium Doped Lanthanum Cobalt Ferrite: Effect of Composition, Strain and Atmospheric Carbon Dioxide. (Advisor: Basu) ZHIJUAN ZHU received the 2015-2016 Hing Wah Cheung Fellowship Award. In 2005 Hing Wah Cheung, father of Wayne Cheung ’99 and William Cheung ’05, established the Hing Wah Cheung Fellowship Fund for engineering graduate students from China and Hong Kong. (Advisor: Gopalan)

MSE COLLOQUIUM STUDENT HOSTS MSE Colloquium student hosts help arrange the speaker’s schedule and help with logistics for their visit to BU. The faculty hosts and the Division administrators appreciate their assistance! The following students were student hosts for the 2015-2016 academic year: Stephanie Beach Paul Gasper Jicheng Guo Jesse Guillet Fulya Ekiz Kanik Jeff Mattson Thomas Stark Xuanji Yu Yang Yu Elbara Ziade

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BU MRS Student Chapter Participates in 2015 MRS Fall Meeting

Members of the BU MRS Student Chapter entered the MRS T-shirt contest at the 2015 MRS Fall Meeting that was held Nov. 30-Dec 4th at the Hynes Convention Center, Boston. Pictured (left to right): Scott Gillard, Tom Stark, Erin Roberts. The MRS Reception was sponsored by the BU Division of Materials Science & Engineering, Department of Physics and the BU Nanotechnology Innovation Center. Photo Credit: Tom Stark MSE graduate students also presented the following posters at the 2015 MRS Fall Meeting: Title: Thermal conduction with phase change in a cylindrical liquid-solid two phase system under nonaxisymmetric condition Authors: Jicheng Guo, Mustafa Ordu, James Bird, Soumendra Basu, Abstract: The melting dynamics of a phase change material (PCM) under non-axisymmetric condition appear qualitatively similar to the evaporation of a drop under Leidenfrost conditions, as both features a thin liquid/vapor layer between PCM and hot surface. However, the extent of the analogy is unclear. Here, we investigate the melting dynamics of PCM in thin-walled cylindrical containers. Through a combination of experiments and physical modeling, we identify a characteristic melting time and gap thickness, which we compare to evaporating droplets.

Title: Development of Transparent Electrodynamic Screens on Ultrathin Flexible Glass Film Substrates for Retrofitting Solar Panels and Mirrors for Self-Cleaning Function Authors: M. K. Mazumder1, J. W. Stark1, C. Heiling1, M. Liu1, A. Bernard1, M. N. Horenstein1, S. Garner2, and H. Y. Lin3 1Boston University, Boston, MA

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2Corning Inc., Corning. N.Y.3Industrial Technology Research Institute, Taiwan Abstract: Design and construction of transparent electrodynami c screens(EDS) printed on ultra-thin (100μm) flexible Corning®WillowTM glass fil m for retrofitting on solar mirrors and panels providing self-cleaning function are presented. Large-scale solarplants installed in semi-arid and desert lands can be shielded by EDS from dust layer build upon solar collectors, which cause major energy-yield loss [1,2]. Cost-effective printing of transparent conductive electrodes is discussed.

Title: Electrophoretically Deposited Spinel Coatings on Crofer 22 APU Interconnect in Solid Oxide Fuel Cells Authors: Zhihao Sun, Ryan Eriksen, Yiwen Gong, Ruofan Wang, Srikanth Gopalan, Uday Pal, Soumendra Basu Abstract: The application of a protective coating on metallic interconnects is an effective way to prevent Cr poisoning of solid oxide fuel cells (SOFCs) cathod. In this study, nano-sized powders of copper manganese spinels (Cu1.3 Mn1.7 O 4 ) were synthesized by glycine nitrate combustion process (GNP) and then were ball -milled and deposited on Crofer 22 APU by electrophoretic deposition (EPD). After subsequent heat treatment, a dense and well-adhered coating layer was achieved.

Sharing the Field’s Allure ENG brings engineering to schools to bring students to engineering

By Joel Brown

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Josiah Quincy Upper School students and Gretchen Fougere, ENG associate dean for outreach and diversity, who says ENG’s goal is “to broaden and build the pipeline from K-12 schools into engineering.” Photos by Cydney Scott It’s a warm spring morning at the Josiah Quincy Upper School in downtown Boston, and the two dozen ninthgraders entering Mr. Warner’s classroom reluctantly remove their earbuds and set down their iced coffees. Their faces seem to say: Light waves? What could be interesting about light waves?

But then the 10 College of Engineering undergraduate “Inspiration Ambassadors” scattered around the room introduce the teens to their own 9-volt batteries, circuit boards, LEDs, and voltmeters. Working in pairs, the Quincy School students must connect their LEDs to batteries, measure the voltages that create blue, red, green, and orange light, and match that to the longest and shortest wavelengths. From that, they will see firsthand Planck’s Law, which says energy and wavelength are inversely proportionate. Suddenly the room is full of cheers, groans, and urgent questions.

Hands-on makes all the difference.

It’s a small step toward ENG’s strategic goal “to broaden and build the pipeline from K -12 schools into engineering,” says Gretchen Fougere, ENG associate dean for outreach and diversity and adjunct associate professor in materials science & engineering. “It’s important that we not let talent go to waste in underrepresented groups such as women and minorities. We need everybody who’s capable and interested in becoming an engineer to be ready and able to do that.”

The Technology Innovation Scholars Program (TISP), founded by Fougere in 2011, sends ENG undergrads into classrooms as Inspiration Ambassadors to get middle and high school students excited about science and to open their minds to the field as a possible career. Many, as at the Quincy School, are African American or Hispanic, and girls make up roughly half the students.

“All of the kids get super-excited because they don’t realize the potential they have,” says Inspiration Ambassador Alyssa Liem (ENG’16), who studies mechanical engineering. “When they have the ability to do something creative, to make their own code or make their own design, they see: I can do this. That’s the best thing we can provide for them—the confidence.”

Fougere has so far overseen several TISP outreach programs. One, which reached 3,000 students this year alone, sends ENG undergrads back to their high schools or middle schools all around the country during the midyear break to spread the engineering gospel. In another they mentor the FIRST (For Inspiration & Recognition of Science & Technology) robotics teams at various Boston area schools. The mission of the nonprofit FIRST, founded by Dean Kamen (Hon.’06), is to inspire young people to be science and technology leaders. Partner organizations, including AT&T, NASA, Accenture, Ametek, and the Ingalls Foundation, help fund the TISP program and have also hired numerous engineers from among the Ambassadors.

In the Quincy School program, funded by a $145,000 grant from AT&T, the ENG undergraduates work with two classes over two years, testing and debriefing students at the end of each year to quantify the program’s effect.

The overarching plan is to spread BU’s TISP model to universities and colleges around the country.

Among the engineering challenges put to the Quincy students in the first year were assembling and testing their own fuel cells, building wind turbines to generate energy, and communicating by fiber optics. “I didn’t know any of this stuff beforehand,” says ninth grader Evan Chen. “Now I know a little more about engineering, what they’re doing.”

The Quincy students enjoy projects like making a wind turbine most, because they’re actually building something, says Liem. Working with their hands is a lot more exciting than hearing someone lecture. “It b ecame a competition of how much voltage they could get from their wind turbine, redesigning and redesigning until they finally got what satisfied them,” she says.

“Sometimes time runs out and they’re still trying to redesign and begging for just one more try,” says Russell Thompson (ENG’16). “That’s fun.”

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It also does a lot for the Inspiration Ambassadors, who are well aware that their chosen field skews white and male.

“I’ve always wanted to increase the diversity in engineering, because I don’t feel li ke we have a lot of minorities or a lot of women,” says biomedical engineering major Lidia De Barros (ENG’17), who is originally from Cape Verde. “I felt like this would give me an opportunity to reach the actual demographic of Boston, not just those who h ave an opportunity to come to BU, and reach out to everyone at once.”

Half of the ENG students applying to the TISP program are female and a quarter of them are underrepresented minorities, and these rates are two to three times higher than the ENG student population. About 100 undergraduates apply for the program each year, twice as many as Fougere can take.

De Barros and others say the program also helps them develop leadership skills that will be useful after they graduate, from coordinating a diverse group to learning to communicate science concepts at a level that anyone can understand—something that could be useful later in dealing with business clients. “Engineers need to be able not only to create stuff, but to understand what it means to society,” Fougere says.

TISP may be even more meaningful for students like Thompson, who is in the five-year STEM Educator-Engineer Program (STEEP), a partnership between ENG and the School of Education. STEEP students earn a bachelor’s in an engineering discipline and a master’s in teaching, equipping them to teach the STEM fields (science, technology, engineering, and math) in middle schools and high schools across the country.

The success of TISP is exemplified by Rahat Khan (ENG’17), whose first connection with the program was as a 10th grader at the John D. O’Bryant School of Mathematics and Science in Roxbury, when TISP students began mentoring his FIRST robotics team.

“It sort of gives you a sense of connection that you don’t necessarily get with a teacher,” says Khan, who even then knew he wanted to study engineering. “In high school, you might have a notion of what mechanical engineering might be, but it’s not the same as you envision it to be. Talking with the ENG students helped me understand what each of the engineering fields actually is.”

Now Khan is studying mechanical engineering at ENG on a BU Community Service Award scholarship and is a TISP Inspiration Ambassador. He has returned to speak to middle-schoolers at the O’Bryant School over winter break and is leading four other ambassadors in mentoring FIRST robotics students at the Academy of the Pacific Rim Charter Public School in Hyde Park for a second year.

“It feels very rewarding when you see that the students are finally getting results and understanding what they’re doing,” he says. “It’s even more rewarding when some of them show interest in engineering. And even if they don’t, it feels like an accomplishment.”

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RESEARCH BIOMATERIALS research encompasses areas such as tissue engineering, design of biomolecules and biopolymers, biosensors, laser spectroscopy and more to create innovations in health care. Over the last decade exciting developments in materials -based technologies range from lab-on-a-chip devices to drug delivery systems to novel engineered tissues.

ELECTRONIC AND PHOTONIC MATERIALS research is invested in III-V nitrides, carbon nanotubes, fiber optic sensors, quantum dots and computational modeling. Engineering breakthroughs —like the blue LED—were produced by Boston University labs and interdisciplinary researchers continue to explore myriad applications in such areas as health care, national defense and information systems.

MATERIALS FOR ENERGY AND ENVIRONMENT can help produce cleaner and more efficient sources of energy to address our present energy-related concerns and steer society to a more sustainable future. Active research areas include clean energy conversion, hydrogen generation and storage, fuel cells, green manufacturing and biofuels/metabolics.

NANOMATERIALS research is concentrated in areas such as coatings, composite materials, photo-acoustic microscopy, nanoscale materials, and multi -scale modeling. Research, often conducted with industry partners, spans a range of application areas, including mechanics and fluid dynamics at the nano-scale, and developing enhanced materials processing capabilities for opto-electronic applications, advanced engines and power systems.

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RESEARCH HIGHLIGHTS

Faster, Better, Cheaper–and Closer to Home How a National BU Research Center is Transforming Cancer Care

By Mark Dwortzan

The wearable probe that Assistant Professor Roblyer (BME) is developing could enable clinicians to detect when a patient’s tumor is resisting treatment and it is time to modify treatment.

In the 1980s computing shifted from room-sized mainframes to personal computers that could easily fit on the desktop. For most users, there was no more need to submit batch jobs to a queue, wait hours for a printout, and walk down the hall to pick it up. All of that could now be done in short order from the comfort of one’s swivel chair. Today cancer care is undergoing a similar transformation, as researchers advance new technologies designed to shift the action away from large, specialized facilities and towa rd smaller, local clinics and patients’ homes —and return test results within minutes rather than days. It’s a trend that promises to considerably reduce the costs, complexities and inconveniences of cancer care, make treatment available to more patients in low-resource settings, and achieve better health outcomes for patients in the US and around the world.

To effect this transformation will require a deft combination of biomedical engineering and clinical expertise, and that’s exactly what the Center for Future Technologies in Cancer Care (CFTCC) at Boston University brings to the table. Launched in July 2012 through a five-year, $10 million grant from the National Institutes of Health (NIH), the Center identifies, prototypes and provides early clinical assessment of innovative point-of-care technologies designed to treat, screen, diagnose and monitor cancers. One of three institutions within the NIH/National Institute of Biomedical Imaging and Bioengineering (NIBIB) Point-of-Care Technologies Research Network (POCTRN), CFTCC is the only POCTRN cancer center and one of the only engineering-focused cancer research centers in the nation.

Largely a virtual center that supports researchers around the country in the development and clinical assessment of emerging point-of-care (POC) technologies and the training of clinicians and other potential stakeholders in their use, CFTCC operates two prototyping facilities on the BU campus. One, located on the fifth floor of the BU

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Photonics Center, is used for early-stage prototyping; the other, housed at the Fraunhofer Center for Manufacturing Innovation, produces more advanced prototypes. As they draw upon these prototyping facilities and the Engineering Product Innovation Center to advance technologies from the lab bench to the marketplace, Center researchers are guided by the NIH’s ultimate aim of lowering healthcare costs while improving the quality of care.

“We’d like to see a shift from a l ot of high-cost imaging studies and resource-intensive, late-stage cancer care to early care, smarter care and prevention. In the future, we hope that the kinds of technologies our researchers are developing will become the standard of care,” says Professor Catherine Klapperich (BME, ME, MSE), who directs the CFTCC. “We’re trying to give inventors —scientists, engineers and clinicians —a springboard to get their technologies to a place where they can become marketable products.”

Accelerating Innovation from Bench to Bedside In its first three years, the Center has funded 12 projects, two of which have produced devices that are now being commercialized. Among the most promising new POC technologies to emerge from the Center are a noninvasive chemotherapy monitoring device, a mobile app that provides cancer patients with easy access to medical information and support, and a screening test for melanoma.

Assistant Professor Darren Roblyer (BME) has used CFTCC funding and prototyping facilities to advance a noninvasive optical device that monitors the effectiveness of chemotherapy at the point of care for breast cancer patients. Wearable by the patient or handheld by a clinician, the tumor -tracking “imaging pad” that Roblyer is developing transmits near-infrared light that penetrates deep inside cancer tissue. Some of the light is absorbed within cancer tumors and some is scattered back to a detector on the pad. Based on the pad’s continuous optical measurements of the absorption and scattering of light within a tumor, a clinician could, in real time, determine rapid changes in the tumor’s structure and metabolism that indicate its resistance to current treatment. A new course of treatment could then be implemented.

Now in production at the Fraunhofer Center and suitable for clinical testing, Roblyer’s dev ice sharply reduces the size, cost and response time of existing chemotherapy monitoring technology so it can be more easily applied at the point of care.

“This is a technology that used to be the size of a refrigerator just about a decade ago,” says Robly er. “Because we’re using new digital technologies to both synthesize our signal and to measure, we can reduce the size of the device to that of a briefcase and the cost by an order of magnitude.”

Another CFTCC-funded project that’s poised to enter the marketplace is the Personal Health Network, a mobile app that enables cancer patients and their family members to communicate more effectively with care coordination nurses, oncologists and other specialists. Spearheaded by Dr. Katherine Kim, assistant profess or at the Betty Irene Moore School of Nursing at University of California -Davis, in collaboration with Tiatros, a digital health technology company based in San Francisco, the app functions like a confidential social network. Once logged onto that network, patients can interact with health providers through video chat and email, and view their plans of care, appointment schedules and a library of medical and self-management information.

“Support from the Center makes possible the optimization of this technology for patients,” says Kim. “We hope to be part of the growing movement that asks how technology can fill the gaps patients experience in the coordination of complex care. Our goal is to bend the cost curve and at the same time improve health.”

University of Texas-Austin Biochemistry Professor Andrew Ellington and BU School of Medicine Professor and Chair

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of Dermatology Dr. Rhoda Alani used their CFTCC grant to develop an integrated microfluidic platform that tests for cancer biomarkers (it functions like a diagnostic paper test-strip), and a handheld electronic reader that can wirelessly transmit test results. Focusing initially on detecting the recurrence of melanoma, the researchers designed the platform to detect cancer biomarkers in circulating nuclei c acid (CNA), which consists of extracellular genetic material (DNA and RNA) that moves freely in the blood. These information-rich molecules could be used to indicate the status of remote tumors, possibly circumventing the need for costly tissue biopsies. Through their novel platform, currently contained within a plastic cartridge, Ellington and Alani aim to transition molecular diagnostic testing to the point-of-care setting.

“The beauty of this is that it’s extremely cheap and easy to use,” says Klapperi ch. “In three years, it’s gone from Andy and Rhoda meeting through the Center to a working device that’s being prototyped by a commercial entity.”

Care plan screen for Personal Health Network mobile app that enables cancer patients and their family members to communicate more effectively with care coordination nurses, oncologists and other specialists. The project’s principal investigator is Dr. Katherine Kim, assistant professor at the Betty Irene Moore School of Nursing at University of California-Davis (Photo courtesy of UC Davis.)

Streamlining Cancer Care The melanoma biomarker test is one of a number of CFTCC projects that may enable a clinician —and, ultimately, the patient—to administer a rapid test and report the results via the Internet. With that goal in mind, Klapperich is currently working on a microfluidic test that screens for HPV (human papillomavirus, which can lead to cervical cancer) and returns results within minutes rather than days. Other projects, including an app Professor Christos Cassandras (ECE, SE) is co-developing, aim to boost the numbers of people in high-risk, low-compliance populations who get screened for colon and other cancers.

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One of the greatest potential benefits of POC screening is to enable clinicians and patients to quickly and easily distinguish between nonaggressive cancers and those likely to spread rapidly and cause illn ess. Using molecular diagnostics to accurately detect cancer biomarkers in body fluids, such tests could do everything from eliminating unnecessary surgery for nonaggressive tumors to replacing the mammogram with a blood test.

“What are the early molecular changes, and how can we detect them most efficiently? Those are the kinds of questions we try to focus on at the Center,” says Klapperich. “How can we assist clinicians not just in identifying tumors, but by querying the cancer and quantifying the level of risk to the patient? In the last 10 years, exciting tools have emerged that allow us to quantify biomarkers in blood in new ways.”

Even as researchers develop faster, better and cheaper screening technologies, they must also find ways to sell those disruptive technologies to the clinical community.

To overcome potential resistance to the innovations they’re advancing, CFTCC engineers, clinicians, public health practitioners and technology transfer experts spend considerable time on assessing clinical need s. Their collective goal is to determine what technologies will have the biggest impact on improving the healthcare delivery experience for both physicians and patients.

“When you get a diagnosis of cancer, you’re basically entering a years -long healthcare odyssey where you see an array of different providers, take an insane number of tests and endure uncomfortable procedures,” says Klapperich. “If we can mitigate some of those stress points along the way, that’s really our goal.”

Gauging Newborn Malnutrition, Kidney Disease and More Simple surface tension sensors may allow field, home diagnosis

By Mark Dwortzan A surfactant is a substance that reduces the surface tension of the liquid in which it is dissolved, thus enabling the liquid to disperse more easily when it comes in contact with a wet-able material. For instance, laundry detergents help water penetrate through fabric and break up stains. Milkfat also acts as a surfactant, causing droplets of whole milk to wick into a certain class of materials, unlike low-fat or skim, which would bead up like water on a duck’s back.

What makes this more than an intriguing factoid is that one can use it to design a material to evaluate the fat content in breast milk, a critical factor in neonatal health. If the milk fails to penetrate the material, then it contains an inadequate concentration of fat (and calories). Caloric deficiency affects the nearly 10 percent of newborns who fail to thrive due to malnutrition, and the more than 80 percent of mothers who c hoose formula largely for this reason.

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When a droplet of bodily fluid is placed on the surface of the electrospun mesh, it either remains beaded up or (due to surface tension) wicks into the mesh material and rapidly changes color. When it wicks, it dissolves a dye that turns purple.

Over the past two years in Professor Mark Grinstaff’s (BME, MSE, Chemistry) lab, BME PhD student Eric Falde has been engineering a polymer sensor that indicates if breast milk has sufficient calories for nursing newborns. He tuned the polymer to switch from non-wetted (the milk beads up) to wetted (the milk wicks through) when there’s an inadequate level of milkfat (too much surface tension in the milk), and to release a purple dye to show when this switch occurs. Intended for home or field use, the sensor provides a far more rapid, affordable, portable, and simple test than today’s standard of care, which relies on a bulky centrifuge or high -pressure liquid chromatography to separate and analyze milk components.

Grinstaff, Falde and Stephan Yohe (BME, PhD’13) describe their results in the online edition of Advanced Healthcare Materials.

“A facile and rapid measurement of the fat content of breast milk may provide a means for mothers to ensure that their infants are receiving sufficient nutrition and help more than 400,000 infants a year,” said Grinstaff.

Falde created the sensor using a technique called electrospinning which applies a high electric field to a polymer solution and spins the solution into a mesh of fine fibers. The mesh consists of a top layer that responds to small changes in liquid surface tension to resist or absorb a test droplet, and a bottom layer that reveals a color change when wetted.

“When a small droplet of test liquid is deposited on the sensor, it either remains or gets rapidly absorbed and changes color, depending on whether the liquid is above or below the surface tension threshold“ said Falde, who adjusts the threshold value by tuning how hydrophobic (water-resistant) the polymer will be.

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Because it’s designed to switch between wetted and non-wetted states with liquids of a particular surface tension, the sensor could be tuned to detect surface tension changes (corresponding to abnormal levels of fats and proteins) in other biological fluids—blood, urine, saliva and more—that may serve as indicators of a wide range of medical conditions. User-friendly and power-free, such sensors could be deployed at the point of care, including in the home.

“It’s difficult to create a simple test that screens for kidney disease, but a urine sample should show surface tension differences so that we can design a less invasive, faster and more comfortable diagnostic,” said Falde. In the paper, he described two prototype sensor meshes, each tuned to a different surface tension detection range, that he designed, evaluated and tested with human breast milk and urine samples. The latter sensor tested for high bile acid levels, an indicator of kidney disease.

Research Could Bolster Nanoscale 3D Printing, Catalysis and Sensor Design

By Mark Dwortzan

Assistant Professor Scott Bunch (ME, MSE) A study led by Assistant Professor Scott Bunch (ME, MSE) has demonstrated the ability to measure and control the transport of gas through a single molecule-sized pore in graphene, a strong, flexible material made of oneatom-thick sheets of carbon atoms. By using gold nanoparticles to block and unblock such por es in a graphene membrane, Bunch and his research team have provided the first evidence of controlling the transport of gas through a molecule-sized opening in any existing membrane material.

“These nanopore molecular valves provide the unique ability to c ontrol a single-file flow of molecules, and may lead to important applications in nanoscale 3D printing, catalysis and sensor design,” said Bunch.

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A composite of atomic force microscope images of pressurized graphene membranes Nanoscale 3D printing could be used to manufacture high-precision devices ranging from micro-needles to nanorobots. New applications in catalysis, the acceleration of chemical reactions, could yield new chemical co mpounds for scientific and commercial applications. The research may also improve the performance of graphene-based separation membranes, which can be used to purify gas, capture carbon from power plant carbon dioxide emissions, and perform other applicati ons.

Bunch and collaborators at Boston University, MIT, University of Colorado and National University of Singapore used two methods to create the nanopores in the graphene membranes. They either applied a voltage pulse with an atomic force microscope, or exposed the graphene to ultraviolet light. They also used an atomic force microscope to monitor the flow of hydrogen, nitrogen and other gases.

The research, which was funded by the National Science Foundation, is described in the online edition of Nature Nanotechnology.

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BU Materials Day Focuses on Health Care 126 Researchers Convene on Campus

By Michael G. Seele

Professor Mark Grinstaff (Chemistry, BME, MSE) was among the presenters at the Nanomaterials in Medicine symposium.

One hundred and twenty-six materials researchers from as near as Boston and as far away as California and Iran convened in the Photonics Center on September 25 for the BU Materials Day symposium, “Nanomaterials in Medicine: Improving Healthcare Through SMALL Innovations.”

The day-long event featured an array of speakers who addressed the promise and use of nanomaterials in drug delivery, biomedical imaging, and fighting cancer and infectious diseases.

Dean Kenneth Lutchen welcomed the symposium participants and noted the wide-ranging, interdisciplinary strength of the College of Engineering’s Materials Science & Engineering Division. Materials research, he said, will play an important role in advancing society, particularly in healthcare.

“The current challenges facing health care call for biomaterials solutions,” he said. “It is an inherently complex, multi-scale problem you are trying to address.”

Two College of Engineering faculty affiliated with MSE — Professor Mark Grinstaff (Chemistry, BME) and Assistant Professor Allison Dennis (BME) — made presentations at the symposium.

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Grinstaff’s presentation focused on his lab’s work in using drug-infused nanoparticles to treat mesothelioma, a highly fatal cancer associated with asbestos exposure. Mesothelioma progresses locally, Grinstaff noted, and current chemotherapy treatments — which infuse toxic drugs throughout the body for a relatively brief period — have not been effective.

Grinstaff’s approach has been to develop nanoparticles on the order of 100 nanometers that are infused with the chemotherapy drug paclitaxel. The particles are small enough to be admitted into a cancer cell, where the more acidic environment causes the nanoparticles to expand to 1,000 nanometers and begin releasing the drug. The cells are not able to quickly expel the nanoparticles, which can release paxl itaxel into the cell — and only the cell — for up to two weeks.

The research has produced excellent results in vivo, Grinstaff noted, and he hopes that this approach may also benefit patients suffering from breast, lung and ovarian cancers.

Dennis’ presentation focused on her work with quantum dots, which she described as semi -conductor nanocrystals with optical properties. Quantum dots have many applications in solid-state lighting and consumer electronics, as well as biomedical imaging.

She described how her lab has been working to manipulate the dots to change the color of light they emit. Dots emitting multiple colors can be used to more effectively conduct tissue-depth imaging, she said. Some of the dots are exceptionally bright, making their detection easier.

More recently, she said, she has been working with the chemistry of quantum dots in order to find an alternative to the toxic element cadmium so the dots can be used more readily in biomedical applications.

Other speakers and their topics at the symposium included: •

Vladimir Torchilin, distinguished professor of pharmaceutical sciences at Northeastern University, “Stimuli-sensitive Combination Nanopreparations of siRNA and Chemotherapeutic Drugs to Treat Multidrug Resistant Cancer.”

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Alnylam Pharmaceuticals Senior Vice President of Drug Discovery Muthiah Manoharan, “Making Drugs Out of siRNAs.”

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University of California, Los Angeles professor of chemistry and biochemistry Heather Maynard, “Bio-inspired and Degradable Nanomaterials for Delivery of Proteins.”

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University of Washington bioengineering Professor Patrick Stayton, “Intracellular Delivery of Biologic Drugs Diagnostics.”

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Niren Murthy, professor of bioengineering at the University of California Berkeley, “New Strategies for Imaging Infectious Diseases and Oxidative Stress.”

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Anna Moore, professor of radiology at Massachusetts General Hospital and Harvard Medical School, “Image-guided RNA-based Cancer Therapies.”

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University of Pennsylvania Associate Professor of bioengineering Andrew Tsourkas, “Engineering Targeted Nanoparticles for Molecular Imaging and Therapeutic Applications.”

Associate Professor Tyrone Porter (ME, MSE) organized the symposium and moderated the discussions that followed each presentation.

“Nanomaterials in medicine is such a timely subject as we have seen unprecedented activity in the design and production of biologically and medically relevant materials on the nanoscale,” Porter said. “The symposium

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featured leaders in the field who are pushing the boundaries to gener ate novel constructs and platforms that ultimately will revolutionize how we image, diagnose, detect, and treat disease.”

Chen Lab Paper Published in Nature Materials New Material for Studying Cell Mechanics May Spark New Thinking on Disease

By Michael G. Seele Researchers have long known that most cells living in tissues produce stabilizing networks of fibers, and that the stiffness of those tissues, in turn, influences cell’s behavior. When this relationship goes awry, diseases like cancer and organ fibrosis result. But researchers have largely been studying this interaction using two-dimensional models that don’t mimic the fibrous materials in the body.

Enter Professor Christopher Chen (BME, MSE) and his team, who have developed a three-dimensional platform for studying cell interactions with fibers and discovered some relationships that may upend some of the thinking on how cells sense tissue stiffness. Chen and his colleagues detail their findings in a paper, “Cell -Mediated Fibre Recruitment Drives Extracellular Matrix Mechanosensing in Engineered Fibrillar Microenvironments,” published in this week’s issue of Nature Materials.

Past research has suggested that the stiffness of the tissue that cells sit in affects their ability to spread and proliferate. Using a culture of cells grown on an elastic, flat, gel surface, previous researchers have found that as they increased the gel’s stiffness, the cells grew in size and proliferated. Recognizing that these physical conditions hardly mimicked the structure of actual tissues in vivo, Chen and his team set about creating a three-dimensional fibrous network model where the effects of tissue stiffness could be studied in a more realistic setting.

But first, they needed to develop a new material they could manipulate to adjust stiffness while mimicking the natural fiber structure of tissues. Bioengineer Brendon Baker and polymer chemist Britta Trappmann, two postdoctoral fellows in Chen’s lab, devised such a material, constructed three-dimensional matrices of fibers, embedded adult stem cells into this scaffolding, and began studying the cells’ response. Surprisingly, they found that the cells behaved very differently in these fibrous networks compared to flat gels.

For one, the pulling forces generated by cells only modestly stretched the Jell -O-like surface of the 2D model, but in contrast caused dramatic and permanent structural rearrangements in their matrix. They then adjusted the stiffness of the fibers and found that the cells — unlike those on the 2D gel — grew and proliferated more in a softer environment than in a stiffer one.

“The cell sits much like a spider within a web, applying forces to the fibers of the network,” said Baker. “These forces applied to the softer fibers allow cells to pull in or recrui t more fibers, bringing more of the matrix within the cell’s reach. The cell’s ability to change its local environment could explain why we see more proliferation in this setting.”

“These findings highlight a gap in our understanding of how cells interact with their fibrous surroundings,” said Chen. “Hopefully, this new material can serve as a springboard for helping researchers elucidate the complex relationship between cells and their environment, which may bring us closer to understanding the mechanism o f several diseases.”

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BUnano: The Center for Nanoscience and Nanobiotechnology Reveals New Name

Mark Grinstaff (Chemistry, BME, MSE), Director of Nanotechnology Innovation Center Boston University Center for Nanoscience and Nanobiotechnology is cha nging its name to the Nanotechnology Innovation Center (BUnano). BUnano Center is where nanomaterials intersect medicine and energy, and the new name better reflects the ground-breaking activity and aspirations of the center.

BUnano is an interdisciplinary academic research center, now in its tenth year, which seeks to attain national and international prominence and recognition for Boston University research and applications in nanoscience, particularly in nanobiosystems and nanophotonics.

The Center (8 St. Mary’s Street) includes 45 affiliated faculty members representing ten departments from the Colleges of Engineering and Arts and Sciences and the School of Medicine and has over 200 students and postdoctoral fellows engaged in nano-based research.

The BUnano center builds linkages between researchers and technology commercialization resources at BU, including the Photonics Center, the Clinical and Translational Science Institute, and the BU-Fraunhofer Alliance for Medical Devices, Instrumentation and Di agnostics, to accelerate the development and deployment of nanotechnology innovations that will be used to meet key challenges in medicine, energy and materials science The Center also serves as focal point for interactions with peer universities, Boston-area hospitals, industry, and government to accelerate advances in the field of nanoscience.

One of the most important programs offered by BUnano is the Cross -disciplinary Training in Nanotechnology for Cancer (XTNC) Program. XTNC has been supported by the National Cancer Institute at the National Institutes of Health, and trains pre- and post-doctoral scholars from science, engineering, and medicine in nanotechnology applications for cancer diagnostics and treatment. Through co-mentored research experiences, specialized coursework and hands on workshops, strong recruitment and retention of underrepresented minorities, and a unique urban outreach program, XTNC trainees become versatile and skilled in research acumen, aware of many technologies and opportuniti es, and prepared to make an impact on cancer and other medical challenges.

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BU Wins $13M Patent Infringement Suit Moustakas’ LED Discovery at Heart of Case

By Joel Brown

Prof. Emeritus Theodore Moustakas (ECE, MSE) A US District Court jury has awarded Boston University more than $13 million after finding that three companies infringed on a BU patent for blue LEDs (light emitting diodes), used in countless cell phones, tablets, laptops, and lighting products.

After a highly technical three-week trial in November, the 10-person jury unanimously found that the companies had willfully infringed on BU’s patent for the invention by 2013 Innovator of the Year Theodore Moustakas (ECE, MSE), College of Engineering Distinguished Professor of Photonics and Optoelectronics Emeritus. Because the jury found the infringement to be willful, the $13,665,000 award could be doubled or tripled by Judge Patti B. Saris. No date has yet been announced for further proceedings.

Despite the amount of damages awarded, “the best part of this is that it validates Professor Moustakas’ work,” says Michael Pratt (Questrom’12), interim managing director of BU’s Technology Development office. “The story is really not about the money. The first thing we want is recognition of his seminal contribution to this field.”

Moustakas, who became a professor emeritus when he retired in June but continues to conduct research at the Photonics Center, testified extensively at the trial and was present in court every day. When the judge read the jury’s verdict, “I put my head down,” he says. “I cried.” He describes the jury’s decision as “amazing…everything we asked,” saying also that his lifetime’s work was being challenged.

“Fundamental to our mission as a global research institution is nurturing an environment of discovery that supports our faculty and the incredibly important work they do,” says Jean Morrison, provost and chief academic officer. “We are delighted with the verdict in this case. Boston University has successfully fought, and will continue

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to fight, for our faculty members and the intellectual property they create here.”

The three primary defendants, all Taiwan-based, were Epistar Corporation, Everlight Electronics Co., Ltd., and LiteOn Technology Corporation, along with various subsidiaries, most located in the United States. Each is involved in manufacturing or packaging LEDs for use in consumer electronics . A number of big-name electronics manufacturers were initially part of the University’s case, but they avoided litigation by joining a settlement that includes licensing and confidentiality agreements.

The University was represented by Michael Shore, a partner at Shore Chan DePumpo LLP, in Dallas, specialists in intellectual property cases, and Erik Belt, a partner specializing in patent disputes at the Boston law firm McCarter and English LLC, which has represented BU before. While it is possible for the defendants to appeal the verdict, Belt says it would be difficult to overturn the jury’s clear finding of fact.

The University will receive less than half of the final award, after the attorneys, who took the case on a contingency basis, and previous patent licensees are paid. Moustakas will receive 30 percent of the University’s share.

Moustakas joined BU in 1987 and was named the Universi ty’s inaugural Distinguished Professor of Photonics and Optoelectronics in 2014. A search is under way for his successor, and the Distinguished Professorship will be renamed the Theodore Moustakas Professorship of Photonics and Optoelectronics.

Moustakas’ invention dates to June 22, 1990, when researchers in his lab were trying to produce microscopically thin layers of gallium nitride to be used in the LEDs, growing crystals of the substance at high temperatures. They discovered that a heater used in the experiment had malfunctioned and the material had cooled to 270 degrees Celsius, far below the intended 600 degrees. But instead of aborting the experiment, Moustakas told them to fix the heater and continue. The snafu led to the growth of a smoother, more translucent gallium nitride layer that also grew much faster when crystallized at the higher temperature, a result replicated–deliberately–the very next day.

The main patent for the LED was issued in 1997, based on an application first submitted in 1991. Si nce then, blue LEDs have become a key component in many products, because they can generate white light when coated with phosphor.

“The real story is the robustness of Moustakas’ technology,” says Pratt. “It really did become a personal story.

There was an attack, an affront to his creation. They had two experts saying it didn’t exist…and the jury wasn’t buying that at all.”

“To infringe in patent law, you don’t have to know about the patent and you don’t have to have an intent,” says Belt. To prove willfulness, “you basically have to show the other side knew of the patent and they were perhaps recklessly disregarding the fact that they were infringing or willfully blind to it. There’s a lot of ways to say it, but you basically have to show that there was wi llful disregard for BU’s patent rights.

“I think this really validates Professor Moustakas’ scientific breakthrough and establishes him as one of the great scientists in his field,” Belt says.

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BUnano shows strong presence at MRS 2015 Fall Meeting Material Research Society (MRS) held its bi -annual meeting in Boston November 30-December 4, 2015. BUnano faculty Klapperich, Bansil, and graduate students from Dal Negro’s and Grinstaff’s labs delivered oral and poster presentations. The advances described varied from biomaterials, drug delivery, optics, nanolayers and plasmonic applications to teaching.

Catherine Klapperich, Professor of Biomedical Engineering, Mechanical Engineering and Materials Science & Engineering delivered a talk titled “Effects of Paper Materials on In Situ Nucleic Acid Amplification” where she reported the results of her group’s extensive investigation into the optimization of two different isothermal amplification schemes, helicase dependent amplification (tHDA) and loop-mediated isothermal amplification (LAMP), on PCR for four separate DNA and RNA targets.

Rama Bansil, Professor of Physics and Materials Science & Engineering delivered an invited talk titled “Engaging Non-Science Majors: Physics of Food and Cooking.” The talk discussed a new course that Prof. Bansil has developed that introduces non-science majors to the basic principles of phase transitions and the science involved in cooking.

Professor Luca Dal Negro’s (ECE, MSE) group members delivered several talks on plasmonic applications at the

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MRS meeting. Yu Wang’s first talk “Broadband Enhancement of Local Density of States Using Silicon -Compatible Hyperbolic Metamaterials” highlighted a promising first step towards the engineering of novel Si -compatible broadband sources for applications to on-chip optical communication, processing and sensing. His second talk, “Tunable Optical and Structural Properties of Alternative Plasmonic Materials” demonstrated the critical importance of annealing treatments to provide tunability of both optical and structural properties of nanolayers.

Another student from Professor Dal Negro’s group also presented two ta lks. Ran Zhang’s first talk, “Plasmonenhanced Random Lasing in Bio-compatible Networks of Cellulose Nanofibers” focused on the cost-effective and facile synthesis of plasmon-driven random lasers and their potential for the development of novel types of ra ndom cavities and plasmonic lasers for optical biosensing and detection. Zhang’s second talk, “Active Core-Shell Plasmonic Composites for Surface Enhanced Raman Scattering,” focused on his research using biochemical testing and sensing. Finally, Ren Wang’s talk “Radiative Properties of Diffractively-coupled Optical Nano-antennas with Helical Geometry” highlighted novel opportunities for the engineering of chiral sensors, filters, polarized lasers, and components for nano-scale active antennas with unprecedented beam forming and polarization capabilities.

Professor Mark Grinstaff (Chemistry, BME, MSE) students Iriny Ekladious and Kristie Charoen Tevis delivered oral presentations. Kristie’s talk was titled “Efficacy of Paclitaxel Impacted by Both Three Dimens ional Culture and Tumor Macrostructure,” while Iriny’s presentation was titled “Synthesis and Characterization of Poly(1,2 -glycerol carbonate)-graft-succinic acid-paclitaxel Conjugate Nanoparticles.” Iriny’s talk described how through engineering a polymeric nanoparticle drug delivery system their group aims to address the known deficiencies of paclitaxel, chemotherapy drug. Kristie’s talk focused on the development of multi -cellular spheroid model of a breast cancer tumor, and its subsequent use to evaluate drug treatments, including a nanoparticulate formulation.

Translational Research in Biomaterials (TRB) fellows from Grinstaff lab, Benjy Cooper and Julia Wang gave poster presentations. Benjy is developing, with promising results, polymeric biomaterials to restore lubrication and compressive strength to osteoarthritic cartilage. His poster, “Improving Cartilage Biolubrication with Soluble Polyzwitterionic Networks,” was a nominee for best poster prize. Julia’s poster, “Electrosprayed Superhydrophobic Layered Composites for Tension-induced Wetting and Drug Release,” focused on drug release with mechanical triggers using a superhydrophobic composite, since triggers are present in the body physiologically or can be applied externally. Control of the release of dye, proteins, and chemotherapeutics depended on the amount of strain applied to the system. Marlena Konieczynska’s poster “A Dissolvable Hydrogel -based Dressing for Seconddegree Burn Wounds” described a transparent hydrogel dressing which would address the painful problem of dressing change for second-degree burns. Finally, an undergraduate student from Grinstaff lab, Kathryn Hardin, presented a poster titled “Tribological Characterization of the Mode of Action of Multifunctional Polymer Lubricants,” which described her results on understanding the mechanism of lubrication between two surfaces of several new biopolymers.

Naturally Inspired: Zhang’s Research Takes a Page from Biology to Build Materials

By Sara Elizabeth Cody At first glance, diatoms seem to have little to do with engineering. However, to Professor Xin Zhang, (ME, MSE), they are the central focus of a recently published study coming from her Laboratory for Microsystems Technology.

“By drawing inspiration from different fields of science, we come up with unconventional approaches to study the materials, which allows us to learn more about them,” says Zhang. “In this case, we learn from nature to build materials of our own.”

The study, published as the cover story in Extreme Mechanics Letters, used the exoskeletons of diatoms called frustules to develop a stencil that can be easily produced and replicated in a certain range of sizes for use in

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research protocols. The porous, bowl -shaped, three-dimensional exoskeletons, made naturally of pure silica, lent themselves well to stencil-making, and served as a unique fabrication method.

The porous, three-dimensional structure of the diatom frustrules can be oriented on a large scale and used as a potential alternative for creating micro- and nanopattern surfaces, which have many practical applications in research.

“The ability to uniformly orient the frustules will be beneficial for enhancing their ap plication to practical technologies, from sensors to solar cells,” says Aobo Li (ME), a graduate student who worked on the study. “We were able to figure out how to orient them uniformly on a large scale, which allowed us to make micro - and nanostencils.”

Current methods of creating nanopattern surfaces presented a number of problems for researchers —they can be costly, time-consuming, or it can be hard to achieve scalability or control over the size of the stencil. Zhang’s novel approach seeks to address these limitations by using the bio-structures of the diatoms as a potential alternative for fabricating micro- and nanopatterns.

“You can make chips, you can make computers but if you humbly turn to nature, you see so many unique micro and nanostructures that already exist,” says Zhang. “You can be inspired by these beautiful, available structures and can even build engineering components directly out of them. By looking to diatoms, we are trying to understand nature and leverage these biological components for our specific engineering purposes.”

Forums Bring Together BU Faculty Researchers, Funders New effort to demystify logistics for professors

By Rich Barlow Muhammad Zaman (BME, MSE) is hardly a slouch as a researcher. His team’s PharmaChk detector of counterfeit medicines has won big-league backing, including from Bill and Melinda Gates, and it helped make the College of Engineering biomedical engineering professor one of BU’s first winners of a Howard Hughes Medical Institute

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professorship.

Yet even Zaman learned a thing or two from Research on Tap, a new BU series where researchers discuss their work and mingle with colleagues. “I did not know the richness of the work done at BU, and I made a number of new connections with colleagues on both campuses,” says Zaman, who attended a November session on infectious disease research. “Continuing these workshops would be fantastic.”

He’ll get his wish. Three Research on Tap sessions were held in the fall, and more are planned this semester, part of a full-court press BU is making to demystify the sometimes byzantine byways of conducting, and securing money for, research. In addition to Research on Tap, there are workshops on the logistics of research and its funding, as well as informational meetings here and in the nation’s capital with professors and federal officials. The first spring session, on BU’s research into international migration, is Febr uary 4.

The first logistics workshop, targeting new faculty members, introduced them to the University’s research -related offices. “Many research grants require what is referred to as a data management plan, which describes how data will be collected, handled, stored, protected, and so forth,” says Gloria Waters, vice president and associate provost for research. Waters says the workshops offer advice from experts on writing data management plans.

“Many research grants also require the researcher to descri be a plan to mentor the students or trainees, such as postdocs, who are working in their lab,” she adds. “We pulled together a panel of senior BU faculty who have served on grant review panels to describe how to write an effective mentoring plan and what f unders look for when reviewing them.”

Cara Stepp, a Sargent College of Health & Rehabilitation Sciences assistant professor of speech, language, and hearing sciences, cohosted a workshop that brought a National Science Foundation (NSF) representative to di scuss CAREER, the NSF’s most important award program for junior faculty. The rep “explained the structure of NSF in a way that was useful for both new and seasoned investigators,” says Stepp, who also is an ENG assistant professor of biomedical engineering. “He also let us know about new mechanisms that are available and recommended specific opportunities.”

Other workshops featured officials from major federal funders of research, including the US Agency for International Development, the National Institutes of Health, and the US Department of Defense.

Alice White (ME, MSE), an ENG professor and chair of mechanical engineering, attended the new faculty workshop and says she learned of the great work being done by BU’s Professional Development and Postdoctoral Affairs office. A workshop by an NSF representative, meanwhile, left her better informed, she says, about crafting proposals to that vital funding agency.

Research on Tap’s two-hour sessions—half devoted to brief talks by faculty presenters, the balance a wine-andcheese reception where attendees network—seek to be interdisciplinary, with “faculty from across the schools and colleges,” Waters says. Among other fall topics were Air, Earth, and Water: Elements of Health and the Urban Environment, and Lighting the Way: Current Research at the BU Photonics Center. Turnout—between 90 and 120 at each of the three sessions —demonstrates how the organizing professors at each “did a great job of getting a wide range of faculty to present in their session,” she says.

For the third leg of this three-legged research stool, Jennifer Grodsky, BU’s vice president for federal relations, arranges meetings in Washington, D.C., where faculty brief federal agencies about their research. In recent months, Grodsky has also organized tours of BU labs for representatives of such groups as the US Department of Energy and the US Air Force.

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“It’s important for BU faculty to hear directly from federal officials about their priorities and goals, so that we can better connect our research strengths with the nation’s needs,” she says. Meanwhile, government funders “have been impressed with the creativity and passion of the BU research community.”

Bonecrusher: Engineering Professor Elise Morgan looks for a better way to predict spine fractures

By Barbara Moran

Using the tools of engineering, BU Professor of Mechanical Engineering Elise Morgan wants to find a better way to predict spine fractures. Photo by Cydney Scott As far as age-related fractures go, broken hips are the biggie, the injury that people fear most—the one that could end your life as you know it, or end your life, period. But while broken hips garner the most attention, spine fractures are far more common, affecting approximately 25 percent of all postmenopausal women in the United States, according to the journal American Family Physician. The prevalence of these fractures rises as we get older, affecting 40 percent of women who reach age 80 and nearly 20 percent of men over the age of 50. And the consequences can be serious: back pain, height loss, hunched posture, and immobility.

Spine fractures are insidious because many go undiagnosed, brushed aside as the back pain that comes with getting older. But they indicate risk for even more spine fractures, and hip fractures as well. If a doctor misses someone at high risk, the patient may have more—and worse—broken bones down the road.

Despite the big numbers and enormous consequences, age-related spine fractures remain difficult to predict, so people who might benefit from preventative treatment often don’t get it (and some people who do get treatment may not need it most). Elise Morgan, a professor of mechanical engineering and materials science and engineering, wants to change that, by finding a better way to predict age-related spinal fractures. “We’re trying to develop methods for identifying who is really at risk for fracture,” she says, “methods that are much better than what’s currently used.” She’s doing i t in an unusual way, by using the tools of mechanical engineering, techniques

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more commonly used to measure stress and strain on bridges and buildings.

“Elise’s engineering background gives her a fundamental understanding of mechanics, which informs every part of her work,” says Paul Barbone, (ME, MSE) an ENG professor of applied mechanics and theoretical acoustics who collaborates with Morgan. “She can look at the problem from both sides: how do the bones hold up as a structure, and how does bone growth and development play a role? It gives her a unique perspective.”

Doctors currently assess a patient’s risk of spine fracture with a bone density scan, basically an X -ray that measures how much bone you have and how dense it is. The scan generates a “T-score,” which classifies a person’s bone density as compared to the rest of the population. Using the T-score, a doctor categorizes you as either normal, osteoporotic, or “osteopenic”—a term meaning almost-but-not-quite osteoporotic. The problem, says Morgan, is this: about half the people who fracture their spine are classified as normal based on their T-score. “Clearly the scan is missing something,” she says.

Morgan and her team, with funding from the National Institutes of Health (NIH), want to develop a screening technique that’s better able to predict who will actually fracture. That’s difficult, though, because it’s not always clear how spines fracture. That’s where Morgan’s engineering background comes in.

“As a mechanical engineer I’m thinking, well, we’ve got this exquisite structure that is the spine, and even a single vertebra itself is a fairly complicated structure,” she says. “The first thing we need to do is really understand how these fractures occur. Otherwise, it’s hard to predict whether they will occur. And so that’s really a mechanical engineering problem: How is a structure failing?”

To answer this question, Morgan and her colleagues took human vertebrae—yes, actual human vertebrae from people who donated their bodies to science—and squeezed them until they broke. This type of testing is unusual in itself: usually when engineers want to examine the mechanical properties of a material, they take small samples and craft them into a standardized size and shape for testing. This makes sense for, say, titanium alloys, but not for bone. “Bones don’t come in standard shapes and sizes, and the properties of the tissue vary throughout the bone,” says Barbone. Testing whole vertebrae, he adds, “is like testing hundreds of samples, all at once, in their native configuration, interacting with their neighbors as they would normally.”

Morgan’s team squashes the vertebrae using a pair of machines that not only measure force and deformation but also grab images of the vertebrae with a micro-CT scan. “We do that imaging while we’re doing the mechanical testing, so we get time-lapse series of images of how the vertebrae are failing,” says Morgan.

Much of the original testing fell to Amira Hussein, a postdoctoral fellow on BU’s Medical Campus who worked on the project as a PhD candidate in Morgan’s lab. “The human skeleton is a mechanical system but it grows and adapts in response to stress, so everyone’s vertebrae are different,” she says. “That’s really cool.”

Morgan’s team used computational tools developed in Barbone’s lab to interpret and analyze the image data.

Hussein says this step was critical for finding exactly when and where a vertebra “failed,” or lost its abil ity to support a load: “Once we could see where the failure took place, we looked to see what was special about the structure of that part of the bone. Was there anything different that could help us predict fracture?”

The tests revealed some surprises, says Morgan. They found that almost all vertebrae failed when depressions and cracks appeared in the center of the top endplate—the flat circle of bone tissue that caps each vertebra —rather than in the very low density bone inside. It didn’t matter if the researchers tested vertebrae from the lower or middle portion of the spine, and it didn’t matter if the machine squeezed the samples vertically or flexed them in an arch, the way the spine bends when someone reaches down to pick up a bag of groceries —the vertebrae all

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failed on the top endplate. But why there?

Further investigation showed that the endplate tended to fail first where it was the most porous, with the weakest internal microstructure. While one might expect weak, porous bone to fail first, nobody had experimentally identified this link between endplate microstructure and failure of the entire vertebra. This finding may prove useful for diagnosis, says Morgan: doctors viewing X-rays and CT scans of patients’ spines often report depressions of the top endplate, she says, a finding that may likely indicate a spine fracture. The research, conducted mainly by Hussein and her fellow graduate student Timothy Jackman, was published in the Journal of Orthopaedic Research in July 2014, with follow-up studies set to appear in the Journal of Bone and Mineral Research and the Journal of Biomechanics in early 2016.

Morgan’s team used this data to build computer models that simulate spine fracture, models that led them one step closer to a predictive test. “With the 3D imaging, we were able to see the whole volume of the vertebra and where it fails, and then to compare this to the model to determine whether the model is working correctly,” says Hussein. “That was a major contribution.”

Morgan is now using CT scans from Framingham Heart Study participants—a large and well-established study group—to further test and refine her diagnostic model. She hopes that in a few years, this data may supply enough information to create a reliable test.

“Right now it’s really hard to identify who is being over-treated for osteoporosis, and who’s not being treated at all but should be,” says Morgan. “We want to change that.”

BUnano Director Mark Grinstaff Finds 2-Step Delivery Method Ups Cancer Drug’s Concentration Mark W. Grinstaff of Boston University (Chemistry, BME, MSE) and Yolonda Colson of Brigham & Women’s Hospital, found that a two-step procedure—delivering a tumor-localizing, drug-absorbing nanoparticle followed by the actual therapeutic—can increase the amount of drug that reaches tumor cells and the amount of time the drug acts on the cells (Scientific Reports 2016, DOI:10.1038/srep18720). Cancer nanomedicine expert Joseph M. DeSimone of the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, notes that the study “reports a first-of-its-kind result”.

Read more in Chemical & Engineering News (C&EN).

Cancer Treatment Goes Local

By Sara Elizabeth Cody When it comes to treating cancer, one BU researcher is going local . Professor Mark Grinstaff (BME, MSE, Chemistry, MED) recently published two studies that offer new approaches to the treatment of two intractable cancers—mesothelioma and esophageal cancer—by delivering therapeutic agents directly to the tumor site.

“Local drug delivery allows us to maximize drug dose at the disease site while reducing drug exposure to the rest of the body,” says Grinstaff. “This approach affords significantly fewer negative side effects, like hair loss and an overall decrease in the immune system, which are common with conventional intravenous chemotherapy treatments.”

The first study, published in Scientific Reports, describes a highly targeted approach to treating mesothelioma, an aggressive and highly fatal cancer associated with asbestos exposure. Mesothelioma progresses locally, Grinstaff noted, and current chemotherapy treatments —which infuse toxic drugs throughout the body for a relatively brief period—have not been effective in extending survival.

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In the research study published in Angewandte Chemie International Edition, stretching the stent wrapped in the drug-infused polymer sheath causes treatment to be released directly to the disease site.

Postdoctoral research associate Aaron Colby prepared 100-nanometer particles that were small enough to enter a cancer cell, but expanded to 1,000 nanometers once exposed to the cell’s low pH level. In addition, the nanoparticles were engineered to attract a chemotherapy drug and draw it away from healthy cells through a process similar to that which causes oil to separate from vinegar. With the particles acting as beacons for the chemotherapy and the cancer cells unable to expel them quickly, the drug spent more time on target while avoiding healthy tissue. “In our strategy, we are sending in a nanoparti cle first and the drug second, which we have found to increase the amount of drug delivered to the tumor itself compared to the current treatment method,� says Colby.

The second study, published in Angewandte Chemie International Edition, reports a novel drug delivery technology to treat esophageal cancer. A common problem that arises with esophageal cancer patients is difficulty swallowing, as a result of the tumor narrowing or blocking the esophagus. Doctors insert a wire mesh stent to open the passageway.

Grinstaff and his research team had the idea to integrate drug delivery with this tool as a one-two punch to focus the drug on the problem itself.

Graduate student Julia Wang wrapped a drug-infused polymer sheath around the stent so that when it is stretched, it releases drug directly to the disease site.

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“By changing the treatment method from a more passive release system to a more active release system, we are able to control when and how much drug is released,” says Wang.

“What is unique about this drug delivery system is that the amount of drug delivered depends on the extent the cloth is stretched. Using this approach a clinician can tune the dose, something they cannot do today,” says Grinstaff. “That control comes from the polymer composition and the engineering aspects of the design.”

Grinstaff and his team continue to refine the technology so it can pass through the regulatory process and get into the clinics. According to Grinstaff, his unique approaches to treating these diseases will not only lead to more effective treatment, but also will reduce the exposure of healthy cells to toxic chemotherapy drugs.

“Above all else, the potential benefit of both studies is the impact on patient care,” says Grinstaff. “By impro ving upon and streamlining the processes in place to treat aggressive diseases that currently have poor prognoses and no good therapies, not only are you going to treat the disease itself more effectively, but you will also improve the patient’s quality of life.”

Good Chemistry – Professor Malika Jeffried-El Looks to One of the Most Abundant Elements to Solve One of the World’s Most Pressing Problems

By Barbara Moran

Chemistry and materials science & engineering professor Malika Jeffries-EL studies carbon-based polymers. She’s looking for new materials for the next generation of semiconductors. Photos by Cydney Scott For Malika Jeffries-EL (Chemistry, MSE), the love affair began at science camp. She was young, and like many young scientists before her, she fell hard, smitten by the elegance and beauty of the periodic table. “Back then, I was like, ‘Oh my God, there are all these different atoms!’” she recall s. “You can mix them together and make all these different molecules! I could be all day with this.”

Decades later, the Boston University associate professor of chemistry is still mixing molecules, looking for new materials that could fill a pressing need for cheaper, simpler, flexible semiconductors. Semiconductors are materials with distinct electrical properties —electricity flows through them better than it flows through, say, wood or plastic, but not as well as it flows through metal. By altering a semi conductor’s chemistry, scientists can tweak its characteristics; this versatility makes them indispensible for electronics. And as the world grows ever hungrier for laptops, iPhones, solar cells, and lights, the race for next-generation semiconductors is on. Jeffries-EL is betting on organic polymers—long molecules comprised mostly of carbon.

BU Research spoke to Jeffries-EL about a life in chemistry, her favorite element, and seeing her work in lights. A condensed and edited version of the conversation fol lows:

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BU Research: What is a polymer, anyway?

Jeffries-EL: A polymer is what we call a macromolecule, with molecules being some of the smallest things that make up, well, everything.

Wait. But no, that’s not true, is it?

Well, okay, yeah, if you want to talk physics, you can break things into particles. But if we go chemistry-style into the periodic table, we have our atoms; and if you can bind atoms together in various fashions, you can make molecules. So H2O is a molecule. It’s composed of three atoms: two hydrogens and one oxygen. A polymer is the type of molecule you get if you string a bunch of smaller molecules together. If you think about a pearl necklace, a pearl would be your molecule but the necklace would be your polymer.

A lot of people use the words ‘polymer’ and ‘plastic’ interchangeably. But the way you describe it, it doesn’t sound like the same thing at all.

Plastics were one of the earliest industrial applications of polymers, and so people tend to equate polymers and plastics. And some of the most well-known polymers are also plastic-y. Things like nylon, for example. But there are tons of polymers out there that I wouldn’t say are plastics. And the types of polymers that my group works with are actually semiconductors—so they’re lousy plastics.

So why do we care about polymers?

Because we can manipulate both their molecular structure and atomic structure to get properties that we may not be able to get from naturally occurring materials.

Can you give me an example?

Okay. Some of the early research in polymers was trying to make materials that mimic silk. But if you think about things like polyester and nylon, which were some of the original synthetic polymers, they’re not as silky as silk.

They’re not as good as silk. And so many would view that as a failure. But they have properties that silk does not have. Maybe we can’t get the exact properties of nature, but we can get properties nature can’t do, like flame retardancy or stiffness and strength.

And so in my materials research, we kind of do the same thing but we’re doing it in semiconductors. Everyone wants a mobile phone, everyone wants a laptop, everyone wants a flat-screen TV, and we need semiconductors to do this. We look at our periodic table, and there are several elements that are well-known semiconductors, and our technology is being driven by these elements —silicon being the most prevalent. Everyone knows silicon— Silicon Valley—that drives our computer industry.

What’s wrong with silicon?

The manufacturing of silicon is not trivial . Most of the costs of your computer are not the plastic and stuff that’s the outside; it’s the inside. It’s the chips and the processing of silicon.

But there are also other types of semiconductors that are widely used in our handheld devices. Some scientists call these “rare-earth” metals, because they’re not as abundant as other elements. If we’re all depending on these rare-earths, somebody’s not going to be able to have a phone.

And then the world will collapse!

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Carbon alone is not a natural semiconductor. But certain arrangements of carbon atoms allow charge to flow through the system. In this sample, energy from the flashlight is re-emitted as blue light.

The advantage of organic-based materials—carbon-based materials—is that we can make a lot of them into solutions. So instead of taking a big chip and machining it down into smaller chips, maybe we can take a strip of plastic and inkjet-print all the circuitry, and then cut it out. It’s a different process, and can be a lot cheaper and a lot less labor-intensive. But Earth is rich in carbon, and so what my group does is make polymers that are carbon based, which mimic the properties of these semiconducting materials. So now we’re taking our most abundant element and using it to do something that we’re currently doing with the rare-earth elements.

Cool! So why doesn’t the technology exist yet?

People are working on it. There are some prototypes, both in academic labs and in research labs, but one of the biggest unknowns is the lifetime. Some of the newer stuff, the organic stuff, isn’t lasting as long as the conventional stuff, so that’s a drawback.

And I don’t think these materials necessarily can replace existing technology. It’s kind of like the fabrics. Could nylon replace silk? Probably not. But is there a niche for nylon? Yes. And that, I think, is the opportunity—to go into new markets and to change things. One of the big things about plastic -based materials is they’re flexible. If you have an irregular surface and you want to cover it with, s ay, solar panels, then maybe you can get an organic that can bend and fit around it.

How did you get interested in chemistry in the first place?

I was always curious. I was that kid who said, “Why? Why? Why?” And I was fortunate enough one summer to do a science camp, when I was probably about 11 or 12 years old. And I came back with my periodic table, and I looked at my mother and said, “I want to be a chemist.” And she said, “Okay, that’s nice, dear. Why?” And I said, “Because a chemist’s job is to mix, stir, heat, and figure out what happens.” She said, “I think you’d be good at that.”

Do you have a favorite element?

Do I have a favorite element? That’s a great question.

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I bet one came right into your head but you didn’t want to say it, because you felt b ad for the other elements.

You’re right! Gold! [laughter] That is so funny. Just because it’s gold?

Yeah. Well, you know what? Platinum is a little bit more double service. Platinum is great in jewelry, and platinum can actually do some awesome chemistry, so we’ll go with platinum.

You said that carbon is abundant but it’s not a natural semiconductor, right? So why try to force it to be something that it’s not?

We’re not using pure carbon; we’re actually using molecules that contain carbon —hydrocarbons, largely containing hydrogen and carbon. If you have certain arrangements of carbon atoms, you could get electron transfer in the system, and that’s the beginnings of what you need for a semiconductor. And so one carbon on its own can’t do it, but if you have a couple of them arranged correctly, it actually moves quite freely.

What is the hardest part of your research?

One of the weird things about polymers is that the properties are not just a function of the actual chemical structure, but also its history. How was it processed? With semiconductors, how you process it changes everything.

You can do a bad processing technique and your devices don’t work, and you’re like, “Oh my God, this is a bad polymer.” And then you spend some time, play with your processing, and all of a sudden you’ve got a top-class device.

And so we struggle to make sure that every material is realizing its full potential, so that the molecules arrange themselves in the most optimal fashion for what we need it to do. And it often is hard to predict exactly how the molecules are going to interact with each other.

I like that. Every molecule can be its best molecule! Come on, guys! You can do it!

That’s right! You can be your best version of yourself!

What’s your dream for where you might see your research in the world?

I’m a New York girl, so I would love to see my molecules being used on a billboard in Times Square. The LEDs lighting it up, or my solar material powering it. That would be really cool.

Attend Launch of National Microbiome Initiative White House event announces federal, private sector collaboration

By Barbara Moran Right now, armies of microbes are wiggling, slithering, and swimming through your gut, over your tongue, and across your skin. Your microbes can do things that are essential, like making vitamin K, or dysfunctional, like increasing your risk of obesity. The full set of microbes associated with a particular habitat is called a microbiome, and almost every habitat on Earth—including your body—has one. Rivers have thei r own microbiomes, as do fish, oceans, patches of soil, and even the Earth’s atmosphere.

In recent years, scientists and the public have come to appreciate these complicated communities of minute microbes, which may offer clues to curing diabetes and clea ring oil spills and understanding a wide range of occurrences, from climate change to the origin of life.

Last Friday, the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy took steps to recognize these tiny fellowtravelers by launching the National Mi crobiome Initiative. Several federal agencies will provide scientists with $120 million in new research funding through the initiative, which also will receive $400 million in new funding from nonfederal groups, such as industry, academia, and private foundations.

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Daniel Segrè, an ENG (BME, MSE) and CAS professor, and PhD candidate Allyson Byrd (ENG’19) were at the White House for the launch of the National Microbiome Initiative. “It’s a very exciting time,” says Segrè. “Now everybody is interested in the microbiome.” Photo courtesy of Professor Segrè

A group of interdisciplinary scientists at the forefront of microbiome research attended the launch event, including Boston University’s Daniel Segrè, a College of Engineering professor of bioinformatics, biomedical engineering and materials science & engineering, and a College of Arts & Sciences professor of biology, and Allyson Byrd (ENG’19), a PhD candidate in bioinformatics, who studies the human microbiome at the National Institutes of Health’s National Human Genome Research Institute, as part of the BU-NIH graduate partnership program.

“What’s happening here is really pushing all the boundaries. I’ve never seen something so ready to go,” said Congresswoman Louise Slaughter (D-N.Y.), during introductory remarks to scientists and policy makers at the White House event announcing the launch. Slaughter, a microbiologist by training, said that gaining a better understanding of the microbial world is critical for confronting issues like food safety and antibiotic resistance. “It’s going to be like splitting the atom when you get all this done,” she said.

During the event, Obama administration officials announced steps to address questions that span multiple microbiomes—like, what is a healthy microbiome? Why are some microbial communities resistant to change while others are vulnerable? Funding will target the need for better technology and more computing power to model microbial communities, and ultimately, tools to fix dysfunctional microbiomes and protect healthy ones.

Funding for the initiative will come from the US Department of Energy, the National Aeronautics and Space Administration, the National Institutes of Health, the National Science Foundation, and the US Department of Agriculture, as well as from the nonfederal organizations, among them the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation.

The announcement dovetails with Boston University’s own microbiome initiative, which will launch with a fall 2016 conference: Microbes at Multiple Scales: From Genes to the Biosphere. The BU initiative will focus on modeling microbial systems, environmental and human health impacts, and applying the techniques of synthetic biology to microbiome research.

Microbial Environment of the Human Gut

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The population of microbes living in and on a person is called the human microbiome. Changes in gut microbes— like those pictured here—have been associated with colon cancer, type 2 diabetes, and even Alzheimer’s disease.

Photo courtesy of Pacific Northwest National Laboratory “There are many different angles to look at microbes, many people in different fields who don’t even know each other, but are doing highly related work,” says Segrè, who uses computer modeling to study the behavior of microbial communities. He says that BU has unique strengths in mathematical modeling, physics, environmental biology, and biomedical engineering that can be brought to bear on understanding how microbes behave individually and on a global scale.

“The initiative has been very energizing and exciting,” Segrè says. “I love the idea of people from different departments making new connections. That’s how you get the most interesting science.”

BU will hire new faculty focused on interdisciplinary microbiome fields and intends to make new doctoral tr acks available to PhD students. Those new doctoral tracks will produce interdisciplinary microbiome scholars with the ability to combine quantitative ecology, systems biology, bioinformatics, physics, and quantitative biology.

BU will also leverage portions of its Center for Integrated Life Sciences & Engineering, scheduled to open next spring, and the Massachusetts Green High Performance Computing Center, a joint venture of BU, Harvard, MIT, Northeastern, and the University of Massachusetts, for interdisci plinary microbiome research, enabling collaborations on big data and infectious disease topics relevant to microbiome research.

“At BU we have unique strengths in microbial ecosystem research, with faculty working on both the interaction between microbes and the environment and others working on microbial genome engineering and the design of novel microbial strains and communities,” says Gloria Waters, vice president and associate provost for research.

“This presents us with the opportunity to bring together faculty from these various fields to establish BU as a center of excellence on microbial ecosystem research across scales and disciplines. Hopefully, the initiative will encourage schools and colleges to hire in this interdisciplinary area, as well as to potentially create educational programs that capitalize on our strengths.”

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MATERIALS SCIENCE & ENGINEERING COLLOQUIUM SERIES

Date

Speaker

Affiliation

Title of Talk

Faculty Host

Student Host

14-Aug

Kookheon Char - joint with Physics seminars

Seoul National University

Polymer Thin Film Platforms with Nanostructure and Functions

Ophelia K.C. Tsui

11-Sep

Charles Eddy

U.S. Naval Research Lab

Power Electronic Materials Research to Enable Next Generation GaN Power Switches

Karl Ludwig

Thomas Stark

2-Oct

L. Lee Chou

Boston University

Human Bone Tissue Engineering

Ophelia K.C. Tsui

Xuanji Yu

23-Oct

Zi Chen

Dartmouth College

Mechanics and Geometry in Chiral Structures: From Nanohelices to Twisted Embryonic Brain

Katherine Zhang

Jeff Mattson

30-Oct

Andrew Bocarsly

Princeton University

Mechanics and Geometry in Chiral Structures: From Nanohelices to Twisted Embryonic Brain

Linda Doerrer

Jesse Guillet

13-Nov

Marion Emmert

Worcester Polytechnic Institute

Recovering Rare Earths: Adventures in Sustainable Process Development

Linda Doerrer

Stephanie Beach

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20-Nov

Candan Tamerler

University of Kansas

Self-Organized BioNano Interfaces: From Surfaces to Biologically Integrated Hybrid Materials

M. Selim ĂœnlĂź

Fulya Ekiz Kanik

4-Dec

Sanat Kumar

Columbia University

Nanocomposites with Grafted Nanoparticles

Ophelia K.C. Tsui

Xuanji Yu

29-Jan

David Cahill

University of Illinois at Urbana Champagne

Ultrafast Heat Transfer in Nanoscale Materials

Aaron Schmidt

Elbara Ziade

12-Feb

Kurt Sickafus

University of Tennessee

A Geometric Layered Atom Model For Fluorite-Structured Oxides

Soumendra Basu

Yang Yu

19-Feb

Efstathios Meletis

University of Texas, Arlington

Interface-induced Nanostructures, Multifunctional Films, Coatings for Harsh Environments: from Science to Engineering

Theodore Moustakas

Xuanji Yu

6-Apr

Joseph Woicik

NIST

Soumendra Basu

Jicheng Guo

8-Apr

Dibyendu Mukherjee

University of Tennessee, Knoxville

Uday Pal

Paul Gasper

15-Apr

Peggy Cebe

Tufts University

Hard X-ray Photoelectron Spectroscopy (HAXPES): Investigations of Electronic Materials and Interfaces Integrating Nanobiomaterials for Future Bio-hybrid Solar Fuel Conversions Unraveling Mysteries of the Silk Cocoon

Ophelia K.C. Tsui

Xuanji Yu

8-Jun

Katsuyoshi Kakinuma

University of Yamanashi

Synthesis and evaluation of nanoparticle catalyst electrodes for polymer electrolyte fuel cells and electrolysis cells for hydrogen generation

Srikanth Gopalan

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RESEARCH LABORATORIES

ADVANCED MATERIALS PROCESS CONTROL LABORATORY ASSOCIATE PROFESSOR MICHAEL GEVELBER http://www.bu.edu/pcl/ 15 St. Mary’s St., Brookline, MA 02446 617-353-9572 Research in this laboratory focuses on improving materials processing capabilities by applying a controls -based approach. Our controls-based approach integrates process modeling, sensor development, both system and control design, and experimentation to achieve greater control of material microstructure as well as improving yield and maximizing production rate. Research projects, typically conducted with i ndustry partners, span a range of application areas including opto-electronic applications, advanced engines, power systems, and biomedical applications. Ongoing research projects include real -time control for plasma spray for thermal barrier coatings and fuel cells, e-beam deposition for precision optical coatings, electrospinning of nanofibers, chemical vapor deposition, and Czochralski crystal growth. Research is also being conducted on developing intelligent control and sensing approaches for optimizi ng building HVAC systems, using university buildings to test out new ideas.

APPLIED ELECTROMAGNETICS PROFESSOR MARK HORENSTEIN AND RESEARCH PROFESSOR MALAY MAZUMDER http://www.bu.edu/ece/research/electro-physics/applied-electro magnetics/ 8 St. Mary’s Street, Room 417 617-353-1909 This laboratory is devoted to problems in experimental electromagnetics with a primary focus on medical and industrial electrostatics, micro-electromechanical systems (MEMS), and sensors. Current projects include transdermal injection of medicinal nanoparticles via pulsed electric fields, development of a passive laser communication node using a MEMS retro-reflective mirror, the design of a “smart-joint” variable-stiffness endoscope, the use of an electrodynamic screen to remove dust particles from solar collectors, and the development of a new type of electrostatic-based, dry powder inhaler. The research work also involves experimental studies on particle electrodynamic motion, optical characterization reflectivity and transmi ssion properties of solar collectors, and development of pulsed three-phase HV power supplies for activating electrodynamic screens.

ATOMIC MEMBRANE LAB ASSISTANT PROFESSOR SCOTT BUNCH http://sites.bu.edu/bunch/ 8 St. Mary’s St, Boston, MA 02215 617-358-1570 Our lab focuses on the nanomechanical properties of a new class of 2D atomically thin materials such as graphene – single atomic layers of graphite. We are most interested in their remarkable mechanical properties such as high strength, extreme flexibility, and unprecedented barrier properties. We fabricate and characterize nanomechanical devices such as suspended “atomic drumskins” which vibrate at MHz frequencies and stretch with applied pressure differences. This unique geometry has allowed us to experimentally measure a number of physical properties of 2D materials such as their elastic constants, molecular transport and barrier properties, and adhesive interactions. These atomically thin membranes act as barriers for gases and liquids and represent the thinnest

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membrane possible (one layer of atoms) with the smallest potential pore sizes attainable (single atomic vacancies), and unprecedented mechanical stability. The applications that we are primarily interested in are semipermeable membranes for gas or liquid separations and nanoelectromechanical sensors.

BIOMIMETICS MATERIALS ENGINEERING LABORATORY PROFESSOR JOYCE WONG http://people.bu.edu/wonglab/ 44 Cummington Mall, Boston, MA 02215 617-353-2374 The Biomimetic Materials Engineering Laboratory is focused on the development of biomaterials to probe how structure, material properties and composition of the cell -biomaterial interface affect fundamental cellular processes. Specifically, we are interested in developing substrata with features that mimic physiological and pathophysiological environments to study fundamental cellular processes at the biointerface. Current research projects include pediatric vascular tissue engineering of vascular patches; development of targeted nano - and microparticle contrast agents for theranostic applications in cardiovascular disease and cancer; and engineering biomimetic systems to study restenosis and cancer metastasis.

CELL AND TISSUE MECHANICS LABORATORY ASSOCIATE PROFESSOR DIMITRIJE STAMENOVIC 44 Cummington Mall, Boston MA 02215 617 353-5902 Fundamental and applied research of cell mechanics and cell and soft tissue rheology  Measuring and modeling mechanical and rheological properties of the cytoskeleton of living cells at the whole cell and subcellular length scales  Measuring an modeling cell -substrate and cell-cell interactions and their effects on cell shape, orientation and homeostasis  Modeling of pneumatic osteoarthritis knee brace.

COKER GROUP PROFESSOR DAVID COKER http://people.bu.edu/cokergrp/index.html 590 Commonwealth Avenue Room 530 Boston, MA 02215 Phone: 617-353-2490 David Coker's research group in Theoretical and Computational Chemistry studies excited state dynamics in condensed phase complex systems. Using simulation and electronic structure methods they are developing accurate models, the quantum dynamics of which, can be treated reliably with their partial linearized density matrix propagation approach. The group's research activities include: 1) exploring how exciton transport in biological and synthetic light harvesting systems is influenced by local variation of chromophore environment and chromophore density, 2) studying the dynamics of multi domain complexes in which exciton transport is followed by competing charge separation and recombination processes, 3) incorporating new semiclassical mapping Hamiltonian methods for treating dynamics of many electron systems into their partial linearized propagation approach to treat dense systems of strongly interacting chromophores, and 4) developing a new approach to sample the initial Wigner distribution characterizing multistate thermal equilibrium that is required for the general implementation of their quantum dynamics methods. This research has the potential for broad impact in several areas of scientific and societal importance including solar energy technology, first principles design of new materials, and quantum information science.

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COLLINS LABORATORY PROFESSOR JAMES COLLINS www.bu.edu/abl 44 Cummington Mall, Boston, MA 02215 617–353–0390 Our laboratory is currently working in two areas: 1) we are developing and implementing computational experimental methods to reverse engineer and analyze gene regulatory networks in microbes and higher organisms. 2) We are designing and constructing synthetic gene networks for a variety of biotechnology and bioenergy applications. We are also using engineered gene networks to study general principles underlying gene regulation.

COMPUTATIONAL ELECTRONICS LABORATORY PROFESSOR ENRICO BELLOTTI http://www.bu.edu/ece/research/electro-physics/computational-electronics/ 8 St. Mary’s St., Boston MA 02215 617-358-1576 The Computational Electronics Laboratory (CEL) is equipped with state-of-the-art computing resources. The lab operates a hybrid shared/distributed memory cluster, employing over 2TB RAM and 392 processors spread over twenty networked nodes running BULinux. The Computational Electronics Group develops numerical techniques and software to study semiconductor materials and to perform electronic and opto-electronic device simulation. Commercial software packages, such as Synopsysis TCAD, complement independently developed tools. Specific applications include calculation of the electronic band structure calcula tions for material defects, semi-empirical evaluation of material properties, and electrical/electromagnetic characterization of infrared detectors and power electronics.

COMPUTATIONAL ENERGY LABORATORY ASSISTANT PROFESSOR EMILY RYAN http://www.bu.edu/cel 110 Cummington Mall, Rm 229 Boston, MA 02215 617-353-7767 The Computational Energy Laboratory (CEL) uses multi-physics computational methods to investigate alternative and advanced energy technologies. Our research focuses on developing computational mod els of the reactive transport, fluid mechanics, heat transfer and electrochemistry to investigate the design and operation of energy related systems, such as high temperature fuel cells, advanced battery technologies, subsurface transport and post combustion carbon capture. Central to the research in CEL is reactive transport in porous media, which is critical to many energy-related technologies and their operation and degradation.

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DANIEL SEGRÈ LAB ASSOCIATE PROFESSOR DANIEL SEGRÈ http://www.bu.edu/segrelab/ 24 Cummington Mall, Room 909, Boston MA 02215 617-358-2301 Through a combination of mathematical modeling and experimental methods, we study the dynamics and evolution of metabolism in individual microbial species and in microbial ecosystems. We are interested both in the fundamental principles of biological organization, as well as in applications, especially in the areas of human disease, metabolic engineering, and environmental sustainability.

DENNIS LAB ASSISTANT PROFESSOR ALLISON DENNIS http://sites.bu.edu/dennislab/ 8 St. Mary’s St., Room 601, Boston, MA 02215 617-358-1226 The Dennis Lab is focused on advanced semiconductor quantum dot synthesis for biomedical imaging and biosensing applications. Our unique core/shell colloidal nanocrystals fl uoresce brightly under ultraviolet illumination, emitting colors from blue into the near infrared. We are particularly interested in near infrared emitters for tissue-depth imaging and visible emitters for biosensing using fluorescence resonance energy tra nsfer (FRET).

DOERRER GROUP ASSOCIATE PROFESSOR LINDA DOERRER http://avengingmanateestudio.us/DoerrerGroup/index.html 590 Commonwealth Avenue, Room 365 Boston, MA 02215-2521 617-358-4646 The Doerrer research group specializes in synthetic inorganic chemistry and is an equal -opportunity element utilizer. Currently there are four main avenues of research in the group: The first two areas involve the use of highly fluorinated aryloxide and alkoxide ligands for the (perhaps transient) stabilization of high oxidation states in first-row transition metals. These complexes are being investigated for C-H oxidation and functionalization with Cu(I)/O 2 or Cu(II) as well as for O-H activation in water oxidation with other late first-row transition metals. The third area of research involves metal -metal bonds and metal -metal interactions. We are interested in using the phenomenon of metallophilicity, which is the attraction of electron rich (pseudo) closed-shell metal centers e.g. d 10 Au(I), d8 Pt(II), for each other. We have used these relatively weaker attractive forces in combination with electrostatics to form one-dimensional chains of metal atoms for investigation as low-dimensional semi-conductors. More recently heterobimetallic lantern complexes containing unpaired electrons have also been assembled with metallophilic interactions. The fourth area of research is our most recent work. We have begun investigating Fe3 O 4 nanoparticles and variations on that theme as contrast agents.

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ENGINEERING MATERIALS FOR ENERGY & THE ENVIRONMENT LABORATORY RESEARCH ASSISTANT PROFESSOR JILLIAN GOLDFARB 8 St Mary's Street, PHO 627, Boston MA 02215 The EME2 Lab tackles issues surrounding the past, present and future generation of energy, and its impact on the environment. These include: (1) mitigating the environmental impacts of energy-derived pollutants via improved understanding of contaminant behavior, (2) devel oping new materials to reduce waste and remediate or retard the spread of contaminants, and (3) investigating economically viable and industrially scalable alternative energy sources through byproduct and waste conversion pathways.

FEMTOSPEC LABORATORY ASSOCIATE PROFESSOR RICHARD AVERITT, PROFESSOR LARRY ZEIGLER, PROFESSOR SHAYAMSUNDER ERRAMILLI, PROFESSOR KENNETH ROTHSCHILD http://physics.bu.edu/femtospec/index.html 8 Saint Mary’s Street, Boston MA 02215 617-353- 1271, 617-353-9918 Ultrafast laser spectroscopy is increasingly becoming an indispensable tool for studying the properties of materials. This laboratory aims to develop an advanced femtosecond laser spectroscopy system that will be applicable to a broad range of multidisciplinary problems in the fields of condensed matter physics, chemistry, and biology. Examples of topics to be focused on include quasiparticle dynamics in multifunctional materials, band gaps in carbon nanotubes, molecular events in biological energy conversion and photosensing, ultrafast response to light of heme proteins and the structure of biological polymers such as mucin using high sensitivity 2D -IR. Many studies will be facilitated by the ability of the new instrument to probe the same sample over a broad range of wavelengths from the far-IR to UV and detect small changes in absorbance. This capability should open a new window on ultrafast processes that up to now have been difficult to investigate.

FRAUNHOFER CENTER FOR MANUFACTURING INNOVATION (CMI) PROFESSOR ANDRE SHARON, DIRECTOR http://www.fh cmi.o rg/Alliance/in dex .html 15 St. Mary’s Street, Boston MA 02215 The Fraunhofer Center for Manufacturing Innovation (CMI), a collaboration between Fraunhofer -Gesellschaft, Europe's largest R&D organization and Boston University, conducts research and complements the R&D needs of a broad range of industries, including biotechnology, photonics, manufacturing, and renewable energy.

Engineers, scientists, faculty, and students at the Center transform emerging research into viable technology solutions that meet the needs of both domestic and global companies. Our research areas include high precision automation systems , laboratory assays, instruments , and devices.

GREEN MANUFACTURING LABORATORY ASSOCIATE PROFESSOR SRIKANTH GOPALAN 730 Commonwealth Ave., Boston, MA 02215 617-358-2297 Research in this laboratory focuses on environmentally benign power generation technologies such as solid oxide fuel cells (SOFCs). We explore the materials science and electrochemistry of SOFCs using impedance s pectroscopy, galvanostats and potentiostats. Studies in this lab include measurement of the rates of charge transfer reactions that occur at the interfaces of solid state electrochemical devices, exploration of new processes, and modeling of the transport phenomena that occur in such devices.

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In this lab we also conduct research on ceramic gas separation membranes for the separation of industrially important gases such as oxygen and hydrogen. Ongoing projects conducted in close collaboration with industrial partners include the development of electrode and electrolyte materials for lower operating temperature SOFCs and the development of mixed ionic and electronic conducting materials for separation of hydrogen. The laboratory is equipped with a Perkin Elmer 263 A Potentiostat / Galvanostat used for characterization of electrochemical systems such as fuel cells, ceramic gas separation membranes, batteries and sensors, a Horiba 910 particle size analyzer capable of obtaining particle size distributions of powders in the range of 0.01 microns to 1 mm using light scattering technique, a Solartron 1255 Frequency Response Analyzer (FRA) used for AC impedance spectroscopy, a high temperature furnace that can operate up to 1700°C, and a Spex 8000 mill capable of producing sub-micron particles for use in solid state electrodes by high energy ball milling in a very short period of time.

HIGH TEMPERATURE OXIDATION LABORATORY PROFESSOR SOUMENDRA N. BASU 750 Commonwealth Ave., Boston, MA 02215 617-353-3746 The research thrust of this laboratory is to investigate the high temperature oxidation behavior of materials by exposing metal and ceramic samples to corrosive atmospheres containing oxygen and sulfur at elevated temperatures up to 1,400°C. The laboratory is equipped with a CAHN thermogravimetric balance and a Mettler microbalance for weight gain measurements, as well as an apparatus for oxidation in O -18 atmospheres, in order to determine oxidation mechanisms.

INTEGRATED PHOTONICS LABORATORY (IPL) ASSISTANT PROFESSOR JONATHAN KLAMKIN http://www.bu.edu/ipl 8 Saint Mary's Street, PHO 735, Boston, MA 02215 The Integrated Photonics Laboratory (IPL) conducts pioneering research in integrated photonics technologies for optical communications, microwave photonics, and sensing applications. The Laboratory is equipped with a number of simulation and design tools for realizing photonic integrated circuits (PICs) both at Boston University and through external foundries. The Laboratory also houses equipment for device and su bsystem characterization.

Novel devices can be fabricated using equipment in the IPL as well as in the shared facilities of the Photonics Center and Division of Materials Science Engineering. Specific research areas include lasers for silicon photonics, graphene optoelectronics for ultrafast modulation and photodetection, polymers and plasmonics for switching, photonics for microwave signal processing, and transceivers for optical interconnects.

INTERFACIAL FLUID DYNAMICS LABORATORY ASSISTANT PROFESSOR JAMES BIRD http://www.bu.edu/fluidlab/ 730 Commonwealth Avenue, EMA 224 617-358-6929 Bird’s research group, located in the Interfacial Fluid Dynamics Laboratory, investigates a variety of phenomena that are dominated by interfacial forces, such as surface tension. These projects range from measuring the drainage and rupture of bubbles to modeling how oil flows through porous rock. Because these phenomena are often counter-intuitive, the group’s approach is to combine carefully controlled bench-top experiments with theoretical modeling. Experimental techniques include interferometry, microfluidics, and high -speed photography.

The new physical insights gained from these projects can be applied to problems in manufacturing (e.g. controlling the degassing of bubbl es in molten glass), energy (e.g. determining how best to extract oil from porous reservoirs),

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and the environment (e.g. reducing uncertainty in climate models by better characterizing marine aerosol production).

LAB FOR ENGINEERING EDUCATION & DEVELOPMENT (LEED) ASSOCIATE PROFESSOR MUHAMMAD H. ZAMAN http://www.bu.edu/leed/what-we-do/research/ 36 Cummington Mall, Boston, MA 02215 A key component of our research activity is focused on developing smart, simple and cost-effective devices for invasive and non-invasive diagnostics. Our strategy is problem-focused rather than platform-focused as we try to optimize our platforms for specific needs in the field. With the help of our partner companies and institutions, versions of the prototype are tested in the field for feasibility before development of a full -scale solution.

LABORATORY FOR DIAGNOSTICS AND GLOBAL HEALTHCARE TECHNOLOGIES ASSOCIATE PROFESSOR CATHERINE KLAPPERICH http://www.bu.edu/klapperich/ 44 Cummington Mall, Boston, MA 02215 617-358-0253 The Klapperich Laboratory for Diagnostics and Global Healthcare Technologies is focused on the design and engineering of manufacturable, disposable systems for low-cost point-of-care molecular diagnostics. We have invented technologies to perform microfluidic sample preparation for bacterial and viral targets from several human body fluids including, urine, blood, stool and nasowash. These technologies include nucleic acid extraction, protein extraction, microorganism enrichment and/or concentration and small -scale dialysis. We are currently working on devices for the detection and quantification of HIV, hemorrhagic fevers, infectious diarrheas, influenza, MRSA, and cancer biomarkers. Projects include detection by PCR, isothermal amplification, and novel optical techniques. Our main application area is global health. We consider assay development, device design, sample flow, storage and transport all opportunities to drive down the cost and increase the accessibility of molec ular tests in the developing world.

LABORATORY FOR MICROSYSTEMS TECHNOLOGY PROFESSOR XIN ZHANG http://people.bu.edu/xinz/ PHO 903, 8 St. Mary’s St, Boston, MA The Laboratory for Microsystems Technology (LMST), directed by Professor Xin Zhang, was founded in 2002 as a college-wide, student-centered, interdisciplinary research and education program in the broad area of micro - and nanoelectromechanical systems (MEMS/NEMS or micro/nanosystems). Our research includes fundamental and applied aspects of MEMS and nanotechnology. Specifically, we seek to understand and exploit interesting characteristics of micro/nanomaterials, micro/nanomechanics, and micro/nanomanufacturing technologies with forward-looking engineering efforts and practical applications ranging from energy to health care to homeland security.

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MATERIALS LAB FOR ENERGY AND ENVIRONMENTAL SUSTAINABILITY PROFESSOR UDAY PAL http://people.bu.edu/upal/index.htm 750 Commonwealth Ave., Boston, MA 02215 617-353-0375 The laboratory conducts research on (1) SOM (Solid-Oxide Oxygen-Ion-Conducting Membrane) Process for Electrolysis of Metals and Alloys from their Oxides; (2) Solid Oxide Electrolyte Electrolyzer for the production of pure hydrogen and syn-gas from a source of waste and steam; (3) Novel Continuous Co-firing Process for Fabrication of Solid Oxide Fuel Cells ; (4) Large Scale Rapid Response Energy Storage and Electrical Energy Generation System; and (5) Fundamental Studies on Cathode Materials for Solid Oxide Fuel Cells.

MATERIALS X-RAY DIFFRACTION LABORATORY PROFESSOR KARL LUDWIG http://sif.bu.edu/projects/materials-xray-diffraction-lab/ 590 Commonwealth Avenue, Boston MA 02215 617-353-7291 Our research investigates how materials evolve on atomic and nano-length scales as they change from one form to another. In particular, we use real -time x-ray techniques to examine structural evolution during phase transitions, thin film growth and surface processing. Many of the experiments use the high brightness of synchrotron x-ray sources – the National Synchrotron Light Source (NSLS) at Brookhaven National Laboratory on Long Island and the Advanced Photon Source (APS) at Argonne National Laboratory outside of Chicago. Where possible, we make contact with fundamental theory and simulation. In the last few years, our detailed interest has been in three directions – understanding surface and thin film processes, investigating nanoscale dynamics in metallic alloys using coherent x-ray scattering and studying the rel ationship between atomic structure and function in solid oxide fuel cell cathodes. Many of our in-situ studies utilize a unique ultra-high vacuum growth and surface modification facility, that we have helped develop, on the insertion-device beamline X21 at the NSLS. We have been using it to examine surface morphology evolution during ion bombardment (which can cause the spontaneous growth of surface nanostructures) and issues related to the growth of wide-bandgap group III-V semiconductor films using plasma-assisted molecular beam epitaxy (in collaboration with Professor Moustakas in Electrical Engineering).

Coherent x-ray scattering provides the ability to probe nanoscale dynamics in metallic alloys and other materials systems. Partially coherent x-ray beams are created using small (10 micron) slits in conjunction with a highbrilliance 3rd generation synchrotron source, such as the APS. The disorder in the alloys produces speckle patterns in the scattered x-ray intensity. The evolution of the speckle pattern can then be related to the underlying dynamics of structural changes (e.g. ordering, phase separation or stacking fault rearrangement) in the alloy. Solid oxide fuel cells offer the potential for highly efficient energy conversion, but improvements in c athode function are needed before their potential can be fully realized. In collaboration with Professors Pal, Basu and Gopalan in Engineering and Professor Smith in Physics, we are examining in-situ the near-surface atomic structure of cathode materials in order to better understand the relationship between function and structure.

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MATRIX MECHANOTRANSDUCTION LAB ASSOCIATE PROFESSOR MICHAEL SMITH http://www.bu.edu/mml/ 44 Cummington Mall, Room 515 , Boston, MA 02215 617-358-5489 The form and function of cells and tissues is regulated by various properties of their local microenvironment such as rigidity and cell shape. In vivo, these properties are defined by the extracellular matrix (ECM) and adjacent cells.

During dynamic processes such as development, these properties regulate ECM turnover and remodeling in addition to cell movement, proliferation, and contractility. This newly remodeled matrix and altered tissue shape then redefines the local microenvironment, thus further enjoining the cell response i n an iterative, closed loop which leads to the coordinated self assembly of higher order structures. The ECM is more than a passive mechanical element in this process since it presents an array of binding sites for cells and cell signaling molecules.

Furthermore, cell contractile forces stretch some components of the ECM, for example fibrillar structures composed of the protein fibronectin (Fn), into non-equilibrium conformations that have altered signaling properties. This can occur through protein unfoldi ng, thus exposing amino acids with cell signaling functions that are normally buried in the equilibrium fold of the protein. Understanding how these microenvironmental properties regulate cell fate should increase the clinical efficacy of tissue engineering scaffolds that depend upon both biochemical and physical cues. Alternatively, engineered cell culture platforms might permit long-term maintenance of cell phenotype in vitro, thus permitting diagnostic research on the laboratory bench that might otherwise require animal experimentation. However, much remains to be learned about how these properties converge to direct cell fate in vivo. Predictions derived from reductionist systems often break down in more complicated environments. Broadly speaking, my lab focuses on quantifying the relationship between environmental cues and ECM production, elucidating the mechanisms by which Fn tension and unfolding alters its cell signaling capacity, and finally engineering culture environments to control the form and fu nction of the ECM. These goals are accomplished using an interdisciplinary toolbox including a spectroscopic approach for quantifying strain within Fn matrix fibrils and microfabricated cell culture environments.

MICROSCOPY LABORATORY PROFESSOR SOUMENDRA N. BASU 15 St. Mary's Street, Brookline, MA 02446 This laboratory is dedicated to the preparation of electron transparent specimens for observation in the Transmission Electron Microscope (TEM). Specimens have to be reduced to thickness in the order of 1 00Ă… in order to study atomic arrangements by high resolution TEM. Equipment available for this purpose includes a GATAN dimpler and ion-mill, as well as precision grinding and polishing apparatus.

MULTIFUNCTIONAL MATERIALS SPECTROSCOPY LABORATORY ASSOCIATE PROFESSOR RICHARD AVERITT http://physics.bu.edu/averittlab/ 590 Commonwealth Avenue, Boston, MA 02215 617-353-2619 In this lab we use time-resolved optical spectroscopy spanning from the far infrared through the visible to characterize the fundamental and technologically relevant properties of a host of interesting materials. In some cases we design, fabricate, and characterize our own artificial materials, but we also collaborate with colleagues from all over the world to characterize interesting artificial and quantum-based materials that they create. The beauty of optical spectroscopy, whether it is time-resolved or time-integrated, is its breadth of applicability to meaningfully study virtually any material you can imagine. With a very collaborative and multidisciplinary mindset, that is exactly what we do.

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MULTISCALE LASER LITHOGRAPHY LABORATORY (ML-CUBED) PROFESSOR ALICE WHITE 8 St. Mary’s Street, Room 628, Boston, MA 02215 With the installation of a Nanoscribe Photonics Professional GT Direct Laser Writing (DLW) tool, Prof. Alice White’s Multiscale Laser Lithography Laboratory now has the capability to rapidly prototype 3D polymer structures with nanoscale resolution over tens of microns to millimeters. In addition to a yellow-light room where the DLW is done, the lab has a processing bench with a spinner where we mix a wide range of photosensitive materials, as well as microscopes for characterization and a UV lamp and oxide plasma for surface p reparation. We also have a workstation to support CAD design. Current research projects include designing and fabricating mechanical metamaterials, scaffolds for cell studies, antennas for Terahertz radiation, and fixtures to enable neurological studies of birds.

MULTISCALE TISSUE BIOMECHANICS LABORATORY ASSOCIATE PROFESSOR KATHERINE YANHANG ZHANG http://www.bu.edu/zhanglab/ 110 Cummington Mall, Room 230, Boston, MA 02215, 617-358-4406 In the Multiscale Tissue Biomechanics Lab, K. Zhang’s research group integrates knowledge of biology, nonlinear solid mechanics, and finite element modeling, especially of complex materials and constitutive behavior. Through the research, the lab provides insights in understanding the relationship between microscopic biological processes and changes in macroscopic tissue mechanics due to diseases, and helps the development of diagnostic, therapeutic, and pharmaceutical techniques. The Multiscale Tissue Biomechanics Laboratory was established in 2006 and includes a fully equipped wet lab and computational facilities for characterization and modeling of the mechanical behavior of soft biological tissues and composites at multi -scale. Current research thrusts in the Multiscale Tissue Biomechanics Lab include the development of structural constitutive models that directly integrate information on tissue composition and microstructure for simulation of cardiovascular diseases and methods of prevention, the structural and functional changes of elastin due to elastin – lipid interactions and glycation, and the cellular level mechanical properties and forces within the extracelullar matrix.

NANO HEAT TRANSFER LABORATORY ASSISTANT PROFESSOR AARON J. SCHMIDT http://www.bu.edu/nanoheat/ 8 Saint Mary’s Street. Room 503D, Boston MA 02215 Research in the Nano Heat Transfer Laboratory is focused on understanding and controlling thermal energy in nanoscale systems such as nanoparticles, thin films, membranes, and multilayers. We specialize in ultrafast optical measurements of transport and laser—material interaction. Applications include development of new materials, solid-state energy conversion, thermal management, thermal wave imaging, and fundamental transport physics.

The laboratory is equipped with two custom-built photothermal microscopes for thermal property imaging and transport measurements.

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NANOMEDICINE AND MEDICAL ACOUSTICS LABORATORY ASSOCIATE PROFESSOR TYRONE PORTER http://www.bu.edu/medal/ 44 Cummington Mall, Room B03, Boston, MA 02215 617-353-7366 The Nanomedicine and Medical Acoustics Laboratory is focused on the development of stimuli -responsive colloidal systems for diagnostic and therapeutic applications. For example, we desi gn and manufacture targeted lipidcoated microbubbles for ultrasound-based molecular imaging of inflammation associated with cancer or coronary artery disease. These targeted microbubbles can also be loaded with drugs for image-guided and highly localized drug delivery. On the nanoscale, we design and produce perfluorocarbon nanoemulsions that can be phaseconverted into microbubbles, which are then used to assist in drug transport across cell membranes ( i.e. localized drug delivery) or enhance ultrasound-mediated ablation of solid tumors. Lastly, we design and produce drugloaded lipid- and polymer-based nanoparticles that are sensitive to biological cues, such as changes in pH levels or enzymatic activity. When subjected to a specific cue, these nanopa rticles can be designed to release their payload rapidly or gradually, thus delivering an effective dose to diseased cells and tissue specifically and enhancing the therapeutic efficacy of the drug.

NANOSCALE ENERGY-FLUIDS TRANSPORT LABORATORY ASSISTANT PROFESSOR CHUANHUA DUAN http://www.bu.edu/neft/ 730 Commonwealth Avenue, EMA 222 & 215A, Boston, MA 02215 617-353-3270 The Nanoscale Energy-Fluids Transport (NEFT) laboratory experimentally studies energy and fluids transport at the nanoscale. We are part of the Mechanical Engineering Department of Boston University. Professor Chuanhua Duan is the Principal Investigator of the NEFT lab. Our current investigations include: * Exploring anomalous transport phenomenon in 1-D or 2-D confined nanochannels; * Enhancing ion/molecule transport in batteries and fuel cells using nanostructured materials; * Improving phase-change heat transfer based on patterned micro/nanostructures; * Developing new nanofluidic devices for biomolecule sensing and separation.

NANOSCALE MECHANICAL ENGINEERING LABORATORY ASSOCIATE PROFESSOR KAMIL EKINCI http://www.bu.edu/nems/index.html 110 Cummington Mall, Boston, MA 02215 617-358-0253 The research in Nanoscale Mechanical Engineering Laboratory focuses on physical phenomena a t the nanoscale as well as nanoscale devices and ultrasensitive measurement techniques for a variety of applications. The physical phenomena of interest ranges from fluctuations to fluid dynamics to photonics. The applications pursued so far involve bio-molecule sensing using nano-electromechanical systems (NEMS), designing motion transducers for nanoscale applications and ultrafast scanning probe microscopy.

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NANOSTRUCTURED FIBERS AND NONLINEAR OPTICS LABORATORY PROFESSOR SIDDHARTH RAMACHANDRAN http://people.bu.edu/sidr/ 8 St. Mary’s St., Boston MA 02215 617-353-9881 Light beams in free space travel at the "speed of light," and tend to diverge (diffract). Complex, nano -structured photonic devices can be used to slow light (confine photons in time) a nd counteract diffraction (by confining photons in space). Some confinement geometries lead to spatially complex beams that possess intriguing properties such as the ability of optical vortices to carry orbital angular momentum or the ability of Bessel bea ms to self-heal. Our group studies the myriad phenomena encountered by the manipulation of such fundamental effects of light, with the aim of developing next generation photonic devices.

NOVEL MATERIALS LABORATORY PROFESSOR KEVIN SMITH http://nml.bu.edu 590 Commonwealth Ave., Boston, MA 02215.

617-353-5980 Research in the Novel Materials Laboratory is focused on understanding the fundamental electronic properties of complex materials, in crystalline, thin film, and nano-scaled form. This is intrinsically a diverse and interdisciplinary endeavor, involving aspects of physics, chemistry and materials science. We study a wide variety of different materials, most of which are technologically relevant with an emphasis on materials for energy generation and storage. The tools we use in our research are high-resolution electron and photon spectroscopies, and we both synthesize our own samples and study materials made by numerous collaborators. All of our research is been undertaken at synchrotron radiation facilities, specifically the National Synchrotron Light S ource (Brookhaven National Laboratory, NY), the Advanced Light Source (Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, CA), and MAXLab (Lund, Sweden). The scope of our research activities is quite broad, and stretches from the fundamental quantum mechanics of low dimensional correlated solids, through the electronic structure of nano-scaled thin film organic semiconductors for use in photovoltaics, to the interface properties of multi -element metal oxides with potential use in solid oxide fuel cells. We have also studied wide band gap nitride semiconductors, organic superconductors, transparent conducting oxides, and rare earth nitrides.

OPTICAL CHARACTERIZATION & NANOPHOTONICS LABORATORY (OCN) PROFESSOR BENNETT GOLDBERG, ASSOCIATE PROFESSOR ANNA SWAN, AND PROFESSOR SELIM ÜNLÜ http://ultra.bu.edu/ 8 St. Mary’s St., Boston MA 02215 617-358-4808, 617-353-1275, 617-353-5067 Nanophotonics addresses a broad spectrum of optics on the nanometer scale covering technology development and basic science discovery. Compared to the behavior of isolated molecules or bulk materials, the behavior of nanostructures exhibit important physical properties not necessarily predictable from observations of either individual constituents or large ensembles. We develop and apply advanced optical characterization techniques to the study of solid-state and biological phenomena at the nanoscale. Current projects include development of high resolution subsurface imaging techniques based on numerical aperture increasing lens (NAIL) for th e study of semiconductor devices and circuits and spectroscopy of quantum dots, micro resonant Raman and emission spectroscopy of individual carbon nanotubes, biosensors based on microring resonators, and development of new nanoscale microscopy techniques utilizing interference of excitation as well as emission from fluorescent molecules. We use high-resolution Raman spectroscopy to explore single atomic layers of graphene as well as atomic layers of chalcogenides. In addition to microscopy, optical resonance is nearly ubiquitous in our research

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projects including development of resonant cavity-enhanced photodetectors and imaging biosensors for DNA, single virus sensing, and protein arrays.

ORTHOPAEDIC & DEVELOPMENTAL BIOMECHANICS LABORATORY ASSOCIATE PROFESSOR ELISE MORGAN http://www.bu.edu/odbl/ 110 Cummington Mall , Boston, MA 02215 617-353-2791 This laboratory uses experimental and computational methods to explore the relationships between structure and mechanical function of biological tissues at multiple length scales. Current research projects include biomechanics of spine fractures, the effects of mechanical stimulation on bone healing, biomechanics of fracture healing, and microscale mechanical characterization of bone tissue. The laboratory houses a biaxial (axialtorsional) servohydraulic materials testing system with a variety of extensometers and load cells, a miniature torsional testing system, two micro-computed tomography systems, a multichannel signal conditional and amplification system, an X-ray cabinet, and various cutting tools including a sledge microtome and low-speed wafering saw.

Additional space is dedicated to cell and tissue culture. Computational facilities include PC workstations equipped with software for image processing, finite element analysis, and general computing.

POWDER METALLURGY & X-RAY LABORATORY PROFESSOR VINOD K. SARIN 730 Commonwealth Ave., Boston, MA 02215 617-353-6451 The powder-processing laboratory is equipped to batch, process, and densify a wide variety of materials. Particle size reduction and uniform mixing are essential in any powder preparation. In addition to a 500cc capacity attritor mill for processing small powder batches, an extensive selection of ball mill sizes and a variety of milling media, including silicon nitride and titanium carbide, are available. Consolidation and sintering capabilities include vacuum, over pressure, and hot pressing up to 25,000 KgF and temperatures in excess of 2400°C. These capabilities make the powder-processing laboratory uniquely equipped for developing high temperature monolithic and composite materials. The laboratory is also equipped with a Bruker D8 Focus diffractometer with independent theta and two-theta axis with copper radiation. This unit extends the laborator y’s capability to perform single crystal back reflection Laue studies for crystal orientation. The standard detector is the scintillation counter, with high dynamic range and low internal background. In addition, several Debye Scherrer powder cameras are a lso available. This unit is equipped with all necessary components for qualitative or quantitative phase analysis, crystallite size determination, and structure determination and refinement.

PRECISION ENGINEERING RESEARCH (PERL) LABORATORY PROFESSOR THOMAS BIFANO 8 St. Mary’s St., Boston MA 02215 617-353-5619 Research in the Precision Engineering Research (PERL) Laboratory is directed toward design, modeling, fabrication, and testing of advanced microsystems. A core research area involves development of large-scale arrays of coordinated microactuators for use in photonic or optical systems. Recent projects have included: development of deformable micromirror arrays for adaptive optics; modeling of microfluidic transport systems; development of microvalve arrays for control of fluid flow rate and pressure; design and fabrication of advanced optoacoustic MEMS sensors; and micro-scale contouring using ion beam systems. The laboratory houses state-of-the-art

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systems for design, fabrication, and testing of MEMS devices, including interferometric contouring microscopes, a high speed vibrometer, and adaptive optics and microfluidic test beds.

RESTORATIVE SCIENCES AND BIOMATERIALS LABORATORY PROFESSOR AND CHAIR DAN NATHANSON, ASSOCIATE PROFESSOR RUSSELL GIORDANO, AND RESEARCH ASSOCIATE PROFESSOR RICHARD POBER Housman Medical Research Center (R Building) 72 E. Concord Street, Room 520, Boston, MA 02118 617-638-4756 Research in this laboratory focuses on ceramics and ceramic matrix composites. Projects include the testing of current ceramic restorative systems as well as the development of ceramic matrix composites with improved resistance to fracture and higher toughness. Evaluation of new dental materials systems is also an ongoing part of his research activity. Evaluation of the effects of surface finish on strength of ceramics has involved the application of novel machining systems such as the CEREC CAD-CAM system and the Celay copy milling system as well as the effects of polishing, fine grinding, glazing and etching.

SEMICONDUCTOR PHOTONICS RESEARCH LABORATORY ASSOCIATE PROFESSOR ROBERTO PAIELLA http://www.bu.edu/paiella 8 St. Mary’s St., Boston MA 02215 617-358-3385 Research in this lab is aimed at the development of novel optoelectronic devices based on artificially structured materials systems, whose properties can be tailored by design to meet specific applications in a way that is not afforded by simply using bulk materials. One important example is that of semiconductor quantum structures, in which nanoscale layers (or wires or dots) of different semiconductor materials are assembled to create an energy landscape in which electrons behave in a markedly quantum-mechanical fashion. By controlling the dimensions and geometry of these structures, one can tune their most basic electronic and optical properties to enable entirely new device concepts – an approach that has become known as bandgap engineering. Artificial structures involving materials with different optical properties (e.g., metals and dielectrics) can also be designed in a similar manner, and used to control the flow of light and its interaction with the underlying matter in novel and often useful ways. Ongoing research is focused on THz optoelectronic devices, silicon-compatible light sources, and plasmon-enhanced visible LEDs. Our work in these areas involves both theoretical and experimental activities, including design and simulations, device fabrication, and electrical and optical characterization.

THE SHARIFZADEH GROUP ASSISTANT PROFESSOR SAHAR SHARIFZADEH http://sites.bu.edu/sharifzadeh/ 8 St. Mary’s St., Room 535, Boston MA 02215 617-358-4769 The Sharifzadeh research group focuses on understanding and predicting functional material properties using firstprinciples electronic structure methods. We develop and apply these methods, which can predict, with quantitative accuracy, the electronic, magnetic, and structural properties of materials from the basic laws of quantum mechanics. The goals of this research are to extract physical intuition about, and ultimately to design, new outstanding materials.

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SOLID STATE RESEARCH LABORATORY PROFESSOR DAVID BISHOP 8 St. Mary's Street, PHO 607, Boston, MA In this laboratory we are developing the techniques and MEMS devices to do "atomic calligraphy" where we can direct write structures and devices with small numbers of atoms. By moving silicon plates as we evaporate a wide variety of materials we can do 3D printing on an atomic scale.

SURFACE MODIFICATION LABORATORY PROFESSOR VINOD K. SARIN 15 St. Mary’s St., Brookline, MA 02446 This unique state-of-the-art university research laboratory has the capability of R&D activities in the field of surface engineering involving both Chemical Vapor Deposition (CVD) and Physical Vapor Deposition (PVD) techniques. It contains two experimental CVD units capable of producing a wide range of tough, adherent and protective coatings for various applications. Two multiple-target DC and RF sputtering units that produce monolithic, multi layered, and composite coatings are available for coating development by PVD. Research and development of diamond coatings is focused on the combustion flame process. Several combustion flame setups have been developed and fabricated to produce diamond coatings of various morphologies on a wide range of materials.

Unique equipment and techniques have been developed to evaluate the mechanical, chemical, and structural properties of coatings, such as a micro-scratch tester to evaluate adherence. A hot wall CVD reactor is used for the deposition of functionally graded mullite coatings. Mullite (3Al2O3•2SiO2) has received considerable attention as a potential coating material for silicon-based ceramics due to its excel lent corrosion resistance, creep resistance, high temperature strength, and most critically, excellent Coefficient of Thermal Expansion match, especially with Silicon Carbide. Dense, uniform, crystalline mullite environmental barrier coatings have been dep osited by CVD on SiC substrates and these coatings have exhibited excellent high temperature oxidation and hot corrosion resistance. The coating process has subsequently been patented at Boston University. Transparent Radioluminescent Coatings of Lutetium Oxide doped with Europium Oxide are being developed using both PVD and CVD. It is believed that these atomistic deposition techniques will offer extensive promise as an alternative production method for tailoring microstructure and optimizing scintillation characteristics of these ceramics.

THE STRAUB GROUP PROFESSOR JOHN E. STRAUB http://www.bu.edu/chemistry/faculty/straub/ 590 Commonwealth Ave, Room 503, Boston, MA 02215 617-353-6816 The Straub Group investigates fundamental aspects of protein dynamics and thermodynamics underlying the formation of protein structure, through folding and aggregation, and enabling protein function, through pathways of energy flow and signaling. Student and postdoctoral research scientists in the Straub Group work to develop and employ state-of-the-art computational methods while working in collaboration with leading experimental research groups.

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THE TIEN GROUP ASSOCIATE PROFESSOR JOE TIEN http://people.bu.edu/jtien/ 44 Cummington Mall, Room 715, Boston, MA 02215 617-358-3055 Research applying techniques adopted from microlithography, self-assembly, microfluidics, and developmental biology to develop methods of assembling cells into ordered three-dimensional aggregates and use these aggregates as artificial tissue and as in vitro models of disease. The Tien Group is developing new techniques to vascularize biomaterials. Current areas of interest are: the synthesis of microfluidic biomaterials (materials that contain open channels for perfusion), the quantitative physiology of engineered microvessels, and the computational design of vascular systems.

TSUI LAB PROFESSOR OPHELIA K.C. TSUI 590 Commonwealth Avenue, Boston MA 02215 617-358-4669 Our current research primarily concerns the effects of surfaces, interfaces, confinement and frustration on the dynamics and equilibrium of soft condensed matters, illustrated in polymer ultrathin films and liquid crystal systems. These queries have led us to investigate a wide spectrum of contemporary soft condensed matter physics problems including wetting and dewetting phenomena, adhesion, interfacial viscosity, dynamics of confined systems, surface dynamics, surface or frustration induced orientational ordering. Through collaborations with colleagues around the world, we have also worked on related problems of atomic force microscopic (AFM) mechanics, AFM nanotribology, AFM nanolithography, order -disorder phase transition of evaporating solution cast block copolymer films, formation and structure of protein films, liquid crystal display, and electronic and magnetic properties of magnetic granular nano-composites. The major experimental techniques used in our research include AFM, x-ray reflectivity and scattering, contact angle measurement, ellipsometry as well as optical microscopy. Most of the sample preparation involves cleanroom and microfabrication technologies.

ULTRAFAST NANOSTRUCTURE OPTICS (UNO) LABORATORY ASSOCIATE PROFESSOR LUCA DAL NEGRO http://www.bu.edu/nano/Labs/Labs.html 8 St. Mary’s St., Boston MA 02215 617-358-5103 The research is mainly focused on: a) nano-optics and plasmonics; b) optics of complex structures; c) ultra -fast emission spectroscopy and optical gain phenomena; d) nonlinear optics of semiconductor and metal nanostructures. Implemented opti cal techniques include: picosecond fluorescence lifetime spectroscopy, femtosecond pump-probe spectroscopy, dark-field scattering spectroscopy, time-resolved variable stripe length gain techniques, emission quantum efficiency, photoconductivity measurements, Z-scan and SHG nonlinear characterization.

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ULTRAFAST OPTICS LABORATORY ASSISTANT PROFESSOR MICHELLE SANDER http://sites.bu.edu/ufolab/ 8 St. Mary’s St., Boston, MA 02215 617-358-5153 Our group focuses on exploring optical material interactions to develop novel laser sources in the infrared and mid-infrared wavelength regime. We explore femtosecond pulse generation techniques (1 femtosecond = 10 15 seconds) to advance photonic technologies that manipulate and transmit light efficiently. Compact fiber lasers and integrated microphotonic systems are pursued for applications in communications, biomedical diagnostics and treatment, frequency metrology, environmental sensing and spectroscopy.

VIBRATIONS LABORATORY ASSOCIATE PROFESSOR J. GREGORY MCDANIEL http://www.bu.edu/mrg/ 15 St. Mary’s Street, Room 139, Brookline, MA 02446 617-353-4847 The Vibrations Laboratory offers a full suite of sensors, instrumentation, and software necessary to research the vibrations of complex structures and technologies that reduce vibration and noise. One area of current interest is the spatial mapping of energy removal by damping treatments in order to better design damping treatments for complex structures. Another area is the mitigation of automotive brake squeal.

WIDE BANDGAP SEMICONDUCTOR LABORATORY PROFESSOR THEODORE MOUSTAKAS http://www.bu.edu/nitrides/ 8 St. Mary’s St., Boston MA 02215 617-353-1288 In the Wide Bandgap Semiconductors Laboratory, we are investigating the growth, structure, and optical/electronic properties of semiconductors of the gallium nitride (GaN) family. The materials are grown homoepitaxially or heteroepitaxially in the form of thin films, quantum wells (QWs), quantum dots (QDs), and quantum wires on a variety of substrates by Molecular Bea m Epitaxy (MBE) and Hydride Vapor Phase Epitaxy (HVPE). In parallel we are also investigating the growth and fabrication of optoelectronic devices covering the spectral region from the deep UV to terahertz. Such devices include deep UV LEDs and lasers, green LEDs based on InGaN quantum dots (QDs), and terahertz emitters and detectors based on quantum cascade structures. Our group works closely with a number of other BU groups. The crystal structure and microstructure of the materials is investigated in collaboration with Professors Ludwig and Basu. The interaction of InGaN QWs and QDs with plasmonic nanostructures as well the terahertz quantum cascade structures are investigated in collaboration with Professor Paiella. The gain characterization of the deep UV emitting devices is investigated in collaboration with Professor Dal Negro. The experimental work is complemented by theoretical studies based on first principal calculations and simulations by Professor Bellotti.

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MSE SHARED CORE RESEARCH FACILITY The Materials Science and Engineering Core Facility was officially commissioned in June 2012. Since that time, it has grown to house multiple core pieces of equipment for the Materials Science Engineering and Photonics Center Community.

The materials processing area is comprised of two Salare hoods that are dedicated to acid and base processing.

Table space is provided within this room to allow for sample preparation and oven use if applicable.

Two Bruker X-Ray systems have been acquired by an NSF MRI award led by Prof. Ludwig, and are available for faculty usage.

Dr. Jeffr ey Bacon oversees training and maintenance on these two systems. The N8 Horizon and the D8 Discover systems are complementary, and allow for s mall- and wide-angle X-ray scattering (SAXS and WAXS). The N8 Horizon, introduced by Bruker in 2012, is one of the first such systems installed in the US. The instrument is designed for compact spaces and has transmission and grazing incidence SAXS capabilities. The D8 Discover is a very versatile WAXS system with general x-ray

diffraction (XRD), high-resolution XRD, reciprocal space mapping, grazing incidence diffraction, x-ray reflectivity, pole-figure analysis, and sample heating (1000°C) capabilities.

A Zeiss Xradia 410 Versa system was acquired and set up through a separate NSF MRI award, led by Professor Morgan. This tool bridges the gap between high-performing X-ray microscopy (XRM) and less powerful computed tomography (CT) systems. This system provides quantitative 3-D characterization of materials microstructure at multiple length scales down to the sub-micron, including porosity, density, surface area, and topological measures such as 3-D connectivity.

The AFM-FM Microscope that was housed in the core facility is currently undergoing major improvements via a third NSF MRI award led by Professor Goldberg. In conjunction with Asylum, the system is being retrofitted with Raman Spectroscopy for enhanced tip capability. Next to the AFM is a new Renishaw Raman Microscope system that includes a heating/cooling stage and multiple wavelengths for Raman observation. This tool was purchased via the Photonics Center Capital Equipment Committee and is open to all Photonics and Materials Science Engineering faculty.

In the basement of the Photonics Center, the Focused Ion Beam/Transmission Electron Microscope Facility is comprised of two laboratories consisting of 600 square feet, and is overseen by Dr. Alexey Nikiforov. This laboratory houses a recently purchased FEI Quanta 3D FEG FIB (Field Emission Gun Focused Ion Beam) system and a FEI Tecnai Osiris 200kV S/TEM (Scanning/Transmission Electron Microscope).

The FEI Quanta 3D FEG FIB is a powerful tool for SEM (Scanning Electron Microscope) imaging to aid removal and deposition of materials at a micro/nano scale with a resolution of 1.2 nm in the HiVac mode, 2.9 nm in LoVac mode, and 7 nm with the FIB column. The system includes gas injector modules (GIS) and an Omniprobe micromanipulator can be used for TEM sample preparation and lift-out. A Peltier/Heating Stage Control Kit allows

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for the study of in situ dynamic behavior of materials at different humidity (up to 100% RH) and temperatures ( 10°C to 1000°C).

The FEI Tecnai Osiris S/TEM is a versatile scanning transmission electron microscope that allows for brightfield/dark-field imaging, selected area and convergent beam diffraction, and high-resolution imaging with a pointto-point resolution of 0.25nm, and line resolution of 0.102 nm, extended to 0.16 nm with TrueImage™ software, and a STEM resolution of 0.18 nm. The system can seamlessly switch between TEM and STEM modes. The system also includes energy dispersive x-ray (Super-X EDX) capabilities for composition analysis and mapping, and energy filtered TEM with electron energy loss spectroscopy (Gatan EELS) for light element quantification and mapping.

A new sample preparation room to prepare electron transparent samples for use in the TEM is currently operational and open to all Photonics and Materials Science Engineering Faculty. Through equipment purchases at the Photonics Center, a grinder, cut-off saw, disc cutter, automated polishing and lapping equipment, dimpler, and ion mill are all installed.

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VISITING COMMITTEE MEMBERS DR. H. LEE BUCHANAN is currently Venture Partner, Paladin Capital Group in Washington, DC. He is also a Director of Tektronix, Lucent-Alcatel Government Solutions, TestMart, Corp., Advantage Federal, Corp, and the Robotics Technology Consortium. Prior to Paladin Dr. Buchanan was Vice President, Advanced Concepts, EDO Corporation, a $1B producer of Intelligence, Electronic Warfare, sonar, and weapons systems for the U.S. military; Executive Vice President of Perceptis, a holding company for producers of wireless data collection and intelligence systems; and President and CEO of QualStream.

DR. C. BARRY CARTER is Department Head and Professor in the Chemical, Materials & Biomolecular Engineering Department at the University of Connecticut. Professor Carter is the author of the popular textbook, “Ceramic Materials: Science and Engineering”, published by Springer. Professor Carter’s research interests are in characterization of interfaces and defects in ceramics and semiconductors.

DR. GEORGE CRAFORD is currently the Solid State Lighting Fellow at Philips Lumileds Lighting Company.

Prior to joining Philips he was the Technical Director of the Electronics Division at Hewlett-Packard Company. At Hewlett-Packard, Craford’s group pioneered the development of various types of LEDs and products. Dr. Craford is a fellow of the IEEE and a member of the National Academy of Engineering. He has received numerous professional awards including the 2002 National Medal of Technology from the President of the United States in recognition for his contributions to the LED technology.

DR. ARTHUR GOSSARD is Professor of Materials and Electrical and Computer Engineering at the University of California, Santa Barbara. Before going to Santa Barbara in 1987, he was a Distinguished Member of Technical Staff at Bell Laboratories in Murray Hill, New Jersey. He is a fellow of the American Physical Society, the IEEE and the AAAS, a Humboldt Society Senior Award recipient, a member of the National Academy of Engineering and the National Academy of Sciences, a recipient of the 1983 American Physical Society Oliver Buckley Condensed Matter Physics prize, the 2001 American Physical Society James McGroddy New Materials Prize, the 2009 Al Cho International MBE Award and the 2005 John Bardeen Award of the TMS. His research involves the growth of artificially structured materials by molecular beam epitaxy.

DR. JAMES G. HANNOOSH is currently Vice President of Development for Astra Tech, Inc., and former CEO and Senior Vice President of Atlantis Components, Inc. Both companies produce dental implants and medical devices employing advanced materials.

DR. MAX G. LAGALLY is Erwin W. Mueller Professor and Bascom Professor of Surface Science at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. Lagally is the recipient of numerous honors and awards, including his election into the German National Academy of Science, the American Association for the advancement of Science, and the National Academy of Engineering.

DR. RON LATANISION is currently Corporate Vice President & Practice Director at Exponent Engineering and Scientific Consulting, and Professor Emeritus in Materials Science and Engineering at Massachusetts Institute of Technology. He is a member of the National Academy of Engineering and a Fellow of ASM International, NACE International, and the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. Dr. Latanison’s expertise and interests are in the areas of electrochemical science and processing technologies.

DR. PAUL MANKIEWICH serves as Chief Architect, Mobility Solutions at Juniper Networks. Dr. Mankiewich serves as Chief Technology Officer of the Wireless Networks Product Group. He served as Chi ef

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Technology Officer of Alcatel -Lucent for the Americas. Previously, he was Chief Technology Officer and Chief Architect for Lucent Technologies. He was responsible for the technology direction of all Lucent products and solutions including mobile, optica l, switching and data networking solutions, IP Multimedia Subsystem (IMS) and end-user applications. He was the Chief Technical Officer, Mobility Solutions, and also served as Senior Vice President of Networking Research, Bell Laboratories.

DR. KWADWO OSSEO-ASARE is Distinguished Professor of Metallurgy and Energy and Geo-environmental Engineering in the Department of Materials Science and Engineering, and the Department of Energy and Mineral Engineering at Pennsylvania State University. He is a member of the National Academy of Engineering. Professor Osseo-Assare’s research interests are in the areas of materials processing in the aqueous media.

DR. SUBHASH C. SINGHAL is Battelle Fellow and Director, Fuel Cells, in the Energy and Environment Directorate at the Pacific Northwest National Laboratory, and an Adjunct Professor in the Department of Materials Science and Engineering at the University of Utah. He is a member of the National Academy of Engineering and the Washington State Academy of Sciences. He s erved on the Electrochemical Society’s Board of Directors, was President of the International Society for Solid State Ionics. Dr. Singhal’s expertise and interests are in the areas of high temperature materials and solid oxide fuel cells.

DR. HARRY L. TULLER is Professor of Ceramics and Electronic Materials in the Department of Materials Science and Engineering, and Head of the Crystal Physics and Electroceramics Laboratory at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. He is Editor-in-Chief of the Journal of Electroceramics, Fellow of the American Ceramic Society, and elected to World Academy of Ceramics. Professor Tuller’s research interests are in the areas of electroceramics and solid-state materials.

HANS-PETER WEBER, DMD, is the Raymond J. and Elva Pomfret Nagle Professor of Restorative Dentistry and Biomaterials Sciences, and serves as Chair of the Department of Restorative Dentistry and Biomaterials Sciences at the Harvard School of Dental Medicine. His expertise is in the area of dental implants and reconstruction.

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Boston University Division of Materials Science and Engineering Annual Report 2015-2016 Š 2016 Boston University Photography: Boston University Photo Services except where otherwise noted.

Content: Cheryl Stewart, Elizabeth Flagg, Ruth Mason, MSE staff, and MSE faculty

This report provides a description of the instructional and research activities of the Division of Materials Science and Engineering at Boston University during the 2015-2016 academic year. Instructional activities are reported from the Fall 2015 through Summer 2016 semesters while scholarly activities and budget information are reported from July 1, 2015 to June 30, 2016.

Boston University’s policies provide for equal opportunity and affir mative action in employment and admission to all programs of the University.

For more information or to download this report as a PDF, please visit our website at www.bu.edu/ mse.

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