Mettler Toledo receives Powtech/TechnoPharm
Innovation Award 2010 for the FBRM® C35 particle size distribution technology in the particle characterization and materials sciences category. The award was presented during the Partec/Powtech/WCPT6 conference in Nuremburg, Germanay 26-29 April 2010.

Promethean Particles wins Lord Stafford
Award for business/university collaboration romethean Particles is a University of Nottingham spin-out company specializing in supercritical fluid-based particle precipitation process development.

Calando Pharmaceuticals receives FDA approval
for Phase I clinical trials based on targetted nanoparticles incorporating siRNA technology. CALLA-01, their investigational anticancer agent, is used to compose a nanoparticle, along with proprietary siRNA, that targets the M2 subunit of ribonucleotide reductanse. The targetting is accomplished with Calando's proprietary polymer delivery system.

Nanosphere announces FDA clearance of
second moleclar diagnostics assay. This nanotechnology-based molecular diagnostics company has received clearance from the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) for the Verigene® F5 / F2 / MTHFR Nucleic Acid Test, which detects disease-associated gene mutations that can contribute to blood coagulation disorders and difficulties metabolizing folate (vitamin B-12). This marks the second nanotechnology-based assay cleared by the FDA to run on the Verigene® System, following clearance in September of the company’s Verigene® Warfarin Metabolism Nucleic Acid Test.

Hitachi achieves milestone in HD technology.
Researchers at Hitachi have successfully reduced existing recording heads by more than a factor of two to achieve new heads in the 30-50 nanometer (nm) range, which is up to 2,000 times smaller than the width of an average human hair (approx. 70-100 microns). Called current perpendicular-to-the-plane giant magneto-resistive (CPP-GMR) heads, Hitachi's new technology is expected to be implemented in shipping products in 2009 and reach its full potential in 2011. This technology will support nanoparticle-based recording media.

Air Force contract for $5.6M to Hybrid Plastics
for POSS (polyhedral oligomeric silsesquioxane) nanomaterials. The Air Force expects polymers based on POSS to soon replace Kapton in space vehicle applications.

Polysciences opens new custom synthesis
laboratory. Polysciences, Inc., a leading manufacturer of specialty chemicals, and a leading supplier to the particle industry, announced the opening of a new laboratory dedicated to custom synthesis in Warrington, Pennsylvania.

Nantero carbon nanotube technology and HP thermal inkjet ssed for printable memory
applications. Nantero, Inc., a nanotechnology company using carbon nanotubes for the development of next-generation semiconductor devices, is working with HP to explore the use of HP inkjet technology and Nantero’s carbon nanotube (CNT) formulation to create flexible electronics products and develop low cost printable memory applications.

Aquanova German Solubilisate Technologies GmbH receives the Frost & Sullivan 2006
Excellence in Technology Award in the field of solubilisation processes for functional foods and dietary supplements. This award recognizes the company’s development of the highly sophisticated NovaSOL® Nanosome technology, which enables the encapsulation of active functional food and supplement ingredients. Unlike the conventional emulsion and microemulsion particles with massive particle size, this technology enables the formation of micelles, which are just 30 nm in diameter, for encapsulating the active substance, thus enhancing its bioavailability many times over.

Malvern Instruments wins Queen's Award
for enterprise in international trade. Malvern Instruments’ award is in the category of International Trade, reflecting the company’s increased export earnings, up by 76% through sustained growth over the past six years.

Particle Measuring Systems received Photonics Company of the Year Award
on November 14th from the Colorado Photonics Industry Association. The Boulder, Colorado company was founded in 1972 as a developer and manufacturer of instruments for measuring extremely small particles. It has since grown to be a major provider of instruments to the semiconductor, pharmaceutical, aerospace, biotechnology and automotive industries.

FEI Company and Malvern Instruments team
for nanoparticle analysis. FEI Company and Malvern Instruments Ltd (Malvern, UK) have entered into a joint development and marketing program for advanced nanoparticle analysis utilizing Malvern's particle image analysis software on FEI's line of Quanta(TM) scanning electron microscopes (SEMs). The combination delivers a powerful particle analysis solution that extends current analysis technologies for nano-sized particles.

NanoSight receives £250,000 from Strathdon Investments plc.
NanoSight Ltd, a leading provider of instruments for the optical detection and real time analysis of sub-micron particles, announced it has secured significant investment to support its current sales drive and develop new capabilities in nanoparticle analysis in the sub-500nm region. This latest tranche is the second in a round of investment totalling £500,000, led by Strathdon and including the South West Venture Fund and a private investor.

Rinzler Lab/Arrowhead Research partner
to further develop thin film flexible electronics based on carbon nanotubes. The thin film transistors (TNT) fabricated in the process at the University of Florida can be used to manufacture RFID tags, flexible displays, and electronic paper. Arrowhead will provide $647,000 over a two year period to develop optimized TFT devices and prototypes of TFT arrays and will have the first option to exclusively license and commercialize the technology owned by University of Florida.

Vincent Rotello wins Langmuir Lecture Award
for his work in engineering the nanoparticle interface for materials and biological applications. The University of Massachusetts Amherst professor of chemistry received this award on August 24, 2010 at the Colloid and Surface Chemistry Division Awards Symposium during the 240th national ACS meeting in Boston.

Moungi Bawendi wins 2010 ACS Award in Colloid
and Surface Chemistry for his work in the synthesis, characterization, and application of semiconductor quantum dots. Bawendi is the Lester Wolfe Professor of Chemistry at MIT where he has long led an innovative team in quantum dot science and technology.

Hayat Unyuksel receives AAPS Lipid-Based
Drug Delivery Outstanding Research Award. The University of Illinois at Chicago Biopharmaceutical Sciences professor was cited for her two decades of research achievements in developing drug nanocarriers with phospholipid assemblies, liposomes, and micelles. She was cited for her successes in specifically targetting infected tissues in animal models of breast cancer and rheumatoid arthrititis with concomittant improvements in efficacy and safety.

Hayat Unyuksel receives AAPS Lipid-Based
Drug Delivery Outstanding Research Award. The University of Illinois at Chicago Biopharmaceutical Sciences professor was cited for her two decades of research achievements in developing drug nanocarriers with phospholipid assemblies, liposomes, and micelles. She was cited for her successes in specifically targetting infected tissues in animal models of breast cancer and rheumatoid arthrititis with concomittant improvements in efficacy and safety.

Marie-Alexandra Néouze receives Anton-Paar
Science Award 2008 of the Austrian Chemical Society (GÖCH) for her publication "Nanoparticles connected through an ionic liquid-like network" in Journal of Materials Chemistry. In this publication an original new method to connect silica nanoparticles through cationic organic bridges is described.

Valery G. Babak died unexpectedly on 5 December 2008. He pursued a distinguished career in surface and colloid science in Russia and in France. He made major contributions to the science of encapsulation and drug delivery. He amassed colleagues and friends around the world, and he will be missed by many. He is survived by his wife Loubov Babak of Moscow.

Jacob Israelachvili receives 2008 ACS Award in Surface
and Colloid Chemistry for his major contributions to surface solvation and structure. The UCSB professor of chemical engineering and materials science received a plaque and a $5,000 prize at the 236th National Meeting of the American Chemical Society in Philadelphia this past August.

Amanda Barnard named 2008 L'Oreal Australia
for Women in Science Fellow. Theoretical physicist Amanda Barnard will use her Fellowship to create computational tools to predict the behaviour of nanoparticles in the environment. After obtaining a PhD in physics from RMIT, she went first to the Argonne National Laboratory near Chicago, then to Oxford where she investigated the safety of nanoparticles and wrote a commentary on nano-hazards for Nature Materials. She returned to Australia in 2008 to take up a Future Generation Fellowship at The University of Melbourne.

Two 2008 Sigma Pi Sigma Undergraduate
Research Awards go to nanoparticle-based projects. Ferroelectric Nanoparticles Suspended in Liquid Crystals by James Vedral, Evangelos Economou, C. Travis Hunter, Christopher Bull, Hoshang Almemar, Sara Goldman and Robert Webber from the University of Colorado, Colorado Springs, and Scanning Probe Study of Viral Nanowire by Nat Steinsultz, James Porter and Nick Hennigar of Suffolk University in Boston were the two winning projects and research teams, respectively. These Society of Physics Students (SPS) chapters have received funds to pursue these chapter research projects. The awards provide calendar year grants to support local chapter activities that are deemed imaginative and likely to contribute to the strengthening of the SPS program. The program is funded through income from the Sigma Pi Sigma Trust Endowment Fund and is administered by the American Institute of Physics.

Jackie Ying named first Editor in Chief of
Nanotoday. The MIT professor and Executive Director of the Singapore-based Institute of Bioengineering and Nanotechnolgoy will head this topical review publication published by Elsevier. Beginning in 2009 the journal will become known as Nano Today with six issues per year. Its new focus is as an international rapid reviews journal, with articles available on ScienceDirect, Elsevier's electronic delivery platform.

Prof. Dr. Helmuth Moewald honored with
the degree of doctor honoris causa by University Montpillier, the oldest university in France. Moehwald is Director of the Interfaces Department at the Max Planck Institute for Colloids and Interfaces in Potsdam.

Kattesh Katti receives Outstanding Missourian
Award. Kattesh Katti, professor of radiology and physics and senior research scientist at the MU Research Reactor, was honored on Tuesday, March 4, for his work in treating cancer. Katti recently discovered how to make gold nanoparticles using gold salts, soybeans and water - research that has garnered worldwide attention and could have applications in several disciplines.

Sumio Iijima named 2007 Balzan Prize winner.
Professor Iijima of Mejo University, Nagoya, honored for his discoveries of single walled carbon nanotubes and for his studies of their properties. The prize comes with 1 million Swiss Francs.

Janos H. Fendler, CAMP Distinguished Professor since 1997, passed away on July 2, 2007, following an extended illness. Prof. Fendler received both his Ph.D. in Physical Organic Chemistry and D.Sc. in Membrane Mimetic Chemistry from the University of London. During his career, he published more than 300 journal articles, six books, and more than 100 book chapters and reviews. He was one of the most prominent chemists in the field of colloid and interface science. Prior to joining Clarkson, he was the Distinguished Professor of Chemistry and director of the Center for Membrane Engineering and Science at Syracuse University. Among many awards and honors, Prof. Fendler was the recipient of the American Chemical Society Kendall Award in Colloid Science (1983), Humboldt Research Award for Senior U.S. Scientists (1991), and the Meyerhoff Award of Israel (1997). In 2005, he chaired the 79th Colloid and Surface Science Symposium at Clarkson.

Pierre-Gilles de Gennes dies at 74.
As reported by the Associated Press in the Herald Tribune and by Le Monde, the 1991 Nobel Laureate in Physics passed away last Friday on May 18th in the Paris suburb, Orsay. Awarded the Nobel Prize for his seminal work on liquid crystalline phases, de Gennes remained a popular scientific figure worldwide up to his death. He was widely acclaimed for his abilities to make problems and solutions easy to understand by scientists and by lay people alike. He was widely respected for his contributions to surface and polymer science, and these contributions have been invaluable to various aspects of colloid and particle technology.

Alan Pitt named 2007 Rideal Lecturer.
This prestigious lecture award and supporting symposium are sponsored by the Society of Chemical Industry and the symposium will be held April 27, 2007, at the SCI International Headquarters on Belgrave Square, London. The Awardee will present a lecture entitled "Designer Molecules for Interfacial Activity". Pitt has had a long and distinguished carreer at Kodak, Ltd. (Harrow), where he has made many invaluable contributions to dispersion technology, and the design and use of multi-tailed surfactants.

Two Nobel Laureates and a half dozen or so
contenders will lecture at the nanoparticle-packed program for the Chemistry of Supramolecules and Assemblies Gordon Research Conference at the Il Ciocco Resort in Barga (Tuscany), Italy in early May 2007. This program focuses upon Functional Materials via Bottom-Up Self-Assembly, and showcases leading nanoparticle and supramolecular scientists in a program limted to 150 participants. Nobel Laureates Lehn and Polanyi and twenty other distinguished scientists will describe frontier advances in sensors, devices, and advanced materials.

Activery Biotech names Andreas Kordikowski
R&D director. Dr. Kordikowski is a recognized expert in supercritical fluid crystallization, This pharmaceutical company of Barcelona, Spain, focuses upon SCF technologies for pharmaceutical particle precipitation.

Simitri Gidaspow receives Thomas Baron Award in Fluid-Particle Systems
at the 2006 Annual AIChE meeting. This PTF/AIChE award is sponsored by Shell Global Solutions for outstanding scientific/technical accomplishment which has made a significant impact in the field of fluid-particle systems or in a related field with potential for cross-fertilization. Gidaspow is University Distinguished Professor of Chemical Engineering at Illinois Institute of Technology.

Particle Technology Forum Award given to Douglas W. Fuerstenau of Berkeley
at the 2006 Annual AIChE meeting. This PTF/AIChE award is sponsored by DuPont for outstanding contributions in the field of particle technology, teaching of particle technology (as evidenced by the aggregate contributions of the nominee’s PhD students to the field) and the advocacy of particle technology within industry, academia, and government.

McMurray and Flagan share 2006 Fuchs Award.
Professors Peter McMurray (University of Minnesota) and Richard Flagan (Caltech) were named the 2006 Fuchs Awardees at the 7th International Aerosol Conference in St. Paul, Minnesota in October. This award is given every four years jointly by the Gesellschaft für Aerosolforschung, the Japan Association of Aerosol Science and Technology, and the American Association for Aerosol Research. The Fuchs Award is considered the highest honor for researchers in the field of aerosol science and technology.

Joe DeSimone named AAAS Fellow.
Joseph DeSimone, Professor of Chemistry (UNC, Chapel Hill) and Chemical Engineering (North Carolina State University) was recently named a Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science. DeSimone was cited for his entrepreneurship in developing nanoparticle enterprises, such as Micell and Liquidia, that have brought innovative nanoparticle technology into the marketplace.

Don Kania named president and CEO at FEI.
Dr. Kania, 51, has most recently been president and chief operating officer of Veeco Instruments Inc., where he has worked since 1998. Prior to that he held technical and general management positions of increasing responsibility at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory and Los Alamos National Laboratory.