Partnerships for Research and Education in Materials

Download NMHU-PREM-0934212-X-ray diffraction
Photodynamic therapy (PDT) combines a drug (called a photosensitizer) with a specific type of light to kill cancer cells.
The general goal of LMITA Thrust 1 to find efficient synthetic route to obtain E,E-3,5-bis(thienylidene)piperid-4-ones with donor substituents, that will be tested as materials for photodynamic therapy as photosensitizer.
Undergraduate student Rachel Lucero [...]

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The energy content of the world’s standing terrestrial biomass carbon (i.e., the renewable, above-ground biomass that could be harvested and potentially used as an energy resource) is estimated as approximately 100 times the world’s total annual energy consumption.1
The catalytic conversion of lignocellulosic biomass into intermediates that can be used to produce fuels and high-value [...]

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On April 10, 2010 Wi(PR)2EM and the Science on Wheels Educational Center (SONW) organized and coordinated the NanoDays event at the Mayagüez Mall that we called in Spanish DíasNano.  The Mayagüez Mall is the main shopping mall in western Puerto Rico.  This large event was a collaboration between Wi(PR)2EM, SONW, the NSF funded Nanotechnology [...]

JSU-UCSB PREM Participants presented Nanoscience exhibition at the Capital Science Museum at Jackson, MS. During the exhibition, several demos were used to demonstrate and engage the audience on the beauty of Nanoscience.. The overall goal of the event was to expose and prepare community students to consider various Nanobased science, technology, engineering and math (STEM) [...]

Dulal Senapati, Anant K Singh and Paresh Chandra Ray
Department of Chemistry, Jackson State University, Jackson, MS, USA
Acknowledgements: Dr. Ray thanks NSF-PREM grant # DMR-0611539 and NIH-SCORE grant # S06GM 008047 and DOD grant # W 912HZ-06-C-0057 for their generous funding
We have demonstrated that real time evolution of intermediates of colloidal nanocrystals can be fully accessed [...]

Jhansi Rani Kalluri, Tahir Arbneshi, Sadia Afrin Khan, Adria Neely, Perry Candice, Birsen Varisli, Marla Washington, Shardae McAfee, Britinia Robinson, Santanu Banerjee, Anant Kumar Singh, Dulal Senapati, and Paresh Chandra Ray
Department of Chemistry, Jackson State University, Jackson, MS, USA
The contamination of drinking water with arsenic poses a threat to global health. As many as 140 [...]

The aim of the project is to develop a continuous and environmentally friendly process using twin screw extrusion technology for enzymatic conversion of lignocellulosic biomass to simple sugars and other high value end products. A significant finding of our current research is that commercially available enzymes (cellulases) are active in N-methyl morpholine oxide (NMMO) [...]

The five technical divisions of The Minerals, Metals and Materials Society (TMS) -Electronic, Magnetic & Photonic Materials, Extraction & Processing, Light Metals, Materials Processing & Manufacturing, and Structural Materials – sponsored the Student Poster Contest during the 2009 TMS Annual Conference & Exhibition held in San Francisco on February 15-19, 2009. The Poster [...]

During the 2008 Sigma Xi Annual Meeting and Student Research Conference held in Washington, DC on November 20-23, 2008 UPRM PREM student Ronald Carrasquillo (Chemical Engineering) presented the poster titled “Development of an Alternative Aluminum Matrix Composite for Bearing Applications,” which was co-authored by undergraduate students Roberto Rivera (Chemical Engineering) and Yarimar Martínez (Industrial Engineering), [...]

The National Science Foundation has recently awarded $5 millions to the University of Puerto Rico – Mayagüez for the establishment of a nanotechnology center focused on research and education of biomedical and energy-driven systems and applications. This five-year project, set to start on September 1st, is led by doctors Carlos Rinaldi, Arturo Hernández, [...]

In July 2008 the Board of Directors of the Materials Research Society (MRS) has unanimously approved the establishment of an MRS chapter at the University of Puerto Rico – Mayagüez (UPRM).

The American Society for Materials (ASM International) has named PREM professor, Dr. Kumar Sridharan a Fellow of the society. Dr. Sridharan is a distinguished research professor in the University of Wisconsin-Madison (UW) Engineering Physics Department.

The summer of 2008 has become the most active season for outreach to diverse groups for the UPRM/UW PREM. Besides the scheduled research activities involving public high school teachers, this PREM partnered with other UPRM initiatives intended to attract and retain students interested in Engineering and Science.
In early July five teachers from Mayagüez, Cabo [...]

The doping of MgB2 precast material with 2 at.% and 5 at.% TaB2 under varying high energy processing ball milling conditions with Pulverisete-4 and Spex mills was carried in order to investigate critical current enhancement condition. Higher critical current densities were achieved with the 5 at.% TaB2-doped MgB2 than with the 2 at.% doped MgB2. [...]

Cobalt ferrite (CoFe2O4) possesses excellent chemical stability, good mechanical hardness and a large positive first order crystalline anisotropy constant, making it a promising candidate for magneto-optical recording media. In addition to the precise control on the composition and structure of the ferrite, the success of its practical application relies on the capability of controlling [...]

The ability to perform quantum simulations of materials properties over length scales that are relevant to experiments represents a grand challenge in computational materials science.

We study the non-abelian quantum Hall effect, a spectrum gap is established to protect topological degenerating Pfaffian states, which may have novel applications in quantum computing.

Scientific and technological progress of our society demands the development of new materials as well as the optimization of the properties in those materials of actual use; materials–related issues are present in all types of industries. Therefore, the formation of professionals with an effective background in the understanding of science and engineering concepts behind materials [...]

Three posters presented by University of Puerto Rico-Mayagüez PREM students during the TMS Annual Meeting held in New Orleans in March 2008 received First Prizes during the poster competition. The corresponding departmental affiliation of the students reflects the inherent interdisciplinary nature that has fostered this PREM project.

In this paper we have reported development and evaluation of a miniaturized, inexpensive and battery operated ultra-sensitive nanomaterial based fluorescence resonance energy transfer (NSET) probe shown in Figure 1.