2017 Highlights ReportInstruMNTL“Nanoscience is impossible to do by yourself because all the tools and expertise we need are
beyond any one professor’s budget. Being in a facility like MNTL makes a huge diﬀerence. The
well-developed facilities and easy-to-use shared tools that are available inﬂuenced my decision
to come here. I am also really excited to get to collaborate with all of the world-class scientists
working here.”
Professor Arend van der Zande
Assistant Professor, Mechanical Science & Engineering
Aﬃliated with the Beckman Institute for Advanced Science and Technology, Materials ResearchLab, and Micro & Nanotechnology Laboratory

OPTOELECTRONICS& NANOPHOTONICS

NANOMEDICINE &BIONANOTECHNOLOGYMICRO &NANOELECTRONICS

MEMS &INTEGRATEDSYSTEMS

Founded in 1989 as a lab unit of the College of Engineering, MNTL has grown to become oneof the nation’s largest and most sophisticated university-based facilities for semiconductor,
nanotechnology, and biotechnology research. It contains over 8,000 square feet of class 100
and class 1000 cleanroom laboratory space and state-of-the-art, ultra-high-speed optical,
electrical device, and circuit measurements equipment. MNTL houses facilities that areavailable for use by university and industrial scientists from across the U.S. Our faculty,
researchers, and students collaborate with educational institutions and industries fromaround the world.

Director’s Message

Welcome to the Micro & Nanotechnology Laboratory Highlights for the2017 academic year. It was a year that witnessed the start of new research
initiatives, welcoming new faculty to our family, and recognition of theaccomplishments of our talented students. MNTL is among the mostadvanced academic research facilities in the world, supporting exploration of
microelectronics, photonics, bionanotechnology, and micro-electromechanicalsystems. We work with applications that range from next-generation opticsbased data communication, new forms of biomedical imaging, diseasediagnostics, wireless communications, LED lighting and solar energy, to
ﬂexible electronics, and much more. The excellence of our faculty andstudents is matched by a dedicated staﬀ of professionals who ensure

Brian T. Cunningham

laboratory safety, train students to use sophisticated lab tools, and support
the business of performing research.
In the pages of this report, you will see a snapshot of the fundamental
research that incorporates novel theory, material science, fabrication methods,
devices, circuits, integrated systems, and instrumentation that truly spans thecontinuum from atoms to systems. You will also notice that MNTL continues
on a path toward increasingly interdisciplinary research, with collaborations
that extend outside the walls of our building to integrate the contributions ofchemists, biologists, clinicians, and industrial partners. It is truly an excitingtime to be a student at MNTL, as the campus plans to launch the newengineering-based Carle Illinois College of Medicine’s inaugural class in Fall
2018, while at the same time a new Cancer Center, NSF-supported
NanoManufacutring Node, and a new collaboration with the Carl R. Woese
Institute for Genomic Biology on the topic of cancer diagnostics are all coming
online.
Please keep in touch with us and consider subscribing to our InstruMNTL
enewsletter for news and regular updates.

Table of Contents
2

2017 Research Highlights

14 Faculty Focus
19 Student Successes
22 Outreach23 Alumni Update
24 Advancing the Future
25 New & Noteworthy
26 By the Numbers 20172017 HIGHLIGHTS REPORTResearch Highlights

University Launches First U.S.
Nanomanufacturing Node
“These simulation tools
could save signiﬁcanttime and money whileproviding valuable insighton how to reﬁne criticalprocess steps innanomanufacturing.”

Illinois researchers have been awarded
a ﬁve-year, $4 million grant by the
National Science Foundation (NSF) tolaunch the nation's ﬁrst computational
node aimed at developing nanomanufacturing simulation tools. The nanoMFG
Node’s mission is to be the engine fordesign, simulation, planning, andoptimization of highly relevant
nanomanufacturing growth andpatterning processes.
Kimani Toussaint (PI and Director),
Narayana Aluru (Co-PI), Elif Ertekin(Co-PI), and Placid Ferreira (Co-PI), allfaculty members from the Departmentof Mechanical Science & Engineering(MechSE) at Illinois, will lead this eﬀort,
along with Hayden Taylor (Co-PI) who isfrom UC, Berkeley.
Clarifying the Node’s goals, Toussaintsaid: “To make nanomanufacturing
economically viable, we envision endusers getting onto the nanoHUB cyberplatform and simulating every stage inthe manufacturing of a nano-enabled
product. These simulation tools could

MechSE professors
Placid Ferreira, Kimani
Toussaint, Narayana
Aluru, and Elif Ertekin

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save signiﬁcant time and money whileproviding valuable insight on how to
reﬁne critical process steps in nanomanufacturing.”
The Node team aspires to create tools
in areas ranging from nanoscale transportphenomena models to nanoscale selfassembly. The Node will provide many
opportunities for student engagement
through summer workshops that will
be open to Illinois students as well as
students from all over the country. There
will also be engagement with industry
in order to keep the tools developed
relevant to industry needs.
The team plans to develop computational tools that have been validated byexperiments by collaborating with manyof the facilities and centers at Illinois,
including the Materials Research Laboratory and the Micro-Nano-Mechanical
Systems Cleanroom Laboratory. They
also plan to collaborate with the National
Center for Supercomputing Applicationsat Illinois for software development anddesign.

New Plasmonic Sensor Improves Early
Cancer Detection
A new plasmonic sensor developed by
Illinois researchers will serve as reliable early
detection of biomarkers for many formsof cancer and eventually other diseases.
The research team is led by Professor
Lynford Goddard and Associate Professor
Logan Liu, both of Electrical & Computer
Engineering (ECE), with students Abid
Ameen and Lisa Hackett carrying out the
project.
The team published its results in Advanced
Optical Materials as a cover article.
The sensor has been proven reliable todetect the presence of the cancer biomarker
carcinoembryonic antigen (CEA) to themagnitude of 1 nanogram per milliliter.
Most humans carry at least some amountsof CEA, with an average range of 3-5
nanograms per milliliter. The researchers
chose to focus on CEA because its presencein higher concentrations is an early indicatorof many forms of cancer, including lung andprostate cancers.
The device combines two sensing
methods, which hadn’t until this time beenable to be used together. First, it uses a 3D
multi-layer nanocavity in a nanocup array,and secondly, it uses plasmonic sensing.
The plasmonic sensor is an improvement
over the current state-of-the-art method
as it is able to improve the limit of detection
by at least two orders of magnitude.
Secondly, because it works with much lessinstrumentation, it is less expensive andmore portable. This aspect will be especially
important for those who don’t live close toan advanced medical facility, including thosein developing nations.

A plasmonic nanocavity biosensor design enables detection ofclinically relevant concentrations of the cancer biomarker CEA.

2017 HIGHLIGHTS REPORT

3

Research Highlights“The notion that we candetect early formation ofcancer is what is driving
this research forward. The
cost of this technology isless than $100, which will
enable quality health carein resource-limited places
around the world.”

ECE Professor Viktor Gruev, right, and graduate student, Missael Garcia

Mantis Shrimp-inspired Camera
Enables Glimpse Into Hidden World
By emulating the eye of the mantis
shrimp, MNTL researchers havedeveloped an ultra-sensitive camera
capable of sensing both color andpolarization. The bioinspired imager
can potentially improve early cancer
detection and help provide a newunderstanding of underwater
phenomena, the researchers said.
Findings were reported in the journal
Optica. Viktor Gruev, Professor of
Electrical & Computer Engineering,MNTL aﬃliate, and co-author of thestudy, in collaboration with graduate
student Missael Garcia, led an eﬀort
to replicate the shrimp’s visual systemusing some basic physical concepts.
“The same laws of physics that apply
to the mantis visual system also apply
to silicon materials, the material used tobuild our digital cameras,” Garcia said.
“By stacking multiple photodiodes on top

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of each other in silicon, we can see
color without the use of special ﬁlters.
And by combining this technology withmetallic nanowires, we eﬀectively have
replicated the portion of the mantis
shrimp visual system that allows it tosense both color and polarization.”
Gruev further explained that “Bymimicking the mantis shrimp visualsystem, we have created a uniquecamera that can be used to improve thequality of our lives. The notion that we
can detect early formation of cancer iswhat is driving this research forward.
The cost of this technology is less than$100, which will enable quality healthcare in resource-limited places aroundthe world.”
The National Science Foundation(NSF) and the Air Force Oﬃce of
Scientiﬁc Research supported thisstudy.

van der Zande to Lead Team Studying
Novel Nanomaterials in New NSF Center
The University of Illinois was awarded
a Materials Research Science andEngineering Center (MRSEC) by the
National Science Foundation in 2017.
The NSF awards approximately eight toten MRSECs at a time, many of themrenewals. There are currently about 20of these centers in the U.S. This marks
the ﬁrst time that Illinois has received
such a center.
The new MRSEC is supported by a
six-year, $15.6M grant and will focus on
two types of materials. One group will
study new magnetic materials, whereultra-fast magnetic variations could
form the basis of smaller, more robust
magnetic memory storage. A second
group, led by a team in the Departmentof Mechanical Science & Engineering(MechSE), will design materials thatcan withstand large mechanicaldeformations, like bending andcrumpling, that typically destroy theproperties of those materials—andeven create materials where thedeformation enhances performance.
This interdisciplinary research
proposal entitled "Active Interfaces andHighly Deformable Nano-Materials,” isco-led by MechSE Assistant Professor
Arend van der Zande and Bioengineering Professor Rashid Bashir. MechSE
professors Narayana Aluru, Elif Ertekin,
Pinshane Huang, and Sungwoo Nam,along with Nadya Mason (Physics), andCatherine Murphy (Chemistry) are alsopart of the group.
The team’s research is intended tobridge the electronic design capabilityof hard materials with the adaptive
nature of biology—with the goal ofengineering electronic devices capableof changing shape and deforming into
three-dimensional structures.

Arend van der Zande

2017 HIGHLIGHTS REPORT

5

Research Highlights

Growth Method May Enable New
Properties for Next-Generation
Semiconductor Devices“MBE was ideally suitedfor this research because
it enabled us to monitor
the surface in situ—
while we’re growing it—
and we can control thegermanium deposition
down to the submonolayer level.”

Minjoo Larry Lee
Electrical & Computer Engineering(ECE) faculty member and researcher
at MNTL, Minjoo Larry Lee, and his
students, have demonstrated a novel
crystal growth method for making
semiconductor nanocompositesthat could one day lead to betterperforming devices like integrated
circuits chips and lasers. Nanocomposites are formed when nanosized particles are embedded in amatrix in order to improve certain
material properties.
Lee’s team used molecular beam
epitaxy (MBE) to grow germanium(Ge) nanowires in a matrix made ofindium aluminum arsenide (InAlAs), awell-studied semiconductor material
used in telecom applications.

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According to Lee, MBE provides agreat deal of control and is easier tomonitor than other crystal growthmethods. “MBE was ideally suited forthis research because it enabled us tomonitor the surface in situ—while we’re
growing it—and we can control thegermanium deposition down to thesub-monolayer level,” said Lee about
the growth innovation known as
spontaneous phase separation.
The nanocomposites enable strainengineering at the nanoscale, resulting
in novel and enhanced optoelectronic
properties. Strain engineering is widelyused to make quantum well lasers forlong-haul telecommunications, andsilicon chips for digital electronics
products. In both cases, strain induceschanges to the active material’s
bandgap and “density of states,”leading to properties and performancethat would be otherwise unattainable.
“This growth mechanism allows us toimpose new strain states that are
diﬃcult to get to in almost
any other way,” said Lee. In the coming
months, Lee will try to extend thephase separation technique to othersemiconductor materials—both for thematrix and the nanostructure. This
research was supported by a grant fromthe National Science Foundation (NSF).

New Physics Laws May Enhance
Performance of Widely Used Lasers
A team of University of Illinois researchers at MNTL recently applied newtheoretical physics concepts to enhance
the performance of a well-establishedsemiconductor laser technology.
Electrical & Computer Engineering (ECE)
Professor Kent Choquette and students
in his group have reported parity-time(PT) symmetry breaking in an electricallyinjected, room temperature vertical-cavity
surface-emitting laser (VCSEL) array forthe ﬁrst time.
Choquette's group demonstrated a
viable VCSEL platform to showcase PT
symmetry phenomena; the foundation
has been set to explore signiﬁcantadvances in VSCEL technology, such as
higher single-mode power, electronic
beam steering, and faster data-transmission
rates.
Zihe Gao, the lead author of theresearch study, was inspired to apply

the PT symmetry concepts to VCSEL
technology after attending the IEEE
Photonics Conference (IPC) in 2015.
“While prior work demonstrated thephysics, I realized that we may have theright technology platform to bring thephysics to applications,” noted doctoral
student Gao, whose work has opened up
a new ﬁeld of interdisciplinary research.
Until now, researchers had explored PT
symmetry phenomena using either
optically pumping or at cryogenic
temperatures, neither of which arepractical for real-world applications.
The Illinois team reported theseﬁndings in the journal Optica. Other teammembers included: ECE graduate
students Stewart T.M. Fryslie, Bradley J.
Thompson, and ECE Professor Scott
Carney. Their work was supported by the
National Science Foundation.

“While prior work
demonstrated the physics,
I realized that we may
have the right technology
platform to bring thephysics to applications.”

Left to right: ECE Professor
Kent Choquette, graduate
students Zihe Gao andBrad Thompson, and ECE
Professor Scott Carney2017 HIGHLIGHTS REPORT

7

Research Highlights

Researchers Develop Transistors
that Can Switch Between Two Stable
Energy States

Milton Feng
“Building a transistor withelectrical and opticalbistability into a computer
chip will signiﬁcantly
increase processing
speeds because thedevices can communicate
without the interference
that occurs when limited
to electron-onlytransistors.”

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Modern computers are limited bya delay formed as electrons travel
through the tiny wires and switches
on a computer chip. To overcome thiselectronic backlog, engineers would liketo develop a computer that transmits
information using light, in addition toelectricity, because light travels fasterthan electricity.
Having two stable energy states,or bistability, within a transistor allows
the device to form an optical-electric
switch. That switch will work as theprimary building block for developmentof optical logic—the language needed
for future optical computer processors
to communicate, said Milton Feng,
the Nick Holonyak Jr. Emeritus Chair inElectrical and Computer Engineeringand the team lead in a recent study.
In their study, the researchers
describe how optical and electricalbistable outputs are constructed froma single transistor. The addition of an
optical element creates a feedback loop

UNIVERSITY OF ILLINOIS AT URBANA-CHAMPAIGN

using a process called electron tunneling that controls the transmission oflight. The team published its results in
the Journal of Applied Physics.
In 2004, Feng and Nick Holonyak,
the Bardeen Emeritus Chair in Electricaland Computer Engineering and Physics,
discovered that light—previously
considered to be a byproduct of transistor electronics—could be harnessedas an optical signal. This paved the way
for the development of the transistor
laser, which uses light and electrons totransmit a signal.
“Building a transistor with electricaland optical bistability into a computer
chip will signiﬁcantly increase processing speeds,” Feng said, “because thedevices can communicate without theinterference that occurs when limited
to electron-only transistors.”
The U of I Department of Electrical &Computer Engineering supported thisresearch.

Team Advances GaN-on-Si Technology
Toward Scalable High Electron
Mobility Transistors
made of graded AlGaN reduce threading
dislocation, and stacking those layers
reduces stress. With this type of
conﬁguration, the team achieved anelectron mobility of 1,800 cm2/V-sec.
“The less strain there is on the GaN layer,
the higher the mobility will be, which

Can Bayram
After studying threeultimately corresponds to higher

diﬀerent buﬀer layertransistor operating frequencies,”

conﬁgurations, Bayram’s

said Hsuan-Ping Lee, an ECE graduate

team discovered thatstudent researcher leading the scalingof these devices for 5G applications.
GaN on 200-mm Si wafer thickness
mapping image.

According to Bayram, the next step forof graded AIGaN reduce

his team is to fabricate fully functional

threading dislocation, andhigh-frequency GaN HEMTs on a silicon
A research team led by Can Bayram,
Assistant Professor of Electrical &Computer Engineering (ECE) at MNTL

platform for use in the 5G wireless data
networks.
network will enable faster data rates forsilicon transistor technology

the world’s 8 billion mobile phones andby optimizing the composition of thewill provide better connectivity andsemiconductor layers that make up the

performance for Internet of Things (IoT)

device. Working with industry partners

devices and driverless cars.

reduces stress.

The team, in collaboration with Veeco

high electron mobility transistor (HEMT)and IBM, conducted their research withstructure on a 200-mm silicon substrate

support from the Air Force Oﬃce ofwith a process that will scale to larger

Scientiﬁc Research. Their work can beindustry-standard wafer sizes.

found at J. Phys. D: Appl. Phys. 50 (2017)

After studying three diﬀerent buﬀer

stacking those layers

When it’s fully deployed, the 5G

has advanced gallium nitride (GaN)-on-

Veeco and IBM, the team created thethicker buﬀer layers made055103.

layer conﬁgurations, Bayram’s teamdiscovered that thicker buﬀer layers

2017 HIGHLIGHTS REPORT

9Research Highlights

The technology will enableclinicians to rapidly
diagnose disease in theiroﬃce or in the ﬁeld,

Integrated Lab-on-a-chip Uses
Smartphone to Quickly Detect
Multiple Pathogens

resulting in earlier,more informed patientmanagement decisions,while markedly improving
the control of disease
outbreaks.

A multidisciplinary group that
includes the University of Illinois at
Urbana-Champaign and the Universityof Washington at Tacoma has developed a novel platform to diagnose
infectious disease at the point-of-care,using a smartphone as the detection
instrument in conjunction with a test kit
in the format of a credit card. The groupis led by Illinois Electrical & Computer
Engineering (ECE) Professor and MNTL
Director Brian T. Cunningham; Illinois
Bioengineering Professor Rashid Bashir;Dr. Ian Brooks, a research scientist
aﬃliated with the School of Information
Sciences at Illinois; and, University ofWashington at Tacoma Professor David
L. Hirschberg, who is aﬃliated with
Sciences and Mathematics, division ofProcess illustration

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UNIVERSITY OF ILLINOIS AT URBANA-CHAMPAIGN

the School of Interdisciplinary Arts andSciences. Dr. David Nash, a private
practice equine expert and veterinarianin Kentucky, was an additional
collaborator.
Findings have been published inAnalytical Chemistry, demonstrating
detection of four respiratory diseases inhorses, and in Biomedical Micro-devices,where the system was used to detectand quantify the presence of Zika,
Dengue, and Chikungunya viruses in a
droplet of whole blood.
The system is composed of anunmodiﬁed smartphone and a portable
3D–printed cradle that supports the
optical and electrical components andinterfaces with the rear-facing cameraof the smartphone. The software
application gathers information about
the tests conducted on the microﬂuidic
card, patient-speciﬁc information, andassay results, which are communicatedto a cloud storage database. The systemrepresents the only platform to datethat can multiplex detection of viral andother nucleic acid targets on a portable
point-of-care setup using one droplet ofbodily ﬂuid.
The work was funded by a grant fromthe National Science Foundation (NSF).

UI researchers andphysicians at Carle
Foundation Hospitaldeveloped a rapid test forsepsis that counts whiteblood cells and certain
protein markers on theirsurface to monitor apatient's immune
response.

Quick Blood Test Finds Signs of
Sepsis in Single Drop of Blood
A team of researchers from the
University of Illinois and Carle Foundation
Hospital in Urbana, Illinois completed aclinical study of a new portable device
designed to quickly ﬁnd markers ofdeadly, unpredictable sepsis infection
from a single drop of blood. A ﬁrst of
its kind, the device will provide rapid,
point-of-care measurement of theimmune system's response without
any need to process the blood.
This can help doctors identify sepsis
at its onset, monitor infected patients,
and could even point to a prognosis,
said research team leader Rashid Bashir,
Professor of Bioengineering and the
Executive Associate Dean of the Carle
Illinois College of Medicine. The
researchers published their ﬁndings in thejournal Nature Communications.

“We are looking at the immune
response, rather than focusing on
identifying the source of the infection,”
Bashir explained. “One person’s immune
system might respond diﬀerently fromsomebody else’s to the same infection.
In some cases, the immune system
will respond before the infection isdetectable. This test can complement
bacterial detection and identiﬁcation.
We think we need both approaches:
detect the pathogen, but also monitor
the immune response.”
The Center for Integration of Medicine
and Innovative Technology Innovation in
Boston supported this work through a
Point-of-Care Technology ResearchCenter in Primary Care grant. Additional
support came from Carle Foundation
Hospital and the University of Illinois.

“We are looking at
the immune response,rather than focusing on
identifying the sourceof the infection.”2017 HIGHLIGHTS REPORT

11

Research Highlights

Nanopores Could Map Small Changes
in DNA that Signal Big Shifts in Cancer“DNA methylation is
actually a starting process
for cancer. So we want todetect how many of them
there are and how close
together they are. That
can tell us at which stage
the cancer is.”Simulations indicate thatmeasuring the current
through the membrane
instead of just the solution
around it is much more
precise.

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Detecting cancer early, just as changes
are beginning in DNA, could enhance
diagnosis and treatment as well as further
our understanding of the disease. A new
study led by ECE Professor and MNTL
aﬃliate Jean-Pierre Leburton, describes amethod to detect, count, and map tiny
additions to DNA called methylations,which can be a warning sign of cancer,
with unprecedented resolution.
“One or a few methylations is not a big
deal, but if there are many of them andthey are packed close together, then it’sbad,” said Leburton. “DNA methylation is
actually a starting process for cancer. So
we want to detect how many of them there
are and how close together they are. That
can tell us at which stage the cancer is.”Other attempts at using nanopores todetect methylation have been limited inresolution, but Leburton's research grouptried a slightly diﬀerent approach. They
applied a current directly to the conductive
sheet surrounding the pore. Working withLOW RES

UNIVERSITY OF ILLINOIS AT URBANA-CHAMPAIGN

Klaus Schulten, a Professor of Physics
at Illinois, they used advanced computer
simulations to test applying current todiﬀerent ﬂat materials, such as graphene
and molybdenum disulﬁde, as methylated
DNA was threaded through.
“Our simulations indicate that measuring the current through the membrane
instead of just the solution around it ismuch more precise,” Leburton noted.
“If you have two methylations close
together, even only 10 base pairs away,
you continue to see two dips and nooverlapping. We also can map where
they are on the strand, so we can see
how many there are and where they are.”Grants from Oxford Nanopore
Technology, the Beckman Institute forAdvanced Science and Technology, theNational Institutes of Health, and the
National Science Foundation supported
this work. The study was published in theinaugural issue of the journal 2D Materials
and Applications.

Update on Research Theme:
Omics Nanotechnology for Cancer
Precision Medicine
The Omics Nanotechnology for Cancer
Precision Medicine (ONC-PM) Theme is agood case study in how peer networking,collegiality across institutions, andinterdisciplinary collaboration contributeto meaningful research that can change
the world.
The Theme got its start when Professor
Andrew Smith and Professor Brian T.
Cunningham co-organized an on-campus
symposium in 2015 on the topic of“Super-Resolution Imaging Technologies.”
Dr. Manish Kohli from Mayo Clinic
attended, leading to discussion amongst
the three regarding the topic of cancer
diagnostics. Cunningham explained“The symposium led to some discussion
between the three of us, and developing
some concepts for new cancer
diagnostics that would be capableof being ultrasensitive for the mostdemanding applications, like detecting ahandful of miRNA or mRNA molecules ina single droplet of blood. Manish alreadyhad a great collaborator at the Medical
College of Wisconsin, Professor Liang
Wang, with expertise in bioinformatics.
Together, they had already been clinicallyvalidating which biomarkers hadconcentrations that tracked withsuccessful response to drug therapy.”
Cunningham took the lead in preparing
a proposal to establish a new Theme at
the Carl R. Woese Institute for Genomic
Biology (IGB) at Illinois. Previously, there
had not been a similar Theme focused on
genomics-based diagnostics. “A campus
as strong as ours needs to be at theforefront of this area. IGB is the perfectenvironment for supportinginterdisciplinary science with very
ambitious goals,” said Cunningham.
Kohli’s eﬀorts to obtain seed funding
from a benefactor at Mayo Clinic helped
the research team get the technical workoﬀ to a strong start and build somepreliminary data that would strengthen
their grant proposals.
Their chief goal is to develop use-athome sample collection assays that canbe employed to identify sub-classes ofcancer, as well as to track treatment
eﬃcacy and progress. MNTL and IGB
facilities will be used to conduct Themeresearch. The group was awarded a ﬁveyear grant from the National Institutes of
Health (NIH), starting in May 2018.

“A campus as strong as ours
needs to be at the forefrontof this area. IGB is theperfect environment for
supporting interdisciplinaryscience with very ambitious
goals.”

Theme research team members include: Theme lead, Brian T. Cunningham (Electrical & Computer Engineering, Bioengineering,
Director of MNTL); Rashid Bashir (Bioengineering); Timothy M. Fan (Veterinary Clinical Medicine); Auinash Kalsotra(Biochemistry); Benita Katzenellenbogen (Molecular & Integrative Physiology); Manish Kohli (Medical Oncology, Mayo Clinic);
Zeynep Madak-Erdogan (Food Science & Human Nutrition); Olgica Milenkovic (Electrical & Computer Engineering); Andrew
Smith (Bioengineering); and, Liang Wang (Pathology, Medical College of Wisconsin).
2017 HIGHLIGHTS REPORT

13

New Faculty

Scholarly achievement and research activities are an integral part of a top research university like theUniversity of Illinois. Active research fosters future curriculum development and builds relevancy in what
students are taught. From a more global perspective, research has signiﬁcant economic and quality-of-life
impact. Moreover, today’s researchers are training the next generation of researchers and educators.
Here we celebrate the arrival of new colleagues and highlight some of the awards and recognition that they
have received this past year.

Kejie Fang

Joseph Irudayaraj

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Kejie Fang, Assistant Professor of Electrical & Computer Engineering, received his
Ph.D. in physics from Stanford University in 2013. Prior to joining the University of Illinois
faculty, Fang was a postdoctoral scholar and senior research scientist at the California
Institute of Technology (Caltech). His research interests center around nanophotonics
and quantum photonics, with an emphasis on physics exploration and chip-scale
integration.
He studies light manipulation and light-matter interaction at micro- and nano-scales,with a focus on synthesizing emergent optical states and making quantum photonic
devices. His goal is to address emerging technology challenges from manipulation of
single photons on chips to large-scale integration. He has authored 17 articles andpapers, which have appeared in Nature Physics, Nature Photonics, and Physical Review
Letters.

Joseph Irudayaraj has joined the faculty at the University of Illinois at UrbanaChampaign as a full professor, Founder Professor in Bioengineering, and Associate Headfor Graduate Programs in the Department of Bioengineering. He comes to Illinois from
Purdue University, where he served as a professor of biological engineering and deputy
director of the Bindley Bioscience Center. Irudayaraj conducts bionanotechnology
research, developing tiny (nano) diagnostic tools to understand cellular mechanismsthat could lead to targeted therapies or better prognosis for cancer or neurogenerative
diseases.
At Illinois, his focus is to “develop optical technologies and nanoparticle sensors for
epigenetic regulation and dynamic phosphorylation monitoring to understand disease
etiology—with a primary focus on cancer and immunotherapy,” he said.
Irudayaraj’s appointments at Illinois include the Beckman Institute for Advanced
Science and Technology, the Carl R. Woese Institute for Genomic Biology, and the Micro& Nanotechnology Laboratory.
Irudayaraj holds an M.S. degree in biosystems engineering and an M.S. in informationand computer science, both from the University of Hawaii, and he earned his Ph.D. inbiological engineering at Purdue University.

UNIVERSITY OF ILLINOIS AT URBANA-CHAMPAIGN

In 2017, MNTL welcomed Jean-Pierre Leburton to our ranks, as he moved from the
Beckman Institute for Advanced Science and Technology to facilitate key collaborations
with several MNTL faculty researchers. A member of the Illinois ECE faculty since 1981,
Leburton’s chief areas of expertise are nanostructure and device physics, includingtransport in quantum structures and carbon-based nanostructures, spin eﬀects innanostructures, and nano-biotechnology. “I develop physical models to understand the
behavior and operations on novel nanoscale electronic and optical devices,” Leburton
explained. “I also use these models to explore new properties of nanostructures.” Most
recently, he’s been doing research that merges semiconductor physics with biology.
Leburton earned his Ph.D. from the University of Liege, Belgium, where he also
received his B.S. degree.
Leburton is the Gregory Stillman Professor of Electrical and Computer Engineering,
Professor of Physics, and a research professor at the Coordinated Science Laboratory,
the Frederick Seitz Materials Research Laboratory, and the Micro & Nanotechnology
Laboratory.

A pioneer in advancing biomedical nanotechnology, Shuming Nie joined the
University of Illinois Department of Bioengineering as the Grainger Distinguished
Chair in Engineering in September 2017. In addition to his faculty position with
Bioengineering, Nie will hold joint appointments in the Electrical & Computer
Engineering Department and the Micro & Nanotechnology Lab. A Fellow of both the
AAAS and IAMBE, Nie has received the MilliPub Club Award, Merck Award, Nature
Publishing’s Achievement Award in Nanomedicine, and the UK’s Rank Prize in
Optoelectronics. He earned his Ph.D. from Northwestern University.
Nie comes to Illinois from Emory University and the Georgia Institute of Technology,
where he had been the Wallace H. Coulter Distinguished Chair Professor in Biomedical
Engineering for more than 10 years. Nie’s academic work is primarily in the areas ofnanomedicine, molecular engineering, and image-guided/minimally invasive/robotic
surgery.
Most recently, Nie has explored the use of bioconjugated nanoparticles fortherapeutic drug delivery, making it possible to deliver the drugs directly to tumors
with minimal damage to non-cancerous cells. This type of therapeutics could result in
more eﬀective cancer treatment with far fewer side eﬀects. During the last ﬁve years,
his collaborative teams have been engaged in seven clinical trials for image-guided
cancer surgery, enrolling more than 300 cancer patients at multiple hospital sites.

Jean-Pierre Leburton

Shuming Nie2017 HIGHLIGHTS REPORT

15

Faculty Awards & Recognition

MNTL values the hard work of faculty and recognizes the importance of awards in developing and sustaining
excellence across the wide range of activities involved in teaching, research, and public service.
Below are just a few examples of MNTL faculty achievements and recognition for 2017.

Select Faculty Awards
2017 Benjamin Franklin Medal in Electrical Engineering—Nick Holonyak Jr.
2017 Distinguished ECE Alumni Award—Milton Feng
NSF CAREER Award 2017—Wenjuan Zhu; Can Bayram
2017 Dean’s Award for Excellence in Research—Jean Paul Allain
2017 NASA Early Career Faculty Award—Songbin Gong
2017 Fellow of American Institute for Medical & Biological Engineering—Kyekyoon Kim
Faculty Entrepreneurial Fellow (2016-2017)—Jean Paul Allain
President, IEEE Photonics Society—Kent Choquette
Sandia National Labs Faculty Fellow—Kent Choquette
IEEE Fellow 2017—Xiuling Li
2017 Power List (published by The Analytical Scientist)—Shuming Nie

Journal Paper Selected as “Editor’s Pick”

Peter Dragic

16

MNTL

In December 2017, ECE Professor and MNTL researcher Peter Dragic and his researchteam were notiﬁed that they had a journal paper selected as an Editor’s Pick, based on“its excellent scientiﬁc quality.” Featured in Optics Letters, the paper is entitled “Highly
nonlinear yttrium-aluminosilicate optical ﬁber with high intrinsic stimulated Brillouinscattering threshold.”
Vital to the Information Age and just a bit thicker than a human hair, optical ﬁbers
carry enormous amounts of information around the world and are used in countless
applications including the Internet, weapons systems, and medicine. Typically developed
from silica, today’s optical ﬁbers are reaching the limits of their information-and-powercarrying capacity, due to a phenomena known as nonlinear optical eﬀects.
Dragic and his colleagues are working on ways to reduce or eliminate such nonlinear
eﬀects, particularly by addressing stimulated Brillouin scattering (SBS), an adverse
interaction between optical and acoustic waves. Key to their research is further
investigation and development of diﬀerent materials that can be used to produce
optical ﬁbers, such as yttrium-aluminum-garnet.
As demonstrated in this paper, Dragic said that the team has “…ﬁgured out a way
to signiﬁcantly suppress SBS to record level in these ﬁbers by their design, via materials
and waveguide, thus without the need to stretch or heat the ﬁber.”
The team’s research funding comes from the U.S. Department of Defense (DOD),
High Energy Laser Joint Technology Oﬃce.

UNIVERSITY OF ILLINOIS AT URBANA-CHAMPAIGN

Bayram and Zhu Receive NSF Career Awards
The National Science Foundation (NSF) announced that Can Bayram and Wenjuan
Zhu, both assistant professors of Electrical & Computer Engineering (ECE), have earned
2017 NSF CAREER Awards, which will provide each of them with $500,000 over the
next ﬁve years in support of their research and educational activities. NSF CAREER
Awards empower promising junior faculty to build a ﬁrm foundation for a lifetime ofleadership through integrating research and education.
Bayram is using his award to explore the fundamental properties of cubic phase lightemitting diodes (LEDs) that will provide the critical knowledge required to close the"green gap" in the visible spectrum. Current commercial LEDs consist of a mixture of
red, green, and blue LEDs to produce white spectrum light. Red and blue LEDs do not
rely on phosphor-down conversion, however, conventional green LEDs do, limiting
green light output power only to a fraction of its theoretical limit.
In parallel to the research activities, Bayram will develop a solid-state lighting themebased interactive K-12 outreach program and new curriculum materials for middle
schoolers and undergraduates. Bayram will make these educational resources available
online to enable a signiﬁcant global reach. He has already created a new ECE course
entitled “LEDs and Solar Cells,” which was oﬀered in the Spring 2017 semester.
Next-generation information technology is driving the need for integrated circuits,
devices, and architectures to process unprecedented amounts of real-time data inincreasingly eﬃcient and cost-eﬀective manners. Wenjuan Zhu’s research seeks toestablish fundamental knowledge of a new hybrid material platform that consists ofnovel ferroelectric metal oxides (hafnium and zirconium oxide), stacked with a layer of
two-dimensional material like graphene and mono/di-chalcogenides.
On the educational front, Zhu is creating a new graduate/undergraduate course on
2D materials to train the next-generation workforce in nanoelectronics. She also plans
to implement a science education program for elementary students called “Little
Einstein” and for middle school girls called “Girls Go Tech” that focuses on cultivating
their passion and interest in a future career in STEM ﬁelds.

Can Bayram

Wenjuan Zhu

MNTL Faculty Selected as Associates at Center for
Advanced Study
One of Illinois’ most respected resources for public events programming andco-sponsorship, the Center for Advanced Study (CAS), has named two of MNTL’s
faculty researchers as Associates for the 2018-19 year. Such recognition incentivizes
scholarly achievement and advances the university’s intellectual work.
Professor Brian T. Cunningham is the Director of MNTL and a Professor of both
Electrical & Computer Engineering (ECE) and Bioengineering. Professor Lynford
Goddard is also a Professor of ECE and heads the Photonic Systems Laboratory
research group, whose work is based at MNTL.
On an annual basis, CAS invites U of I faculty to submit creative and scholarly
proposals for competitive consideration by the Center’s permanent Professors. Tenured
faculty whose proposals are selected are appointed Associates. Such an appointment
grants one semester of teaching release time to pursue an individual scholarly project of
merit, in addition to participation in a yearly roundtable discussion of research interests.

Brian T. Cunningham

Lynford Goddard
2017 HIGHLIGHTS REPORT

17

Faculty Awards & Recognition

Gong Receives NASA Early Career Award

Songbin Gong

The National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) has awarded Electrical& Computer Engineering (ECE) Professor Songbin Gong an Early Career FacultyAward. The highly coveted award comes with $600,000 in funding support for a
proposed research project.
Gong’s proposed research seeks to develop photonic integrated circuits (PIC) thatcan surpass the state-of-the-art for performing widely tunable and highly sensitive
microwave and millimeter-wave radiometry. The project will do so “by exploiting the
pronounced photonic, electro-optic and piezoelectric properties of ion-sliced lithium
niobate thin ﬁlm platforms for signal modulation, ﬁltering and detection,” Gong saidin his proposal.
Gong is excited about the opportunity to work with NASA and is looking forward
to bringing his proposed concept to fruition. “The outcome of this research will
enable a new chip-scale solution for passive microwave radiometry over a wide
frequency range with ﬁne spectral selectivity,” said Gong.
Gong currently leads the Illinois Integrated RF Microsystems Research Group(ILIRM). The group’s research leverages micro/nano electro mechanical systems(N/MEMS) and integrated photonic technologies to enable radio and microwave
frequency chip-scale hybrid microsystems.

Enabling Subsystems in the LN PIC platform exploiting interactions among
microwave, photons, and phonons’ from Gong’s proposal.

18

MNTL

UNIVERSITY OF ILLINOIS AT URBANA-CHAMPAIGN

Student Success

Anming Gao Recipient of the 2017 Lam
Outstanding Graduate Student Award
Anming Gao, whose primary research area is microelectronics and photonics, wasselected as a recipient of the 2017 Lam Outstanding Graduate Student Award. Patienceand perseverance were key to his accomplishment.
Gao is presently working on his Ph.D. in electrical and computer engineering at the
University of Illinois, and is on schedule to graduate in 2018. He received a master’s
degree in electrical engineering from Shanghai Jiao Tong University.
Gao’s research requires a lot of cleanroom time, working on micro-nano fabrication. If
a given fabrication project does not come out well, the researcher must be willing andable to trace back and identify the issues experienced and de-bug the project, often
repeatedly. It’s time-consuming work that requires a high degree of patience. Gao
explained “Failures make you feel frustrated, but they are valuable and will ﬁnally lead
you to success.”
Songbin Gong, Assistant Professor of Electrical & Computer Engineering, is his
graduate advisor. Gao has been a member of Gong’s research team since he came toIllinois in 2014. He credits his research success to a strong teamwork ethos at MNTL. “I
am very honored to be selected as a recipient of the 2017 Lam Outstanding Graduate
Student Award,” he said. “My research would not have been possible without guidancefrom my supervisor, help from my group members, MNTL staﬀ, and all the resources
provided by MNTL.”
After graduation, Gao is planning to continue working in the micro andnanotechnology area, preferably in academia or as a research scientist in industry.
Gao is also a past recipient of the Nick and Katherine Holonyak, Jr. Graduate Student
Fellowship for 2015-2016.

Anming Gao

Grad Student Honored with NASA SpaceTechnology Research FellowshipElectrical & Computer Engineering (ECE) graduate student Dicky Liu decided to passon an NSF Graduate Research Fellowship in 2017. While he was honored to be among
the three ECE students who were oﬀered a place in one of the nation’s oldest and mostprestigious programs, he decided to decline in favor of a diﬀerent honor, a NASA SpaceTechnology Research Fellowship.
“I chose to go with NASA [because of] the mentorship and the visiting technologist
experience," he said. "I will spend ten weeks every year at a NASA center conducting
my research with help from experts in the ﬁeld. In addition, I will be assigned a personalresearch advisor from NASA to help coach me in my endeavors.” At Illinois, he is an
MNTL aﬃliate and advised by ECE Professor Can Bayram, who is also an MNTL
researcher.
Liu’s research interests align well with NASA’s initiatives. As he explained, ultraviolet
radiation has shown important applications in space technology, including gravitational
wave observation, light detection and ranging, planetary atmospheric measurements,
and chemical spectroscopy.

Dicky Liu

2017 HIGHLIGHTS REPORT

19

Student Success2017 International Frequency Control Symposium
Best Paper Award

Ruochen Lu

A student research group mentored by Songbin Gong, Assistant Professor of
Electrical & Computer Engineering, has received the 2017 International Frequency
Control Symposium Best Paper Award. The paper is titled “Lithium Niobate Phononic
Crystals for Radio Frequency SH0 Waves.”
Ruochen Lu, a Ph.D. candidate in the Department of Electrical & Computer
Engineering at Illinois, explained the signiﬁcance of the research team’s project: “Fromour work, the LiNbO3 thin ﬁlm platform has been demonstrated to manipulate phonon
propagation with unprecedented wide bandwidth and low loss, potentially promising a
new paradigm of radio frequency signal processing in the acoustic domain.”
Research at MNTL is a team sport, and Lu counts on his group for their insights andassistance in the micro fabrication process. He collaborates with Tomas Manzaneque,Yansong Yang, and Gong, who is his advisor.
This paper is part of a project named “DARPA Near Zero Power RF and Sensor
Operations (DARPA N-ZERO).” The goal of the overall project is to build a low powerbudget wake-up radio capable of being triggered upon a faint signal. The researchteam is working to integrate piezoelectric devices after the antenna to passively
amplify the voltage swing across the follow-on CMOS circuit. With phononic crystal
utilization, they are able to move some of the signal processing functions to themechanical domain from the CMOS circuit, without consuming extra power, which willfurther reduce the power budget of the system. Additional applications using phononic
crystals to build other RF devices are underway, as the research group moves forwardwith its work.

Undergrad Named Goldwater Scholar

Dennis Rich

20

MNTL

Dennis Rich was named a 2017 Goldwater Scholar in honor of his dedication toresearch. Rich is a junior advised by Can Bayram, Assistant Professor of Electrical &Computer Engineering and an MNTL aﬃliate.
The award was established in 1986 to honor Senator Barry Goldwater, who served for
30 years in the U.S. Senate. Recipients receive stipends toward covering the cost oftuition, fees, books, and room and board. Through this program, outstanding students
are encouraged to pursue careers in math, the natural sciences, and engineering. “Thisrecognition is single handedly the top award for any undergrad in the country,” said
Bayram. “Dennis has been working with me since his ﬁrst day as a freshman, and I amvery pleased to see him bring this national recognition to our department. This islargely due to the undergraduate research opportunities created in our department, as
well as the rigorous course, education, and outreach opportunities available to ourundergrads. I also thank AFOSR YIP [The Air Force Oﬃce of Scientiﬁc Research Young
Investigator Research Program] for partial support of Dennis’s work.”
When asked about his current research with Bayram, Rich enthusiastically explainedthat they are engaging an eﬀort to demonstrate a new method of inexpensively
producing thin-ﬁlm semiconductor devices. They believe this paper-thin computer chip
will improve performance due to thermal dissipation being better in thinner devices.

UNIVERSITY OF ILLINOIS AT URBANA-CHAMPAIGNAn REU participant
explains her poster
presentation findings.

Research Experience for Undergraduates
MNTL shares in the Illinois mission to educate students, to challenge them to solve
real-world problems, and to grow professionally. An important part of the nano@Illinois
Research Experience for Undergraduates (REU) program, funded by the National
Science Foundation, is generating student interest in high-quality scientiﬁc researchand encouraging them to pursue graduate school education.
What do REU participants do? They commit to spending 10 weeks with the programand agree to participate in all program activities. They typically work about 40 hours
per week in the lab, as determined by their mentors. REU focuses on diversity instudent recruiting and this means that participants have the chance to engage withfellow learners from across the nation and around the world. Each participant is
assigned a faculty mentor and a research mentor.

EBICS REU Leaders
Rashid Bashir, Emergent
Behaviors of Integrative
Cellular Systems, Leadership
Catherine Murphy, Principal
Investigator
Umberto Ravaioli, Co-PI
Irfan Ahmad, Executive
Director, Center for
Nanoscale Science andTechnology

REU oﬀers students:
Financial Assistance••$4,500 stipend per student
Free housing & allowances for meals & travel

Career Mentoring
•
•
•
•
•

Grad school prep
Faculty mentoring
Professional development
Student networking & social engagement
Build resume with important research experience

Hands-on Research Experience•••

10 weeks of active research work at Illinois, MIT, or Georgia Tech
Poster & oral presentation as program wrap-up
Potential opportunities to contribute to publications & present at conferences

2017 HIGHLIGHTS REPORT

21

OutreachResearch Experience for Teachers

nano@Illinois RET Leaders
Xiuling Li, Principal
Investigator
Lynford Goddard, Co-PI
Irfan Ahmad, Executive
Director, Center for
Nanoscale Science andTechnology

A key complement to the Research Experience for Undergraduates program is the
Research Experience for Teachers (RET) program, also funded by the National
Science Foundation. Selected educators conduct research in our world-class labs
and engage in other professional development activities over six weeks during thesummer, on a full-time basis. The teacher proﬁle is diverse: elementary, high school,
and community college instructors participate. They are from around the nation,
Maryland to California, Illinois to Texas, and they come from urban, suburban, andrural communities.
The ﬁnal targeted outcome for the participants is creating a high-caliber, multi-day
instructional module, along with related learning resources—all based on the
research that they conducted throughout the summer.
Who’s Eligible to Participate?
• Practicing STEM educators• Bachelor’s degree or higher in STEM, or pre-service STEM teachers currently
enrolled in an undergrad program (a rising junior or higher)
These educators take what they have learned and developed back to their schools,
to their students, who then beneﬁt year-by-year. Often, they also end up sharing theirlearning and accomplishments via conference presentations, with peers and othereducation professionals.
What they say about the experience—
Diana Rodriguez commented, “Amazing! I learned a lot of things about research andtechniques. I learned to experiment and how to keep a lab notebook, participate inlab group meetings…I wanted to get out of my comfort zone.”RET StatsYear

Participants

2014

4

2015

12

2016

11

2017

14

Diana Rodriguez analyzes her research for nano@illinois co-PI Lynford Goddard, Professorof Electrical & Computer Engineering.

22

MNTL

UNIVERSITY OF ILLINOIS AT URBANA-CHAMPAIGN

Alumni Update

Q&A with 2017 Grads

Left to right: Chen, Cvetkovik, Yu

To see the full interview, be sure
to check out our News section
at mntl.illinois.edu.

During the fall, three 2017 UI graduates who conducted research at MNTL whilepursuing their Ph.D.s at Illinois participated in a Q&A session about their lives after
graduation.
Weili Chen is a sensing hardware engineer at Apple, whose work at MNTL involved
optics design and biosensor development. Caroline Cvetkovic is a postdoc fellow at
the Center for Neurogeneration at the Houston Methodist Research Institute, looking
at ways to address problems associated with neurodegenerative diseases such as
stroke or spinal cord injury. Hojeong Yu is a postdoc research fellow at Harvard
Medical School/Massachusetts General Hospital, and works with medical doctors
and researchers from various disciplines.
Both Chen and Yu agree that Professor Brian T. Cunningham’s research helped
inﬂuence their decision regarding the research group that they wanted to join
while at the U of I. Cvetkovic was part of the Laboratory of Integrated Biomedical
Micro/Nanotechnology and Applications with Rashid Bashir, Professor of
Bioengineering, and she appreciated the novelty of the research, the interdisciplinary
focus, and the chance to merge science and creativity.
Aside from their current professional pursuits and accomplishments, all threewere extremely productive during their time at Illinois. In collaboration with his
advisor and colleagues at MNTL, Chen published 10 papers, and the group provided
trailblazing optical biosensing systems for the next generation of biomedical
detection tools. Both Chen and Yu worked with innovative portable, point-of-care
device ideas for mobile detection of infectious diseases.
Funding is always vital to a researcher’s career and research achievements, andCvetkovic was funded by a National Science Foundation (NSF) Science andTechnology Center—in this case, the Emergent Behaviors of Integrated Cellular
Systems (EBICS) initiative—during her time here, as well as an Integrative Graduate
Education and Research (IGERT) traineeship, and a Support for UnderRepresented
Groups in Engineering (SURGE) fellowship.

Corporate Relationship Building
Consistent with MNTL’s strategic plans and identiﬁed research directions, ourfaculty researchers and gifted students can provide signiﬁcant insights, strategic
perspectives, and new solutions for problems and opportunities faced by companies
across the nation and around the world. We encourage you to review our Industry
Aﬃliates Program details on the web at mntl.illinois.edu/industry/. Or contact:
Greg Pluta, Managing Director
1260 Micro & Nanotechnology Laboratory
University of Illinois
Urbana, IL 61801
217-244-2132
gpluta@illinois.edu
2017 HIGHLIGHTS REPORT

23

Alumni Update

Alumna Zhuo Receives Postdoctoral
Scholar Award
Yue Zhuo, PH.D. ’15 BIOE and postdoctoral fellow at the University of Illinois at
Urbana-Champaign, earned the 2017 Microscopy and Microanalysis Postdoctoral
Scholar Award for her conference paper, “Label-free Imaging of Stem Cell Adhesion
and Dynamic Tracking of Boundary Evolution using Photonic Crystal Enhanced
Microscopy” (PCEM). The Microscopy Society of America presented the award inAugust 2017 at the Microscopy and Microanalysis annual meeting in St. Louis.
The PCEM imaging system relies on photonic crystal biosensors to enable labelfree monitoring of live cells. The system is a new tool for measuring single-cellbehavior that may hold great potential for studying cell-surface attachment
proﬁles, cell-substrate interactions, and cell-drug responses. The ultimate goal is toassist research in wound healing, stem cell therapy, and cancer treatment.
Zhuo, who is collaborating on this project with UI professors Brian T. Cunningham
and Brendan Harley, is a fellow at the Beckman Institute for Advanced Science andTechnology and a member of Cunningham’s nanosensors research group. Zhuo
provides a more complete description of the research in her recent paper,“Quantitative Imaging of Cell Membrane-associated Eﬀective Mass Density Using
Photonic Crystal Enhanced Microscopy,” published November 2016 in the journal
Progress in Quantum Electronics.

Zhuo receives her award.

To learn more about how
your private gift support
can help MNTL advance thefuture, please contact:

Advancing the Future
Research leads to beneﬁcial product development, observable enhancements tothe quality of life, ranging from food safety to life-saving medical devices andtreatments. Advancement, private giving, has become an important engine forresearch innovation and student growth for universities. Private gift support can help
facilitate MNTL’s eﬀorts to create the future, enabling infrastructure for empowering
innovation, such as the best-of-breed equipment that is so vital for 21st century
research in micro and nanotechnology.
There are many ways to be engaged with our work—sponsorship of symposia andworkshops, naming opportunities for lab and research facilities, or even support offurther development of MNTL’s atrium displays, which highlight important milestones
in our research and development history. You can help us continue to pursue a bold,interdisciplinary research agenda with real-world impact.

24

MNTL

UNIVERSITY OF ILLINOIS AT URBANA-CHAMPAIGN

Dale L. Wright
Associate Dean for
Advancement, Engineering
1308 W. Green St.
310 Engineering Hall
Urbana, IL 61801
217-244-0604
dlwright@illinois.edu

New & Noteworthy for 2018

MNTL is excited to announce that we are inaugurating the Stillman Lecture Series.
Lecture events will take place in the spring and fall each year.
The ﬁrst Stillman Lecture was delivered by the distinguished Professor John Bowers,
from the University of California Santa Barbara Electrical and Computer Engineering
department. Professor Bowers holds the Fred Kavli Chair in Nanotechnology, and he is
the Director of the Institute for Energy Eﬃciency. He worked for AT&T Bell Laboratories
and Honeywell prior to joining UCSB. Bowers was excited to be the ﬁrst speaker for the
new Stillman Lecture Series: “Greg Stillman was a hero of mine, and a model of a great
faculty member and scientist. I will do my best to deliver a lecture worthy of this honor.”
Bowers’s talk was entitled “Progress in Bonding and Epitaxial Growth for
Heterogeneous Photonic Integrated Circuits.”
John Bowers
The Stillman Lecture Series honors the many extraordinary
contributions of Professor Gregory Stillman to the University of Illinois
family. A native Nebraskan, Stillman graduated from the University of
Nebraska in 1958 with a B.S. in electrical and computer engineering.
He next served in the U.S. Air Force as an oﬃcer and pilot aﬃliatedwith the Strategic Air Command, before entering the University of
Illinois graduate program in electrical engineering in 1963. Afterearning his Ph.D. in 1967—his mentor was Professor Nick Holonyak,
Jr.—he joined the MIT Lincoln Laboratory, working there until he was invited to serve asa member of the U of I’s Electrical Engineering faculty in 1975.
His research and teaching were key to building and sustaining engineering’s legacy
at Illinois, with contributions including the growth and characterization of compound
semiconductor materials and devices. Today’s wireless and broadband communications
owe much to Stillman’s work. He contributed to the development of advanced
characterization techniques for carrier mobility, photoconductivity, far infraredemission, and photothermal methods of studying impurities, and many of theseevaluation techniques are now widely used for compound semiconductors. A proliﬁcresearcher and author in the ﬁeld, he published over 300 papers. One of the mostconsistent and notable observations made by those asked to describe him is that he
was always a caring mentor; he supervised the doctoral work of 40 students while atIllinois and taught hundreds.
Coupled with ﬁnancial backing from the state of Illinois and the visionary
expectations of semiconductor industry leaders at the time, Stillman’s leadership was
critical to the opening of the Microelectronics Laboratory in 1989, the precursor totoday’s MNTL. Stillman also served as the ﬁrst director of the Microelectronics
Laboratory, setting a long-term pattern for the growth and impact of the 21st century’s
Micro & Nanotechnology Laboratory.
Stillman received widespread industry recognition for his research and discoveries.
He was elected a Fellow of the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE) in
1977, followed by election to the National Academy of Engineering in 1985. In 1990,
Stillman received the IEEE Morton Award and was also awarded the GaAs Symposium
Heinrich Welker Medal in 1990. On multiple occasions over the years, he was therecipient of the College of Engineering D.C. Drucker Eminent Faculty Award and theECE Faculty Outstanding Teaching Award.

2017 HIGHLIGHTS REPORT

25

By the Numbers

New Grants in FY17
Selected Examples

26

MNTL

PI

Sponsor

Title

Ahmad, Irfan

SERDP

Mechanism of Fungal Degradation on Military Aircraft Coatings$

Bashir, Rashid

LANL

Optogenetically Patterned-NMjs Using Interfaces for Screening of CWAs

$ 337,500

Bayram, Can

NSF

CAREER: Cubic Phase Green Light Emitting Diodes for Advanced Solid
State Lighting$ 500,000

Cunningham, Brian Stanford/NIH Portable Nanostructured Photonic Crystal Devices for HIV Viral Load

$ 178,572

Dallesasse, JohnNSF

E2CDA: Type I: Collaborative Research: Electronic-Photonic Integration
Using the Transistor Laser for Energy-Eﬃcient Computing$ 509,747

Eden, James Gary

AFOSR

Internal Cooling of Fiber and Disc Lasers by Radiation Balancing andOther Optical or Phonon Processes$ 841,633

Gong, Songbin

DARPA

Chip-scale Anti-Reciprocal Platform of Electromechanical Elements CARPE$ 204,558

Gruev, Viktor

NSF

Bioinspired Multispectral Imager for Near Infrared Fluorescence Image
Guided Surgery$ 441,774

Lee, Larry

NSF

Growth of Tensile Germanium Nanowires Embedded in a III-V Matrix$ 352,135

Li, XiulingNSF

PFI:AIR-TT: Technology Translation: Rolled-up 3D Passive Electronic
Component Prototype Development$ 200,000

Zhu, Wenjuan

NSF

CAREER: Transforming Electronic Devices Using Two-dimensional
Materials and Ferroelectric Metal Oxides$ 500,000

UNIVERSITY OF ILLINOIS AT URBANA-CHAMPAIGN

Award Amount
199,9812017 MNTL User
Distribution by Department
Chemistry

Physics
Neuroscience–1

Chemical & Biomolecular Engineering

Civil Engineering–1

Nuclear Plasma &Radiological Engineering

3

2

3
4
15

42

Materials Science& Engineering

Electrical &ComputerEngineering

Mechanical Science& Engineering

16

13

Bioengineering

Research Expenditures, FY11—FY17$8,548,892 $8,225,125$6,735,767$7,012,555$7,452,790$6,960,508$5,959,174

FY11

FY12

FY13

FY14

FY15

FY16

FY17

2017 HIGHLIGHTS REPORT27

“The Quintessential Engineer”
was installed outside theMicro & Nanotechnology
Laboratory in the Spring of
2017. Created by Chicago
sculptor Julie RotblattAmrany, the statue is meant
to encourage and inspire
female students to reach forand attain their engineering
dreams. Sakshi Srivastava wasa junior in the Department ofElectrical & Computer
Engineering when she started
the movement behind the
project. The statue is a giftfrom Texas Instruments.

28

MNTL

UNIVERSITY OF ILLINOIS AT URBANA-CHAMPAIGN

Ways to Engage with MNTL
Help us continue to pursue a bold, interdisciplinary research agenda with real-world impact.
• Advance our research via your private giving• Subscribe to our quarterly enews at https://forms.illinois.edu/sec/3845917• Join us on LinkedIn at www.linkedin.com/company/micro-nanotechnology-lab/• Share your expertise by presenting a seminar to our students• Sponsor symposia or workshops at MNTL
• Build a corporate scientiﬁc research relationship with MNTL

MNTL Leadership Team
Brian T. Cunningham, Director
Gregory C. Pluta, Managing Director
Nandini Topudurti, Associate Director, Financial Operations
Ken Tarman, Manager, MNTL Facilities
Mark J. McCollum, Manager, Cleanroom
Angana Senpan, Manager, Bionanotechnology Lab
Janet L. McGreevy, Assistant Director, Communications
MNTL Annual Highlights Report Credits

Writers: Corey Blumenthal, Victoria Halewicz, Khushboo Jain, Mike Koon, Rick Kubetz, Jonathan Lin,
Janet McGreevy, Susan McKenna, Laura Schmitt, Julia Sullivan, Liz Ahlberg Touchstone, Allen Xu,
Lois Yoksoulian
Photography/Images: Thompson-McClellan Photography, Janet Sinn-Hanlon, Brian Stauﬀer,
Engineering at Illinois

NONPROFITORGANIZATION
U.S. POSTAGE
PAID
CHAMPAIGN, IL
PERMIT NO. 453

208 N. Wright Street
Urbana, IL 61801
217-333-3097
mntl.illinois.edu