James Hathaway, jim.hathaway@asu.edu
(480) 965-6375
December 20, 2002

Center celebrates 25 years of excellence

It's the silver jubilee of ASU's Center for High Resolution Electron Microscopy (HREM), and the world-renowned facility is celebrating a quarter century of groundbreaking research in materials science with an international conference that will be attended by 150 of the top researchers in the field.

The conference, "Recent Developments and Applications of Atomic Resolution Electron Microscopy and Spectroscopy, a Silver Jubilee," is scheduled for Jan. 7 - 10 at ASU's Old Main. Among the scientists attending are 40 invited speakers from 10 countries, who will deliver papers and chair sessions discussing recent research and future trends in the field and its significance with regard to nanoscience.

"Roald Hoffman, a Nobel-laureate at Cornell University, has described nanoscience as the next industrial revolution," says John Spence, Regents Professor of physics and co-chairman of the conference organizing committee along with David Smith, Regents professor of physics, and Peter Crozier, research scientist, senior. "Electron microscopy has played a big part in this, including work done here. With electron microscopy you can see how the atoms are arranged which is a big help for understanding properties of materials and how we can make new and better materials. And you can make materials in the electron microscope, not just look at them."

It is no accident that a number of the invited speakers are former ASU students and post-doctoral researchers, pointed out Smith, director of the Center for Solid State Science and also HREM's director. Many of these now-prominent scientists are former students of Regents Professor Emeritus John M. Cowley, HREM's founding director, and the conference was planned as a celebration of his 80th birthday.

"It's going to be quite a nice get-together with all the associates and students and a lot of the people who have been through here," says Cowley. "A lot of people from around the country have been through for the winter schools and various workshops we've had over the years. It's a good crowd of people that we know."

The conference's three keynote speakers will be Cowley, Mihail Roco, senior adviser for nanotechnology with the National Science Foundation, and Sumio Iijima, the discoverer of the carbon nanotube - and a former student and colleague of Cowley's.

"A crucial part of the nanoscience revolution has been the nanotube, which was discovered by Sumio Iijima, who spent 10 years here at ASU," says Spence. "What is less widely known is that when he first came to ASU, he also discovered the nanosphere - the Buckyball - five years before its official discovery. This is a big slice of the nanoscience revolution and it came out of electron microscopy at ASU, as established here by John Cowley."

Though most of the conference events will be open only to registrants, the three keynote lectures will be open to the campus community on the morning of Jan. 7. For information, call the Center for Solid State Science at (480) 965-4544.

Hathaway, with the College of Liberal Arts & Sciences, can be reached at (480) 965-6375 or (Hathaway@asu.edu).