Funding – Center for Nanoscale Materials and Biointegration

UAB Receives Three-year Department of Education Training Grant

The United States Department of Education has given a three-year training grant award to the University of Alabama at Birmingham’s Department of Physics under the Graduate Assistance in Areas of National Need, or GAANN, program.

The GAANN program will support five Ph.D. students with an annual competitive stipend up to $37,000, along with an additional yearly educational allowance to cover graduate tuition and other costs. Yogesh Vohra, Ph.D., associate dean for the College of Arts and Sciences, will serve as the project director for the program and hopes graduates will fulfill the national need for the United States workforce in quantum information sciences.

Read the full story as originally posted on UAB News website.

Congratulations to CNMB’s Drs. Kharlampieva & Wasko

Join the Center for Nanoscale Materials and Biointegration (CNMB) in congratulating members Dr. Eugenia Kharlampieva and Molly Wasko who will be helping the National Science Foundation decide how to invest hundreds of millions of dollars in grants to build the technologies of the future (The UAB Reporter). Dr. Kharlampieva is Distinguished Professor in the Department of Chemistry as well as the Co-Director of the CNMB and Dr. Wasko is University Professor/Associate Dean, Collat School Of Business Dean’s Office.

Their roles as program directors through NSF’s rotator program, will be integral in magnifying UAB’s existing reputation as an outstanding research institution. The rotator program is designed to bring practicing scientists into the upper echelon of scientific decision-making in the United States, where they work alongside the agency’s permanent staff.

As reported in the UAB Reporter, according to Dr. Kharlampieva, “This experience is unique and exciting and really puts you out of your comfort zone.,” In September 2023, the NSF invested $72.5 million through the DMREF in 37 new four-year projects. Kharlampieva helped to select those recipients, whose projects include designing the next generation of rechargeable batteries, organic semiconductor systems, AI-enabled automated design of ultra-strong and ultra-elastic metallic alloys, and fast energy storage. Although much of the work is administrative — selecting expert participants in grant panels, following up with principal investigators on their progress and notifying those not selected — “I am always a scientist first,” Kharlampieva said. “This keeps me on the cutting edge of research and in knowing how to find the best science.”

You can read the full story here.

Spotlight on Growing Diamonds at UAB

Ribbon cutting for the new $75 million dollar East Science Hall (ESH) and South Science Hall (SSH) took place on Thursday, August 17, 2023. Visitors from on and off campus participated in the festivities which included guided tours of the building’s research labs, teaching labs, new offices and much more. ESH and SSH house the Departments of Physics, Biology and Chemistry. Dr. Yogesh K. Vohra, Professor of Physics and University Scholar, had the pleasure of leading the tour of the diamond fabrication lab along with Q&A about the process and uses.

Below is an excerpt of an extensive article by Al.com on Dr. Vohra’s process for growing diamonds:

The Microwave Plasma Chemical Vapor Deposition reactor (CVD), which uses microwave power to break down methane and hydrogen gases to grow diamonds in the lab, has now been moved to a basement room of the new building. The South Science Hall and East Science Hall, part of the new Science and Engineering Complex, opened Thursday.

Large tanks are ready to combine methane and hydrogen into a mixture to produce high-pressure, high-temperature, nitrogen-doped synthetic diamonds. Yogesh Vohra, professor of physics at the University of Alabama at Birmingham, held up several samples of yellow diamond crystals made in UAB’s lab to show a tour group.

You can read the full article here.

Dr. Yogesh Vohra receives $8 Million DOE NNSA Award for a Stewardship Science Academic Alliances Center of Excellence

The University of Alabama at Birmingham has been awarded $8 million from the United States Department of Energy’s National Nuclear Security Agency. Distributed over five years, the award will establish one of nine Stewardship Science Academic Alliances Centers of Excellence.

UAB’s cooperative agreement will be for the Center for Additively Manufactured Complex Systems under Extremes.

Yogesh Vohra, Ph.D., professor in the Department of Physics and associate dean for Research and Innovation in the College of Arts and Sciences, will serve as the principal investigator. Read UAB News full story here.

January 2023 CNMB Member Spotlight: Dr. Eugenia Kharlampieva

Dr. Euguenia Kharmlampieva, CNMB Co-director, is among 3 UAB chemists fighting cancer. Kharlampieva and Veronika Kozlovskaya, Ph.D., research associate in Kharlampieva’s lab and her longtime collaborator, have created a cloaking device for fragile anti-cancer drugs. Their nanocapsules can be 60 times smaller than a red blood cell and produced at industrial scale. And they are smart; that is, they can release their cargo at precise locations when triggered by a burst of ultrasound energy, a specified temperature or the acidic environment around cancer cells. Click here to see original article in it’s entirety as published in the UAB Reporter.

2022 REU Jayden Ratcliffe Attends Southeastern Section of the American Physical Society (SESAPS)

Submitted by 2022 REU Jayden Ratcliffe

The University of Alabama at Birmingham (UAB)’s Research Experience for Undergraduates (REU) program enabled me to participate in computational high-entropy materials research with Dr. Cheng-Chien Chen, where I learned a great deal about machine learning methods and high-entropy borides. He invited me to present our research at a poster expo at the Southeastern Section of the American Physical Society (SESAPS) conference in Oxford, MS. Taking part in the conference was a fantastic opportunity for me to attend talks about physics research across the country, support my mentor and colleagues from UAB, and present my own research.

Dr. Chen and his Ph.D. students gave highly informative talks about their specific research topics. I was also able to attend lectures given by several of my professors from my home college, Mississippi State University. There were so many various categories of physics lectures I could choose to attend, and I really appreciated that diversity. I was very fascinated in the astrophysics lecture session, where they discussed research on black holes and exoplanets.

At the poster expo I was able to discuss my research with students and professors. It was a wonderful way for me to become more comfortable talking about my research to people of diverse backgrounds. During my REU at UAB I presented at the poster expo, and this thoroughly prepared me for my presentation at the SESAPS convention. I want to thank UAB for their continuous support and Dr. Chen for all his challenging work in helping me succeed. I have learned so much from these experiences, and they will aid me in furthering my career in physics.