MNTL provides an environment in which greatness is expected and achieved.
DIRECTOR’ S MESSAGE
Brian T. Cunningham
In semiconductors, the most interesting physics occurs at the interfaces between dissimilar materials, where p-n junctions form diodes, quantum wells confine photons, and metals launch carriers into transistors. Likewise, interesting new science occurs at the interfaces between disciplines, where electromagnetics meets biochemistry, new material configurations enable devices with previously impossible capabilities, and where new optical devices impact clinical medicine.
MNTL serves as the interdisciplinary research home for faculty and students who actively seek out the boundaries of what is possible at the nanometer scale, while also exploring the impactful science that occurs when electrical engineers, material scientists, plasma physicists, mechanical engineers, chemists, and chemical engineers come together. MNTL is not only a building comprised of offices and labs, but it is also a facility where undergraduate students, graduate students, postdocs, and visiting scientists from a dozen departments come to be trained in the arts of epitaxial crystal growth, semiconductor device fabrication, cell culture, optoelectronic device characterization, mobile point-of-care systems for disease diagnostics, and much, much more.
The interactions that take place through our shared-use laboratories, seminars, workshops, symposia, and Industry programs bring people together with a diverse array of life experiences, scientific training, and perspectives. Combined with world-class facilities, excellent students, and highly accomplished faculty, MNTL provides an environment in which greatness is expected and achieved.
I invite you to explore this Highlights Report for the evidence to back up the assertions I just made. Within these pages, you will see how we are creating the technologies that are certain to make enormous impacts on our society. Semiconductor materials and devices that are at the foundation for faster wireless data transmission, higher bandwidth optical fiber communication, advanced LED lighting, high-efficiency solar cells, and flexible electronics represent only some of the areas in which breakthroughs have occurred this year.
As the University of Illinois opens the first-ever Engineering-based College of Medicine in 2018, MNTL technologies are being developed for genomics-enabled cancer precision medicine, mobile diagnostic tests for sepsis and infectious disease, augmented reality vision for surgeons, engineered tissue, machines comprised of live cells, and new forms of medical imaging.
In addition to the achievements and professional recognitions accumulated by MNTL faculty and students in the past year, we also highlight several new faculty. We are looking forward to the impact that Professors. Viktor Gruev( ECE), Peter Dragic( ECE), Larry Lee( ECE), and Yurii Vlasov( ECE, Materials Science, Bioengineering) will have as they establish their research programs.
Like a quantum well in a semiconductor laser, the interdisciplinary boundaries at MNTL raise the“ potential” of every person engaged in research here, enabling us to“ emit” great science with high intensity and a society-changing direction.
MNTL provides an environment in which greatness is expected and achieved.
MNTL | 2 | University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign