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Spotlight Publications Category

“Chemical and Biomolecular Strategies for STING Pathway Activation in Cancer Immunotherapy” published in Chemical Reviews, selected as VINSE Spotlight Publication

Jul. 21, 2022—About the authors: Co-first author, Kyle Garland earned his Ph.D. in Chemical Engineering in 2021 under the direction of Prof. John Wilson and is currently working for Brooklyn Immunotherapeutics, Inc. in San Diego, California as an R&D scientist investigating in vivo gene editing. His dissertation focused on the development of innate immune activators for local...

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“Investigating the effects of N-terminal acetylation on KFE8 self-assembly with 2D IR spectroscopy” published in Biophysical Journal has been selected as a VINSE spotlight publication

Jul. 5, 2022—About the author: William Weeks is a PhD candidate in Chemistry under direction of Dr. Lauren Buchanan. In this article, Will and Dr. Buchanan determine how N-terminal acetylation causes aggregates of a model amphiphilic peptide, KFE8, to shift from a flat to a twisted ribbon structure.  By utilizing the high spectral resolution of two-dimensional infrared...

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“Dynamic Color Tuning with Electrochemically Actuated TiO2 Metasurfaces” published in Nano Letters selected as VINSE Spotlight Publication

Jun. 17, 2022—About the author: Janna Rathert recently completed a Ph.D. in Mechanical Engineering under the direction of Prof. Jason Valentine at Vanderbilt University and Prof. Cary Pint at Iowa State University. The collaboration between the Pint and Valentine groups seeks to explore ways in which electrochemical methods can be leveraged to reversibly modulate photonic devices, especially...

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“Minimizing the Reorganization Energy of Cobalt Redox Mediators Maximizes Charge Transfer Rates from Quantum Dots” selected as VINSE Spotlight Publication

Jun. 8, 2022—About the author: Madeleine Fort is working on her PhD in Interdisciplinary Materials Science under the guidance of Dr. Janet Macdonald. In this recently published article, she, and Sophia Click from Dr. Sandra Rosenthal’s lab, observed the effect of the reorganization energy of a charge acceptor on electron transfer rates from cadmium-based quantum dots. This...

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Spotlight Publication “Photonic crystals with split ring unit cells for subwavelength light confinement” published in Optics Letters

May. 27, 2022—About the author: Kellen P. Arnold is currently a second-year graduate student pursuing a Ph.D. in interdisciplinary materials science under the direction of Dr. Sharon Weiss. The Weiss group focuses on advancing silicon photonics for communications, sensing, and quantum information by leveraging nanoscale light-matter interactions in photonic crystal devices. Kellen’s recent publication proposes a new...

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Spotlight Publication: “Fluorescent Colloidal Ferroelectric Nanocrystals” published in the Journal of the American Chemical Society

May. 10, 2022—About the author: Cara Bradsher earned her Ph.D. in October 2021 under the direction of Dr. Sandra Rosenthal and is currently working as a research scientist in nanoparticle research and development in San Diego. Her Ph.D. work focused on the introduction of ferroelectric properties in quantum dots through cation exchange. In recently published work, she...

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Spotlight Publication: “Signatures of atomic structure in subfemtosecond laser-driven electron dynamics in nanogaps” published in Physical Review B

Apr. 28, 2022—About the author: Luke Bhan is currently an undergraduate computer science and physics major working under the supervision of Dr. Kalman Varga. His lab focuses on the simulation of nanoscale materials and their properties. In recently published work, he simulates electron dynamics across nanoscale gaps in aluminum structures containing thousands of atoms. From the simulations,...

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Spotlight Publication “Enhanced photocurrent response speed in charge-density-wave phase of TiSe2-metal junctions” published in Nanoscale

Apr. 17, 2022—About the author: Thayer Walmsley earned his Ph.D. in Physics in August 2021 under the direction of Dr. Yaqiong Xu. He is currently a J.D. student at Vanderbilt Law School. His Ph.D. work focused on exploring novel two-dimensional materials and their applications via scanning photocurrent microscopy. In his recently published work, he fabricated 2D metal-semimetal...

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Spotlight Publication “Scalable synthesis of nanoporous atomically thin graphene membranes for dialysis and molecular separations via facile isopropanol-assisted hot lamination” published in Nanoscale

Apr. 3, 2022—About the author: Peifu Cheng is currently a research engineer in Chemical & Biomolecular Engineering under the direction of Dr. Piran R. Kidambi. Peifu studies low-dimensional materials (such as graphene, h-BN and carbon nanotubes) based membranes for ionic/molecular separation, desalination and dialysis. In recently published work, he created a novel roll-to-roll manufacturing compatible isopropanol-assisted hot...

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Spotlight Publication “Morlet Wavelet Filtering and Phase Analysis to Reduce the Limit of Detection for Thin Film Optical Biosensors” published in ACS Sensors

Mar. 18, 2022—About the author: Simon Ward is currently a Ph.D. student in the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering under the direction of Dr. Sharon Weiss. In recently published work, he proposed a signal processing method capable of significantly lowering the detection limit of thin film optical biosensors. The signal processing method drastically reduces noise contributions...

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