2012-10-18: NCW Nanotechnology Talk by Prof. Paul Weiss, UCLA

Abstract: Since we have learned to measure the precise structures, environments, interactions, and functions of molecules at the nanoscale, we are now learning to direct molecules into desired positions to create nanostructures, to connect functional molecules to the outside world, and to serve as test structures for measurements of single or coupled molecules. Hierarchical patterning enables simultaneous control at many levels, all the way from the macroscale through the microscale, ultimately to the subnanometer scale. Interactions within and between molecules can be designed, directed, measured, understood, and exploited. We examine how these interactions influence chemistry, dynamics, structure, electronic function, and other properties. Such interactions can be used to advantage to form precise molecular assemblies, nanostructures, and patterns, and to control and to stabilize function. By understanding interactions, function, and dynamics at the smallest possible scales, we hope to improve synthetic systems at all scales. We are also using these strategies to control and to understand interactions, function, and structures of biological systems. I will discuss upcoming opportunities to make inroads into refractory problems in biology and medicine, and will discuss our first results and strategies in these areas.

Biography: Paul S. Weiss is director of the California NanoSystems Institute, Fred Kavli Chair in NanoSystems Sciences, and distinguished professor of chemistry & biochemistry and of materials science & engineering at UCLA. He received his S.B. and S.M. degrees in chemistry from MIT in 1980 and his Ph.D. in chemistry from UC Berkeley in 1986. He was a postdoctoral member of technical staff at Bell Laboratories from 1986-1988 and a visiting scientist at IBM Almaden Research Center from 1988-1989. Before coming to UCLA in 2009, he was a distinguished professor of chemistry and physics at the Pennsylvania State University, where he began his academic career as an assistant professor in 1989. His interdisciplinary research group includes chemists, physicists, biologists, materials scientists, mathematicians, electrical and mechanical engineers, and computer scientists. Their work focuses on the atomic-scale chemical, physical, optical, mechanical and electronic properties of surfaces and supramolecular assemblies. He and his students have developed new techniques to expand the applicability and chemical specificity of scanning probe microscopies. They have applied these and other tools to the study of catalysis, self- and directed assembly, physical models of biological systems, and molecular and nanoscale devices. They work to advance nanofabrication down to ever smaller scales and greater chemical specificity in order to connect, to operate, and to test functional molecular assemblies, and to connect these to the biological and chemical worlds. Two current major themes in his laboratory are cooperativity in functional molecules and single-molecule biological structural and functional measurements.

Reservations: There is a choice of Coq au Vin (chicken with wine sauce) or Beef Bourguignon for dinner. The cost of the dinner is $31 per person including tax, tip, and wine with dinner; cash or check at the door. Please call Nancy Paradiso in the Section Office at 310 327-1216 or email office@scalacs.org by Monday, October 15, 2012 for reservations.

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