Institute of Materials Science - Newsletter 2017

ANNUAL NEWSLETTER 2017

2 CAMMA - UConn/FEI Advanced Microscopy and Materials Analysis

14 IMS Pharmaceutics Professor Could Revolutionize Diabetic Self-Care

30 Experience Eurotech: Three MSE Undergraduates in Germany

Content 6 IMS Scientists Find Material’s Defects Improve Solar Cell Performance

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28 Pushing the Boundaries of Science for a Sustainable Future

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| COLLABORATION | RESEARCH | FACULTY | OUTREACH | FACULTY AWARDS | STAFF | STUDENTS | ALUMNI

This newsletter is produced for the alumni, faculty, students, corporate supporters, and friends of the Institute of Materials Science at the University of Connecticut.

Please direct any questions or comments to: IMSinfo@uconn.edu.

When Push Comes to Shove: Size Matters for Particles in Bloodstream

STAFF WRITER: Olivia Piper  STAFF WRITER & PROOFREADER: Amanda Campanaro 

10 MSE Department Head Dr. Alpay Discusses the Many Joys of His Academic Career

CONTRIBUTORS: IMS faculty and staff Colin Poitras, UConn Communications

PHOTOGRAPHY:

Ryan Glista Peter Morenus et al.

DESIGN & PRODUCTION Heike Brueckner

MESSAGE FROM THE DIRECTOR Hello again or for the first time. This past year has been a very exciting time for the Institute of Materials Science (IMS). Faculty members have been working very hard to obtain enhanced funding for their research programs. In fact, the grant support has increased by about $1.5M. In addition, the Industrial Affiliates Program (IAP) welcomes a new director, Dr. Paul Nahass and a new associate director, Hatice Bodugoz Senturk. Tremendous support from industry and from State and Federal sources have led to numerous new research programs throughout IMS. A major development is the United Technologies Aerospace Systems (UTAS) Center of Excellence established in IMS. This initial 5-year program brings a true partnership to UConn. Several research projects are underway in this program. The UConn/FEI Partnership in Electron Microscopy is continuing with numerous state-of-the-art projects and graduate student fellowships. In addition, several research proposals of the Academic Plan were funded that will lead to unique research capabilities including new instrumentation.

Such developments do not happen overnight, nor do they happen without the strong support of many of you. For that tremendous support we are very thankful. These new efforts have fortified the three major programs of Materials Science, Materials Science and Engineering, and Polymer Science and Engineering in IMS. In turn, the Administration under the leadership of Provost Mun Choi has promised that a new building, Science Building 1, will be the new home of IMS in a few years. We are currently planning the new labs and facilities and how such a move will smoothly occur. Finally, new instrumentation in the Innovation Partnership Building of the UConn Technology Park is being purchased and we will update you when this occurs.

Alicia Huckle, our new financial manager, brings considerable experience from the Hartford Regional Campus of UConn. Josh Strecker is our new building manager who also brings considerable experience in building management from UConn Storrs. We are very fortunate to have such talented people as part of IMS. We are dedicated to continually improving the teaching, research, and outreach efforts of the Institute of Materials Science. We have received outstanding guidance from the IMS External Advisory Board and from faculty members of the Internal Advisory Board.

We look forward to hearing from all of you. Materials Efforts are alive and well in IMS. We appreciate all of the help each of you has given to IMS. Sincerely, Steven L. Suib Director, Institute of Materials Science

There are several new staff members in IMS that are making a major difference in our everyday lives.

www.ims.uconn.edu

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COLLABORATION

CAMMA - UCONN/FEI CENTER FOR ADVANCED MICROSCOPY AND MATERIALS ANALYSIS “The five new instruments represent a great leap forward in the electron and ion beam characterization capabilities at UConn. The types of analyses that we have done previously can now be performed much more efficiently and at far higher resolution.”

Slated for completion in 2017, the Innovation Partnership Building (IPB) will rise as the first of nine proposed buildings, kicking off the development of the UConn Tech Park. Taking cues from university technology parks sprouting across the nation, UConn’s technology park strives to “accelerate innovation with industry, from startups to mid-sized and large companies, provide an active interface linking basic research and industrial applications, and advance state economic development goals.”

In support of this massive undertaking, scientific instrument companies FEI/Thermo Fisher Scientific and EDAX have partnered with UConn and the Institute of Materials Science to develop a state-of-the-art microscopy center to be housed within the IPB. This partnership generously provides special arrangements for the purchase of seven new microscopes and ancillary analytical equipment, funding for a facility manager, and grant money to support future research endeavors.

“The Advanced Characterization Laboratory in the IPB has been specially designed to house sensitive instruments for imaging, diffraction, and spectrometry. The construction of the IPB on a ‘clean’ site, away from the main campus, will provide an environment free from mechanical and electro-magnetic interference that might affect the instruments. This will truly be a worldclass showcase facility for researchers at UConn and for our partners in industry,” says Dr. Mark Aindow, Professor of Materials Science and Engineering and Associate Director of the IMS. The UConn/FEI Center for Advanced Microscopy and Materials Analysis (CAMMA) will house 12 electron microscopes from both FEI and the existing IMS Microscopy Laboratory. With instruments spanning across all three broad microscopy categories (SEM, TEM, and FIB), the Center will be available for IMS graduate students and faculty, as well as UConn’s industry partners, to satisfy all their materials testing and characterization needs.

Capable of examining the surface of materials to determine the structure and composition of micro- to nanosized features, Scanning Electron Microscopes (SEM), like the new FEI Teneo LVSEM, are specialized for failure analysis, guiding materials fabrication, and understanding relationships within and between materials.

The Teneo LVSEM also offers the added advantage of

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a “low vacuum” mode setting, permitting the examination of many materials that conventional, high vacuum SEMs cannot.

To determine the structure and composition of materials at the nano-scale level and smaller, Transmission Electron Microscopes (TEM), like the FEI Talos F200X S/TEM, utilize an electron beam to probe the structure of the material at the atomic level, offering over 10 million times magnification. The Talos F200X S/TEM is especially designed to determine the chemical makeup of materials at extremely high magnifications.

Focused Ion Beam (FIB) instruments, or Dual Beam FIB, incorporate high resolution SEM columns with an additional focused ion beam column to modify a sample at accurately positioned locations determined by the SEM. Capable of removing material, cutting into a material to probe buried layers and structures, adding material to create new shapes, and even cutting material from one location to be placed into another using an integrated micromanipulator, applications are limited only by one’s imagination. The Center will house two types of Dual Beam FIB instruments: a conventional Nanolab G3 gallium-ion beam FIB and FEI’s new xenonion Helios Plasma FIB. The latter instrument is capable of much higher beam currents, which allows cutting and building at a scale approximately 30 times larger than the Nanolab. Together, these instruments allow samples to be modified at a variety of scales.

In 2015 the first phase of CAMMA was completed with the installation of five state-of-the-art electron microscopes within the existing IMS microscopy lab. According to Dr. Aindow, “These five new instruments represent a great leap forward in the electron and ion beam characterization capabilities at UConn. The types of analyses that we have done previously can now be performed much more efficiently and at far higher resolution. More importantly, these instruments enable us to perform many new types of experiments, including in situ studies and three-dimensional tomographic investigations. This is allowing faculty to explore new research opportunities and is attracting new industrial partners to UConn.” In 2017 these instruments will be moved to their permanent home in a custom-designed suite within the IPB. Until the completion of the IPB, however, the IMS Microscopy Laboratory will temporarily house the three

COLLABORATION

FEI Helios Xe Plasma Dual Beam FIB, similar to the G3 FIB but with capability to remove much larger volumes of material by using a high-current, Xenon plasma beam. Dr. Roger Ristau operating. original IMS microscopes and five out of the seven new FEI instruments for current material testing and characterization demands. The final two microscopes will join the ranks once all the microscopes are moved to the permanent facility. The first of these is the aberrationcorrected Titan Themis S/TEM, which is FEI’s most powerful instrument to date. The Titan will provide imaging, electron spectrometry, and X-ray microanalysis at an atomic scale, giving an unparalleled insight into nanoscale structures and phenomena. The second is a monochromated Verios SEM, which will provide surface imaging at a resolution only previously possible in transmission instruments. The Verios will be an invaluable tool in studies of the nanoparticulate and mesoporous materials, used in a wide variety of energy and environmental applications FEI/Thermo Fisher Scientific and EDAX’s commitment to support the research of UConn and the several industry partners that rely on the application of these new microscopes and analysis equipment will continue well beyond the completion of CAMMA’s new facility in the IPB. Dr. Roger Ristau was appointed Manager to oversee the combined activities of the existing IMS Microscopy Laboratory and CAMMA. He holds a Ph.D. in materials science and engineering from Lehigh University, professional experience working at Seagate Technology, Accurel/Evans Analytical, and Sandia National Laboratories, and a decade of experience as the Microscopy Lab academic assistant. The lab team also includes Dr. Lichun Zhang who has extensive expertise in the operation of all the lab’s instruments, and will thus be instrumental in this monumental endeavor. Dr. Lichun Zhang received his Ph.D. from the University of Science and Technology in Beijing in 1999, and held a postdoctoral fellowship with Dr. Mark Aindow before joining IMS as an academic assistant in the Microscopy Lab in 2010.

FEI Teneo LVSEM, a high-resolution SEM with EDS and EBSD, and the capability to operate at ‘low vacuum.’ This allows imaging materials that cannot be imaged well in a conventional, high vacuum SEM. Kan Fu operating.

FEI Helios G3 Dual-Beam FIB, a multi-function tool with highresolution SEM and Focused Ion Beam (FIB). Once the area of interest is located by the SEM, the FIB can be used to remove material by sputtering action. Shannon Poges operating.

FEI Talos TEM/STEM. Transmission and Scanning Transmission Electron Microscope with extremely high magnification capability. Together with the Super X EDS system, this microscope can analyze materials at the atomic level. Bahar Deljoo operating.

www.ims.uconn.edu

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RADENKA MARIC TAKES THE LEAD AS EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR OF TECH PARK Radenka Maric, CT Clean Energy Fund Professor of Sustainable Energy and professor in the Departments of Materials Science and Engineering and Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering, recently became the Executive Director of the new UConn Tech Park. UConn’s Tech Park represents a clear advancement for the research University, as the Innovation Partnership Building (IPB), the crown jewel of the Tech Park, will provide researchers with: “115,000 square feet of state-of-the-art research space and $40 million worth of specialized equipment.”

Maric, who received her Ph.D. from the University of Kyoto, Japan, is very excited about the many possibilities inherent in this project, and believes that this new Tech Park will attract researchers from all across the country, as well as local Connecticut industries. In an interview with UConn Today, Maric stated that what makes this Tech Park, specifically the Innovation Partnership Building, so different from other research buildings already on campus, is the goal of working Professor Radenka Maric with major industries within the state, with UConn able to provide these industries with the essential technology and expertise that they require. According to Maric, the research capabilities of the facility will be state-of-the-art, and “no university in the country will have such a portfolio of equipment with such capability.”

Maric’s particular background and education is perfectly suited to her new position as Executive Director. She has spent her career as an innovator, winning many awards for her groundbreaking research as well as her leadership

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skills, such as the Leadership Award from the National Research Council of Canada in 2006, 2007 and 2008, as well as the Innovation Award from the National Research Council of Canada in 2009. More recently, Maric was a finalist in the Research and Leadership category for the Women of Innovation Award, given by the Connecticut Technology Council in 2013 and 2014; she also represented the Materials Science and Engineering department in the Fall 2016 Accelerate UConn cohort.

In terms of how exactly the Innovation Partnership Building and the Tech Park will advance UConn’s research credibility, Maric states that though UConn is already known for its Institute of Materials Science, making connections and speaking with people about the amazing industry work and cutting edge research that will take place at the Tech Park can only help to grow UConn’s reputation: “Going out and telling people what our new Tech Park facility is and how it is different from everything else that is out there, and how important it is for the objectives of fundamental and applied science. If we do that well, then we can be successful.”

This year alone, Maric has been the keynote speaker at six conferences around the world, and she is confident in her ability and the ability of her fellow faculty members and students to take advantage of the amazing opportunities that the new Tech Park will offer, opportunities that will not only allow students and researchers to grow, but will allow UConn to succeed as well: “I see great opportunities for our professors. I see great opportunities for our students. We will have plenty of training areas for students and this will help them develop the critical skills they need to secure high-paying jobs. With the new capabilities made possible through the IPB and Tech Park, we are going to provide our faculty and students the tools they need to be even more successful. This is an amazing opportunity for UConn to put itself on the map.” 

RESEARCH

MSE FACULTY’S RESEARCH EXPLORES MATERIALS FOR SPACE “The results of this research will represent a paradigm shift in the area of shape memory materials, enable a new design of cryogenic linear actuators, sensors, and switching devices for deep space exploration, and more broadly, suggest a mechanistic path to a whole new class of shape memory materials.”

Each year, NASA accepts a select number of proposals from Early Career Faculty (ECF) at accredited U.S. Universities to award a generous research grant for three years of funding and the opportunity to further research into space exploration. This year, MSE Pratt & Whitney Assistant Professor Seok-Woo Lee’s proposal, “Development of Small-Volume, High-Precision, and Reliable Cryogenic Linear Actuators by Using Novel Intermetallic Compounds,” was accepted for an ECF award.

The Early Career Faculty award is one of the Space Technology Research Grants Program awards granted to universities on behalf of outstanding faculty researchers early in their careers. ECF challenges faculty to examine the theoretical feasibility of ideas and approaches that are critical to making science, space travel, and exploration more effective, affordable, and sustainable.

“Our project aims at a scientific understanding of shape memory effects below 50 K in ThCr2Si2-type intermetallic compounds as well as developing a proto-type cryogenic linear actuator that can be used as a sensor and a switching device in deep cold space, at about 3 K,” says Dr. Lee. ThCr2Si2-type intermetallic compounds exhibit superelasticity and shape memory effects through the reversible phase transformation between orthorhombic and collapsed tetragonal phases. This is completely different from the conventional martensitic-austenitic phase transformation observed in most shape memory materials. What is crucial to their proposal is that these intermetallic compounds exhibit strong shape memory effects below 100 K, which has never been observed before, Dr. Lee explains.

“The results of our research will represent a paradigm shift in the area of shape memory materials, enable a new design of cryogenic linear actuators, sensors, and switching devices for deep space exploration, and more broadly, suggest a mechanistic path to a whole new class of shape memory materials,” says Dr. Lee. The results were achieved through collaboration among lab mates, and among universities. Over the last two years, Dr. Lee has worked as part of a research team to investigate superelasticity and shape memory effects of ThCr2Si2-type intermetallic compounds. This

(Blue panel): Sn-flux grown single crystal CaFe2As2. (Green panel): Density Functional Theory (DFT) calculation of collapsed tetragonal phase transformation. (Red panel): Four red paths in TemperaturePressure Phase diagram demonstrate the possibility of shape memory effects at 25~50 K. Two blue paths demonstrate the possibility of thermal actuation. Corresponding schematic diagrams are available below phase diagram. team includes Professor Paul C. Canfied’s group at Iowa State University, Professor Christopher R. Weinberger’s group at Colorado State University, and Ames Laboratory, which, Dr. Lee said, contributes by growing a single crystal using solution growth technique.

“My research team characterizes mechanical properties, which are the most important data in this project,” he says. Meanwhile, Professor Christopher R. Weinberger’s group performs Density Functional Theory simulations to investigate the atomic-scale processes of superelasticity and shape memory effects. The team’s combined capabilities of synthesis, measurement, and theory enables them to pursue excellent research on these materials. Currently, Dr. Lee’s team leads this project.

The proposal was made in conjunction with Ph.D. students John Sypek and Keith Dusoe’s experimental results which were gathered during Dr. Lee’s first two years at UConn. “I am very happy to see that NASA accepted our preliminary results and potential to develop a new cryogenic actuation technology,” he says.

The funding will allow John Sypek and Keith Dusoe, his first two Ph.D. students, to continue to pursue an understanding of the unique mechanical properties of ThCr2Si2-type intermetallic compounds, and to develop their practical applications. 

www.ims.uconn.edu

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RESEARCH

IMS SCIENTISTS FIND MATERIAL’S DEFECTS IMPROVE SOLAR CELL PERFORMANCE “This study identifies new paths to optimize the performance of cadmium telluride solar cells and increases our understanding of the conductive properties of this promising material.”

A breakthrough materials mapping technique developed by UConn scientists has led to the discovery of highly-conductive properties in cadmium telluride, a promising material that could someday surpass the performance of silicon in solar cells.

While studying the effects of a chloride solution treatment on solar cells made of cadmium telluride, a team of researchers led by UConn UTC Professor of Engineering Innovation Bryan Huey in IMS and MSE noticed that microscopic “fault lines” within and between crystals in the material acted as conductive pathways that eased the flow of electric current.

Normally, such “planar defects” – the fault-like misalignments in the arrangement of atoms within a material – are viewed as a bad thing. They can create dead-end traps in materials that interrupt the flow of electric current in solar cells and reduce their efficiency. But just the opposite is true, it appears, with cadmium telluride.

IMS/MSE professor Bryan Huey, left, and post-doc Justin Luria prepare a specimen for study under a customized Atomic Force Microscope (AFM) in UConn’s Institute of Materials Science. Huey and Luria were part of a team that developed a breakthrough materials mapping technique that can be used to produce unique 3-D images of materials at the nanoscale. (Ryan Glista/UConn Photo)

“Cadmium telluride is a market-ready technology and primary competitor to silicon-based solar cells,” says Justin Luria, a Sunshot Postdoctoral Fellow in Huey’s lab and one of the UConn project’s lead researchers. “This study identifies new paths to optimize the performance of cadmium telluride solar cells and increases our understanding of the conductive properties of this promising material.”

The team’s findings appeared in the Sept. 26, 2016 issue of the journal Nature Energy.

A novel materials mapping technique developed by Luria and UConn graduate student Yasemin Kutes led to the findings. Working in UConn’s Institute of Materials Science over the past two years, Luria and Kutes created an innovative microscopic mapping process that allowed them to capture

hundreds of sequential images of the cadmium telluride as they peeled off one nanoscale layer at a time. The resulting data allowed the team to build a three-dimensional, highresolution ‘tomographic’ map of a cadmium telluride solar cell, somewhat like what is created in medical science during a computed tomography (CT) brain scan, also known as a CAT scan.

Previously, scientists around the world have been limited when scanning surfaces or cross-sections of solar cells using traditional methods. UConn’s research marks the first time scientists have successfully gathered three-dimensional images of photo-electrical currents traveling beneath the surface of a solar cell.

This image shows a slice of cadmium telluride with a 3-D cutaway revealing the pathways of conductivity (bright spots) in crystal grains and along planar defects throughout the material.

(Justin Luria/UConn Image)

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“Everyone using these microscopes basically takes pictures of the ‘ground,’ and interprets what is beneath,” says Huey, an associate professor of materials science and engineering. “It may look like there’s a cave, or a rock shelf, or a building foundation down there. Instead, we carefully dig, like archeologists, keeping track of exactly what we find every step of the way – though, of course, at a much, much smaller scale.”

RESEARCH

UConn researcher Justin Luria observes a sample of a cadmium telluride solar cell that is being tested under artificial sunlight in UConn’s NanoMeasurements Lab. (Photo by Ryan Glista/UConn) The atomic force microscope (AFM) used by Huey’s group in UConn’s NanoMeasurements Lab applies a very fine probe, half a million times sharper than a pencil point, across a surface to track its topography – the hills and valleys of the surface structure. For this project, the researchers simultaneously measured the current induced by exposure to artificial sunlight, just as for an actual solar cell.

The resulting maps created by the UConn team revealed current flowing most freely along the crystal boundaries and fault-like planar defects. Samples of cadmium telluride that had been treated with the chlorine solution had more defects overall, a higher density of these defects, and what appeared to be a high degree of connectivity among them, while untreated samples had few defects, no evidence of connectivity, and much lower conductivity.

The team shared its findings with physicist Eric Stach, head of the electron microscopy group at the Brookhaven National Laboratory’s Center for Functional Nanomaterials (CFN), seeking to confirm its suspicions that the material’s defects were indeed caused by planar shifts in atomic alignments within the crystals. Advanced instrumentation at the CFN, a U.S. Department of Energy Office of Science User facility, would allow researchers there to take UConn’s work another step by analyzing the structure of the material at the atomic scale.

CFN staff physicist Lihua Zhang used a transmission electron microscope and UConn’s results as a guide to meticulously study how atomic-scale features of chloride-treated cadmium telluride related to the conductivity maps.

“When we looked at the regions with good conductivity, the planar defects linked from one crystal grain to another, form-

ing continuous pathways of conductance through the entire thickness of the material,” says Zhang. “So the regions that had the best conductivity were the ones that had a high degree of connectivity among these defects.”

“The advanced imaging process developed at UConn provides scientists a new systematic method that can be used to determine whether defects found in a material are good or bad in terms of conductivity,“ says Stach, who, with Zhang, serves as a co-author on the paper. It can also be used to explore the effects of different processing methods or chemicals to control how defects form.

“There is already a billion-dollar-a-year industry making cadmium telluride solar cells, and lots of work exploring other alternatives to silicon,” says Stach. “But all of these alternatives, because of their crystal structure, have a higher tendency to form defects … In the case of cadmium telluride, we may want to find ways to make more of these defects, or look for other materials in which defects improve performance.”

Either way, Stach says, combining the new computed tomography technique developed at UConn and electron microscopy yields a “clear winner” in the search for more efficient, cost-competitive alternatives to silicon solar cells.

This research was supported by the U.S. Department of Energy’s (DOE) Office of Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy (EERE) – including its Sunshot Program – and the DOE Office of Science. The cadmium telluride samples were provided by Andrew Moore of Colorado State University.

Colin Poitras - UConn Communications

www.ims.uconn.edu

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RESEARCH

WHEN PUSH COMES TO SHOVE: SIZE MATTERS FOR PARTICLES IN BLOODSTREAM “When it comes to using particles for the delivery of cancer drugs, size matters. When you have a bigger particle, the chance of it bumping into blood cells is much higher, there are a lot more collisions, and they tend to get pushed to the blood vessel walls.”

A UConn engineering professor in the IMS Polymer Program has uncovered new information about how particles behave in our bloodstream, an important advancement that could help pharmaceutical scientists develop more effective cancer drugs.

Making sure cancer medications reach the leaky blood vessels surrounding most tumor sites is one of the critical aspects of treatment and drug delivery.

While surface chemistry, molecular interactions, and other factors come into play once drug-carrying particles arrive at a tumor, therapeutic medication doesn’t do very much good if it never reaches its intended target.

Assistant Professor Anson Ma’s Complex Fluids Lab used a fluorescence microscope to illuminate a microfluidic device that simulates a blood vessel. The research team was then able to observe and measure how particles of different sizes behave in the bloodstream. Their finding, that particle size matters, could aid the development of more effective cancer drugs. (Anson Ma/UConn Photo)

Anson Ma, Assistant Professor of chemical and biomolecular engineering, used a microfluidic channel device to observe, track, and measure how individual particles behaved in a simulated blood vessel.

Ma says he wanted to learn more about the physics influencing a particle’s behavior as it travels in our blood and to determine which particle size might be the most effective for delivering drugs to their targets. His experimental findings mark the first time such quantitative data has been gathered. The study appears today in the Biophysical Journal.

“Even before particles reach a target site, you have to worry about what is going to happen with them after they get injected into the bloodstream,” Ma says. “Are they going to clump together? How are they going to move around?

Are they going to get swept away and flushed out of our bodies?”

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Using a high-powered fluorescence microscope in UConn’s Complex Fluids Lab, Ma was able to see particles moving in the simulated blood vessel in what could be described as a vascular Running of the Bulls. Red blood cells race through the middle of the channel as the particles – highlighted under the fluorescent light – get carried along in the rush, bumping and bouncing off the blood cells until they are pushed to open spaces – called the cell-free layer – along the vessel’s walls.

What Ma found was that larger particles – the optimal size appeared to be about 2 microns – were most likely to get pushed to the cell-free layer, where their chances of carrying medication into a tumor site are greatest. The research team also determined that 2 microns was the largest size that should be used if particles are going to have any chance of going through the leaky blood vessel walls into the tumor site.

RESEARCH

“When it comes to using particles for the delivery of cancer drugs, size matters,” Ma says. “When you have a bigger particle, the chance of it bumping into blood cells is much higher, there are a lot more collisions, and they tend to get pushed to the blood vessel walls.”

The results were somewhat surprising. In preparing their hypothesis, the research team estimated that smaller particles were probably the most effective since they would move the most in collisions with blood cells, much like what happens when a small ball bounces off a larger one. But just the opposite proved true. The smaller particles appeared to skirt through the mass of moving blood cells and were less likely to experience the “trampoline” effect and get bounced to the cell-free layer, says Ma. Assistant Professor Anson Ma

Ma proposed the study after talking to a UConn pharmaceutical scientist about drug development at a campus event five years ago.

“We had a great conversation about how drugs are made and then I asked, ‘But how can you be sure where the particles go?’” Ma recalls, laughing. “I’m an engineer. That’s how we think. I was curious. This was an engineering question. So I said, ‘Let’s write a proposal!’”

The proposal was funded by the National Science Foundation’s Early-concept Grants for Exploratory Research or EAGER program, which supports exploratory work in its early stages on untested, but potentially transformative, research ideas or approaches.

Knowing how particles behave in our circulatory system should help improve targeted drug delivery, Ma says, which in turn will further reduce the toxic side effects caused by potent cancer drugs missing their target and impacting the body’s healthy tissue.

The findings were particularly meaningful for Ma, who lost two of his grandparents to cancer and who has long wanted to contribute to cancer research in a meaningful way as an engineer.

Nanocarrier particles injected into the bloodstream bounce off red and white blood cells and platelets, and are pushed toward the blood vessel walls. This physical interaction, measured and quantified for the first time by engineering professor Anson Ma’s lab, provides important information for drug developers.

the bloodstream long enough for imaging to occur. In that case, smaller particles would be better, says Ma. Moving forward, Ma would like to explore other aspects of particle flow in our circulatory system, such as how particles behave when they pass through a constricted area, such as from a blood vessel to a capillary. Capillaries are only about 7 microns in diameter. The average human hair is 100 microns. Ma says he would like to know how that constricted space might impact particle flow or the ability of particles to accumulate near the vessel walls.

“We have all of this complex geometry in our bodies,” says Ma. “Most people just assume there is no impact when a particle moves from a bigger channel to a smaller channel because they haven’t quantified it. Our plan is to do some experiments to look at this more carefully, building on the work that we just published.”

Joining Ma on the current study were Ph.D. candidate Erik Carboni; Brice Bognet from UConn’s polymer program in the Institute of Materials Science; chemical and biomolecular engineering associate professor Leslie Shor; Ph.D. students Grant Bouchillon and Andrea Kadilak; and undergraduate student Michael Ward.

Colin Poitras - UConn Communications

Measuring how particles of different sizes move in the bloodstream may also be beneficial in bioimaging, where scientists and doctors want to keep particles circulating in

www.ims.uconn.edu

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FACULTY

MSE DEPARTMENT HEAD DR. ALPAY DISCUSSES THE MANY JOYS OF HIS ACADEMIC CAREER “I really enjoy mentoring and advising students.

That’s the reason I am in academics, to work with young minds on new materials systems, concepts, and their applications.”

Professor S. Pamir Alpay, Materials Science and Engineering (MSE) Department Head, can find practical applications of science in almost anything, from fictional food replicators in Star Trek to 3-D printing of aircraft parts. Anyone can see that Dr. Alpay is driven by a lifelong passion for materials science and engineering. But he is equally motivated by the rewarding experience of working with young minds, and seeks creative and exciting new ways to teach and learn.

Enthusiasm for the science is required when there are so many materials to research and products to develop.

Among Dr. Alpay’s most current collaborative efforts is a project for UTAS (United Technologies Corp. Aerospace Systems) to help develop novel aluminum (Al) alloys, with the help of Dr. Rainer Hebert, Director of the Additive Manufacturing Innovation Center (AMIC).

“UTAS is particularly interested in a new generation of alloys that would be additively manufacturable. We are using theoretical tools and materials genomics concepts to do this,” Dr. Alpay says. Also with Dr. Hebert, they are working to understand defect microstructures

Professor S. Pamir Alpay, MSE Department Head (right), participates in an interview with Amanda Campanaro, MSE/IMS Written Communications Assistant (left). in titanium (Ti) and what is happening on the surfaces of Ti and Ti-based alloys. This is important because mechanical properties of Ti and its alloys depend strongly on the defects and their concentration.

The third project is an ongoing collaboration with Professor Steven Suib, the Director of IMS and Professor

Dr. Alpay’s recent work with his team and collaborators is focused on metallic systems for aerospace applications. On the left is a titanium crystal structure displaying all potential defect sites. The figure on the right shows the minimum value of formation energies for impurity atoms selected across the periodic table. The most significant result from this study is that metallic impurities, regardless of their atomic size and the chemical environment, occupy substitutional sites while non-metals assume either interstitial positions or form impurity pairs resulting in dimers depending on thermodynamic conditions.

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FACULTY

of Chemistry, on the development of better catalysts.

“We are using first-principles based methods in describing surface reactions and in the design of unique catalysts for a number of applications in the field of clean energy,” Dr. Alpay explains.

Until very recently, Dr. Alpay’s research mostly concentrated on the theoretical modeling of functional oxides, but his current interests are more aligned with metallurgy and surface chemistry. “Al alloys are used all over an aircraft – including fuselage and landing gear,” he says. “Furthermore, Ti alloys are used in aerospace applications where high strength at high temperatures are needed. They are also employed in medical devices and orthopaedic joint replacements.”

Dr. Alpay conducts research for projects with several colleagues from the MSE department including Drs. Serge Nakhmanson, Rainer Hebert, Bryan Huey, and George Rossetti, with whom they share a lab. “For many years, I had the pleasure of working with Professor Mark Aindow on several projects, including very recently one from GE (General Electric) on the development of new materials residential circuit breakers,” Dr. Alpay says. “I get to collaborate with excellent colleagues in our department.”

He maintains a joint appointment with the Physics Department and enjoys teaming up with several faculty in Physics, including Assistant Professor Jason Hancock and Professor Barry Wells. Alpay says: “I also work very closely with Steven Suib on surface chemistry and catalysis.”

Though Dr. Alpay always found engineering interesting and excelled at math and physics, he was first introduced to materials engineering by his aunt and uncle. “Both were accomplished mechanical engineers working in metal processing,” he explains. “My aunt would talk about the steel plant she was working in, blast furnaces, metal casting, and the ‘new’ field of metallurgy and materials engineering.”

Dr. Alpay received his Ph.D. in Materials Science and Engineering in 1999 from the University of Maryland, where he studied the physics of ferroelectric thin films, and remained a postdoctoral research associate at the Materials Research Center at the University of Maryland until 2001. The researchers who inspired Dr. Alpay were Professor Ramamoorthy Ramesh (Member of National Academy of Engineering), now at UC Berkeley; Professor Manfred Wuttig, and his Ph.D. advisor Professor Alexander Roytburd. “Alec and Ramesh have been an inspiration for me and steered me towards a career in academia. I owe a lot to them,” Dr. Alpay says.

As an undergraduate and a Master’s student, Dr. Alpay was mentored by notable engineering researchers such as Professor Sakir Bor, who recently passed away, and Professor Riza Gurbuz, both of the Middle East Technical University (METU). Since joining UConn in 2001, Dr. Alpay has been an invaluable leader, educator, and researcher, contributing a depth of knowledge and guidance to better the MSE Department.

When MSE became an independent Department again in 2012, Dr. Alpay, then a Program Director of MSE in the combined Department of Chemical, Materials, and Biomolecular Engineering, was nominated by his peers to lead the new MSE Department. His goals for the department have focused on increasing the undergraduate and graduate student enrollment and to strengthen ties with Connecticut industry. Dr. Alpay was named last year the Director of the UTAS Center for Advanced Materials, which opened in collaboration with UConn to advance materials research in MSE and IMS. However, it is his work with young minds that really gives his career meaning. “I really enjoy mentoring and advising students. That’s the reason I am in academics, to work with young minds on new materials systems, concepts, and their applications,” he says.

“In terms of research, my graduate students are my colleagues and co-workers. We are a team.” It is clear how much he enjoys teaching, as he was elected MSE’s Teacher of the Year and UConn School of Engineering Outstanding Faculty Advisor in 2013. He is an elected Fellow of the American Physics Society Award and a Member of the Connecticut Academy of Sciences and Engineering. 

(Left to right): Professor and MSE Department Head S. Pamir Alpay, Ph.D. student Fu-Chang Sun, Post-Doctoral Research Associate Sanjeev K. Nayak, Post-doctoral Research Associate Sanjubala Sahoo, Ph.D. student Mehmet Tumerkan Kesim, Ph.D. student Hamidreza Khassaf, Ph.D. student Yomery Espinal, and Ph.D. student Tulsi Patel enjoy a dinner.

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HOW PROFESSOR RAMPRASAD’S GROUP IS SHAPING MATERIALS DISCOVERY “While quantum mechanics is very powerful, robust and accurate, it is very computationally expensive. Machine learning can efficiently ‘interpolate’ between the results of quantum mechanics; quantum mechanics and machine learning can lead to expert materials recommendation systems.”

Recently, there has been some interesting activity in Professor Rampi Ramprasad’s lab. As a computational materials scientist, Professor Ramprasad and his group members — composed of graduate students and post-doctoral researchers — are involved in computation-guided materials discovery.

(Left to right): Dr. Venkatesh Botu, Ph.D., currently a research scientist at Corning Inc.; Dr. Martin Hoffman, a visiting scientist; Dr. Chiho Kim, Postdoctoral fellow; Rohit Batra, third-year Ph.D. student; Dr. Huan Tran, Postdoctoral fellow; James Chapman, Lihua Chen, Arun Kumar Mannodi Kanakkithodi, all graduate students; Dr. Sridevi Krishnan, Postdoctoral fellow; Dr. Ramprasad, and Erik Nykwest, graduate student.

The Ramprasad group studies materials on the computer—virtually—using fundamental theories such as quantum mechanics and data-driven methods such as machine learning. These methods accelerate significantly the design and discovery of new application-specific materials by virtually screening thousands of new materials even before they are actually made, and provide guidance for the specific types of materials that should be made and tested. This type of activity, which would have been viewed as “science fiction” just a few decades ago, is rapidly becoming a prominent sub-field of materials science here at UConn and around the world.

A recent highlight of Professor Ramprasad’s research relates to his work on polymer insulators for electrostatic energy storage. The Office of Naval Research, through the Multidisciplinary University Research Initiative (MURI), funded this work. Along with his colleagues, Professor Greg Sotzing (a synthetic chemist) and Professor Yang Cao (an electrical engineer), his current graduate students Arun Mannodi-Kanakkithodi and Lihua Chen, his current post-docs Dr. Huan Tran and Dr. Chiho Kim, and many other present and past group members of his and his colleagues’ teams, Professor Ramprasad has been able to show how quantum mechanics based computations can truly drive and transform the discovery of new materials.

“We have come up with several new polymers which did not exist before but appear to be very suitable and very promising for capacitor-based energy storage ap-

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plications,” Professor Ramprasad explains. Their work has been recently summarized in articles in Advanced Materials, under the title “Rational Co-Design of Polymer Dielectrics for Energy Storage”, and in Progress in Materials Science, under the title “Advanced Polymer Dielectrics for High Energy Density Applications”.

The MURI project is aligned with the White House Materials Genome Initiative (MGI) launched by President Obama in 2011 “to help businesses discover, develop, and deploy new materials twice as fast.”

Professor Ramprasad attended the 5-year anniversary event of the MGI at the White House in August 2016, in which several MGI accomplishments were highlighted, including the UConn-lead MURI effort. “It is an honor to be a part of our polymer discovery effort,” Professor Ramprasad says. For him, the MURI project has been an extraordinary learning experience, providing an in-depth view of the many aspects and challenges involved in the path from fundamental science, to validation, to realworld applications.

A new addition to his computational toolkit arsenal is “machine learning,” a branch of artificial intelligence that is concerned with how we can create a computer system that can automatically and progressively learn and improve through experience. “Within the context of materials science, such a paradigm can help transform the discovery process, and make it far more efficient, by using available materials data and new data that can be intentionally created in a careful manner, e.g., using quantum mechanics,” Professor Ramprasad explains.

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While quantum mechanics is very powerful, robust and accurate, it is very computationally expensive. Machine learning can efficiently “interpolate” between the results of quantum mechanics; quantum mechanics and machine learning can lead to expert materials recommendation systems. One such system to efficiently explore the polymer genome and design suitable polymer materials is available at khazana.uconn.edu, thanks to the efforts of Dr. Chiho Kim, Dr. Huan Tran and Arun Mannodi-Kanakkithodi. A recent article in Reviews in Computational Chemistry, titled “Machine Learning in Materials Science: Recent Progress and Emerging Applications,” discusses how data-centric learning tools can make materials exploration more efficient.

Professor Ramprasad believes that the basic notions and philosophy underlying machine learning have enormous implications for several aspects of materials science. For instance, along with his graduate students James Chapman and Rohit Batra, post-doc Dr. Huan Tran and several others in his group, he is investigating how a computer system may be trained to learn from itself and its own experiences during the course of a quantum mechanics based materials simulation. This has lead to a new family of machine learning “force fields” that could lead to materials simulations at quantum mechanical accuracy but 6-8 orders of magnitude faster. Along with post-doc Dr. Chiho Kim, Professor Ramprasad is exploring ways to mine materials data for laws, guidelines and rules, which can improve intuition about materials enormously.

Their recent work was published in Chemistry of Materials, titled “From Organized High-throughput Data to Phenomenological Theory: The Example of Dielectric Breakdown.”

It’s been a busy year for Professor Ramprasad. Another new project he is working on deals with the unusual behavior of a well-known material, hafnium dioxide (or HfO2). Under certain conditions, this material displays switchable electrical polarization, i.e., ferroelectricity— the electrical analog of ferromagnetism. Along with his colleague Professor George Rossetti, graduate student Rohit Batra, post-doc Dr. Huan Tran, and Professor Jacob Jones, a collaborator at the North Carolina State University, Professor Ramprasad is currently trying to explain how and under what circumstances hafnium dioxide may display this surprising behavior.

“It was a puzzle as to why this material should display ferroelectricity because you don’t expect it based on what was known previously about this material. Electronic devices based on hafnium dioxide in this new polar state can transform how we store information in a computer,” Professor Ramprasad explains.

Professor Ramprasad received his B. Tech. in Metallurgical Engineering at the Indian Institute of Technology, Madras, India, before going on to earn an M.S. in Materials Science & Engineering at Washington State Univer-

sity, and a Ph.D. in Materials Science & Engineering at the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign. He worked at Motorola as a technical staff member in their R&D division for six years before joining UConn in 2004.

When asked why he chose an academic job, Professor Ramprasad said that the freedom to pursue academic research, the opportunity to work with students, and teaching lured him to his current occupation.

While Dr. Ramprasad thinks that academia is the right place for him, he nonetheless values the time he spent at Motorola. “It made me more flexible and adaptable,” he explains. He also gained a perspective on the connection between research and real-world applications.

“For the most part, I think science should be useful to society.” All of these things, he says, contributed to his success in academia. Likewise he encourages his students to develop a big picture with regard to their research and to be able to communicate beyond the academic level.

His dedication to academia and shared learning is evident. In the classroom, he experiments with non-traditional modes of teaching, by arranging scientific debates and quiz contests and “flipping” the classroom. His research too is somewhat non-traditional, and operates at the crossroads of disciplines. His collaborations are diverse and cut across disciplinary, institutional and national boundaries. Professor Ramprasad says that modern academic research has evolved into an interdisciplinary group effort. He believes that he is personally a beneficiary of this cooperation-based research landscape.

Professor Ramprasad derives great pleasure from working with his students and post-docs, inspiring them and being inspired by them. “A lot of the exciting contributions we are able to make are because of the talented group members that I’ve had in my projects. I am fortunate to have (had) a passionate set of students and postdocs in my group,” Professor Ramprasad said.

His past students and post-docs are presently at Seagate, University of Sydney, Los Alamos National Laboratory, Shanghai Jiao Tong University, Indian Institute of Technology (Madras), Army Research Laboratory, FritzHaber-Institut, University of Munich, Oak Ridge National Laboratory, Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, and Corning, Inc. Professor Ramprasad says “Seeing them succeed—there is no replacement for that joy.”

Professor Ramprasad is a Fellow of the American Physical Society and an elected member of the Connecticut Academy of Science and Engineering. He is the recipient of the Alexander von Humboldt Fellowship, the Max Planck Society Fellowship for Distinguished Scientists, the United Technologies Corporation Professorship for Engineering Innovation, and most recently, the UConn Centennial Term Professorship. 

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IMS PHARMACEUTICS PROFESSOR COULD REVOLUTIONIZE DIABETIC SELF-CARE “Our sensor is injectable and functions to give glucose readings 24/7 with no inconvenient and painful finger pricking.”

For diabetic patients, metabolic monitoring and glucose management is about to become a lot more efficient, and, hopefully, cost effective. Diane J. Burgess, Board of Trustees Distinguished Professor of Pharmaceutics, UConn School of Pharmacy, is working to bring a miniaturized, injectable biosensor that gives more reliable readings 24/7, and is likely to revolutionize the drug manufacturing process, to the market.

Professor Burgess is working on this groundbreaking pharmaceutical project in collaboration with Professor Fotios Papadimitrakopoulos, of UConn IMS and Chemistry, and Professor Faquir Jain, of UConn IMS, Electrical and Computer Engineering. In conjunction with researchers at UConn and Biorasis (a UConn startup company), she is collaborating on a totally implantable, miniaturized biosensor for metabolic monitoring. This collaborative research is particularly important because it is likely to have a direct impact on the pharmaceutical industry, and thus, on patients all over the world.

“This is a very cool project, as it brings together diverse expertise to solve a problem that has practical importance to diabetic patients,” Professor Burgess explains. “Our sensor is injectable and functions to give glucose readings 24/7 with no inconvenient and painful finger pricking.” As mentioned, it also enhances glucose management with increased reliability in the data since it allows for continuous readings rather than a few discrete timepoints, according to Dr. Burgess.

This ground-breaking research is likely to revolutionize the manufacturing process of drug products,

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Professor Burgess (left) received the 2014 AAPS Outstanding Educator Award from the 2014 AAPS President Marilyn Morris. while also working toward a goal of lowering the cost of these finished products and medicines for the consumers who require them.

Professor Burgess also works on pharmaceutical processing and manufacturing issues for complex pharmaceutical products in conjunction with colleagues at the FDA (Food and Drug Administration). She is renowned for her work on developing testing methods for complex drug products. In particular, she focuses on injectable drug products.

Professor Burgess received her Ph.D. in pharmaceutics from University College London, in the UK. As a Board of Trustees Distinguished Professor of Pharmaceutics in the School of Pharmacy, she now teaches Pharm.D. and Ph.D. students.

Additionally, she has a very active research group and does a lot of professional service work, such as her term as the President of the American Association of Pharmaceutical

Scientists in 2002 and President of the Controlled Release Society in 2009. Currently at UConn, Diane has a research group consisting of 2 postdoctoral fellows, a research technician, 7 graduate students and 12 undergraduate students. She collaborates with professors, as well as researchers outside of UConn. Dr. Burgess gives credit to the worldclass professors she was lucky to study under at University College London and at the University of Strathclyde in Glasgow, Scotland, for cultivating her interest in a scientific career. She was inspired by Professors J.B. Stenlake, A.T. Florence. and W. C. Bowman, well-published scholars and scientists of pharmaceutical chemistry, pharmaceutics and pharmacology, while she was completing her B.S. in pharmacy at the University of Strathclyde.

As for inspiration, Dr. Burgess says “working with the students at UConn is great, and I very much

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enjoy teaching them and doing research with them.”

The undergraduate, graduate and postdoc students working with her are equally as thrilled, as she has been given a multitude of awards for her fantastic teaching, leadership and research capabilities, including the 2014 AAPS Outstanding Educator Award, the Distinguished Service award from the University of Connecticut School of Pharmacy in 2009, the Outstanding Teacher of the Year Award in 1992 and 2005, the School of Pharmacy, University of Connecticut, Teacher of the Year in 2005, the 2014 AAPS (American Association of Pharmaceutical Scientists) Research Achievement Award in Formulation Design and Development and The APSTJ Nagai International Woman Scientist Award from the Japanese Pharmaceutical Science Association in 2011.

Additionally, Professor Burgess has over 202 refereed publications, and is the editor of two books. She has given over 547 research presentations, over 271 invited lectures, and 21 keynote addresses at major international scientific meetings.

Overall, her insatiable drive to do more and to be more keeps her, those around her, and the work they do, moving forward at warp speed.

When discussing her favorite quote, which she feels best describes her passion and work ethic, Dr. Burgess references what tennis player Andy Murray said at the moment he became the number one player in the world: “I will work even harder.” 

From Storrs to Shanghai, IMS Professor Aims to Bridge International Collaboration Yao Lin, Associate Professor of Chemistry in the Polymer Program of the Institute of Materials Science, has become very passionate about chemistry and polymer science—and about encouraging intercontinental collaboration on it. With a background in chemistry, polymer and molecular biology and a degree from Fudan University, China, Dr. Lin is interested in researching bio-inspired materials for the future and developing educational opportunities for students at home and abroad.

Associate Professor Yao Lin

Dr. Lin and his lab are currently working on two projects which mimic certain natural protein polymers and complex enzymes to create synthetic, bio-inspired materials. One direction is trying to understand the cooperative folding and interactions between complex macromolecules containing synthetic polypeptides to mimic the dynamic process of protein polymerization. According to Dr. Lin, the protein polymerizations provide the filaments with excellent mechanical strengths for our muscles, our cells, and contribute to cell movement. The reason cells can move is partially because these protein fibers can grow on one end, and shrink on the other end.

The other direction involves mimicking an enzymatic structure that forms “teams” that can degrade cellulose into sugars. When bacteria develop complex structures like nano-machines that recruit six to ten different types of enzymes into a team, they can work much more effectively than individual enzymes. Dr. Lin and his group are researching whether they can replace that type of protein scaffold with synthetic polymers, and thus design the chemistry at interface between these polymers and proteins. This will allow them to recruit different engineered proteins in an organized manner.

“We are trying to understand if we can encourage some kind of synergistic actions between these enzymes, and eventually, whether we can build up some kind of nano-machines,” Dr. Lin explains. He imagines making something like “nanospiders” that can move on the cellulose surface and degrade the polysaccharides when they are moving around.

“A lot of my research involves some kind of physical and biophysical chemistry, polymer synthesis and characterization, and model-based mechanistic studies.”

As a high school student in China, Dr. Lin had to decide his major before applying to college, as students generally did at that time. Dr. Lin received an early offer from Fudan University, because of his good performance in the Physics Olympiad. “I was 17 years old, and I didn’t want to take physics because that was my dad’s major,” he explains, “but I wasn’t very interested in chemistry back then.” However, one of his family’s friends, who was a polymer scientist, highly recommended the

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Schematic Illustration of Supramolecular Polymerization of Complex Polymers into Tubular Superstructures.

interdisciplinary subject. “He gave me a lecture about plastics and rubber, and convinced me that the field has a very bright future and my interest in physics would also pay off. Indeed, I became more and more interested,” Dr. Lin says.

Fudan University has a big chemistry and polymer department with faculty from very diverse fields, which presents an excellent opportunity for collaboration.

Through an exchange program Dr. Lin initiated, UConn chemistry students can study abroad at Fudan University in China while Fudan students can carry out research at UConn during the summer.

“China is still a developing country but they invest a lot of money in research. Particularly, the research in chemistry and materials has made very rapid progress in the last two decades. Our students will be able to learn something new there, on the other side of the earth. I was a student at Fudan and I also understand how important it is if you bring students abroad to the U.S. for a couple of months. It is a mind-opening experience,” says Dr. Lin. This idea is what motivated him to begin a summer exchange program for undergraduates between Fudan University and UConn.

The program, which became official in 2012, has been running for three years so far and got renewed very recently. This exciting program is very constructive for students and faculty from both universities because, in addition to hosting exchange students, they host joint symposiums on specific topics, visiting scholars, and Fudan University has invited Chemistry and IMS fac-

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ulty to give short summer courses for their students.

Currently there are six chemistry students who have visited Fudan, and twelve students from Fudan have visited UConn.

“What better collaboration to engage in than with one of the top-ranked schools in China? Excellent undergraduate students from Fudan have been engaged in summer research in Storrs, and the first ones have now become graduate students here,” Chemistry Department Head Christian Brückner said. Professor Brückner believes chemistry and science in general thrives on collaborations. “No institution possesses all the expertise to be able to compete alone in the modern global science world,” he says.

“Right now, we would like to bring it to the next levels.

For example, we hope we can initiate long term collaborations in selected research directions. And we want to get the graduate students involved in the exchange.”

There are activities encouraging student collaboration between the universities, and the faculty publish joint papers with the visiting students, but there is limited collaboration at the faculty level. Dr. Lin believes this can only be driven by the faculty.

“Everybody only wins in a good collaboration,” Professor Brückner says. He believes the UConn-Fudan collaboration is characterized by a purpose, strong commitment, good organization, and many connections on many levels. “There are strong personal connections between Uconn and Fudan, and I am looking forward to expanding our interactions.” 

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MEET NEW MINDS AT IMS Sina Shahbazmohamadi, Assistant Professor in the Department of Biomechanical Engineering as well as Director of the CHASE lab here at UConn, received his Ph.D. in mechanical engineering from UConn in 2013. While working toward his Ph.D. he studied the mechanical behavior of thermal barrier coatings (TBCs) used in gas-turbine engines. His work within this field led to the invention of a patented technology that is used to predict the life of TBCs non-destructively.

He has also been published in 10 different journals and conference proceedings. In 2014, Sina Shahbazmohamadi completed his postdoctoral fellowship in electrical and computer engineering at UConn. His current research focus is centered around: Hardware Security Assurance, Nondestructive Reliability and Failure Analysis of micro/nanoscale systems, X-ray Tomography and applications, Tera Hertz Spectroscopy and Imaging and Advanced Manufacturing Techniques. Dr. Shahbazmohamadi’s work has also led him to take part in unique and interesting projects associated with UConn, such as working with a Ph.D. candidate in music history and theory, Robert Howe, along with multiple musicians, in order to 3-D print antique instruments, allowing them to be played successfully once again.  Since joining UConn’s Department of Chemistry as an assistant professor in August 2016, Dr. Rebecca Quardokus has been interested in characterizing and developing new materials and methods for next-generation electronics. After earning her Ph.D. in chemistry at the University of Notre Dame in 2013 and completing a year-long postdoctoral term at the same department, she worked as a postdoctoral research associate at the NaAssistant Professor tional Institute of Standards and Rebecca Quardokus Technology (NIST) for two years.

While at NIST, Dr. Quardokus worked as a member of the Nanoscale Reliability Group in the Applied Chemicals and Materials Division, using LT-UHV four-probe scanning tunneling microscopy (STM) to study low-dimensional materials. Currently, her research interests lie at the intersection of materials science, chemistry, and physics, where she investigates a range of issues including the reliability of self-assembled monolayers, engineering, characterization, and reliability of twodimensional materials, and coupling and manipulating molecular rotors. The Quardokus Research Group uses STM as the primary tool to investigate surface-confined molecular interactions and two-dimensional materials.

Currently, one project characterizes the reliability of self-assembled monolayers (SAMs) after exposure to external perturbations, while another project focuses on surface-confined synthesis of two-dimensional materials. Among Dr. Quardokus’ achievements are the Rohm and Haas Outstanding Graduate Student Award earned during her Ph.D. research, a publication titled “Green’s function modeling of response of two-dimensional materials to point probes for scanning probe microscopy,” in Physics Letters A this year and “Solving the counter ion and clocking problems in molecular QCA: Synthesis of a neutral mixed valence diferrocenyl carborane,” in Angewandte Chemie last year. Dr. Quardokus is a member of AVS: Science and Technology of Materials, Interfaces, and Processing, the American Chemical Society, and the Materials Research Society. 

Assistant Professor Sina Shahbazmohamadi

Dr. Ki Chon, Krenicki Department Head and Professor of Biomedical Engineering, received his Ph.D. from the University of Southern California, and was a postdoctoral fellow, studying cardiovascular physiology and biomedical engineering, at MIT. His research interests are wide ranging, and include: medical instrumentation, biomedical signal processing, and identification and modProfessor Ki Chon eling of physiological systems.

Dr. Chon’s laboratory which is currently working on six different research projects focuses on medical instrumentation, biosignal processing, modeling, simulation and development of novel algorithms to understand dynamic processes and extract distinct features of physiological systems. The six unique projects that are currently being researched in Dr. Chon’s laboratory include evaluation of the effects of oxygen toxicity and hyperbaric environments on the autonomic nervous system, real-time detection of atrial fibrillation, atrial flutter and atrial tachycardia from surface ECG, spatio-temporal analysis of renal autoregulation, noninvasive assessment of diabetic cardiovascular autonomic neuropathy (DCAN) from surface ECG or pulse oximeter, vital sign monitoring from optical recordings with a mobile phone and wearable devices for vital sign monitoring. As well as being a respected faculty member at UConn, Dr. Chon has been given multiple awards, including being a Fellow for the International Academy of Medical and Biological Engineering (IAMBE), a Fellow for the American Institute for Medical and Biological Engineering (AIMBE), the Program Co-Chair of the 28th International Conference of the IEEE EMBS, 2006, NYC, and he became a Krenicki Endowed Chair Professor in 2014. 

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MEET NEW MINDS AT IMS Dr. Zaghi Bridges the Gap for Next Generation Structures Upon speaking with Arash E. Zaghi, a new IMS affiliated faculty member and Assistant Professor in the Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering, one quickly discovers his passion for creativity in engineering. Though creativity and engineering don’t always seem to go hand-in-hand, Dr. Zaghi is hoping to change the conversation and the teaching methods surrounding engineering, bringing both projects and mindsets into the 21st century.

“We have to become creative, more creative actually, and we should be more open-minded about adopting new technologies,” he says, when discussing the corrosion and disrepair of the over 60,000 bridges in our country that have been identified as structurally deficient. In his technical research work on materials for next generation structures, his focus has been set on rebuilding and strengthening bridges around the nation, ensuring that the newer models are better than those created 50 or 60 years ago — many of which are reaching the end of their service lives.

Currently, his research addresses the need for fast and effective repair methods for bridges with corrosion problems, and how to best utilize the huge amount of funding that is required to update these structures. In this venture his advice is to “get creative,” recognizing that the best way to keep these bridges secure is to reinvent how they are created by researching and utilizing new materials.

“I am currently working on a research project that is funded by the Connecticut Department of Transportation (ConnDOT), and we are using an advanced concrete material, ultra-high performance concrete (UHPC) to repair these bridges,” Dr. Zaghi says. Testing that they have done in the past year and a half shows that theirs is a good alternative to the current costly and time consuming repair methods.

His research with the ConnDOT is proving to be extremely fruitful, as his work recently resulted in the Connecticut Department of Transportation winning the “High Value Research” award, a competitive national award presented by the American Association of State Highway and Transportation Officials. He is also excited about his work with building new bridges with hybridcomposite materials (composed of both metal and nonmetal fibers). These materials are particularly ductile and would allow bridges to better withstand extreme events such as earthquakes and blasts, as well as daily wear and tear.

Dr. Zaghi’s passion for bridges and building did not begin with this research, however. He says that he has

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had a lifelong love of infrastructure and gets a creative spark when it comes to structures. “I always liked building stuff, and structural engineering is very relevant to that,” Dr. Zaghi explains. “I Assistant Professor Arash E. Zaghi loved playing with Legos and building towers, structures have always been my passion, and I think it’s a passion of many of the students.”

This passion deepened during his college years and when earning his Ph.D. in civil engineering from the University of Nevada, Reno, in 2009. Now, his love of structures motivates him both in his research and when working with students. As an award-winning teacher (he was given the C.R. Klewin, Inc. Excellence in Teaching Award in 2013 and 2014), Dr. Zaghi hopes to impart to his students knowledge in addition to a sense of creativity and ­­love of engineering that he believes is vital to the craft.

He even tries to evaluate student learning in unique and creative ways designed to test content knowledge and resourcefulness. “I actually give bonus points to students who did something exciting, and took a different approach, I value that a lot,” Dr. Zaghi explains. For this ability to see beyond facts and figures, he credits many of his own past professors not only for teaching him the material, but for showing him what it means to be a passionate instructor. “In addition to doing a good job teaching the material, they encouraged us to think outside the box. They told us that this is not the end of the line, that we were just scratching the surface.

They told us how many great things can be done in this area.”

Overall, Dr. Zaghi is someone who exudes passion for the work he does, a passion that is obviously not lost on his colleagues and others in the field, as he was recently selected for the National Academy of Engineering’s 2016 US Frontiers of Engineering Symposium. Whether his work is conducting exciting research that could help to repair and rebuild the thousands of bridges in dire need in CT, or working with students to create the next advancement in the field of Civil Engineering, he is truly dedicated as a researcher, a teacher, a mentor and an engineer. 

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MEET NEW MINDS AT IMS Since 2014, Dr. Tasoglu has been an assistant professor in the department of Mechanical Engineering. He received his Ph.D. in mechanical engineering from UC Berkeley in 2011. When working towards his Ph.D., his research focused on transport phenomena and pharmacokinetics of anti-HIV microbicide drug delivery. Currently, his research interests include: complex fluid dynamics, micro-assembly approaches, magnetics, microfluidics, cell and tissue mechanics, regenerative medicine, cryopreservation, and cell-based diagnostics for point-of-care. In his UConn research group, Dr. Tasoglu works with dozens of undergraduate students, research specialists, graduate students and postdoctoral researchers. Dr. Tasoglu is a well-respected researcher and highly motivated teacher, as evidenced by the many fellowships and awards he has been given, including the: Chang-Lin Tien Fellowship in Mechanical Engineering, Allen D. Wilson Memorial Scholarship, and the UC Berkeley Institute Fellowship for Preparing Future Faculty. Outside of UConn, his work has been featured on the covers of many journals and magazines, including: Advanced Materials, Small, Trends in Biotechnology, and Physics of Fluids and highlighted in Nature Assistant Professor Medicine, Boston Globe, Reuters Health, and Boston Magazine. Additionally, he has published Savas Tasoglu over 40 co-author articles in similar journals, such as: Nature Communications, Nature Materials, Advanced Materials, PNAS, Small, ACS Nano, Chemical Society Reviews, Trends in Biotechnology, Scientific Reports, Physics of Fluids, and Journal of Computational Neuroscience. Recently, media coverage focusing on his work has discussed how bioengineers plan to use 3-D printing, as well as his research into an easy and cost-effective test for the diagnosis and monitoring of sickle cell disease.  Hatice Bodugoz Senturk, the recently appointed Associate Director of the Industrial Affiliates Program (IAP), received her Ph.D. in physical/polymer chemistry, from Hacettepe University in Ankara, Turkey. Her graduate studies provided her with a diverse background where she learned about subjects like polymer synthesis and characterization, while simultaneously cultivating her love of research and diversity within academics. Her Dr. Hatice Bodugoz Senturk passion for academia led her to her previous work at Massachusetts General Hospital as a principal investigator while holding an instructor position at Harvard Medical School, where she worked on developing new materials for musculoskeletal system disorder. Her new position as Associate Director of the Industrial Affiliates Program at UConn IMS has allowed her to bridge academia with industry, focusing specifically on problem solving. She is excited about the variety of projects and the amount of growth that is inherent to IAP, as well as the fantastic team that the program currently possesses. Her experience so far has been excellent, as the diverse and challenging work that she is exposed to on a daily basis meshes expertly with her expansive background. She is confident that the program will continue to grow, and continue to serve Connecticut’s industry with its extremely successful characterization laboratories such as microscopy, thermal analysis, mechanical, spectral and chromatographic analysis. Eventually, she says that the ultimate goal is to: “expand the Industrial Affiliates Program, to help even more companies with their research, development and production problems.”

Overall, she is intrigued by the many interesting prospects that not only the Industrial Affiliates Program, but also Connecticut itself has to offer, as a Boston resident, confident that not even an artic Storrs winter could shake her current enthusiasm and excitement for her position. 

Paul Nahass, the newly-appointed Director of the Industrial Affiliates Program, received his Ph.D. from MIT in materials science and engineering. Before coming to UConn, he spent 25 years working in industry in the Boston area, where he had a broad range of research and development director jobs, working for companies in the materials area in fields including: carbon nanotubes, industrial textiles, composites, silDr. Paul Nahass ica aerogels, and wearable technology. He also started his own company in the field of wearable technology, which is still running, allowing him to blend his passion for industry and technology in a hands-on way. His industry experience allows him to have a much deeper understanding of companies with R&D and characterization needs. His ability to “feel the pain” of these companies, combined with his broad, technical background makes it easy for him to understand exactly what companies are looking for and what they need. He is very excited about the idea of building bridges between UConn and the industrial community, and believes that the Industrial Affiliate Program’s ability to provide meaningful solutions to very real problems can only grow as the program advances. In the near future, he would like to include more biotech companies into the Industrial Affiliates Program, on both the pharmaceutical and medical device side: “The Institute of Material Sciences has incredible characterization facilities and expertise to interpret their output. We are solving these problems now and I hope to get the word out quickly.” 

www.ims.uconn.edu

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SEMINARS & LECTURES

INDUSTRIAL AFFILIATES PROGRAM (IAP)

INSIDE THE IMS INDUSTRIAL AFFILIATES PROGRAM Departures and arrivals have marked a year of change and growth at the IMS Industrial Affiliates Program.

But even amidst change, the IAP has maintained its dedication to providing the highest quality services to its members and industry partners.

With the departure of Dr. Fiona Leek as acting director, Dr. Paul Nahass joined the program as director in May 2016. Paul brings extensive industry and research experience to this role as well as a desire to find improvements to our offerings and grow our membership. His 25 years of industry research and development work have already begun to pay dividends in new memberships and expanded services.

Dr. Hatice Bodugoz Senturk, our new associate director, comes to us from Massachusetts General Hospital and possesses extensive research and characterization experience. Her dedication to seeing every project to a satisfactory conclusion is evident in her daily interactions with our members and partners as she coordinates the successful completion of each project with the talented staff of our characterization laboratories.

The program welcomed four new members in 2016.

BYK USA is part of a multinational company with operations in North America, South America, Europe, Asia, and the Middle East. BYK Additives & Instruments is one of the world’s leading suppliers in the field of additives and measuring instruments. Duracell is known worldwide for its batteries and power storage technology and has headquarters in Bethel, CT and Geneva, Switzerland. Duracell is a subsidiary of Berkshire Ha-

SAVE THE DATE!

IMS Industrial Affiliates Program Annual Meeting on 24th May, 2017 20

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thaway. Dur-A-Flex is a principal supplier of colored quartz aggregate to the seamless flooring industry.

The East Hartford, CT-based company has “50 years of extensive field knowledge and innovation in seamless commercial/industrial flooring systems and polymer components — epoxies, urethanes and methyl methacrylates (MMA) plus premium colored quartz aggregates.” Chemtura Corporation, a former member, is a global specialty chemical company headquartered in Philadelphia, PA with principal executive offices in Middlebury, CT. Chemtura provides products and solutions for the transportation, energy, and electronics industries. We are happy to welcome Chemtura back.

Members and industry partners can benefit from the latest equipment to arrive in the IMS. Anton Paar’s state-of-the-art MCR 702 TwinDrive rheometer was placed on loan in IMS in July 2016 as the result of a partnership with IMS faculty member and rheology specialist, Dr. Anson Ma. The MCR 702 TwinDrive combines two torque transducers and drive units in a modular setup, which allows for maximum flexibility.

It comes with many accessories that allow the user to configure the instrument easily to study the flow behavior and structure of various fluids while controlling the test environment precisely. The MCR 702 offers nanoscale precision with consistent gap control and is equipped with the rheo-microscopy setup and an oven which provides gradient-free and accurate temperature control in all measuring systems.

As it has always done, the IAP stands ready to assist members and partners with small projects. Partnering with IMS faculty researchers who serve as principle investigators on these projects, the IAP director and/or associate director may serve in a project management capacity to ensure a smooth process from beginning to end. In addition, we can advise industry partners going through the Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) grant application process. The IAP can bring together IMS faculty members and industry partners to explore focus, timeline, and other steps in the process.

The IMS Industrial Affiliates Program is industry’s partner in research, development, and quality control. We look forward to serving our members and partners in the coming year.

OUTREACH

Faculty Award Briefs IAP Short Course

INTRODUCTION TO ELECTRON MICROSCOPY APPLICATIONS Spring 2017

The goal of this two-day short course is to familiarize participants with the applications, capabilities, and limitations of common electron microscopes and associated techniques. By the completion of the course, each attendee will have a better understanding of what can be expected of a microscopy services lab, what type of information can be obtained from each instrument/ technique, and how to interpret the data provided by electron microscopy.

The techniques discussed in this short course will be Scanning Electron Microscopy (SEM), Transmission Electron Microscopy (TEM), Energy Dispersive X-ray Spectroscopy (EDXS), and Focused Ion Beam (FIB). The course will familiarize attendees with the basic hardware and functions of the instruments, explain how images are formed and how to interpret them, and provide live demonstrations on each instrument.

Course Highlights • Introduction and Overview of Instrument Hardware • Sample Preparation and Handling • Data Acquisition and Interpretation • Capabilities and Limitations of Techniques • Demonstrations Who Should Attend This course is intended for non-experts who are responsible for requesting microscope services, or who will be receiving and interpreting results.

Join our mailing list to receive full details on this and other IMS Industrial Affiliates Program events.

Contact: rhonda.ward@uconn.edu

Dr. Jason Hancock of the Physics Department is among the recipients of the Fall 2016 Scholarship Facilitation Fund Award (SFF), announced by the Office of the Vice President for Research. Hancock received the award for work on his project titled “Exploring Light/ Sound Energy Conversion Using Negative Thermal Expansion Materials”. The SFF is designed to assist faculty in the initiation, completion, or advancement of research projects, scholarly activities, creative works, or interdisciplinary initiatives that are critical to advancing the faculty member’s scholarship and creative projects.

Dr. Rainer Hebert of MSE has been named a Castleman Professor in Engineering Innovation after achieving a range of accomplishments in academia throughout the years. He currently serves as Director of Undergraduate studies, as well as Director of the Additive Manufacturing Innovation Center in partnership with Pratt & Whitney, where he leads additive manufacturing research projects and manages the expansion of the Center. Dr. Hebert’s research interests now focus on the melting and fusion behavior of powder beds interacting with laser beams and the phase selection during the solidification stages of additive manufacturing.

He also is the winner of the MSE Award for Teaching Excellence after receiving the greatest number of votes from MSE graduating seniors. The award was created in order to recognize faculty members who have positively influenced MSE students in regard to their academic, research, extracurricular, and personal development. In their statements nominating Dr. Hebert for the award, students noted that he “is extremely knowledgeable,” “has great presentation skills,” “is always available to help students,” and “is a great mentor.”

Dr. Bryan Huey of MSE has been named a United Technologies Corporation (UTC) Professor in recognition of his excellence in research as an associate professor and performance as the Director of Graduate Studies. Advanced SPM from his nmLabs focuses on high speed SPM, multiferroics, inorganic as well as molecular perovskite solar cells, and nano-bio-mechanics, with notable papers over the past two years in journals such as Nature, Nanoletters, Applied Physics Letters, and many more. Prior service includes his position as chair of the Basic Science Division of the American Ceramic Society, a co-organizer of the EMA conference, and a co-organizer for the 2017 US-Japan dielectrics meeting.

www.ims.uconn.edu

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AWARDS

Faculty Award Briefs Dr. Seok-Woo Lee, MSE Pratt & Whitney Assistant Professor, has been awarded an Early Career Faculty (ECF) award for outstanding research in his proposal “Development of Small-Volume, High-Precision, and Reliable Cryogenic Linear Actuators by Using Novel Intermetallic Compounds.”

The proposal investigates ThCr2Si2-type intermetallic compounds for use in deep cold space. These compounds exhibit superelasticity and shape memory effects through the reversible phase transformation between orthorhombic and collapsed tetragonal phases, and exhibit strong shape memory effects below 100 K. This has never before been observed.

Dr. Cato T. Laurencin, University Professor, Institute for Regenerative Engineering Endowed Chair Professor, Department of Orthopaedic Surgery, and UConn Health Tenured Professor, School of Engineering, is a recipient of the 2016 National Medal of Technology and Innovation from the president of the United States. The award is the nation’s highest honor for technological achievement that is bestowed by the president on America’s leading innovators. In 2016 he received the Connecticut Medal of Technology for his development of revolutionary technologies with important application in the marketplace.

Dr. Anson Ma, CBE and IMS, has been nominated by Dr. Megan Creighton from 3M Company to receive a 3M NonTenured Faculty Award. This award recognizes outstanding junior faculty members who are selected based on their research, experience and academic leadership, to help the selected faculty achieve tenure and conduct research, and is granted as part of 3M’s support of innovative research in higher education. Dr. Ma’s research focuses on understanding the complex flow behavior (rheology) and processing of various complex fluids such as foams, emulsions, nanoparticle suspensions, and biological fluids, with particular interest in improving the reliability and pushing the existing resolution limit of inkjet and 3D printing technology.

Dr. Michael T. Pettes, Mechanical Engineering, has been awarded a 2016 NSF CAREER award for his proposed research “CAREER: Understanding the Roles of Strain and Mass Disorder on Fundamental Thermal Transport Processes in Two-Dimensional Materials”. The 5-year project was awarded by the Chemical, Bioengineering, Environmental, and Transport Systems Division of the Directorate for Engineering (ENG/CBET) and will provide a conceptual advancement in knowledge concerning the effect of mechanical stimulus and isotopic disorder on heat transfer in technologically-relevant 2D materials.

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Dr. Rampi Ramprasad, MSE, has been chosen for appointment to a Centennial Term Professorship as the School of Engineering continues to celebrate 100 years of research and growth. The Centennial Term Professorships, established through an anonymous donation of $1 million, are aimed at recognizing outstanding faculty members who have left a lasting impact on the School of Engineering through leadership and innovation in teaching, research, mentorship, engagement, and institution building.

Dr. Luyi Sun, IMS and the Department of Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering (CBE), was elected to be a Fellow of the Society of Plastics Engineers (SPE). The SPE Fellowship is a distinction reserved for those who have made extraordinary accomplishments in the field of plastics engineering, science or technology. Several accomplishments, including his research of polymers and polymer based composites and his co-patented, innovative injection stretch blow molding, a process that makes containers, contributed to this achievement. Dr. Sun’s research revolves around how to make plastics work better in our daily lives.

He also has been admitted as a Fellow of the Royal Society of Chemistry (RSC), a professional society based in the United Kingdom with over 50,000 members worldwide.

Fellow of the Royal Society of Chemistry (FRSC) is given to elected Fellows who have made significant contributions to the chemical sciences. Dr. Sun was nominated for his research into materials chemistry.

Dr. Jing Zhao, Chemistry, and IMS associated faculty member, is the recipient of both an Early Career Faculty award and the National Science Foundation CAREER Award in 2016. This honor recognizes Dr. Zhao’s leading example in conducting outstanding research, guiding in education, and the integration of both research and education, and will provide financial support for her research project Synthetically Controlled Plasmon-Multiexciton Interaction in Semiconductor-Metal Hybrid Nanostructures. Her research aims to distinguish optical and structural properties of nanoparticles and to recognize the interaction between materials at the single particle level. 

SUPPORT UCONN IMS Over the past fifty years, the UConn Institute of Materials Science (IMS) has invested in scientific developments within the state, nation, and across the globe. Our students, faculty, staff, and alumni continue to make countless contributions made possible by the educational, outreach, and research efforts of IMS. IMS is home to more than 150 graduate students performing research in our materials science, materials science and engineering, and polymer science programs.

Please consider donating to the Institute as we make strides toward a richer future.

Your donation to the fund(s) of your choice will directly contribute to our efforts to keep our research infrastructure and graduate education strong.

An Unrestricted IMS General Fund Account (20312) This account supports all IMS activities, from maintenance of supplies to industrial collaborations.

Julian F. Johnson Alumni Fellowships Fund (22177) This account provides fellowships to graduate students in the IMS Polymer Program. The Polymer Program is the only center in Connecticut dedicated to research and education in polymer science and engineering and is nationally and internationally recognized for its excellence.

Materials Science and Engineering (MSE) General Fund Account (22165) This account supports the Materials Science and Engineering Program offered by the Department of Materials Science and Engineering. MSE focuses on the production, processing, characterization, selection, design, and modeling of materials.

The Owen F. Devereux MSE Undergraduate Excellence Scholarship (31384) Funds will be used to provide undergraduate merit-based scholarships in honor of Professor Owen F. Devereux, to students in the Materials Science and Engineering Program.

IMS Equipment and Maintenance (21753) This account provides cutting-edge equipment and maintenance for the wide-range of advanced research instruments and facilities housed within IMS.

IMS Polymer Mixture Thermodynamics (20334) This account supports graduate students and faculty studying polymer mixtures.

Please make checks payable to The UConn Foundation in the memo line and indicate the fund(s) of your choice.

Mail payment to: Steven L. Suib, Director Institute of Materials Science University of Connecticut 97 North Eagleville Road, Unit 3136 Storrs, CT 06269-3136

www.ims.uconn.edu

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External Advisory Board The IMS External Advisory Board (EAB) helps to focus the efforts of IMS in areas of teaching, service, and research.

The EAB is made up of world-wide experts in the area of materials science and consists of members from governmental and industrial labs. The Board meets twice a year to provide advice and help in long-range planning.

Matthew Dougherty GE, Industrial Solutions

Thomas Gordon Gerber Technology

Werner Kaufmann BASF Corporation

Joseph Kozakiewicz Cytec Industries, Inc.

Joseph Krzyzaniak Pfizer Global R&D

Bob Luther Lex Products Corporation

Matthew Mashikian IMCORP

Carmen Molina-Rios DECD, State of CT

Richard Muisener Evonik Corporation

David L. Pappas Duracell Research and Development

Francis Preli Pratt & Whitney

Karl M. Prewo Innovatech, LLC

Leah Reimer Cantor Colburn, LLP

Mark Roby Neomend, Inc.

Shawn Williams Rogers Corporation

Jack Crane CONNSTEP, Inc.

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IMS AFFILIATED FACULTY Biomedical Engineering Dr. Dr. Dr. Dr. Dr.

Ki Chon Kazunori Hoshino Cato T. Laurencin Sina Shahbazmohamadi Wendy Vanden Berg-Foels

Chemical & Biomolecular Engineering

Dr. George M. Bollas Dr. Kelly A. Burke Dr. Cato T. Laurencin Dr. Yu Lei Dr. Anson W. K. Ma Dr. Jeffrey R. McCutcheon Dr. William E. Mustain Dr. Mu-Ping Nieh Dr. Richard S. Parnas Dr. Leslie Shor Dr. Luyi M. Sun Dr. Julia A. Valla

Chemistry

Dr. Douglas H. Adamson Dr. Alexandru D. Asandei Dr. William F. Bailey Dr. Jie He Dr. Rajeswari Kasi Dr. Challa Vijaya Kumar Dr. Yao Lin Dr. Fotios Papadimitrakopoulos Dr. Eugene Pinkhassik Dr. Rebecca Quardokus Dr. Jessica Rouge Dr. James F. Rusling Dr. Thomas A. P. Seery Dr. Gregory Sotzing Dr. Steven L. Suib Dr. Jing Zhao

Civil & Environmental Engineering Dr. Dr. Dr. Dr. Dr. Dr.

Jeong-Ho Kim Baikun Li Ramesh Malla Kay Wille Arash E. Zaghi Wei Zhang

Electrical & Computer Engineering Dr. Rajeev Bansal Dr. Yang Cao Dr. Maria Chrysochoou Dr. Ali Gokirmak Dr. Faquir C. Jain Dr. Helena Silva Dr. Geoff Taylor

Materials Science & Engineering Dr. Mark Aindow Dr. S. Pamir Alpay Dr. Harold D. Brody Dr. C. Barry Carter Dr. Avinash M. Dongare Dr. Pu-Xian Gao Dr. Rainer J. Hebert Dr. Bryan D. Huey Dr. Theodore Z. Kattamis Dr. Cato T. Laurencin Dr. Seok-Woo Lee Dr. Radenka Maric Dr. Serge M. Nakhmanson Dr. Ramamurthy Ramprasad Dr. George A. Rossetti Jr. Dr. Mei Wei

Mechanical Engineering

Dr. Baki Cetegen Dr. Xu Chen Dr. Wilson K. S. Chiu Dr. Robert X. Gao Dr. Kazem Kazerounian Dr. Leila Ladani Dr. Ying Li Dr. George Lykotrafitis Fr. Thanh D. Nguyen Dr. Julian A. Norato Dr. Michael T. Pettes Dr. David M. Pierce Dr. Savas Tasoglu Dr. Dianyun Zhang

Molecular & Cell Biology Dr. Dr. Dr. Dr.

James L. Cole Kenneth M. Noll Victoria L. Robinson Carolyn M. Teschke

Physics

Dr. Elena E. Dormidontova Dr. Niloy Dutta Dr. Gayanath W. Fernando Dr. George Nicholas Gibson Dr. Philip L. Gould Dr. Douglas S. Hamilton Dr. Jason Hancock Dr. Menka Jain Dr. Richard T. Jones Dr. Jeffrey S. Schweitzer Dr. Boris Sinkovic Dr. Barrett O. Wells

Plant Science & Landscape Architecture Dr. Cristian P. Schulthess

Pharmaceutical Sciences Dr. Dr. Dr. Dr. Dr. Dr. Dr.

Robin H. Bogner Diane J. Burgess Bodhisattwa Chaudhuri Devendra Kalonia Debra A. Kendall Xiuling Lu Michael Pikal

UConn Health Center Dr. Dr. Dr. Dr. Dr. Dr. Dr. Dr. Dr. Dr.

Douglas J. Adams A. Jon Goldberg J. Robert Kelly Yusuf Khan Liisa Tiina Kuhn Sangamesh Kumbar Cato T. Laurencin Wai Hong (Kevin) Lo Lakshmi S. Nair Syam Nukavarapu

Emeritus/Retired Faculty

Dr. Dr. Dr. Dr. Dr. Dr. Dr. Dr. Dr. Dr. Dr. Dr. Dr. Dr. Dr. Dr. Dr. Dr. Dr. Dr. Dr. Dr. Dr. Dr. Dr. Dr. Dr. Dr.

Thomas Anderson James P. Bell Philip E. Best Robert R. Birge Joseph I. Budnick Anthony DiBenedetto Steven A. Boggs Harry Frank James Galligan Norman Garrick Maurice Gell William Hines Eric H. Jordan Lawrence A. Kappers Quentin Kessel James Knox Harris L. Marcus Matthew Mashikian Robert Northrop Arthur McEvily Douglas Pease Donald Potter Wolf-Dieter Reiter Dan A. Scola Montgomery T. Shaw Winthrop W. Smith William C. Stwalley Chong Sook P. Sung

IMS Scientific Staff

Dr. Hatice Bodugoz Senturk Mr. Mark Dudley Mr. Gary Lavigne Dr. Paul Nahass Dr. Laura Pinatti Dr. Roger Ristau Ms. JoAnne Ronzello Dr. Lichun Zhang

IMS resident faculty are indicated in bold

www.ims.uconn.edu

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STAFF

MEET THE STAFF Having worked at UConn for over 10 years, Alicia Huckle has many years worth of experience and increasing responsibilities in a university setting, which have been equally distributed between managing foundation, university, state, revenue and grant accounts. Alicia Huckle, the recently appointed Assistant Finance Director for the Institute of Materials Alicia Huckle Science, began her professional career at the IMS in September, 2013.

Joshua Strecker, the recently appointed Building Services Manager in charge of infrastructure, came to the Institute of Materials Science because he was ready for a new challenge. According to Strecker, “the multidisciplinary environment, as IMS houses faculty from three different academic programs,” Joshua Strecker gives him exactly that, a new and interesting challenge that he is excited to take on.

Her educational background includes a B.S. in mathematics from Eastern Connecticut State University in 2003 and a Masters of Business Administration in management and operations and information management from UConn in 2014. On a daily basis, her work includes managing all university and sponsored program accounts within IMS to ensure compliance with accounting practices at both the state and federal level. Additionally, this work involves: budget planning, projections, analyzing, and reporting. Huckle is very excited about her new role within the IMS, crediting her interactions with faculty as one of the highlights of her position. She most enjoys: “working with them through the entire proposal and award process to assist them in successfully conducting their research.” Lately, her hobby is being a new mother to her almost four month old son. 

As Building Services Manager, Strecker is responsible for overseeing much of what allows the IMS to function on a day-to-day basis, including: monitoring and maintaining all building systems, coordinating maintenance with outside contractors and UConn facilities and conducting safety exams that both students and faculty are required to take before gaining access to the laboratories. Strecker is no stranger to UConn, as his last position was the Building Services Manager for the department of Chemistry, and prior to that, he worked for the Academic Renovation, supporting lab renovation projects here at UConn. Outside of his work with UConn, Strecker is an avid fisherman and mountain biker. 

The Institute of Materials Science (IMS) and Materials Science and Engineering (MSE) websites are the face of the respective programs, and an integral part of advertisement and recruitment. The responsibility of maintaining them belongs to Heike Brueckner, Webmaster and Publicist for IMS and MSE, who designs print media and creates presentations, among other tasks.

Heike joined UConn in 2009 as Webmaster and Publicist for the Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering department before joining the IMS and MSE Departments in 2013.

After completing her undergraduate degree, she worked for several years as a training instructor for word processing and desktop publishing software. Heike went on to earn an MBA with a focus on IT and Human Resources, graduating the best of her class.

Prior to moving to the United States, Heike worked for twelve years as an Assistant to the Managing Director and Manager for Human Resources at an international company that provides engineered industrial products. Adding to her diverse experiences, Heike studied sculpture and painting full-time for two years with a German-American artist.

Heike Brueckner Outside of IMS and MSE, Heike is involved with several community outreach and charity organizations. She is the health records coordinator for Echo Dogs White Shepherd Rescue, a non-profit organization comprised of a network of volunteers dedicated to finding good homes for White German Shepherds.

Heike also serves as webmaster and print media designer for the Windham Area Habitat for Humanity. 

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STUDENTS

For Ph.D. Candidate Hamidreza Khassaf, UConn MSE is a Dream Come True For Hamidreza Khassaf, pursuing a Ph.D. in UConn’s Materials Science and Engineering department was written in the stars. While he was pursuing his M.Sc. in MSE at Sabanci University, Istanbul, Turkey, his advisor was an Alumni of UConn’s MSE department. From then on, it was a straight trajectory from his work as an M.Sc. student to his current research in Dr. Alpay’s lab.

“My M.Sc. advisor, Dr. Burc Misirliuglu, is a UConn alumni from Dr. Alpay’s lab as well, and since working with him, I always followed the research that was done at UConn,” Hamidreza says. “The work in this group was very well in line with my M.Sc. work and applying for UConn MSE program was an obvious move for me.”

Currently, his research involves studying the effects of variables such as temperature, mechanical stress, and electric field on physical properties of functional materials. “Particularly, I have interest in ferroelectric materials and their piezoelectric and caloric behavior. I work with various material systems in search for enhanced properties in order to be able to implement them in novel systems and devices,” he explains.

Earlier this year, Khassaf’s research involving AFM probes, titled “Acoustic Detection of Phase Transitions at the Nanoscale,” was published in Advanced Functional Materials to the enthusiasm of the scientific community. News that external electrical and mechanical stimulations in ferroelectric material systems could potentially lead to enhancement of properties such as dielectric response and piezoelectricity spread to global news sites like Eurek Alert! and phys.org.

Hamidreza Khassaf, MSE graduate student Hamidreza completed his B.S. degree in Materials Engineering with a minor in Metallurgical Engineering at Amirkabir University of Technology in Tehran, Iran, in 2009, followed by his M.Sc. degree in MSE from Sabanci University. He joined UConn MSE in 2012, where he began researching sol-gel synthesis of oxide thin films and their structural and electrical properties. In the Functional Materials group at UConn, his current research activities revolve around phenomenological theory of ferroelectric transitions and synthesis/characterization of perovskite structures.

Within Dr. Alpay’s group, Hamidreza works on various problems from understanding the physics behind a phenomenon in functional materials to synthesis and characterization of different materials systems. “I feel blessed to have had the opportunity to work with Professor Alpay,” he explains. “I am fortunate enough to work with so many knowledgeable and helpful graduate students and postdocs in the group as well as other professors within the MSE department with whom I have had a lot of fruitful discussions.”

Hamidreza aims to build a career in academics, specifically in the area of functional materials for electronic and energy applications. He is currently looking for a good postdoctoral position where he can improve his skills and knowledge in the field and be better prepared to achieve his goal.

The angular variation of polarization and free energy surface landscape at RT through the transition from c-phase to aa-phase for PMN-0.70PT at different levels of misfit strain.

“Graduating from a great Ph.D. program is undeniably one of the most important requisites to be a good candidate for a faculty position. Considering my time here and the opportunities that UConn MSE offered me, I have a feeling that I am in the right track.” 

www.ims.uconn.edu

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STUDENTS

PUSHING THE BOUNDARIES OF SCIENCE FOR A SUSTAINABLE FUTURE “The stethoscope is the one tool that almost always comes into contact with a patient, whether they have strep throat, MRSA (Methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus), or the common cold.”

People don’t visit doctors’ offices to pick up infectious bacteria, but often that is what happens. This notion led undergraduate Ryan Cordier, a fifth semester honors undergraduate in the MSE and Biomedical Engineering departments, to develop a new approach to stethoscope hygiene that would decrease patient exposure to bacteria.

With Dr. Alpay as an advisor, Ryan has conducted research in Dr. Huey’s group since his freshman year, where he assisted a graduate student with research on the characteristics of ferroelectric domain propagation in Lead Zirconium Titanate (PZT) using a novel approach to a microscopy technique called Piezoresponse Force Microscopy (PFM). Building upon the research techniques he gained early on, Ryan has turned his attention toward improving patient experiences in a clinical setting by eliminating the risk of transferring infections.

Ryan developed the project last January when he and two other UConn students- fellow biomedical engineering major Amisha Dave and physiology and neurobiology major Liz Pouya - attended the Yale Healthcare Hackathon. Within 24 hours, Ryan and the others proposed and developed a small, wall-mounted dispenser that a doctor or nurse can use to apply a small protective film to the stethoscope before using it on the patient. “The film, instead of the stethoscope, will pick up any microbial agents during contact with the patient,” Ryan says.

“The film can be disposed of before it leaves the room.”

Ryan believes this product has the potential to prevent a large number of infections acquired at hospitals.

This summer their proposal won the Innovation Quest (IQ) grant, which funds original student ideas to help implement them in the real world. The IQ program provided professional assistance for Ryan and his team, which ultimately led them to file a utility patent on the design and form their own company.

“We decided the pursue the notion of turning our idea into a small entrepreneurial venture, and began entering various other innovation competitions,” Ryan says.

“We were incredibly surprised to receive first place in the IQ challenge.”

They decided to couple their efforts with an independent research study to validate the potential for stethoscope hygiene to prevent the spread of infection in clinical settings. With the support of a UConn IDEA Grant, they are conducting research which involves swabbing

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stethoscopes at the Student Health Services clinic and analyzing the bacterial strains to quantify the number of microbes that are being transmitted every day by stethoscopes.

If all goes well, Ryan would be on the verge of revolutionizing the patient’s experience in clinical environments. “The stethoscope is the one tool that almost always comes into contact with Ryan Cordier, MSE undergraduate a patient, whether they student have strep throat, MRSA (Methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus), or the common cold,” Ryan explains. “I’m very excited to see the results of our research project through the IDEA program.”

This project would add to Ryan’s many accomplishments as an undergraduate engineer with big ideas for the future. Ryan is also the Project Lead of Engineers Without Borders’ (EWB) Ethiopia Project, where he oversees technical design and travel logistics. This project involves designing an irrigation system that will improve water retention in the Abba Samuel River Watershed, a rural village in northwest Ethiopia. The village currently has no functioning infrastructure to gather or store water used for irrigation. With partial funding from United Technologies Research Center (UTRC), the students traveled to Ethiopia last January to conduct preliminary observation of the site, and to facilitate stronger ties with the community. They have spent months designing a new distribution system to improve water retention.

“We hope to implement this new system in summer 2017,” Ryan explains. “One of the largest challenges we face is to make sure the community understands exactly why and how we are building these additions, so that the farmers can extend and repair it without our assistance.” The EWB design team aims to use financially viable and locally sourced materials.

“I estimate the irrigation portion of our partnership with the community will take the better part of the next two years, after which my successors will be able to start addressing other problems the community faces, such as water sanitation and sustainable energy.” 

STUDENTS

MSE Research Recognized at International MRS Conference This year’s annual Materials Research Society’s Fall meeting took place in Boston in November featuring a variety of engaging presentations, interesting posters, and some new materials. Arun Kumar Mannodi Kanakkithodi, a fifth-year Ph.D. student in Dr. Ramprasad’s research group, and Keith Dusoe and John Sypek, both third-year Ph.D. students in Dr. Seok-woo Lee’s research group, were among the UConn MRS members to receive recognition for their research.

The design of new polymer dielectrics for capacitor applications via computational crystal structure and property prediction. (Image credit: Dr. Chiho Kim)

Arun received an MRS Graduate Student Silver Award for his thesis work titled “Rational Design of Polymer Dielectrics via First Principles Computations and Machine Learning,” for which he used quantum mechanics based density functional theory (DFT) computations to study the structural, electronic and dielectric properties of many novel and existing polymers. “We identified several promising dielectric polymer candidates for energy storage capacitor applications, which were synthesized and characterized by our experimental collaborators Professor Greg Sotzing and Professor Yang Cao of the Polymer Program at UConn IMS.” The process led to the “rational co-design” of new polymer dielectrics, proving that computations and experiments can be used synergistically to efficiently design new and advanced materials. The research is part of the Multi-University Research Initiative (MURI) funded by the Office of Naval Research (ONR), for which Professor Ramprasad was the principal investigator.

Arun collaborated closely with prior Ph.D. students who graduated from Dr. Ramprasad’s group and a post-doctoral student in his group to carry out the calculations, which we performed on more than a 1000 polymers split amongst the four. “It was only due to this joint effort that we could build a substantial and diverse computational polymer database,” Arun explains.

years ago, he, Keith, and Dr. Lee—also the MRS chapter advisor—have been investigating it the past two years, working together on the research. At the MRS meeting, Keith explained their mechanical characterization of two materials from this class of intermetallics, CaFe2As2 and LaRu2P2, both which exhibited superelastic behavior.

“Upon deformation, these materials undergo a structural collapse along the c-axis which introduces bonding between adjacent layers of the ‘Si-type’ element,’” Keith explains. “This deformation induced structural change by bond making and breaking is reversible and is what accounts for the large amount of recoverable elastic strain.”

“ThCr2Si2-type intermetallic compounds show excellent absorption and release of mechanical work per unit volume. These quantities are almost the state-of-the-art,” Dr. Lee explains.

Research into these materials, which can exhibit shape memory effects below 50K and exhibit cryogenic actuation properties, is currently supported by NASA, and was further acknowledged in conjunction with Dr. Lee’s ECF award earlier this year. 

“The MRS Graduate Student Gold and Silver awards are among the most prestigious student awards given by any society in USA. Winning this award means a lot to me, and I believe it is a culmination of all the good polymer dielectrics research I performed in collaboration with post-docs in our groups and experimentalists in our department,” he says.

This award recognizes Arun’s authorship of an abstract submitted for presentation or for a poster presentation for the MRS meeting.

Meanwhile, Keith presented a new class of superelastic materials that have a ThCr2Si2-type structure and exhibit superelastic and shape memory behaviors by an atypical mechanism. After John discovered the materials two

ThCr2Si2-type (CaFe2As2) micropillar, made by Ga+ focused ion beam milling, used to characterize mechanical properties via in-situ nanocompression.

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EXPERIENCE EUROTECH: THREE MSE UNDERGRADUATES IN GERMANY After a year studying abroad in Germany as part of the Eurotech program, three MSE undergraduates are prepared for global careers in engineering. Andrew Jeffery, Benjamin Thieken, and Alex Kinstler are undergraduate materials science and engineering majors in the Eurotech program who spent the year at the Eberhard Karls University of Tübingen, Baden-Württemberg, one of the most famous and oldest universities in Germany. Below, they discuss their experience working, studying, and living in Germany.

Andrew Jeffery

Benjamin Thieken

1. What is it like studying at the University of Tübingen?

Andrew: Classes only met once a week, which made it tougher to learn the material. You have to spend a lot of time studying outside of class to be prepared for tests. The best opportunity to learn the language and culture wasn’t actually in the classroom, but exploring our surrounding city and meeting German people. However, because we were Americans, everyone wanted to speak English with us.

Benjamin: There are fewer school clubs and activities to participate in at Tübingen University than at UConn.

There were no traditional dorm rooms, but two students shared a bedroom in a flat with three or five other flatmates. The beer was cheaper and tasted much better.

Alex: German semesters are set up differently. The last three weeks were rigorous, but the rest of the semester was more enjoyable.

Alex Kinstler

Alex: Tübingen is not a technical university, and we knew going in that we wouldn’t be taking engineering classes. We focused on improving our German language skills. Having gained a thorough understanding of engineering fundamentals at UConn helped me get the most out of my internship. Specifically, the work we do in laboratory classes, such as grinding, polishing, or etching characterization, helped me assimilate at my company. I surprised my coworkers with how quickly and correctly I could conduct characterization.

3. You completed an internship during the last six months of your visit. How did your MSE education prepare you for the work?

Andrew: I worked at an auto parts engineering firm, MAHLE, in the capital city of Stuttgart where I tested turbo charger air filter systems. I was responsible for testing parts for systems from many different customers, including the luxury vehicle companies Mercedes-

2. How did your MSE classes at UConn prepare you for studying at Tübingen University?

Andrew: We only took German as a foreign language (DaF) course while studying in Tübingen, to prepare for our internship the next semester. Our MSE classes really played a role during the internship. Since I was a process engineering intern, my job required me to use transferable skills that we have developed as engineers such as problem solving, persistence to problems, and quick thinking.

Ben: I only studied German language at Tübingen, they don’t offer engineering courses there. I focused on perfecting my German so I could communicate better at my internship.

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The Eberhard Karls University Tübingen, Germany.

STUDENTS

Benz, BMW, and Maserati. Project management was also a major part of my internship. I learned from my bosses how a multitude of tasks should be handled in a company with over 76,000 employees.

Ben: I worked in the automotive electronics department of BOSCH, a leading global supplier of technology and services, located in Reutlingen, a town outside of Tübingen. During my internship, I discovered how important it is to be a part of international business, and it was a good indication of what work will be like after graduating from UConn. My independent work involved three projects that dealt with material properties through mechanical testing, which drew on my education from UConn. My daily duties included test creation through parameters and process manipulation to find desired material properties. It was a pleasure working with the intelligent and passionate professionals at BOSCH. My time in Germany has only enhanced my desire to learn about materials science.

Alex: I was also an intern at MAHLE, an auto parts manufacturer. My department was located in StuttgartFeuerbach and specialized in the design, production, and repair of heat exchangers (radiators) for cars and trucks. Specifically, I performed metallography in the examination of broken parts and parts still in design. I was also responsible for the metallography of a hightemperature brazing project, for which I needed to develop a DoE (Design of Experiment) in order to find the best brazing material and parameters for a Nickel based brazing alloy.

The state Baden Württemberg located in the southwest, east of the Upper Rhine. The state capital is Stuttgart.

4. Why was this experience important to you?

Andrew: I have always wanted to go abroad and explore a new culture. German culture is particularly important to me because I am of German heritage and have a few relatives living there. German engineering is the standard in engineering, in my opinion, so from an academic perspective it was the obvious choice for me. I wouldn’t trade this experience for anything else, it was the highlight of my studies at UConn.

perience both the culture and the workplace from an insider’s viewpoint. I don’t know what position I am going to have after college, but I want to work for a German company that has a branch in the United States, and then be able to make business trips to Germany. I want to build on my international business experience and acquired German language skills.

Ben: If I could not have gone abroad in college, I would not do it for a long time after. The Eurotech program coincides with my studies in engineering and German so well that the decision to go abroad was easy for me.

Ben: This experience will help me in my future career because I have broadened my professional network.

I got to know many professionals in engineering and other fields, like medicine. I also want to work for a German company with a branch in the United States, so I can travel between the two countries for business.

Alex: I learned how German people live. This is important for me, because I was still deciding if I wanted to move to Germany after graduating. Finding out how German natives live helped me make up my mind.

5. How will you build upon this experience in your future?

Andrew: This internship has shown me how a company in Germany operates. Most people have the chance to visit other countries, but we actually lived there, got to befriend the people we were working with and ex-

Alex: This experience showed me what it is like to be an engineer in Germany. If I had not had the opportunity to intern but only to study in Germany, I might not have chosen to start my life there after graduating. This trip was the turning point that opened a whole country’s worth of doors. I always knew I wanted to do more in Germany but I didn’t know I wanted to move there until I returned to the United States and suddenly felt culture-withdrawal. I’m moving to Germany in August. 

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ALUMNI

CLAIRE JALBERT OF 3M BUILDS ON UCONN EDUCATION TO IMPROVE EVERYDAY LIFE “Every day I use the things I learned at UConn in adhesion science, polymer morphology, and statistics to advance technology in support of our corporate vision at 3M.” Most people are familiar with Post It® notes, Scotch™ tape, Command™ removable mounting, and Scotchbrite™ cleaning supplies, everyday items that make life just a little bit easier. Not as many people are familiar with the research and education that contribute to engineering such items. Claire Jalbert, a senior technical manager at 3M, the company that invented each of those life-savers, now builds upon the skills she learned at UConn to advance technologies like these.

Claire graduated from UConn in 1993 with a Ph.D. in polymer science from the Institute of Materials Science (IMS). As senior technical manager at 3M, she works in the Corporate Research Laboratory for Specialty Film and Polymer Processing. 3M is an international company that supports a broad range of businesses including: Industrial, Healthcare, Electronics and Energy, Safety and Graphics, and Consumer, and produces products ranging from Post It® notes to high-performance electronic devices. Claire’s work furthers product development in these businesses by developing new process technologies for Films, Tapes, and Adhesives.

“By understanding and manipulating the materials and process and the complex interactions between them, 3M creates a broad spectrum of film and adhesive based products, all of which require Polymer Processing expertise to bring to life,” Claire says. She emphasizes how UConn’s excellent academic pro-

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UConn alumna Claire Jalbert, Ph.D., Senior Technical Manager at 3M gram in polymer sciences fully prepared her for the exciting and challenging work that she does. “Every day I use the things I learned at UConn in adhesion science, polymer morphology, and statistics to advance technology in support of our corporate vision at 3M,” she explains.

Claire joined UConn as a Ph.D. student in the IMS Polymer Science Program with a B.S. in chemical engineering from MIT and eight years of industry experience working as a manufacturing engineer and devel-

The ALPHA SIGMA MU International Honor Society Student Chapter celebrates materials science and engineering students with exceptional scholastic standing, character, and leadership. alphasigmamu.engr.uconn.edu

The KERAMOS Student Chapter of the National Professional Ceramic Engineering Fraternity provides students with professional development skills within a ceramics research-based community, creating a local network of peers, engineers, and scientists to discuss current research and developments in the field. keramos.uconn.edu

ALUMNI

opment engineer. When asked why she chose UConn for her Ph. D. studies, Claire is quick to tout the sterling reputation of the Polymer Science Program. She was inspired to enter the field of Polymer Sciences after her first “real world” job at the Rogers Corporation in Connecticut, as a manufacturing engineer. During this time, her passion for engineering transformed into a passion for polymer science. She adds that her path as a non-traditional student fit perfectly with the faculty and program options available at UConn, and in the end, this encouraged her to attend. “My background had its advantages because it helped me stay laser-focused on my goals,” Claire explains. “However, it also had some disadvantages because it required a re-adjustment to ‘school’ mode.” The faculty and staff in IMS supported students from all backgrounds and helped ease her transition, encouraging students to learn from each other.

During her time at UConn, Claire was able to engage in a wide variety of scientific interests by taking special topics classes, greatly expanding her research opportunities. This allowed her to build a foundation that prepared her to lead a team of scientists working on groundbreaking research at 3M. “The classes covered all of the basics, and each semester, special topics classes were offered in areas of faculty specialization. I learned about polymer morphology, rheology, adhesion, and more, from world leading experts in the area,” Claire says. Her research focused on modifying polymer surface properties by manipulating specific features of the polymer chains, and allowed her to explore a topic in a depth that was not possible during her prior eight years in industry.

The many fantastic courses at UConn, as well as the engaging and helpful faculty, are some of Claire’s fondest memories of her time at UConn. Particularly, she enjoyed the special topics classes. “They were cutting edge and it was quite interesting delving into the research going on in their groups and the current

The MATERIALS ADVANTAGE Student Chapter offers students access to four prestigious materials science and engineering societies, offering generous scholarships and grants, outreach opportunities, and professional development programs. ucma.uconn.edu

research of other professors in the field,” she says.

Additionally, her advisor Professor Jeff Koberstein, her peers, and extracurricular activities she engaged with during her time in Storrs helped to enrich her academic experience by inspiring her work and pushing her toward her goals. “Professor Koberstein was a true inspiration; his mantra of knowing and challenging your assumptions has served me well, both technically and personally,” Claire explains. “Knowing the underlying assumptions is often the critical piece in solving the problem.”

However, it takes more than hours in the lab to become technical manager of a huge international company. As President of the Society of Plastics Engineers (SPE) student chapter, Claire learned to lead a team of volunteers. Additionally, Claire met a number of International students whose stories inspired perseverance and taught her something about their culture. “I continue to learn in the international company that 3M is, to appreciate the different backgrounds and perspectives of my international colleagues,” she says. She adds that her activities at UConn, including community education like golf, literature, quilting, and cooking, expanded her skill set and fed her soul.

“These have provided me with valuable lessons for my career such as leading teams, influencing and coaching others.”

Claire says that she is extremely grateful to UConn for preparing her for her current position at 3M, and for inspiring her every step of the way. To current and future students, she has a piece of advice: to invest their time, energy and hearts into their passions, and to make sure they always keep learning and growing.

“Every day I learn something new, and it all helps me be a better technologist, leader, friend, and person.

Don’t be afraid to change or make a change.” 

MATERIALS RESEARCH Society University Chapter is a The

group of over 16,000 researchers in the materials science industry, which grants members access to monthly publications and journal databases on the latest developments in the field as well as networking opportunities for graduate students in materials science. mrs.engr.uconn.edu

The SOCIETY OF PLASTICS ENGINEERS Student Chapter, open to graduate students, works toward expanding industry connections while educating the public about plastic benefits and technology, through outreach and academic seminars. spe.engr.uconn.edu

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