2018 New's Items

Paul Alivisatos, UC Berkeley's Executive Vice Chancellor and Provost and Samsung Distinguished Professor of Nanoscience and Nanotechnology, has been awarded the 2018 Wilhelm Exner Medal(link is external) for his pioneering research in nanoscience. Other award winners for this year include Zhenan Bao, Stanford; Gregor Weihs, Universität Innsbruck; and Thomas Jennewein, University of Waterloo....

Eli Yablonovitch, professor of electrical engineering and computer sciences at UC Berkeley, will be the recipient of the 2019 Benjamin Franklin Medal in Electrical Engineering, the Franklin Institute announced today.

Yablonovitch is being honored “for widely used scientific improvements to radio- and light-based technologies in wireless communications and solar energy applications.”

The Franklin Institute awards have celebrated breakthroughs in science and technology since the Philadelphia science center was founded in honor of Benjamin Franklin in 1824.

“I’m truly...

Scientists are experimenting with narrow strips of graphene, called nanoribbons, in hopes of making cool new electronic devices, but University of California, Berkeley scientists have discovered another possible role for them: as nanoscale electron traps with potential applications in quantum computers.

Scanning tunneling microscope image of a topological nanoribbon superlattice. Electrons are trapped at the interfaces between wide ribbon segments (which are topologically non-trivial) and narrow ribbon segments (which are topologically trivial). The wide segments are 9 carbon atoms...

Several fields of research have sprung up around the chemical drivers, called catalysts, at work in many industrial processes – including those that boost the production of fuels, fertilizers, and foods. These research efforts have developed more useful catalysts that accelerate chemical reactions and make the reactions more efficient without being consumed in the process.

Now, there is growing interest in coordinating the research efforts in these fields to create new, hybrid catalysts with enhanced performance, said Gabor Somorjai, a faculty senior scientist in the Materials...