The 27th Annual Great Lakes Biomedical Conference

Applications   of   Nanotechnology

Advances in Transistors, Biosensors and Viral Detection

Friday April 4, 2003

Golden Rondelle Theatre
SC Johnson Wax
Racine, Wisconsin

Program :

Nanotechnology is a powerful new tool that can sense, measure and control events in molecular dimensions.  This provides never-before available access to a wide range of molecular applications in physics, chemistry and biology. What does this mean to you?  Innovation is a natural part of nanotechnology and these frontiers offer many new opportunities in business, research and education for both professionals and students.  This conference will cover the principles of nanotechnology and applications in transistors, biosensors and early detection of viral agents such as West Nile Virus.
 

INVITED SPEAKERS :

Dr. Wolfgang Porod: currently is Frank M. Freimann Professor of Electrical Engineering at the University of Notre Dame. He received his Diplom (M.S.) and Ph.D. degrees from the University of Graz, Austria, in 1979 and 1981, respectively. After appointments as a postdoctoral fellow at Colorado State University and as a senior research analyst at Arizona State University, he joined the University of Notre Dame in 1986 as an Associate Professor. He now also serves as the Director of Notre Dame’s Center for Nano Science and Technology.  His research interests are in the area of nanoelectronics, with an emphasis on new circuit concepts for novel devices. He has authored some 300 publications and presentations.

He is a Fellow of the IEEE and he currently serves as the Vice President for Publications on the newly-created IEEE Nanotechnology Council. He also has been appointed an Associate Editor for the new IEEE Transactions on Nanotechnology. He is a Founding Member of the IEEE Circuits and Systems Society’s Technical Committee on Nanoelectronics and Gigascale Systems, and he has been active in organizing Special Sessions and Tutorials, and as a speaker in the CAS Distinguished Lecturer Program.
 

Dr. Barbara Israel: is a Founder and is Chief Operating Officer of Platypus Technologies, LLC.  She also holds an appointment as a Senior Scientist in the School of Veterinary Medicine, University of Wisconsin-Madison. She received her PhD in Medical Microbiology from the University of Vermont and did her post doctoral training in virology at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. She has conducted research on arboviruses for the past 15 years with interests in viral pathogenesis and viral evolution.  For the past 4 years, she has been engaged in the application of nanotechnology to the life sciences, particulary for the rapid detection of molecular interactions.

Dr. Israel received her PhD in medical microbiology from the School of Medicine, University of Vermont, Burlington, Vermont. She completed postdoctoral training in virology at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. She holds an appointment in the Department of Pathobiological Sciences, School of Veterinary Medicine, University of Wisconsin-Madison where she has conducted research on animal and human viruses for 18 years. Her professional interests are in the areas of viral pathogenesis, viral evolution, emerging viral diseases, viral diagnostics and nanotechnology.

In 2000, Dr. Israel co-founded Platypus Technologies, Madison WI and serves as the Chief Operating Officer. The mission of the company is to apply nanotechnologies to the life sciences. Platypus is developing a broad platform technology that combines nanostructured surfaces with liquid crystals to detect molecular interactions. The technology has application to drug discovery, infectious disease diagnostics, sensor technology, environmental monitoring and proteomics. The Company currently has 18 employees and has received 7 Small Business Innovative Research Awards totaling approximately $4.0 million.
 

Dr. Daniel van der Weide: received a BSEE from the University of Iowa in 1987, and a Master’s and Ph.D. in Electrical Engineering from Stanford University in 1989 and 1993, respectively. He held summer positions with Lawrence-Livermore National Laboratory and Hewlett-Packard, and full-time positions with Motorola as an Engineer and Watkins-Johnson Company as a Member of the Technical Staff. From 1993-95 he worked as a post-doctoral researcher with the Max-Planck-Institut für Festkörperforschung (Solid State Research) in Stuttgart, Germany, after which he joined the University of Delaware Department of Electrical & Computer Engineering as an assistant and associate professor and director of the Center for Nanomachined Surfaces. In 1999 he joined the Department of Electrical & Computer Engineering at the University of Wisconsin-Madison as an associate professor. He received the National Science Foundation CAREER and PECASE awards in 1997 and the Office of Naval Research Young Investigator Program award in 1998. His current research involves ultrafast electronics, low-dimensional electron systems and the application of high frequency techniques in biotechnology
 

Dr. Timothy M. Herman: is the Director of the Center for BioMolecular Modeling at the Milwaukee School of Engineering. He received his Ph.D. in biochemistry from Oregon State University in 1976. He was a NIH Post-doctoral Fellow at Harvard Medical School from 1977-1979. He held appointments as assistant and associate professor in the Department of Biochemistry involving DNA and RNA research at the Medical College of Wisconsin from 1980-1998.   In 1998 he founded the Center for BioMolecular Modeling where he directs the development of rapid prototyping technologies for the production of physical models of proteins and molecular structures for applications in business, research and education.