People, papers and presentations

A paper by Rice University researchers introducing Teslaphoresis, the directed motion and self-assembly of matter by a Tesla coil, has been selected as an ACS Editor’s Choice by the American Chemical Society. The editors of all ACS journals choose one paper a day to become open-access “due to its potential for broad public interest,” and the papers are made available for all to read. Rice chemist Paul Cherukuri led the team that included Texas A&M graduate student Lindsey Bornhoeft; Rice senior Aida Castillo; Rice research scientists Carter Kittrell, Dustin James and Bruce Brinson; Rice Distinguished Faculty Fellow Bruce Johnson; Thomas Rybolt, chemistry department head and the UC Foundation Professor at the University of Tennessee-Chattanooga; and Preston Smalley of the Second Baptist School in Houston. A story and video about Teslaphoresis were featured in Rice News in March.

 Esther Fernández, assistant professor of Spanish, Portuguese and Latin American studies, presented “Numancia: Memoria Histórica de una Tragedia” at the 28th Cervantes Symposium of California “Cervantes: 1616-2016,” hosted by the Department of Literature at the University of California-Santa Cruz April 23. She also participated in a conversation on “Shakespeare and Cervantes” hosted by the Center for European Studies at the University of Texas at Austin April 28.

Rice theoretical physicist Boris Yakobson, postdoctoral researcher Zhuhua Zhang and research scientist Evgeni Penev authored a “News & Views” article in Nature Chemistry on the manufacture of atom-thin layers of boron titled “Two-dimensional Materials: Polyphony in B Flat.” Yakobson and his team have published papers in recent years theorizing that the synthesis of 2-D boron should be possible and how it could be achieved. Now that their theories have borne fruit, they muse on how the new material could be used by experimentalists. Yakobson is the Karl F. Hasselmann Professor of Materials Science and NanoEngineering and a professor of chemistry.