April 2008: Graduating senior Grant Belgard received a 2008 Outstanding Seniors Award from the Office of Student Activities and the Rice Student Association, and a Salsburg Award in Chemistry from the Department of Chemistry. Congrats!

April 16, 2008: Jie Yu successfully defended her Chemical Engineering PhD thesis on near-infrared-active nanoparticle-assembled capsules!

April 4, 2008: Kimberly Heck was recognized for her award-winning poster presentation at the 2008 Spring Symposium of the Southwest Catalysis Society. She was one of four winners, chosen out of 17 posters in the competition. The title of her poster was "In-situ Detection of Surface Reaction Intermediates Using Surface Enhanced Raman Spectroscopy (SERS)", which was co-authored with Professors Halas, Scuseria, and Wong and Dr. Janesko. Congratulations!

February 11, 2008: Subashini Asokan successfully defended her Chemistry PhD thesis on CdSe quantum dot/tetrapod production!

January 2008: Quang Nguyen joins our research group as a first-year Electrical and Computer Engineering PhD candidate. Welcome!

January 2008: Our paper on the highly selective CdSe tetrapod synthesis using cationic surfactants is one of the "Most accessed articles" of the journal Small in 2007.

January 2008: A picture of CdSe quantum dot suspensions from the Group is featured in a textbook (Chemistry, 5th Edition, McCurry and Fay). (picture)

January 2008: Sumedh Warudkar joins our research group as a first-year Chemical Engineering PhD candidate. Mr. Warudkar is co-advised by Prof. George Hirasaki. Welcome!

December 2007: Ramsey J. Smith joins our research group as a first-year Chemistry PhD candidate. Welcome!

December 2007: Grant Belgard was selected for a 2008 Marshall Scholarship, which he will use for his graduate studies at University of Oxford. Congratulations!
(http://www.media.rice.edu/media/NewsBot.asp?MODE=VIEW&ID=10380)
(http://www.marshallscholarship.org/winners.html)

December 2007: Dr. Zhiqing Yuan joins our group as a visiting research scientist from the Shanghai Research Institute of Petrochemical Technology, SINOPEC, China. Welcome!

November 4-9, 2007: Kimberly Heck, Yu-lun Fang, Enrique Munoz, Shyam Benegal, and Guatam Kini all gave oral presentations at the AIChE Annual Meetingin Salt Lake City, Utah. Good work!

October 2007: Dan Nelson, a freshman at Rice, joins our research lab as a Century Scholar. Welcome!

October 2007: Smithsonian magazine has named Prof. Wong to its list of "America's Young Innovators in the Arts and Sciences: 37 Under 36."
(http://www.media.rice.edu/media/NewsBot.asp?MODE=VIEW&ID=10121&SnID=2)
(http://images.smithsonianmag.com/content/innovators/)

October 2007: An tUasal Nicholas Nolan and Mark Boylan join our group as FAS Science Challenge Fellows. They are PhD graduate students in the School of Chemical and Pharmaceutical Sciences at Dublin Institute of Technology, Ireland. Céad míle fáilte!

September 2007: Xuejiao "Jessica" Tang joins our group as a visiting environmental chemistry graduate student from the College of Environmental Science and Engineering, Nankai University in Tianjin, China. Welcome!

August 2007: Wen-Yin "Lynn" Ko joins our group as a visiting chemistry graduate student from the Department of Chemistry, National Chung-Hsing University, in Taichung, Taiwan. Welcome!

June 2007: Dr. Hitesh Bagaria (PhD, University of Alabama) joins our group as a postdoctoral research associate. Welcome!

June 17-22, 2007: The 20th North American Catalysis Society Meeting was held in Houston, TX (http://www.nacatsoc.org/20nam/), hosted by the Southwest Catalysis Society (SWCS). Kimberly Heck and Yulun Fang received Richard J. Kokes Travel Awards for this meeting.

May 2007: Professor Wong received early promotion to Associate Professor with tenure, effective July 1, 2007.

May 4, 2007: At the Chemistry Department Awards Luncheon this year, Subashini Asokan received the Harry Weiser Research Award (+ money!) for outstanding research by a Chemistry graduate student. Also, Amy Liu received an Engel Fellowship for undergraduate summer research.

March 17, 2007: Jie Yu received a third-place award for her poster presentation ("Synthesis of Near-Infrared-Absorbing Nanoparticle-Assembled Capsules") at the annual graduate student poster symposium of the Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering Department.

February 25-27, 2007: Prof. Wong organized and ran the "Nanotechnology-enabled Water Treatment" (NeWT) Workshop, held in Houston, TX. Over 50 experts from around the world attended this three-day event. (web site)

February 2007: Professor Wong was selected to receive a 3M Nontenured Faculty Award.

January 2007: Gautam C. Kini and Nikolaos Soultanidis join our lab as first-year Chemical Engineering PhD candidates. Mr. Kini is co-advised by Prof. Lisa Biswal. Welcome!

January 2007: Nurgul Akcin joins our group as a visiting chemistry graduate student from Yildiz Technical University, Istanbul, Turkey. Welcome!