Micromeritics Instrument Grant committee has selected the two latest recipients for awards.
A 3Flex Surface Characterisation Analyser has been awarded to Civil and Environmental Engineering Department of MIT, while The University of Georgia College of Pharmacy has been chosen to receive A TriStar II Plus 3030, NanoPlus 3 and Flowprep.
Roland Pellenq, senior research scientist at MIT, said that the department: “Aims at determining the poro-mechanical and transport properties of the most important technological, economical and environmental materials in the world: cement and concrete; source rocks for oil and gas; oxide, glasses and clays for nuclear energy and nuclear waste storage.”
To this end researchers are utilising a method they refer to as the ’nanoscope’ to scrutinise and manipulate materials in such a broad range of magnifications.
Pore structure characterisation such as porosity assessment, pore size distribution and specific surface is the key factor in their approach and is the reason for the department applied for the Micromeritics gift award.
Pellenq is one of the co-founders and lead scientist of the Concrete Sustainability Hub, CSH@MIT, opened October 2009, as an interdisciplinary research center dedicated to the reduction of the environmental footprint of the cement and concrete industry.
Pellenq was hired as a MIT senior research scientist in November 2010 and is the director of the CNRS-MIT joint laboratory ’Multiscale Material Science of Energy and Environment’.
The Georgia College of Pharmacy BS programme now enrols around 200 students and is quickly becoming one of the larger science, technology, engineering and maths (STEM) undergraduate major at UGA according to Michael Bartlett.
He added: “By partnering with Micromeritics the University of Georgia College of Pharmacy will be able expose students in the Department of Pharmaceutical and Biomedical Sciences, as well as our Pharm.D. and graduate programmes to techniques used in the characterisation of drug substances and drug delivery systems.”
Bartlett received his B.S. in Chemistry from North Carolina State University and Ph.D. in Analytical Chemistry from Georgia Tech.
He spent a year as a postdoctoral research associate at the University of Utah in the Department of Medicinal Chemistry before joining the faculty at UGA where he has been for the past 19 years.
Bartlett has published 120 peer reviewed manuscripts and has received more than $7.7 million in research funding from federal agencies and industry.
Among his many awards he was named the College of Pharmacy Teaching of the Year in 2002 and was recognised as an AAPS Fellow in 2011.
He is the editor-in-chief of the international journal Biomedical Chromatography and also serves in the Editorial Advisory Boards of the Journal of Chromatography B and Analytical Methods.
Preston Hendrix, Micromeritics’ president, said: “The programme is designed to promote and advance the acquisition and use of particle characterisation instrumentation in non-profit universities and institutions where other means of funding are not generally available. We are very proud and excited to present this award in an ongoing grant programme to support important research.”
Micromeritics’ Instrument Grant Programme is intended to provide particle characterisation instruments to non-profit universities and research organisations for the purpose of fostering and supporting meritorious research projects.
Applications may be submitted at any time in accordance with the application instructions and will remain active for a period of one year from the date of submission.
