From the 2013 Physics Alumni Newsletter
Some of the research efforts of our faculty and students have received extra recognition in the past year. Professor Timo Thonhauser’s research on hydrogen storage has been featured in national and international news. Dr. Thonhauser was even voted “Salzburger of the Year 2012” (yes, this is the Salzburg from the Sound of Music!) by Austrian newspapers. Coverage of his work appeared in the Austrian national newspapers Salzburger Nachrichten and Unterkärntner as well as in the Charlotte Observer, the Winston-Salem Journal, eScience News, NewsWise, and Bridges (a publication of the Office of Science and Technology).
The BBC reported on work done by Professor Dave Carroll and his students at the Nanotech Center on the development of a new type of light bulb. It is based on a technology invented by Dr. Carroll and has advantages over older technology in that it is more efficient, environmentally friendly, and the bulbs are made of plastic so they won’t break like glass when they are dropped. For more details see the BBC news article at http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-20553143. This work has been published in the journals Applied Physics Letters and Organic Letters.
An article co-authored by Professor Fred Salsbury was featured on cover of the Journal of Medicinal Chemistry. An article entitled “Direct Structural Mapping of Organic Field-Effect Transistors Reveals Bottlenecks to Carrier Transport” by graduate student Jeremy Ward and Professor Oana Jurchescu was featured on the cover of Advanced Materials Journal. An article authored by WFU Alumnus and Postdoctoral Researcher, Joel Grim, along with Professors Burak Üçer and Richard Williams was selected by the editors of Physical Review B to be an Editors’ Suggestion. The paper is titled “Nonlinear quenching of densely excited states in wide-gap solids”. Dr. Piero Canepa who worked as a postdoctoral researcher for Professor Timo Thonhauser had his scientific artwork selected for the month of March for the webpage on Kaleidoscope Images for the journal Physical Review B. The link to the webpage is http://prb.aps.org/kaleidoscope/March2013.
The Winston-Salem Journal on Sept.21, 2012 showcased a beet-root juice based drink that was developed due to its health effects based on the research of Physics Professor Dany Kim-Shapiro, the Harbert Family Distinguished Chair for Excellence in Teaching and Scholarship. The story about the beet-root juice drink was the lead technology featured in an article about the Technology Expo held on Thursday, Sept. 20, 2012 in Winston-Salem to highlight local companies and entrepreneurs that are involved in technology development and technical products and services.
Last October Wake Forest University hosted the Stuttgart NanoDays Conference. This conference was the fourth one in a series of workshops examining entrepreneurship in the natural sciences – specifically dealing with nanocarbon materials. The Fraunhofer Institut IPA (Stuttgart) and the Center for Nanotechnology and Advanced Materials at Wake Forest worked together with an international advisory board to sponsor and organize this event.