Quing Zhu Receives CT Bioscience Innovation Funding

Quing Zhu, professor of Electrical & Computer Engineering and Biomedical Engineering, will receive $500,000 in funding from the Connecticut Bioscience Innovation.

This project involves the development of a handheld near-infrared imager as an add-on unit to commercial ultrasound systems for use in breast imaging. The device is intended to help predict and assess neoadjuvant chemotherapy response.

Neoadjuvant chemotherapy is treatment given before primary therapy, and used in the management of locally advanced breast cancers. A woman may receive neoadjuvant chemotherapy to shrink a tumor that cannot be surgically removed in its current stage. 

NSF Money For Smart Ocean Technology 

The National Science Foundation has awarded a $620,000 grant to the Smart Ocean Technology Research Center, a collaborative effort between UConn and the University of Washington.

The research center was created last year as part of the NSF’s Industry University Collaborative Research Center (I/UCRC) program with the mission of developing new technologies to explore the ocean.

Jun-Hong Cui, director of the research center, said the research team is currently focusing on robotics and ocean sensors to collect data and better understand ocean resources and how they can best be used. This includes monitoring aquaculture and identifying new opportunities for ocean transportation.

Serge Nakhmanson Co-Authors Paper in Nature Materials

Serge Nakhmanson, associate professor in the materials and science engineering department, has co-authored a paper on the development of the first in situ ternary-oxide molecular beam epitaxy (MBE) system for the synthesis of novel layered-oxide materials.

Modern solid-state synthesis techniques already utilize state-of-the-art technology. MBE is simultaneously the most difficult and flexible of these methods, allowing researchers to grow oxide films by spraying atomically thin layers one at a time with great precision. However, addressing the challenge of “knowing exactly where the atoms are going” in order to construct new materials that are usually reluctant to come together requires the development of in situ (watch-as-you-grow) capabilities.

Go here for Giorgina Paiella’s write-up of the study, and here for the paper itself.