March, 2019: Former KIC Postdoc Marc Miskin, now Associate Professor of Electrical and Systems Engineering at UPenn, presented his ground breaking work on cell-sized micro robots at the APS meeting in Boston March 4-8. The nanofabrication techniques were developed at Cornell with his colleagues (and KIC members), professors Itai Cohen and Paul McEuen.

Feb 2019: A nano-sized guitar string vibrates and crackles in an unexpectedly organized and intricate way, according to KIC Director Paul McEuen, whose research group devised a way to listen to a nanoscale guitar for the first time – and then played the Cornell alma mater on it. Their work was published in Nature Jan. 21.

October, 2018: Héctor Abruña, KIC executive committee member and the Emile M. Chamot Professor of Chemistry, was named the recipient of the Allen J. Bard Medal for 2019, one of the highest honors of the Electrochemical Society. 

October, 2018: KIC Members Jin Suntivich & Darrell Schlom change electrochemical properties by “shuffling” the top layer of a well-known catalyst. The ability to tailor the catalyst at the atomic scale could open up a whole new way of thinking about catalyst design, Suntivich says.

August, 2018: Lena Kourkoutis, KIC member and Assistant Professor of Applied and Engineering Physics, has developed and demonstrated a technique for direct visualization of solid-liquid interfaces in an effort to better understand a major problem with Li-metal batteries: dendrite growth on the anode, which can cause short-circuiting and, in extreme cases, catastrophic battery failure.

July, 2018: Guinness World Records has officially recognized KIC members David Muller and Sol Gruner for their world record for highest electron microscope resolution.

July, 2018: KIC member Héctor Abruña to lead the recently funded DOE Center for Alkaline-Based Energy Solutions (CABES), part of the Energy Frontier Research Center (EFRC). CABES, dedicated to the development of advanced fuel cell technologies in alkaline media, has been awarded a four-year, $10.75M grant from the DOE office of Science.

July, 2018: KIC co-Director David Muller, KIC member Sol Gruner and Physics Professor Veit Elser, have developed a method for achieving ultra-high resolution for their electron microscope, using monolayer molybdenum disulfide to achieve a world record for image resolution. The Cornell-developed electron microscope pixel array detector employed in this method was developed with support from the Kavli Institute at Cornell (KIC).

June 2018: In a paper published in Nature, a team led by KIC member Uli Wiesner, the Spencer T. Olin Professor of Engineering in the Department of Materials Science and Engineering, reports discovery of 10-nanometer, individual, self-assembled dodecahedral structures – 12-sided silica cages that could have applications in mesoscale material assembly, as well as medical diagnosis and therapeutics.

May 31, 2018: The 2018 Kavli Prize Laureates were announced as part of a live webcast event. The 2018 Kavli Prize laureate announcements by the Norwegian Academy of Science and Letters in Oslo, Norway included live coverage of a special Prize program from the World Science Festival in New York City, anda special keynote address by the Honorable Shirley Ann Jackson Ph.D., President, Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute.