Xiaoyang Zhu: Recruiting the Best
Continued from Page 9
from Fudan University, and completed his PhD here at The University of Texas
under the direction of the late Professor J. Michael White. Zhu then went on to
do postdoctoral research with Nobel Laureate Gerhard Ertl at the Fritz-Haber-
Institute. Zhu’s research areas include the exciton dissociation and solar energy,
charge transport and organic electronics, and chemical control of bio-interfaces.
Having attracted world-class faculty to the department, such as Xiaoyan Zhu
and others, the challenge is retaining them. At any time another university
may attempt to hire away our faculty. The department must have the resourc-
es to act quickly to protect itself from these outside raids. In the last four years
three senior faculty and one junior faculty have received outside offers. The
department must be vigilant about retaining its faculty, but countering offers
from other universities requires budgetary flexibility that can be challenging.
Flexible, private funds are required to both attract and retain the best faculty.
—M. A. Sims
Graeme Henkelman:
Big Research on a Small Scale
Continued from Page 9
(a nucleotide that is the molecular currency of intracellular energy transfer) are
all used in chemical reactions to convert them to energy. But what we often
take for granted is that all of these reactions require a certain environment,
set of conditions, and sometimes a catalyst to occur and generate energy. This
quandary is especially topical for scientists who develop and create fuel cells
that use hydrogen and oxygen. While this fuel cell technology holds great
promise, in order to compel hydrogen and oxygen to react in a manner that
produces energy one needs a catalyst. Platinum is currently used for this
purpose; unfortunately, platinum is rare and very expensive. Henkelman is
working on replacing the platinum with palladium, a less expensive and
more common metal, which may actually work better than the platinum. The
“There are any number of materials out there, and to the extent that we see some
success in our theory, this project could be very open-ended,” Henkelman said.
“This is the start of a new field. It could take a lifetime, a whole career.”
palladium would be a one-atom thick shell around a core of another metal; in
this case, cobalt. This is called core-shell bi-metallic nanoparticle technology. In
this scenario, the exchange of electrons between the two metals facilitates the
chemical reaction. It is key that the two metals be utilized on the nanoscale
in order to harness their ability to act together as a catalyst for the fuel cell.
Henkelman simulates this and many other approaches to fuel cell development
on petascale computers. Petascale computers are capable of handling many
calculations at once, thus processing hypothetical scenarios at very high
speeds, making it possible to simulate these reactions. If these simulations
do indeed work in the experimental setting, Henkelman can move on to new
technologies such as even smaller fuel cells, photovoltaics, and new, more
efficient energy solutions we have yet to think of.
—Claire McCarthy
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