Archive for the ‘General’ Category
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August 25th, 2010
ACS Fall meeting
Inbetween meetings yesterday I managed to attend a few lectures here in (an extremely rainy!) Boston. Vince Rotello of UMass and Richard Lambert of Cambridge delivered the 2010 Langmuir lectures, both of which were excellent. Other interesting talks included Jin Zhang of UC Santa Cruz discussing his group’s work in the field of solar cell technology using gold nanoparticles, and M Park (from the Rotello group) discussing dendrimer-nanoparticle composite films.
Today boasts another strong line up of speakers including Chad Mirkin. Unfortunately the rain doesn’t appear to have given up just yet though…
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August 20th, 2010
Fall ACS and COMS2010
I’m heading off to the States next week to spend a couple of days at the Fall ACS meeting in Boston, followed by a brief stop in New Mexico for this year’s COMS event (where I’ll be presenting a short paper).
Drop me a line if you are attending either event and want to meet up for a chat about our latest programmes.
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August 2nd, 2010
Normal service to be resumed
Some of you may have noticed it’s been a bit quiet here of late. The reason is that we (in London) have just moved office, an activity which makes a house move resemble a walk in the park…So, we hope to be back to normal in the coming few days. Until then you may want to check out this book which is due for release any day now.
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July 21st, 2010
Kavli lectureship article published
Last year Chad Mirkin of Northwestern was awarded the 2009 Kavli prize for his work in the field of nanoscience. He delivered his award lecture at the 2009 Fall MRS meeting in Boston, and has now published an article based on the lecture in this month’s MRS Bulletin. It’s well worth a look as it covers much of his group’s work using gold nanoparticles, and how this research is moving on to deliver novel applications in all areas of materials science.
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July 15th, 2010
Gold Nanoparticles covered by the Huffington Post
A nice article has appeared on The Huffington Post, the popular US news website. The author, DK Matai, talks at length about the potential of new gold nanoparticle technologies and refers to our recently published white paper.
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July 9th, 2010
Gold Bulletin Volume 43 Issue 2
Apologies for the lack of activity on the blog this week, it’s been very busy here in London. At the beginning of the week the second issue of the year of Gold Bulletin was published, and as usual it brings together a diverse set of high quality gold-based research articles.
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June 28th, 2010
Nanoscale gold coatings made easy
Last week I got chatting to Sang-Kee Eah of The Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, New York. His team have just published this nice paper in Langmuir, the surface science journal. The crux of the research focuses on the identification of a simple, quick and clean way of synthesising gold nanoparticles, and then depositing them reproducibly on a range of surfaces. Check out the paper or Dr Eah’s press release for more details. Or you could even see the team demonstrating their technique on YouTube! -
June 25th, 2010
Final day – SERS, lobsters and many new friends
Having never attended a Gordon conference before, I wasn’t quite sure what to expect – they are generally considered to be as good as it gets, and my expectations were high. I wasn’t disappointed! It really was an excellent meeting, bringing together many famous faces and rising stars of the field. But best of all was the student/postdoc involvement – every poster session had a real buzz to it, and I know for a fact some exciting collaborations were formed.
Teri Odom (Northwestern) and Michael Natan (Oxonica) deserve a mention at this point – they conceived the event, and undoubtedly spent countless hours organising, planning, promoting and generally worrying about it. But it paid off, and every single person I spoke with said how much they thought of the meeting.
A quirky (and I think very sensible) part of the final day was spent discussing the next meeting. The first question was ‘should there be one?’ and the response to this was a unanimous ‘yes’. The location is likely to be the USA again (with Europe as a possibility). Michael becomes the chair, and Francesco Stellacci of MIT was voted into the vice chair position. We will work with Michael to ensure GOLD2012 and GRC2012 do not clash.
Scientifically, the day kicked of with talks under the banner of ‘Nanoparticles, the environment and energy’. Consideration was first given to safety, with presentations from Jim Hutchinson and Catherine Murphy. Plasmonics presentations followed with Stephan Link and Sang-Hyan Oh talking. The evening session focused exclusively on single molecule sensing and SERS, much of which was well beyond me scientifically but it provoked some great debate in the lecture theatre.
The final meal was pretty special too – keeping with the old GRC North Eastern tradition whole lobsters were served. They were so delicious a few attendees were caught going back for seconds, however I will of course never name names… -
June 24th, 2010
Catalysis in action
Yesterday evening’s session was superb, with a focus on catalysis. Sean McClure kicked us off with some catalysis simulation studies, and was followed by Peng Chen of Cornell who expertly presented his complex work on single molecule nanocatalysis. Michael Wong of Rice finished off with an excellent tale of catalysis in action – he presented his group’s efforts in utilising palladium on gold to clean up contaminated ground water.
The poster session was just as active as the previous 2 – some nice posters from Raphael Levy, Steven Perrault and Emilie Ringe (who was this evening’s prize winner – congratulations!) amongst others.
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June 23rd, 2010
High spirits
Victories for England and the USA in the world cup (and progression for both into the knock out stages) have meant 90% of the GRC attendees are either happy (American colleagues) or relieved (me)!
Meanwhile, the conference has continued just as it started, with superb talks and posters. This morning’s session focused on the biomedical applications of noble metal nanoparticles, chaired by Naomi Halas from Rice. Talks from Rebekah Drezek, Jin Zhang and Kimberley Hamad-Schiffer were excellent, each stimulating considerable discussion. Last night saw the second poster session, with nice contributions from Laura Fabris, Katherine Koen and prize winner Kimberley Hamad-Schiffer.
Trevor Keel
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