The Institute for Electronics and Nanotechnology (IEN) at Georgia Tech is pleased to announce the winners for the 2014-15 Spring 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 Spring 2014-2015 IEN Seed Grant Award winners are:

• Ryan Randall (PI Eric Gaucher, Biology), Engineering Protein-based BioInks for 2D Printing
• Ning Xia (PI Rosario Gerhardt, Materials Science and Engineering), An Indium Tin Oxide Ink for All-Printing Liquid Crystal Display Devices
• Mason Chilmonczyk (PI Andrei Fedorov, Mechanical Engineering), Micro/Nanofabrication of Mass Spectrometry Probe for Single-Cell-Scale Biochemical Imaging
• Eric Tervo (PI Baratunde Cola, Materials Science and Engineering & Mechanical Engineering), A Proposal for Fabrication and Characterization of Surface Phonon Polariton Metamaterials
• Ruxiu Liu (PI Fatih Sarioglu, Electrical and Computer Engineering), Microfluidic Chip for Label-Free Single Cell Analysis

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.