For the second year in a row, a team from UNM has won the Collegiate Inventors Competition and will take home more than $30,000 in cash and prizes.
Jeff Brinker, a UNM chemical and nuclear engineering professor, and Dhaval Doshi, a doctoral candidate in chemical engineering, are one of six student/adviser teams to receive the 2001 inventors award.
Their winning entry, “Optically-Adjustable Nanostructures,” uses ultraviolet light to adjust the structure and properties of a glass film riddled with honeycomb-like pores that are one-billionth of a meter in size, Doshi said.
Brinker and Doshi said applications for the “tunable” film include the areas of microelectronics, optical materials, sensors and filters.
Doshi, from Mumbai, India, will receive cash and prizes worth more than $20,000 and Brinker, an internationally renowned researcher at Sandia National Laboratories, will receive $10,000.
Other winning entries include teams from Harvard, Stanford and the University of Maryland. Last year, UNM professor Ravinder K. Jain and student Balaji Srinivasan won the award for their invention in the field of fiber lasers.
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“What I understand is that this award is very hotly contested with all the universities and, typically, schools like MIT and Stanford dominate,” Brinker said. “So, I think for UNM, especially now since UNM’s won it two years in a row, I think that’s a really big deal.”
Doshi said the effects of his win “took a couple days to sink in,” but once he realized it wasn’t a joke, he was honored.
“It’s a very prestigious award, and I feel privileged to be one of the recipients,” he said. “It is great for UNM, for the chemical engineering department, and it says a lot about the great work going on at the University.”
On Sept.14, the pair will be honored along with the other winners at a recognition dinner given by the National Inventors Hall of Fame in Akron, Ohio. The next day, they will share the spotlight with the 2001 inductees into the Inventors Hall of Fame during a ceremony.
“I’m really looking forward to going there and meeting the winners and the inductees of the Hall of Fame,” Doshi said.
The winning entry begins with a solution containing detergents, a photo-sensitive catalyst, alcohol, water and a silica source that makes a thin film of glass, Doshi said. The honeycomb-like pores in the glass, one-billionth of a meter in size, change when exposed to UV light, he said. The key process is that the scientists control the amount and time of exposure of the glass film, allowing them to “tune” properties at the nanometer level, he said.
UNM and Sandia National Laboratories have filed a joint application for the process and the research has been published in the journal Science.
Another specific application for the process is the creation of molecular sieves, or membranes for gas separation, Brinker said. This may one day lead to the “holy grail” of being able to separate oxygen and nitrogen from air, he said.
The Collegiate Inventors Competition is a national event designed to encourage the creativity and problem solving skills of college students active in science, engineering, mathematics and technology, according to a recent press release.
Brinker said he hopes to attract more good students like Doshi as a result of winning the inventors award.
“I’d like to be able to put this sort of thing on our Web page,” he said. “I’ve had a number of other students win some pretty nice awards, so it helps to kind of advertise the relevance, innovation and things we’re doing in our group. And, of course, the money’s always nice.”
For more information, visit the Brinker Group homepage at www.unm.edu/~solgel.
