NANOTECHNOLOGY IN BIONIC RESEARCH

27 August 2009

Nanotechnology is developing new biomaterials with important medical applications, for example, spinal cord and muscle regeneration, epilepsy control, repair of nerve cells and the delivery of drugs to specific tissues. These biomaterials are stimulated electronically, and need to have specific chemical/ mechanical/electronic properties. How each property responds to electrical stimuli is a complex and exciting challenge. Sometimes the biomaterials must have different properties in different parts of the biological environment, and ideally these properties should also be able to change over time. The biomedical engineering challenges are: how to determine the optimum composition of such biomaterials, how to engineer their different properties depending on the biological environment, and how to manage these properties as they change over time. This presentation explores some of the biomedical engineering challenges that are the focus of current nano-medical research programs.

Dr Simon Moulton is a Senior Researcher with the ARC Centre of Excellence for Electromaterials Science at the University of Wollongong. His research area is the development of novel conducting biomaterials for use in tissue engineering applications such as spinal cord and muscle regeneration, as well as drug delivery. In 2008 he was awarded the prestigious ARC Queen Elizabeth II Research Fellowship to develop novel drug delivery systems for epilepsy treatment.

THE WEIRD WORLD OF THE NANOSCALE

24 September 2009

‘Nanotechnology' has been in the news, most recently in the Federal 2009-2010 budget as one of the themes within the new Super Science initiative. But what is ‘nanotechnology' and how much is real as opposed to just hype? In this talk Prof. Mike Cortie explores the field, concentrating on the exciting scientific phenomena underpinning the many new applications under development. The question of what we can expect from nano-technology over the next decade is considered, as well as those ideas likely to remain ‘science fiction' for the foreseeable future. The idea of the infamous ‘grey goo' and nanoscale medical nano-bots is considered as examples. He shows that the application of the nanotech ‘paradigm' is leading to advances on many fronts and that the benefits to society outweigh the risks by a large margin. Finally, he outlines some research projects into the interaction of light with nanoscale objects and structures being carried out by himself and colleagues at the Institute of Nanoscale Technology, UTS.

Prof. Mike Cortie is the Director of the Institute for Nanoscale Technology at the University of Technology Sydney (UTS). Born and educated in South Africa, he was awarded his PhD degree in 1987. After working with South Africa's Atomic Energy Corporation and Pylon Engineering, Mike joined Mintek, a minerals/metals research organization as Head of their Physical Metallurgy Division. He joined UTS in July 2002, where he has pursued his research in nanotechnology and advanced materials using precious metals. He leads a number of ARC/industry funded projects investigating the optical properties of precious metal nanoparticles and intermetallic compounds using precious metals, including the properties of gold-based shape memory alloys.

GREEN NANOTECHNOLOGY FOR ENERGY SMART BUILDINGS

29 October 2009

Heating, cooling, lighting, air conditioning and hot water in buildings, consumes 30% to 40% of all primary energy, depending on location. Construction materials production and associated transport also need lots of energy. Nanotechnology is providing unprecedented ability to tune the properties of "everyday" building materials simultaneously to both human needs and the physical attributes of the environment so as to maximise energy savings at low cost. This presentation will discuss the use and benefits of nanomaterials in windows, paints, walls, daylighting, lamps and low energy cooling on selected buildings. This is engineering on the scale of 10-16 m2 in products made at scales of approximately 108 m2 per annum.

Geoff Smith is Professor in Applied Physics. He is a world leader in the science and technology of coatings, windows, cooling and nanotechnology fields, for energy efficiency and renewables. His solar energy work started at UTS in 1975. Contributions include over 200 publications and around 15 patents, including four in 2009 on novel cooling technologies. He works with the world and Australia's top glass and chemical manufacturers on paints, windows, skylights, and cooling. Geoff chairs our standards committee for skylights and roof glazing, carried out the daylighting design and polymer roofing studies for the Sydney Olympics stadium, and has an honorary doctorate from the University of Uppsala in Sweden.

NANODEVICES USING MOLECULES & NANOPARTICLES

26 November 2009

Dr Andrew McDonagh is an ARC Research Fellow and Senior Lecturer at UTS, with specialist interests in the design/synthesis of functional molecules and the construction of micro- and nanoscale devices. His research projects include light-harvesting ruthenium-based dyes, nanoparticles for forensic fingermark detection, light-responsive molecular structures, molecules for electrochemical switching of nonlinear optical properties, and new types of self-assembled monolayers. Andrew received his PhD from the Australian National University for work investigating the nonlinear optical properties of metal acetylide complexes. After post-doctoral research at the University of Bristol, UK, he was awarded a UNSW Vice-chancellor's Post-doctoral Research Fellowship at the University of New South Wales followed by an ARC Post-doctoral Research Fellowship at UTS.