VCU to host International Science Symposium Nov. 10-13

By Mike Frontiero and Puru Jena

RICHMOND, Va. – Two Nobel Prize winners are among nearly 200 scientists, engineers and students from around the world who will be in Richmond to participate in one of the world's most prestigious multidisciplinary symposia involving physics, chemistry, biology, engineering and medicine.

Hosted by Virginia Commonwealth University, the International Symposium on Clusters and Nano-Assemblies: Physical and Biological Systems (ISCANA) will address cutting-edge developments and emerging trends in the science and technology of nanostructures in physical and biological systems. It will be held Monday, Nov. 10 through Thursday, Nov. 13, 8:30 a.m. to 9:30 p.m., at the Jefferson Hotel, 101 W. Franklin St.

"We will be talking about how nature has perfected science at the nanometer length scale-level over millions of years and how it can be used to design tiny machines that can power faster computers and make better optics and medical diagnostic tools," said Puru Jena, Ph.D., the symposium's chairman and a professor in VCU's Department of Physics. By comparison, the average human hair is 100,000 nanometers in diameter and the width of a typical biomolecule, such as protein, is less than 50 nanometers.

Keynote speaker John B. Fenn, Ph.D., recipient of the 2002 Nobel Prize in Chemistry and research professor in the VCU Department of Chemistry, will discuss the technique he pioneered that allows researchers to study large biological molecules, such as proteins, in the gas phase. 

The second keynote speaker is William D. Phillips, Ph.D., recipient of the 1997 Nobel Prize in Physics and a leading researcher at the National Institute of Standards and Technology in Gaithersburg, Md. He will discuss how lasers can cool atoms to very low temperatures and create an "optical lattice" where a regular array of atoms is held in a nanostructure that has a backbone made of light.

This symposium is part of a Richmond Conference series that Jena founded in 1982 and since then it has been held every four years in Richmond. Its 20-member advisory board includes two Nobel laureates, members of the National Academy of Sciences, and researchers from top universities and institutes around the world. "This is a very prestigious meeting," he said. "We are lucky that scientists at the top of their field come here to share their research."

Sponsors include VCU, Phillip Morris USA, United States Army Research Office, National Science Foundation, U.S. Department of Energy, U.S. Air Force Office of Science and Technology, NASA, Virginia's Center for Innovative Technology, and NanoVA. For more information and a program on the symposium, go to www.vcu.edu/ISCANA.