Halas elected IEEE Fellow

Halas elected IEEE Fellow

FROM RICE NEWS STAFF REPORTS

In recognition of her contributions to applications in biotechnology and chemical sensing using metallic nanoshells and nanoparticles, Naomi Halas has been elected a 2008 fellow of the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE).

NAOMI HALAS

Fellows are invited by the IEEE board of directors on the basis of demonstrated outstanding proficiency and achieved distinction in engineering. This distinction is awarded to a person who has made important individual contributions to any of the IEEE designated fields, including electrical engineering, electronics, computer engineering, computer sciences and the related arts and sciences.

Halas is the Stanley C. Moore Professor in Electrical and Computer Engineering, director of the Laboratory for Nanophotonics and professor of chemistry at Rice. She is best- known as the inventor of nanoshells, a new class of multilayered nanoscale particles that have unique optical properties of wide interest in optics, biomedicine, materials science and other disciplines. In creating nanoshells, Halas drew upon her education and training in both the natural and applied sciences.

Halas joined the faculty in Rice’s Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering in 1989 and received a joint appointment in the Department of Chemistry in 1999.  She is a fellow of the American Physical Society, a recipient of the National Science Foundation Young Investigator Award and a four-time winner of the Rice Engineering Alumni’s Hershel M. Rich Invention Award. Halas was named a fellow of the American Physical Society and she received the “Cancer Innovator” Award from the Congressionally Directed Medical Research Programs of the U.S. Department of Defense in 2003. She received her B.A. in chemistry from La Salle College and her M.A. and Ph.D. in physics from Bryn Mawr College. As a doctoral student, Halas worked four years at the IBM T.J. Watson Research Center, followed by a two-year postdoctoral appointment at AT&T’s Bell Laboratories.