The Institute for Electronics and Nanotechnology (IEN) at Georgia Tech is pleased to announce the winners for the 2015-16 Fall Seed Grant Awards. The IEN Seed Grant’s primary purpose is to give first or second year graduate students in various 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 students will have a chance to learn cleanroom and tool methodology and to consult with the research staff of the IEN Advanced Technology Team. The Seed Grant program’s secondary purpose is to give faculty with novel research topics the ability to develop preliminary data in order to pursue follow-up funding sources.

The Fall 2015-2016 IEN Seed Grant Award winners are:

• Changsheng Wu (PI: ZL Wang, Materials Science and Engineering), Rationally-designed Triboelectric Nanogenerators with Bio-inspired Nano-hair Patterns for Self-powered Mobile Electronics and Active Motion Sensors

• Neha Kondekar (PI: Matthew McDowell, Mechanical Engineering & Materials Science and Engineering), Controlling Mass Transport at Nanoscale Interfaces for Improved Redox‐based Nonvolatile Memory Devices
• David Hahn (PI: Shreyes Melkote, co-PI Buddhika Jayasena, Mechanical Engineering), Large-area van der Waals Materials for Plasmonic Applications by Polymer Stamp-based Mechanical Exfoliation
• Victor Pan (PI: Yonggang Ke, Biomedical Engineering), Self-assembled Complex DNA Nanostructures for Nanolithgraphy
• Anna Miettinen (PI: Zhigang Jiang, co-PI Phillip First, Physics), Imaging the Influence of Defects on Current Flow with Subnanometer Precision

The five student winners for this award cycle come from various schools across campus, and will be provided no-cost access to the IEN cleanrooms and labs for a six-month period. Awardees will present the results of their research efforts at a future IEN User Day.