International Materials Institute
for New Functionality in Glass

Research Spotlights

Recent Research Exchange (RE)

Nektarios Nasikas

Nektarios is a PhD student in the department of Materials Science at the University of Patras in Greece. He is also a research assistant and a full time scholar for the Institute of Chemical Engineering and High Temperature Chemical Processes at the Foundation of Research and Technology in Hellas.
He spent 3 months in June-Sept 2010 and a further 3 months in July-September 2011 at the University of California Davis in the department of Chemical Engineering and Materials Science. While he was there, his research focused on the elucidation of the structure and physical properties of novel glasses that form in the xY2O3 – (1 – x)Al2O3 binary system. "My favorite part about the program was that I had access to state of the art scientific equipment to fulfill the goals of his research collaboration". Additionally, he had the chance to work in a very friendly and scientifically rewarding environment where he could exchange views and ideas with fellow graduate students on common research interests. He says "..his research collaboration program expanded his scientific horizons and gave me the opportunity to acquire new knowledge on glassy materials .... the best part about living abroad was having the opportunity to meet and interact with people from different cultures and places of the world". For Nektarios, the most challenging part about living abroad was that he had to find out everything from scratch (like cell phones, supermarkets, banks, etc.) when he first arrived. But his newfound friends helped him along the way and made his first days in Davis much easier.

RE Alumni

Allison Wilhelm, Graduate Student
Department of Materials Science & Engineering, University of Arizona
Collaborated with Prof. Bruno Bureau's laboratory at University of Rennes, FranceFirst Phase: January-June 2006
Second Phase: August-December 2006
Third Phase: September-November 2008



Holly Moschiano, Graduate Student
New York State College of Ceramics, Alfred University
Collaborated with Prof. Akiyoshi Osaka in Tsushima , Japan
Summer 2006





Soumen Basu, Graduate Student of Physics
Jadavpur University, India
Collaborated with Prof. Venkat Gopalan in Penn State University & Prof. Himanshu Jain, Lehigh University
January - July 2006




Dr. Mohamed Ammar, Post graduate dentist
Alexandria Univeristy, Egypt
Research project title: "Development of Tissue Engineering Scaffold Utilizing Bioactive Glass having Nano-to Meso scale 3/D porosity"
February- August 2006; March - June 2008



Dr. Ana Clara Marques, Post doctoral researcher
Instituto Superior Técnico in Lisbon, Portugal
Research project title: "Nano-mesoporous sol-gel glass bone tissue scaffold"
First Phase: January - March 2006
Second Phase: February - June 2007




Alfonso Pedone, Graduate student
University of Modena and Reggio Emilia, Italy
Research project title: "Rational design of new glasses & glass-ceramics with improved bio-mechanical properties"
September - December 2006




Guang Yang, Graduate Student
East China University of Science and Technology (ECUST), Shanghai, China Research project title: “Near Infrared Broadband Emission from Bismuth/Dysprosium Co-doped Chalcohalide Glasses”
June - November 2007






This material is based upon work supported by the National Science Foundation under Grant Number DMR-0844014.
Any opinions, findings, and conclusions or recommendations expressed in this material are those of the author(s) and do not necessarily reflect the views of the National Science Foundation.

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