On June 10, 2025, Anmol Purohit, Dr. Ji Feng, and Almond Lau won first prize at the NNCI NTEC Showcase for their project, “Synthesis of metal-organic framework particles for removal of short and ultra-short chain PFAS from water”.
Santhosh Sridhar, Ankush Nandi, and Shaunak Deshpande won first prize for “Foam in Bloom” in the “Most Stunning” category in the 2025 Plenty of Beauty at the Bottom image contest hosted by the National Nanotechnology Coordinated Infrastructure (NNCI).
NanoES faculty member Ayokunle Olanrewaju (bioengineering and mechanical engineering) has earned a Maximizing Investigators’ Research Award from the National Institutes of Health’s National Institute of General Medical Sciences. The $2.1 million grant is for five years. Often referred to as “R35 awards,” these grants support broad research programs over the course of several years, providing the nation’s most talented and promising researchers “greater stability…enhancing scientific productivity and the chances for important breakthroughs.”
The National Science Foundation has awarded $3 million to establish a NSF Research Traineeship at the University of Washington for graduate students in quantum information science and technology. The new traineeship — known as Accelerating Quantum-Enabled Technologies, or AQET — will make the UW one of just a handful of universities with a formal, interdisciplinary QIST curriculum. NanoES member and professor of electrical & computer engineering and physics, Kai-Mei Fu, will direct this new traineeship.
Congratulations to materials science & engineering professor Miqin Zhang for receiving the faculty research award and Shane Colburn, a PhD student in Arka Majumdar’s lab, for receiving the student research award.
NanoES faculty member Lih Lin, Professor of Electrical & Computer Engineering, has been awarded an Optical Society Fellowship for 2020 due to the significant technical achievements and contributions she has made in the field of photonics. Dr. Lin has demonstrated pioneering efforts in several new research frontiers, including the research and development of MEMS (Micro-Electro-Mechanical Systems) optical switching technologies and innovation in solution-processed photonic components and devices.
The AeroSpec team cofounded by Sep Makhsous and Jiayang (Joe) He, PhD students in the lab of NanoES faculty member Igor Novosselov, won the $5,000 Fenwick & West fourth place prize at the 2019 Dempsey Startup Competition, an event hosted by the UW Foster School’s Buerk Center for Entrepreneurship.
The MOtiF Materials team led by Elizabeth Rasmussen, a PhD student in the lab of NanoES faculty member Igor Novosselov, won the $15,000 grand prize at the 2019 Alaska Airlines Environmental Innovation Challenge (EIC), an the event hosted by the UW Foster School’s Buerk Center for Entrepreneurship. The team of mechanical engineering students aim to solve a battery manufacturing problem that “doesn’t involve killing our planet with toxic waste.”
Dr. Shreyas Shah, a postdoc working with Karl Böhringer and Arka Majumdar on an integrated photonics project, has been awarded an Unfettered Research Grant award to the tune of $10,000 by the Mistletoe Research Foundation. The Mistletoe Research Foundation, founded in 2017, builds bridges between the academic, entrepreneurial, and civil communities to create a more human-centered and sustainable future through technology.
Hal Holmes, a doctoral candidate of Bioengineering working with NanoES Director Karl Böhringer, has been selected as one of 14 Schmidt Science Fellows in the inaugural year of this prestigious program initiated by Eric and Wendy Schmidt.