US students presented their final research talks for the GIANT International Internship Programme at the end of July. Congratulations to Katie Rose for earning “best final presentation” and Mauricio Alvarez for sharing 3rd place along with MIT student Keith Phuthi. Virginia Tech student, Grace Watt, received 2nd place.
Our REACT cohort in France spent its last week in a 3.5 day prototyping Innovation Workshop, where students worked in teams to create products to make life in refugee camps safer. The “Cleanbox” and “Safety Spot” were designed to leverage REACT-related research. Richard Adamovich-Zeitlin, a Penn undergraduate, had spent his…
Under the leadership of Zahra Fakhraai, REACT’s Penn leads (R. Composto, K. Field, D. Lee) have been awarded a seed grant to pursue and expand ACT 1-related work. The two-year project, “Active Coating Technologies (ACT) to Mitigate the Global Water Crisis,” will build an international working group around redirecting, harvesting…
Neha Manohar, with the support of GIANT mentors at Institut Laue-Langevin (ILL) Philipp Gutfreund and Giovanna Fragneto, applied for and was awarded time to collect neutron reflectivity data at ILL. These experiments will refine work that builds on Neha’s research during her 2017 summer at GIANT and at Penn for…
Part of the Penn REACT team gathered in Grenoble or joined via videoconference during the week of June 18 to participate in the annual REACT@GIANT meeting to discuss research progress and educational programming. REACT students participating in the 2018 GIANT International Internship Programme (GIIP) gave research updates to REACT faculty…
ACT 1 Professors Stebe and Lee are hosting Anne Guindet from the Chemistry Department at the Université Grenoble Alpes – UIT1 to work on understanding the formation of nanoparticle composite films, which have potential for advancing water filtration technology. REACT Fellow Neha Manohar is mentoring Anne. ACT 2, with industrial…
Researchers from Penn and GIANT, along with colleagues at the University of Florida and at Sandia National Labs, published a paper in Nature Materials that describes their innovative approach to designing a membrane that promises efficient and selective transport of protons, ions and small molecules. The lead author, Edward “Ted”…
Most of the 2018 cohort of REACT students started their research at GIANT on May 14 in labs of our French REACT partners. This year’s group includes five undergraduates* (including one from Bryn Mawr College1 and one from Villanova2) and five graduate students** (including one from Alabama State3). French hosts,…
Stephanie Barrow spent the month of May in Daeyeon Lee’s Lab in the Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering Department to work on the conditions for developing layer-by-layer assembled polymer films. This extension of her work in Catherine Picart’s Lab at the Laboratoire des Matériaux et du Génie Physique in Grenoble, France…
David Gordon, one of the undergraduate researchers on the 2017 tent design team, submitted a proposal to present the team’s work to high school students newly admitted to Penn. His presentation, “Graphene Nanoplatelet-Based Superhydrophobic Spray-Coatings Applied to Rapidly Deployable Humanitarian Relief Tents,” was accepted for and presented at the 9th…