Awake

You remember the story of Rip Van Winkle, by Washington Irving, right?  An indolent man, Rip awakes after a 20 year slumber, thereby missing out on the Revolutionary War in upstate New York.  Well, this blog is somewhat like that.

Life size bronze of Rip Van Winkle sculpted by Richard Masloski, copyright 2000.

I have not written a blog post for Room at the Bottom for nearly 3 years.  I could go on and on about the reasons (indolence being one of them), but the end result is that time has passed while this accounting of my observations of nanotechnology and Georgia Tech has stood still.  While I am ready to begin my musings once again, I have the unenviable task of updating the site as well as all (okay, some) of what has transpired during my time away.

When I last wrote in this space, the operational unit for nanoscale fabrication and characterization at Georgia Tech was the Nanotechnology Research Center (NRC).  In early 2011, a new Interdisciplinary Research Institute (IRI) was created at Tech – the Institute for Electronics and Nanotechnology (IEN) - which consolidates much of the research in this area and several existing research centers into a common organization.  This IRI follows on the model set earlier by the Institute for Bioengineering and Bioscience (IBB) and is the new paradigm for similar research topic-themed institutes at Georgia Tech. The founding Executive Director was Prof. Mark Allen, who recently announced his move to Penn; he has been replaced on an interim basis by Prof. Oliver Brand while a national search for a new IEN Director is conducted.

You can find out more about IEN at our new website, and continue to get timely updates and announcements through our Facebook page and LinkedIn group.  You can also come meet us in person at some upcoming conferences: IEEE Sensors (Baltimore, Nov. 4-6), SERMACS (Atlanta, Nov. 13-16), and IEEE MEMS (San Francisco, Jan. 26-30).  Of course, it is my intent that this blog will once again be a source for news, opinion, commentary, review, and gossip about items of interest to our community.  Stay tuned.