NANO @ IOWA
News from the Nanoscience and Nanotechnology Institute at UI
February 18, 2015
Items in red are new this issue.
(Others are carried forward from previous issues.)
1. Upcoming conferences and seminars including nanoscience and nanotechnology:

Nanomaterials for Applications in Energy Technology: Energy Conversion, Storage, and
Transport
Ventura, CA
February 22-27, 2015
http://www.grc.org/programs.aspx?id=15821

TiO2 Nanoparticles Interactions with Proteins: Adsorption, Denaturation,
Aggregation and Surface Charge
Zhenzhu Xu, Department of Chemistry, University of Iowa
S107 Pappajohn Business Building, The University of Iowa
Monday February 23, 2015 12.30-1.30pm

Progress Towards Understanding Size-Dependent Dielectric Properties of
Nanomaterials and the Improved Prediction of Ensuing Functionalized
Nanoparticle Stability
Lahiru Wijenayaka, Department of Chemistry, University of Iowa
S107 Pappajohn Business Building, The University of Iowa
Monday March 2, 2015 12.30-1.30pm

SUN-SNO-GUIDENANO Sustainable Nanotechnology Conference
Venice, Italy
March 9-11, 2015
http://www.susnano.org/conferenceOverview2015SNO-SUN-GN.html

U.S.-EU: Bridging nanoEHS Research Efforts Joint Workshop
Venice, Italy
March 12-13, 2015
http://us-eu.org/Calendar/eu-u-s-bridging-nanoehs-research-efforts-joint-workshop/

Society of Toxicology 54th Annual Meeting
San Diego, CA
March 22-26, 2014
http://www.toxicology.org/AI/MEET/AM2015/

Nanoscience and Nanotechnology Institute Spring Symposium
Chemistry Building, The University of Iowa
Friday April 10, 2015
http://nanotech.uiowa.edu/events/nanoscience-and-nanotechnology-symposium

SENN 2015 – International Congress on Safety of Engineered Nanoparticles and
Nanotechnologies
Helsinki, Finland
April 12-15, 2015
http://www.ttl.fi/PARTNER/SENN2015/Pages/default.aspx

ASME 2015 4th Global Conference on Nanengineering for Medicine and Biology
Minneapolis, MN
April 19-22, 2015
http://www.asmeconferences.org/NEMB2015/
2. Upcoming grant opportunities and funding requests in nanoscience and nanotechnology:

Nanomanufacturing
National Science Foundation
PD 14-1788
Deadline Dates: February 1 – February 17, 2015
September 1 – September 15, 2015
http://www.nsf.gov/funding/pgm_summ.jsp?pims_id=13347

Multidisciplinary Research Program of the University Research Initiative Department of
Defense Office of Naval Research
Department of Defense
ONRFOA14-012
Deadline Date: February 23, 2015
http://www.grants.gov/view-opportunity.html?oppId=266208

Irwin Andrew Porter Foundation Grant Program
Irwin Andrew Porter Foundation
Internal deadline: February 26, 2015
https://research.uiowa.edu/grantTrack/preselection.php?get=uiwins&GrantID=17949&Type=2

Office of Naval Research – Research Opportunity – Select Topics in Nanoscience and
Nanotechnology
Office of Naval Research
ONR-15-SN-0002
Deadline Date: February 26, 2015
http://www.grants.gov/custom/viewOppDetails.jsp?oppId=269741

Project on Advanced Systems and Concepts for Countering WMD (PASCC)
Naval Postgraduate School
NPS-BAA-14-003
Deadline Date: March 31, 2015
http://www.nps.edu/Research/workingwithnps.html

Seed Grants for Environmental Health Research on Contamination, Environmental Toxins
Center for Health Effects of Environmental Contamination, University of Iowa
Deadline Date: April 6, 2015
http://www.cheec.uiowa.edu/seedgrant/rfp.html

Innovative Research in Cancer Nanotechnology
National Institutes of Health
FOA Number: PAR-14-285
Deadline Date: April 15, 2015; October 15, 2015
http://grants.nih.gov/grants/guide/pa-files/PAR-14-285.html

Flexible Hybrid Electronics Manufacturing Innovation Institute
Department of Defense
FOA Number: FOA-RQKM-2015-0014
Deadline Date: May 29, 2015
http://www.grants.gov/web/grants/view-opportunity.html?oppId=271891

Industry/University Cooperative Research Centers Program
National Science Foundation
nsf13-594
Deadline Dates: Letter of Intent June 26, 2015; Full proposal September 25, 2015
http://www.nsf.gov/funding/pgm_summ.jsp?pims_id=5501&org=NNCO&sel_org=NNCO&from=f
und

Science, Technology, and Society
National Science Foundation
15-506
Deadline Date: August 3, 2015
http://www.nsf.gov/funding/pgm_summ.jsp?pims_id=5324

NSF: Science of Science and Innovation Policy
National Science Foundation
PD 09-7626
Deadline Date: September 9, 2015
http://www.nsf.gov/funding/pgm_summ.jsp?pims_id=501084

Army Research Laboratory BAA for Basic and Applied Scientific Research
Department of Defense
FOA Number: W911NF-12-R-0011
Deadline Date: March 31, 2017
http://www.arl.army.mil/www/default.cfm?page=8

Image-guided Drug Delivery in Cancer
National Institutes for Health (NIH)
FOA Number: PA-09-253
Deadline Dates: January 25, May 25, and September 25, annually
http://grants.nih.gov/grants/guide/pa-files/PA-09-253.html

Development of Multifunctional Drug and Gene Delivery Systems
National Institutes for Health (NIH)
FOA Number: PA-10-048
Deadline Dates: February 5, June 5, and October 5, annually
http://grants.nih.gov/grants/guide/pa-files/PAR-10-048.html

Nanoscience and Nanotechnology in Biology and Medicine
National Institutes of Health (NIH)
FOA Number: PA-11-148
Deadline Dates: February 5, June 5, October 5, annually
http://grants.nih.gov/grants/guide/pa-files/PA-11-148.html

Bioengineering Nanotechnology Initiative
National Institutes of Health (NIH)
FOA Number: PA-10-149
Deadline Dates: April 5, August 5, December 5, annually
http://www.grants.gov/web/grants/view-opportunity.html?oppId=53500

Cancer Diagnostic and Therapeautic Agents Enabled by Nanotechnology
National Institutes of Health (NIH)
FOA Number: PAR-10-286
Deadline Dates: April 5, August 5, December 5, annually
http://grants.nih.gov/grants/guide/pa-files/PAR-10-286.html
3. Recent news and updates from NNI:

Spring 2015 Nanoscience and Nanotechnology Symposium
Save the date! Friday April 10, 2015 all-day symposium with keynote speaker Dr Philip
Demokritou, Associate Professor, Director, Laboratory for Environmental Health NanoScience
(LEHNS), and Director, Center for Nanotechnology and Nanotoxicology Harvard School of Public
Health who will talk on “In-vitro Dosimetry of Nanomaterials: Too complicated to consider, too
important to ignore”.
The schedule will be 9.30a.m.-12.30p.m. Talks, 12.30-1.30p.m. Lunch and 1.30-3.00p.m.
Poster Session. The symposium will take place in the Chemistry Building. Further details and
registration form to be announced shortly. Please check the website:
http://nanotech.uiowa.edu/events/nanoscience-and-nanotechnology-symposium

Nano REU program accepting applications
The National Science Foundation Research Experience for Undergraduates (NSF-REU) program in
Nanoscience and Nanotechnology at The University of Iowa is now accepting applications. The
application deadline is March 2, 2015. Please find all the details on the website:
http://nanotech.uiowa.edu/education/nano-reu-program/application
4. Highlights of some new interesting nanoscience and nanotechnology research and articles:

Behavior of life’s molecules revealed
A complex interplay of molecular components governs almost all aspects of biological
sciences—healthy organism development, disease progression and drug efficacy are all
dependent on the way life’s molecules interact in the body. Understanding these biomolecular
interactions is critical for the discovery of new and more effective therapeutics and diagnostics
to treat cancer and other diseases, but currently this requires scientists to have access to
expensive and elaborate laboratory equipment. Now, a new approach developed by researchers
at Harvard Medical School, the Wyss Institute for Biologically Inspired Engineering at Harvard
and Boston Children’s Hospital promises a much faster and more affordable way to examine
biomolecular behavior, opening the door for scientists in virtually any laboratory worldwide to
join the quest for creating better drugs. The findings are published in February’s issue of
Nature Methods. “Biomolecular interaction analysis, a cornerstone of biomedical research, is
traditionally accomplished using equipment that can cost hundreds of thousands of dollars,”
said Wesley P. Wong, HMS assistant professor of biological chemistry and molecular
pharmacology at Boston Children’s Hospital, associate faculty member at the Wyss and senior
author of study. “Rather than develop a new instrument, we’ve created a nanoscale tool made
from strands of DNA that can detect and report how molecules behave, enabling biological
measurements to be made by almost anyone using only common and inexpensive laboratory
reagents.”
http://hms.harvard.edu/news/behavior-lifes-molecules-revealed

Turing also present at the nanoscale
In the world of single atoms and molecules governed by chaotic fluctuations, is the
spontaneous formation of Turing patterns possible - the same ones that are responsible for the
irregular yet periodic shapes of the stripes on zebras' bodies? A Polish-Danish team of
physicists has for the first time demonstrated that such a process can not only occur, but can
also be used for potentially very interesting applications. Everyone is familiar with a zebra's
stripes, but not everyone knows that these are the manifestations of chemical reactions taking
place according to a process first described by the famous British mathematician Alan Turing,
the creator of the basics of today's computer science. Turing patterns, most commonly
displayed in chemistry as periodic changes in the concentration of chemical substances, have
hitherto only been observed in dimensions of microns or larger. It seemed that on a smaller
scale - at the nanoscale, where random fluctuations rule the movement of single atoms and
molecules - these patterns do not have the right to form spontaneously. "So far, no-one has
even studied the possibility of the formation of Turing patterns by single atoms or molecules.
However, our results show that Turing nanostructures may exist. And since this is the case, we
will be able to find very specific applications for them in nanotechnology and materials science,"
says Dr. Bogdan Nowakowski from the Institute of Physical Chemistry of the Polish Academy of
Sciences (IPC PAS) in Warsaw, one of the physicists in the Polish-Danish team that has recently
conducted computer simulations and theoretical analyses on Turing nanostructures.
http://phys.org/news/2015-02-turing-nanoscale.html

New gold-silica nanoparticles act as contrast agents for multiple imaging modalities and
deliver drugs
An international team of researchers from UK, France, and United States has developed hybrid
gold-silica nanoparticles that are visible under three types of imaging modalities while being
able to deliver chemo and photothermal therapy. The nanoparticles consist of a shell made out
of mesoporous silica that has gold quantum dots seeded throughout. They can be tracked
throughout the body using MRI, near-infrared fluorescence, and photoacoustic imaging while
carrying a therapeutic payload. Gold quantum dots have previously looked promising for clinical
applications, but when released on their own they tend to bunch together and cause problems.
Having these quantum dots attached to a larger particle maintains their functionality without
letting them wonder off on their own. This allows the new nanoparticles to enter cells without
being toxic to them, that is until the particles’ location is confirmed and the therapeutic payload
is released.
http://www.medgadget.com/2015/02/new-gold-silica-nanoparticles-act-contrast-agentsmultiple-imaging-modalities-deliver-drugs.html

Novel non-stick material joins portfolio of slippery surface technologies
More than 80 percent of microbial infections in the human body are caused by a build–up of
bacteria, according to the National Institutes of Health. Bacteria cells gain a foothold in the
body by accumulating and forming into adhesive colonies called biofilms, which help them to
thrive and survive but cause infections and associated life–threatening risks to their human
hosts. These biofilms commonly form on medical surfaces including those of mechanical heart
valves, urinary catheters, intravenous catheters, and implants. But a new study reported in the
inaugural issue of ACS Biomaterials Science and Engineering ("Liquid-Infused Silicone As a
Biofouling-Free Medical Material") demonstrates a powerful, long–lasting repellent surface
technology that can be used with medical materials to prevent infections caused by biofilms.
http://www.nanowerk.com/news2/biotech/newsid=38999.php
About NANO @ IOWA
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