American Association for the Advancement of Science Honors VCU Clusters and Nanoscience Researcher

By Sathya Achia Abraham and Katharine Zambon

Shiv N. Khanna, Ph.D., commonwealth professor in the Department of Physics at Virginia Commonwealth University, and leader in the field of clusters and nanoscience, has been named a fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS).

Khanna was honored for his research on the physics of atomic clusters, dedication to teaching science and service to his institution. He has been recognized for his “pioneering contributions to theoretical understanding of electronic and magnetic properties of clusters and developments on superatoms as third dimension to the periodic table,” according to the AAAS.

Khanna is among 539 individuals who will be honored by the AAAS this year on the basis of their scientifically or socially distinguished efforts to advance science and its applications. The election as a fellow is an honor bestowed upon AAAS members by their peers.

This year’s AAAS Fellows will be formally announced in Dec. 23 issue of the AAAS News & Notes section of the journal Science.

Through theoretical work, Khanna and his team have developed a conceptual framework for systematically identifying “superatoms” with unique chemical, magnetic and electronic behaviors. They have already identified numerous superatoms using atoms of a variety of elements in the periodic table.

According to Khanna, the production and stabilization of such species is a stirring development as it opens a new branch of chemistry and material science, showing that these superatoms can be used as building blocks to form new nanoscale materials that could lead to new applications in electronics, magnetism, catalysis, sensors, medicine and other fields.

In previous research findings, Khanna, together with colleagues from Penn State, had demonstrated that aluminum clusters can act as halogen or alkaline earth elements, thus allowing for the creation of new families of nanoscale materials with extraordinary attributes.

Khanna has received a number of honors for his research accomplishments including the University Distinguished Scholarship award from VCU. In 2007, Khanna was named a Fellow of the American Physical Society - selected by his peers in the field of physics for his research contributions.

New fellows will be recognized in February at the AAAS Fellows Forum during the 2012 AAAS Annual Meeting in Vancouver, Canada.

The tradition of AAAS fellows began in 1874. The AAAS is the world’s largest general scientific society and publisher of the journal, Science. AAAS was founded in 1848, and includes approximately 262 affiliated societies and academies of science, serving 10 million individuals.