Sullivan Award Supports CNSE Student Scholarship
ALBANY, N.Y. (Nov. 12, 2024) — From studying advanced lithography to cardiovascular embryology, students at UAlbany’s College of Nanotechnology, Science, and Engineering (CNSE) are pursuing research that is at the cutting edge of human development.
Thanks to funding through the John J. Sullivan Professional Development Award, doctoral students Maria Belen Paredes-Espinosa, Shadi Omranpour, Ezra Pasikatan and Jeelka Solanki have been able to take part in prestigious conferences that have advanced their research and scholarship.
Paredes-Espinosa, who is pursuing her PhD in Nanobioscience under the mentorship of Associate Professor Janet Paluh, attended the prestigious Weinstein Cardiovascular Development and Regeneration Conference in Montreal.
Paredes-Espinosa’s research examines the prenatal human heart, the first organ to form during fetal development. The goal of her research is to improve patient diagnostics, drug screening and perhaps even organ biomanufacturing.
Omranpour is pursuing a PhD in Nanoscale Engineering under the mentorship of SUNY Senior Vice Chancellor for Research, Innovation and Economic Development and UAlbany Professor of Nanoscale Engineering Shadi Shahedipour-Sandvik.
She attended the 66th Electronic Material Conference at the University at Maryland. The conference is considered the premier annual forum on electronic materials research, which constitute the core substances used to create the components of semiconductors, circuit boards, communication cables or optical fibers, among many others.
Pasikatan is completing a PhD in Nanoscale Engineering while working alongside Empire Innovation Professor of Nanoscale Science Alain Diebold. He previously earned his master’s degree at CNSE in 2022.
This year, Pasikatan attended SPIE: Advance Lithography + Patterning which was held in San Jose, California. It has been the premier conference on lithography and patterning in the semiconductor industry since 1976, offering a forum to exchange technical advances and to showcase products in semiconductor lithography, patterning and related technologies.
The topic of Pasikatan’s dissertation is “Advanced Characterization and Metrology of 3D Memory film Stacks and Structures using Mueller Matrix Ellipsometry based Scatterometry.”
Graduate researcher Jeelka Solanki completed her PhD in Electrical and Electronics Engineering in the spring under the mentorship of CNSE Associate Dean for Research and Professor of Nanoscale Science and Engineering Nathaniel Cady. She attended the 33rd Microelectronics Design and Test Symposium (IEEE MDTS 2024) in Albany.
Solanki’s research focuses on designing hardware and software programming. She is working on designing hardware for programming RRAM devices in the packaged form building a bridge between characterization and real-world applications like Artificial Intelligence & Machine Learning.
“For near 20 years, the John J. Sullivan Professional Development Award has been a cornerstone of advancing student research efforts at CNSE,” said Professor and Chair of Nanoscale Science and Engineering J. Andres Melendez. “By providing essential funding, the program has empowered students to engage in groundbreaking research and attend prestigious conferences, enhancing their academic and professional growth.”
A U.S. Army veteran who rose to become vice president of Marketing and Technology Management for MKS Instruments in Andover, Mass., John J. Sullivan made a career of promoting innovation and imagination. After a visit to what was then the UAlbany Institute for Materials in the late 1990s, Sullivan came away highly impressed with the students and faculty of UAlbany’s nanotechnology program and the promise it held. After he retired in 2000, Sullivan became a visiting senior scientist at UAlbany. He later donated nearly $750,000 in MKS stock to establish the fund that now bears his name.
In 2007, Sullivan was asked what the future held for nanotechnology and for the young scientists honing their skills at CNSE. “It’s limitless,” said Sullivan, who passed away in 2010. “It’s just what people can imagine.”