July 23, 2011

by Benjamin White

After three days in Hamburg, Germany and 25 talks relating to nanoscience, the first official SPIRE workshop was declared a success.

The presentations, held all day from June 29th to July 1st at the Institute of Applied Physics at the University of Hamburg, dealt with subjects ranging from rotations in complex molecular machines to theoretical calculations for Galium Nitride surfaces to OU's new spin-polarized scanning tunneling microscope (SP-STM). Each talk lasted 20 minutes and preceded a ten-minute discussion.

Ohio University sent Drs. Sergio Ulloa, Nancy Sandler, Saw-Wai Hla, and NQPI director Arthur Smith along with visiting professor Noboru Takeuchi to present their research and exchange ideas. Graduate students Heath Kersell, Andrew Dillulo and Daniel Bergman made the trip to present their research as well. OU undergraduate physics major Vincent Roberts, who will be a senior this year, also attended to absorb as much as possible from the renowned researchers' discussions.

Bergman is currently spending the summer at the University of Hamburg performing research at the Institute of Applied Physics using one of the school's SP-STMs. Kersell and Roberts will spend the rest of the summer working at Humboldt University. Dillulo will spend the summer working at Freie University in Berlin.

Several speakers from the University of Buenos Aires in Argentina, the third school in SPIRE's “spin triangle” of collaboration, also gave talks from South America using Adobe Connect, a type of videoconferencing software.
“I think it's always a great excitement if both younger students and established professors from both sides can meet and exchange ideas at different levels,” said Dr. Roland Wiesendanger, head of the Scanning Probe Methods Group and co-organizer of the conference.

Both Arthur Smith, the other organizer, and Wiesendanger believe the workshop and continued cooperation between the University of Hamburg and OU benefit both programs immensely. Smith praised the Wiesendanger group's expertise in SP-STM (the University of Hamburg has nearly a dozen scanning tunneling microscopes), and Wiesendanger said the schools have “complementary expertise” in nanoscience and that he expects much in the future.
The workshop was not all work, though. After the presentations each day, members dined at a traditional German restaurant, viewed Hamburg from a church bell tower, and explored the city's canals (Hamburg has more canals than Venice) in a boat tour. After the workshop, participants were given a chance to witness a Ph.D. defense which dealt with spin-transfer torque manipulation on the nanoscale.

SPIRE, funded by a five-year, $2.5 million National Science Foundation grant, was founded in the fall of 2007 and focuses on nanoscience research, especially in the realms of magnetism and spintronics.