Nanomaterials, Soft Matter, and Electronic Materials Find Common Ground at 2003 MRS Spring Meeting
- PDF / 1,307,148 Bytes
- 18 Pages / 612 x 792 pts (letter) Page_size
- 90 Downloads / 165 Views
MRS NEWS
Nanomaterials, Soft Matter, and Electronic Materials Find Common Ground at 2003 MRS Spring Meeting The interplay of materials with biology took center stage at the 2003 Materials Research Society Spring Meeting, which had both the meeting’s plenary speaker, David A. Tirrell of the California Institute of Technology, and the MRS Outstanding Young Investigator, Tim Deming of the University of California—Santa Barbara, presenting talks with strong biological content. This topic was further explored in Symposium O on Materials Inspired by Biology and in one of the presentations in Symposium X on Frontiers of Materials Research. Also, one of the four clusters of symposia covered Molecular Materials and Biomaterials. Held April 21–25 at the San Francisco Marriott and Argent Hotels in San Francisco, California, the Meeting presented symposia clustered under Electronic and Optical Materials, Nanostructured Materials, and General, in addition to the bio-related cluster. The Meeting—chaired by Terry Garino (Sandia National Laboratories), Hans-Joachim Gossmann (Axcelis Technologies), Lisa Klein (Rutgers University), and Albert Polman (FOM-Institute AMOLF)— incorporated tutorial sessions on exciting areas of research; a series of lunchtime talks on Frontiers of Materials Research for a nonspecialist audience; an afternoon session on “Materials Research to Meet 21st Century Defense,” by the U.S. National Materials Advisory Board along with evening seminars by various funding agencies; and other special events. The Meeting reached over 2600 attendees.
MRS BULLETIN/JULY 2003
The 25 technical symposia were categorized into clusters, with about 1300 oral presentations and nearly 900 posters. The equipment exhibit featured over 90 exhibitors from around the world, displaying a range of equipment, services, products, publications, and software. Once again MRS hosted a Career Center providing valuable services for meeting attendees, including access to current job postings, a resume file for prospective employers to review, and on-site interview opportunities. Graduate Student Gold and Silver Awards were announced as well as awards for best poster presentations. See sidebars covering these and other events. Also see daily meeting news and highlights on the MRS Web site for more detailed reports of the technical content (www.mrs.org/meetings). Technical Talks Biomaterials “Beautiful work, as usual,” said one participant about M. Mrksich’s (Univ.
Chicago) presentation on “Tailored Interfaces to Integrate Cells with Electronics” in Symposium N. Such integration has significant potential because cells are functional and able to produce power, sense, and synthesis abilities that are not yet easily engineered. But integrating them with inorganic materials can be a challenge. As an example, Mrksich focused on the “sensing” ability of materials, noting how cells communicate through molecular recognition, while communication in electronics is through current and voltage. First, the two materials need to adhere to each other. The s
Data Loading...
