Bruker Axs Awards Announced at Boston Meeting

The annual Bruker AXS XRD $6,000 scholarship, which recognises academic achievement in advanced x-ray diffration, has gone to Ph.D.
student Michelene E. Miller at Alfred University for her research paper “Novel Processing of Microporous Glass-Ceramics for Gas Separation.
The Award for 2006, was announced at the Materials Research Society’s Fall Meeting held in Boston during November. She is advised by Dr.
Scott T. Misture, Professor of Materials Science at the New York State College of Ceramics at Alfred University in Alfred, NY.
“Using high temperature XRD, we determined that nickel-doped cordierite glass-ceramics are candidates for application as permeability-controlled microporous membranes to separate out carbon dioxide and
hydrogen gases in fossil fuel power plants, both reducing greenhouse gas emissions and generating hydrogen,” explains Miller.
Professor Misture’s group focuses on materials for solid oxide fuel cells and hydrogen production. Funded by the NSF, DOE, EPA, and other agencies, their work centers on solid oxide fuel cells and photocatalysts.
Runner-up is Ph.D. student Qian Zhang from the University of Montreal. His research paper is entitled, “A simple XRD setup to track in situ the evolution of structural order in polymer liquid crystals exposed
to solvent vapour.” Qian Zhang’s research concentrates on physical and optical studies of azo-surfactomesogen/polyelectrolyte complexes. He
is advised by Professor C. Geraldine Bazuin of the University of Montreal’s Department of Chemistry.
Professor Bazuin’s research concentrates on the development of novel supramolecular and nanostructured polymeric materials. “Our particular
areas of interest include liquid crystalline materials, block copolymers, blends, ionomers, nanopatterns on surfaces, ultrathin films, and applications in optoelectronics and gene delivery,” indicates
Professor Bazuin.
The scholarship winner and runner-up were selected by an independent panel of judges: Dr. Tom Blanton from Eastman Kodak; Dr. Jim Kaduk from Innovene and current Board Chairman of the International Centre for
Diffraction Data; Dr. Pam Whitfield from National Research Council Canada; Dr. Jim Britten from McMaster University; and Dr. Nattamai Bhuvanesh, Department of Chemistry at Texas A&M University.