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| Contact: | Dhaval Doshi, 272-7136 Jeff Brinker, 272 -7627 Michael Padilla, 277-1816 |
August 10, 2001
UNM TEAM NAMED WINNERS IN NATIONAL COLLEGIATE INVENTORS COMPETITION
University of New Mexico Professor Jeff Brinker and graduate student Dhaval
Doshi were named winners in the 2001 Collegiate Inventors Competition. They
are one of only five student/advisor teams to receive this years award.
Other teams represented Harvard, Stanford, The University of Illinois at Chicago
and the University of Maryland.
Doshi will receive a $20,000 cash prize and a $2,000 gift certificate to www.hpshopping.com.
Brinker will receive a $10,000 cash prize.
In September the two will travel to Akron, Ohio as guests of The National Inventors
Hall of Fame. The Collegiate Inventors Competition winners will receive their
awards at a dinner given in their honor Friday, Sept. 14, additionally they
will be showcased alongside inductees to the National Inventors Hall of Fame
during an Induction Ceremony Saturday, Sept. 15.
The Collegiate Inventors Competition is a national event designed to encourage
the creativity and problem solving abilities of college students active in science,
engineering, mathematics and technology. It also serves to foster student/advisor
relationships, and stimulate excitement and interest in technology and economic
leadership. The competition required participants to submit an essay describing
the invention and its potential economic, environmental and societal benefits.
The UNM winning entry, Optically-Adjustable Nanostructures, devised
by Doshi and Brinker employs molecular self-assembly to prepare photosensitive
porous thin-film nanostructures and lithographic procedures to define optically
their etchability, wettability, refractive index, dielectric constant, surface
area, pore size and pore connectivity.
This invention enables the multi-billion dollar lithography infrastructure
to be used not just to define the presence or absence of conventional thin film
materials but to define optically the structure and function of new nano-structured
thin film materials crucially needed to advance the capabilities of U.S. industry
in the burgeoning area of Nano-Technology, said Doshi.
Specific applications of the products of this invention include patterned low
dielectric constant thin films needed for all future generations of microelectronics,
optically tunable membranes (molecular sieves) for chemical purification
and pollution mitigation, sensor arrays, fluidic networks for biosensors, and
photonic structures for optical communication.
Doshi said the invention embodies several novel concepts enabling the efficient
formation of nanostructures, their integration into devices, and the optical
definition of both their form and function.
Brinker is a professor of Chemical and Nuclear Engineering and Chemistry at
UNM and a Senior Scientist at Sandia National Laboratories.
Doshi is an international graduate student from Mumbai, India. He received
his Bachelor of Technology in Chemical Engineering from the Indian Institute
of Technology-Bombay, Mumbai, India, in April 97. He is pursuing a Ph.D. in
Chemical Engineering at UNM.
Their work was featured in an article in Science last October. Other members
of the Brinker group that contributed to this work are, Nicola Huesing, Hongyou
Fan and Alan J. Hurd.
This is the second year in a row UNM has been named winners in the competion. Last year UNM student Balaji Srinivasan and professor Ravinder K. Jain were named recipients for their invention of Fiber Lasers.
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