Dave Castner
2006 Catalyst Article
It has been a busy past year as director of both the National ESCA and Surface Analysis for Biomedical Problems (NESAC/BIO) and the Center for Nanotechnology (CNT). The CNT directorship has been a good experience but, this fall, I will be stepping down as CNT director to focus my efforts on NESAC/BIO, which continues to thrive.
Newton Samuel is the fourth NESAC/BIO student in the past six years to win an AVS Graduate Research Award. Newton, who completed his PhD this past summer, is now working at Ethicon J&J in New Jersey and will receive his award at the 2005 AVS symposium this fall. Heather Canavan finished her NESAC/BIO postdoc this past summer and now is an assistant professor in the Department of Chemical & Nuclear Engineering at the University of New Mexico. Julia Apte, a new NESAC/BIO graduate student working on the structure of immobilized peptides, was awarded a three-year NSF fellowship that starts this fall. I served as program chair for the 2004 AVS Symposium and then was elected to a three-year term (2005–2007) on the AVS board of directors.
We are continuing to add new surface analysis instrumentation to NESAC/BIO. After purchasing a new Kratos AxisUltra DLD imaging ESCA system in the past year, we are planning to add a new sum frequency generation vibrational spectrometer and a new time-of-flight secondary ion mass spectrometry system in the coming year.
My teaching activities for the past year included a sophomore-level tools class for bioengineers plus lecturing on surface analysis in various short courses and workshops. We successfully completed the first year of a new interdisciplinary NIH “Road-Map” training grant. This grant provides 12 summer traineeships for bioengineering students between their junior and senior years to do clinical research projects. Finally, it was always good to visit with past NESAC/BIO group members and friends during my travels to various conferences. In the past year this included trips to Korea, Japan, England, France, and Germany, as well as cities across the United States.
