News Archive
08/14/2009 - New Knowlton Group Website Goes Live
The Knowlton Group has updated its web design! Our new layout is designed to be clearer, sleeker, and more useable. We hope you enjoy the new look and feel of our home on the web!
08/05/2009 - Stephanie Barnes and Team Take 2nd Place at INBRE 2009
Stephanie Barnes, Christopher Buu, Jason Brotherton, Hieu Bui, Austin Johnson and Mallory Yates were given the 2nd Place Faculty Choice Undergraduate Poster Award at this year's INBRE conference for their poster entitled "A Radial Dielectrophoretic Trap for Individual Nanostructures." Congratulations team!
07/03/2009 - Bernie Yurke Received 2009 Tulip Award
Our own Bernie Yurke was awarded the 2009 Tulip Award at the 15th International Meeting on DNA Computing and Molecular Programming held in June at the University of Arkansas.
Under the auspices of the International Society for Nanoscale Science, Computation and Engineering, the annual conference is a platform for leading researchers in computer science, mathematics, chemistry, physics, molecular biology and nanotechnology to present significant results and build interdisciplinary projects. It began in 1995 after the publication of landmark work by Leonard Adleman, a theoretical computer scientist who opened the door to the relatively new field of DNA computing.
Yurke was recognized with a Tulip Award for his important contributions to DNA-nanotechnology. Past winners include faculty members from such reputable institutions as Duke University and the University of Tokyo, and conference participants hail from Caltech, Stanford, Princeton and other research powerhouses.
After growing up in Boise, Yurke did two years of undergraduate work at then Boise State College. He transferred to the University of Texas at Austin where he received a bachelor’s degree and a master’s degree in physics and completed his doctoral work in experimental low temperature physics at Cornell University under the guidance of Nobel Laureate Prof. David Lee. After working for Bell Laboratories for nearly 25 years, Yurke was given a joint appointment as a research professor in the departments of materials science and engineering and electrical and computer engineering at Boise State. Currently, he heads up the interdisciplinary Bio-Nanostructure Group, comprised of assistant professor Will Hughes and associate professor Bill Knowlton in the Departments of Materials Science & Engineering and electrical and computer engineering, assistant professor Wan Kuang in the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering, and assistant professor Jeunghoon Lee in the Department of Chemistry and Biochemistry. Their project, DNA Origami, concerns the use of DNA to engineer nanostructures for a variety of applications including biomolecular sensors and devices.
“It is rare that a scientist/engineer is well known for research in two separate fields, but Bernie has received awards for his seminal work on squeezed light with the Max Born Award and now the Tulip award for his DNA Origami research” said Hughes. “We are very fortunate to have Bernie at Boise State” said Knowlton. “He had many offers to go to highly ranked and prestigious universities but instead chose to come to Boise State to be close to his family.”
08/01/2008 - Jason Brotherton wins 2008 Veeco Calendar Contest
Jason Brotherton, an MSE Undergrad in the group, has had the honor of having his AFM image entitled "Wavy Nanostructure" included in Veeco's 2008 AFM calendar. View the contest Here and the winning image.
Former Funding
- 2002 NSF MRI Program Award
- 2003 NSF MRI Program Award (October 2003)1st & 2nd
- 2001 Multidisciplinary University Research Initiative (MURI) with the University of Maryland