Fall 2021 IEN Seed Grant Winners Announced

The Institute for Electronics and Nanotechnology at Georgia Tech has announced the winners for the 2021 Fall Facility Seed Grants. The primary purpose of this program is to give first- or second-year graduate students in diverse disciplines working on original and un-funded research in micro- and nano-scale projects the opportunity to access the most advanced academic cleanroom space in the Southeast. In addition to accessing the high-level fabrication, lithography, and characterization tools in the labs, the awardees will have the opportunity to gain proficiency in cleanroom and tool methodology and access the consultation services provided by research staff members of the IEN.  Seed Grant awardees are also provided travel support to present their research at a scientific conference.

In addition to student research skill development, this bi-annual grant program gives faculty with novel research topics the ability to develop preliminary data to pursue follow-up funding sources. The Facility Seed Grant program is supported by the Southeastern Nanotechnology Infrastructure Corridor (SENIC), a member of the National Science Foundation’s National Nanotechnology Coordinated Infrastructure (NNCI).

Since the start of the grant program in 2014, seventy-two projects from ten different schools in Georgia Tech’s Colleges of Engineering and Science, as well as the Georgia Tech Research Institute and 3 other universities, have been seeded.

The 4 winning projects in this round were awarded IEN cleanroom and lab access time to be used over the next year. In keeping with the interdisciplinary mission of IEN, the projects that will be enabled by the grants include research in semiconductor technology, opto-electronic materials and designs, quantum computing, and polymer nanostructures.

The Fall 2021 IEN Facility Seed Grant Award winners are:

In-situ Electron Microscopy Biasing Experiments on Ferroelectric Oxides on Ge Substrates
PI: Asif Khan and Joshua Kacher | Student: Nashrah Afroze
School of Electrical and Computer Engineering/School of Materials Science and Engineering

Fabrication of Dielectric Resonant Optical Metamaterials using 3D Printed Patterns
PI: Sourabh Saha | Student: Vidhukiran Venkataraman
George W. Woodruff School of Mechanical Engineering

Realization of Microscale Mechanical Bistable Junction
PI: Chengzhi Shi | Student: Chenzhe Wang
George W. Woodruff School of Mechanical Engineering

Fabrication and Characterization of Surface-Modified Polymers
PI: Akanksha Menon | Student: Walter Parker
George W. Woodruff School of Mechanical Engineering

The Southeastern Nanotechnology Infrastructure Corridor (SENIC), a member of the National Nanotechnology Coordinated Infrastructure (NNCI), is funded by NSF Grant ECCS-2025462.

Related Links

• Southeastern Nanotechnology Infrastructure Corridor (SENIC)