Last Thursday and Friday, nearly 200 graduate students, postdocs, and researchers came to Berkeley Lab to discuss the latest in nanoscience advances and to celebrate the endowment of the Kavli Energy NanoScience Institute (ENSI) at Berkeley Lab and UC Berkeley.
In his introductions on Thursday, Lab Director Paul Alivisatos said that the Kavli Foundation has “a deep reverence for fostering new ideas and foundationally new science.” Alivisatos added: “It’s wonderful the Kavli Foundation is enabling us to work on problems that are deep and of practical importance.”
Last Thursday and Friday, nearly 200 graduate students, postdocs, and researchers came to Berkeley Lab to discuss the latest in nanoscience advances and to celebrate the endowment of the Kavli Energy NanoScience Institute (ENSI) at Berkeley Lab and UC Berkeley.
In his introductions on Thursday, Lab Director Paul Alivisatos said that the Kavli Foundation has “a deep reverence for fostering new ideas and foundationally new science.” Alivisatos added: “It’s wonderful the Kavli Foundation is enabling us to work on problems that are deep and of practical importance.”
Nine young UC Berkeley faculty members have been awarded 2015 Sloan Research Fellowships, which are coveted grants for scientists and scholars at the beginning of their academic careers.
The fellowships are among 126 announced today (Monday, Feb. 23) by the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation. They go to outstanding U.S. and Canadian researchers whose achievements and potential identify them as rising stars and the next generation of scientific leaders, according to the foundation. The...
Almost half a century after Dustin Hoffman was taken aside in “The Graduate” and given the famous “one word” line about the future, it may be time to update the script again. And metamaterials appear to have the same potential to transform entire industries. Over the past 15 years or so, scientists have learned how to construct materials that bend light waves, as well as radar, radio, sound and even seismic waves, in ways that do not naturally occur.
First theorized in 1967 by the Russian physicist Victor Veselago and...
The director is part of a 2015 class that includes such names as economist Thomas Piketty, former New York mayor Michael Bloomberg and dancer and choreographer Twyla Tharp. The group is the country’s first learned society. Alivisatos is part of the Mathematical and Physical Sciences group of awardees. More>
The Office of Communications and Public Affairs (OCPA) has several vehicles to update the public on the latest scientific outcomes of projects funded with support from the Office of Science. Each year, we post more than 2000 research news items as well as an equivalent number of Twitter messages. Our most recent items are featured on our home page. Here you will find searchable archives for...
A molecular system that holds great promise for the capture and storage of carbon dioxide has been modified so that it now also holds great promise as a catalyst for converting captured carbon dioxide into valuable chemical products. Researchers with the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE)’s Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (Berkeley Lab) have incorporated molecules of carbon dioxide reduction catalysts into the sponge-like crystals of covalent organic frameworks (COFs). This creates a molecular system that not only absorbs carbon dioxide, but also selectively reduces it to carbon...
Chemist Peidong Yang, who won a “genius” fellowship from the MacArthur Foundation last week, describes the artificial photosynthesis research that earned him this honor. The work could lead to carbon-neutral, sustainable fuels. He started working on it in 2002 as a continuation of semiconductor nanowire research. More>
Haveyou ever been engrossed in your favorite episode of Star Trek on your smartphone and thought “Hey! The color of Kirk’s uniform doesn’t look pure!” Yeah, most of us probably wouldn’t think that. But with quantum dots seeping into modern displays, our viewing expectations could drastically change.
Quantum dots (QDs) are tiny semiconductors that can be easily tuned to create purer color, resulting in perhaps the most vivid display hues on the market today. They were integrated into Amazon’s Kindle Fire HDX reader and into Sony televisions, with Apple...
In what could prove to be a significant advance in the fabrication of graphene-based nanodevices, a team of Berkeley Lab researchers has discovered a new mechanism for assembling two-dimensional (2D) molecular “islands” that could be used to modify graphene at the nanometer scale. These 2D islands are comprised of F4TCNQ molecules that trap electrical charge in ways that are potentially useful for graphene-based electronics.
“We’re reporting a scanning tunneling microscopy and non-contact atomic force microscopy study of F4TCNQ molecules at the surface of graphene in which the...