Five recent nanotechnology engineering graduates from the University of Waterloo have come a long way since they came together over a shared interest in optics and frustration with the poor quality of their smartphone photographs.
Aiping Yu, a professor of chemical engineering, is one of six nation-wide recipients of 2020 E.W.R. Steacie Memorial Fellowships for highly promising researchers. Her selection was announced today by the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada. A virtual awards ceremony is scheduled for this afternoon.
In 2019, the WIN membership expanded beyond the Faculties of Science, Engineering and Mathematics to welcome the first researcher from the Faculty of Environment. Goretty Dias is a sustainability scientist and industrial ecologist and is an associate professor in the School of Environment, Enterprise and Development.
The common belief is that electron microscopy (EM) can only be used on dry samples because of the vacuum inside the microscope’s column. This is no longer the case, as researchers can now visualize fully solvated nanoscale objects in liquids such as water from cryogenic to room temperature conditions. Room temperature in-liquid observations are achieved by squeezing the sample into a nanofluidic chip with a very narrow with a very narrow gap (down to 50nm) between two ultrathin membranes, so that the electron beam can get through the “sandwich” and reach the image detector.
