Achievement

The STAIR seminar, a repeating course, features speakers representing a broad range of topics and academic disciplines. We feel that this course enriches the student experience by broadening their exposure to new research beyond their academic disciplines. This seminar also attracts attendees from disciplines outside the STAIR program. We offer opportunities for one-on-one meetings for faculty and students with our speakers to establish collaborative initiatives beyond the expected departmental avenues. Furthermore, NSF funding also allows us to host an occasional international speaker, and this year Dr. Ingo Manke, Institute of Applied Materials, Helmholtz Centre for Materials and Energy in Berlin, Germany, presented. We also had a speaker, Maciej Haranczyk, from the Lawrence-Berkeley National Laboratory giving a talk this semester on rapid screening of zeolites for carbon sequestration purposes, in line with the growing Materials Genome Initiative theme.