Students – Center for Nanoscale Materials and Biointegration

Physics graduate student Kallol Chakrabarty awarded EPSCoR Graduate Research Scholars Program award

Congratulations to Kallol Chakrabarty on being awared one of five Graduate Research Scholars Programs award.

UAB News reported: Five University of Alabama at Birmingham graduate students in the College of Arts and Sciences and Marnix E. Heersink School of Medicine were awarded Graduate Research Scholars Program awards through the Alabama Established Program to Stimulate Competitive Research. The awards for UAB’s five selected graduate students total more than $118,000 and will apply for the upcoming fall 2022 semester.

The Graduate Research Scholars Program is designed to strengthen and enhance the research capacity of eight participating Alabama EPSCoR institutions by providing graduate student support for students performing federally funded EPSCoR research. The students in the UAB Graduate School represent the next generation of researchers and innovators for the advancement of Alabama’s high-tech human resource capacity. Read the full article here.

NASA Fall 2020 Research Experiences for Undergraduates

NASA – Alabama Space Grant Consortium

Research Experiences for Undergraduate (REU) Program

Hybrid and Remote Undergraduate Research Experiences in Materials Research

University of Alabama at Birmingham (UAB)

NASA-Alabama Space Grant Consortium (ASGC) program at UAB is inviting applications for a Research Experiences for Undergraduates (REU) program during Fall-2020 and Spring-2021 from students that are currently enrolled at UAB. We offer REU-projects in five research clusters: (1) computational materials research/machine learning (2) materials under extreme conditions (3) materials for energy applications, (4) materials for sensors and laser applications, and (5) biomaterials for implants, tissue engineering and drug delivery applications. This REU experience will be offered in a hybrid model which will include fully remote participation for computational research projects and partly remote and partly on ground lab experiences for experimental research projects within the constraints of social distancing and other laboratory safety measures. The undergraduates will carry out the analysis of data generated in their research projects in a fully remote fashion and make Zoom presentations on completed research to faculty mentors and other undergraduates participating in this program.

The program will offer flexible working hours during Fall-2020 and Spring-2021 (staring October 1, 2020 and ending February 28th, 2021). The program will pay $5,000 over the entire work period involving 400 hours of remote/hybrid research with a faculty mentor at UAB.

For program information contact program director Yogesh Vohra (ykvohra@uab.edu) and for application questions contact program coordinator Charita Cadenhead (charita@uab.edu).

The application deadline is September 15th, 2020. Apply using the following web-site. https://sites.uab.edu/cnmb/research-experiences-for-undergraduates/

Support for Interdisciplinary Materials science Program

University of Alabama at Birmingham researchers Drs. Yogesh K. Vohra, Eugenia Kharlampieva and Amber Genau have won a $597,000 federal grant to support up to five doctoral students in the interdisciplinary materials science program. Read entire article here.

Dr. Amber Genau, Materials Science & Engineering

2018-2019 Alabama Space Grant Fellowship/Scholarship Program

ASGC Fellowship/Scholarship Deadline is February 28, 2019

The Alabama Space Grant Consortium is now accepting undergraduate scholarship and graduate fellowship applications. The following is a brief summary of the undergraduate (Table 1) and graduate (Table 2) program details extracted from program application packages (attached). Please read the package in its entirely for complete details and requirements.

UAB is among the largest site in the Consortium and as such, expectations are high with regard to the number of applications received. We are asking faculty to personally reach out to both undergraduate and graduate students and encourage them to apply.

Please share with anyone who you think would be interested in this program (scholarships are for Jr./Sr. in STEM fields and Fellowships are for graduate students in STEM fields). Must be a U.S. citizen.

2018 – 2019 Alabama Space Grant Consortium Scholarship
	Award Amount	Brief Summary
ASGC Scholarship	$1,000 (possible renewal)
Application Deadline		February 28, 2018
Award Announcement		Mid May 2018
Award Criteria		Scholarship awards will be based on academic excellence, the student’s accomplishments and description of their career intentions towards an aerospace career.
Fields of Study		Space related fields include any academic discipline or field of study (including the physical, natural,and biological sciences; engineering; education; economics; business; sociology; behavioral sciences; computer science; communications; law; international affairs; and public administration) that is concerned with or likely to improve the understanding, assessment, development and utilization of space.
Eligibility		US Citizen Currently pursuing bachelor’s degree Full time junior or senior Good academic standing with 3.0 GPA or higher
		Apply Online only asgc_scholarship_undergrad_information_booklet_2018 https://spacegrant.net/apps/?pk=als
Required documents		Resume Official transcript Letter of recommendation Academic goals statement
Awardee Requirements		Final report 4 Research interviews or an Outreach Activity (see application package for details) Professional Photo Biographical info

FELLOWSHIP INFORMATION

2018 – 2019 Alabama Space Grant Consortium Fellowship
	Award Amount	Brief Summary
ASGC Fellowship	Not to exceed $37,000/12 mos (possible renewal)	$24,000 for stipend $12,000 for tuition/insurance $1,000 Student Travel allowance
Application Deadline		February 28, 2018
Award Announcement		Mid May 2018
Award Criteria		Fellowship awards will be based on academic excellence, the quality of the proposed research program or plan of study, the quality of the interdisciplinary approach to achieving the objectives of the proposed program, the merit of the utilization of a NASA field center in carrying out their objectives, the prospects for completion of the project within the allotted time, and an assessment of the applicant’s motivation towards an aerospace career.
Fields of Study		Space related fields include any academic discipline or field of study (including the physical, natural, and biological sciences; engineering; education; economics; business; sociology; behavioral sciences; computer science; communications; law; international affairs; and public administration) that is concerned with or likely to improve the understanding, assessment, development and utilization of space.
Eligibility		US Citizen Currently pursuing bachelor’s degree Full time junior or senior Good academic standing with 3.0 GPA or higher
Apply Online only		ASGC Fellowship Graduate Information Booklet 2018 Apply online: https://spacegrant.net/apps/?pk=alf
Required documents		Resume Official transcript & GRE Scores Two Letter of recommendation Proposal Title & Abstract Description of Proposed Research project Schedule of Target Dates Budget
		Awardee Requirements Final report (see application package for details) Professional Photo Biographical info Respond to academic and employment follow up surveys
Of utmost importance: Applicants should identify source of cost sharing prior to submitting an application. Please discuss with faculty mentor and have mentor faculty mentor discuss with department chair regarding providing the funds for cost sharing in the amount of $18,500

Congrats to Physics Graduate Student Sonal Singh

Sonal Congratulations to Sonal Singh and co-authors for their recently accepted manuscript. The paper entitled ”Spatially Controlled Fabrication of Brightly Fluorescent Nanodiamond-Array with Enhanced Far-Red Si-V Luminescence” (by Sonal Singh, Vinoy Thomas, Dmitri Martyshkin, Veronika Kozlovskaya, Eugenia Kharlampieva, and Shane Catledge) will appear in the JournalNanotechnology. The paper will be available online to readers at http://iopscience.org/. This work demonstrates a novel approach to precisely pattern fluorescent nanodiamond-arrays with enhanced far-red intense photostable luminescence from silicon-vacancy (Si-V) defect centers.The precision-patterned pre-growth seeding of nanodiamonds is achieved by a scanning probe “Dip-Pen” nanolithography technique using electrostatically-driven transfer of nanodiamonds from “inked” cantilevers. The enhanced emission from nanodiamond-dots in the far-red is achieved by incorporating Si-V defect centers in subsequent chemical vapor deposition treatment. The authors anticipate that the far-red intense photostable luminescence (~738 nm) observed from Si-V defect centers integrated in spatially arranged nanodiamonds could be beneficial for the development of the next generation fluorescent based devices and applications.

Harsh Patel Recognized as BME Outstanding Graduate Student

Congratulations to BME graduate, Harsh Patel for being recognized by the Biomedical Engineering Department for outstanding graduate student of the year. Harsh has also won outstanding graduate student for the UAB School of Engineering.

Patel’s dissertation project title is “Bio-hybrid Tubular Electrospun Scaffold for Vascular Tissue Engineering”. He has received numerous honors and scholarships while also taking on a variety of leadership roles. During his time at UAB, Harsh has received the ALSAM Bridge to Doctorate fellowship, the Ireland Research Travel Scholarship, and a 2014 Graduate Student Association travel grant.

For his research, he has received the first placed award for the oral presentation at UAB’s 2013 graduate student research day. Harsh has presented his research in many local and national level conferences such as TERMIS. Harsh has mentored many undergraduate students and helped them to learn polymer characterizations techniques. Harsh has published as a first author a research journal article and a review book chapter during his PhD. Harsh is also co-authored on a published journal article. Harsh served as the 2012-2013 president of the Biomedical Engineering Graduate Student organization (BMEGS) at UAB. He also chaired the 2013 UAB Biomedical Engineering Symposium. Harsh is a member of Tissue Engineering International and regenerative medicine society, biomedical engineering society, Alpha Epsilon Delta pre-health honors society, and Tau Beta Pi honors engineering society.