December 17th, 2012: Dr. Pinar Zorlutuna of Mechanical and Biomedical Engineering Department of UConn gave the 3rd and last special seminar of 2012 at 11 am in IMS 159. The talk was titled “Micro and Nanofabricated Biomaterials for Engineering Biomimetic Tissues”. In her seminar, after giving a brief introduction to tissue engineering, and discussing some of the biomaterials and fabrication approaches that she has been developing for constructing biomimetic tissues, she gave insight about the micro and nanoscale fabrication approaches she has been using for engineering scaffold architecture, improving biomechanical properties of engineered tissues, and controlling cellular orientation and differentiation.
November 16th, 2012: Information Session for Undergraduates
An informal information session was held about getting a graduate degree in MSE for undergraduate students. The event was at 6pm in IMS 159. 6 of the information providers were graduate students in MSE PhD program (Vinnie Palumbo – Jim Bosse – Austin McDonald – Adam Wentworth – Yasemin Kutes – Venkatesh Botu) and one was a UConn MSE grad school graduate (Jackie Garofano – founder of MRS Chapter – now works at UTRC, CT). Graduate Admissions Coordinator Trista Albert was also with us to answer admissions related questions. 8 undergraduate students were benefited from this event.
November 7th, 2012: Prof. Challa V. Kumar of UConn Chemistry Department gave a seminar (2nd Special Seminar of the year, 1st one was given by Prof. Barrett Wells) in IMS 20 at 11am. The seminar was titled “Enzyme/Organic/Inorganic Hybrid Biocatalytic Nanomaterials”. Dr. Kumar talked about their long-term goal of elucidating the molecular signatures of protein-solid interactions, and how this knowledge is useful for the rational design of protein arrays, biocatalysts, biosensors, medical implants and biomaterials. He illustrated several strategies to overcome protein and enzyme deactivation when bound to solid surfaces. The mechanism of protein adsorption on solid surfaces was discussed and novel methods to control protein-solid interactions were presented.
October 5th, 2012: New MRS Officers were selected for the year 2012-2013.
- President: YASEMIN KUTES
- Vice President: JAMES BOSSE
- Secretary: SRIRAM VIJAYAN
- Treasurer: VENKATESH BOTU
March 11 and March 21, 2013: Our Chapter’s Special Project was also awarded by UConn SOE and MSE Department on March 11 and March 21, 2013 respectively with generous amounts of support. Associate Dean for Research and Graduate Education, Dr. Micheal Accorsi mentioned that he was very impressed with the level of activities of our chapter and, in particular, our outreach efforts to high school students through the ASM Materials Camp and various other events.
February 5th, 2013: Our Chapter’s Special Project Proposal for 2013 was recommended for funding by Materials Research Society and the chapter was awarded $400.00 for MRS Chapter Seminars and Industry Trips.
We were informed that the competition for the Special Project Funding was particularly strong this year and priority was given to those projects that were new initiatives, and not a continuation or expansion of a present activity, and to those that were clearly initiated by the students.
This year’s special project aims to bring the chapter’s activities outside of UConn campus, introducing industrial opportunities to the students via 2 field trips. With the field trips, the students will have a better idea of what real-world applications their education will apply to, and help shape their path more accurately. We have come to the realization that many students are not sure whether industry or academia is the right choice for their careers. In this direction, in the coming year we would like to introduce two, technical materials science related field trips, and three talks by local industrial representatives (R&D managers, research scientists, etc) in addition to technical talks.
Again, we would like to increase the outreach efforts beyond UConn campus by visiting high schools in Hartford area and other universities within the state.
March 21st: Dr. Barrett Wells of UCONN physics presented a 45 minutes long seminar on superconductivity. He mainly talked about understanding the behaviour of high temperature superconductors. Click here to see his talk. The seminar was followed by a Q&A session where he answered several curious questions from the audience consisting of both graduate and undergraduate students. Towards the end, a demo on MEGLEV was also given by the speaker, which spurred a lot of interest.
March 14th: MRS Chapter Seminar (first in the five-seminar-series as a part of the UCNN MRS special project) by Dr. Barrett Wells of UCONN physics was announced.
Flyer Bio Dr. Barret Wells
February 22nd: First MRS Chapter meeting for the Spring semester. The meeting was jointly held with materials advantage. At this meeting, we had a pizza party and screened a talk titled “The World in 2030” by Dr. Michio Kaku. The meeting also provided an opportunity to the graduate and undergraduate students to interact with each other.
February 15th: Planning begins for the Seminar Series hosted by our MRS University Chapter, as a part of the proposed special project. Through this project, we would like to expand our chapter’s services to the larger material research community at the University of Connecticut, including students in applied physics and chemistry, biomolecular engineering, chemical engineering, electrical engineering, and materials science and engineering. In the coming year we will organize a series of technical materials science related interdisciplinary talks by UCONN’s faculty members from various departments and a technical poster session featuring work carried out at both graduate and undergraduate levels.
February 6th: The MRS chapter officers meet to plan chapter’s activities.
January 20th: We received notification from Yury Gogotsi Chair, MRS University Chapters and Special Projects Subcommittee, that our chapter was awarded full funding requested for the Special Project proposal.