NanoDay In New York - March 31, 2007

	Horst Stormer received his Ph.D. in 1977 from the University of Stuttgart, joined Bell Labs as a postdoc shortly after and became Member of Technical Staff in 1978. From 1983 to 1992 he headed the Semiconductor Physics Research Department and became the Director of the Physical Research Laboratory of AT&T Bell Labs in 1992. In 1997 Stormer moved to Adjunct Physics Director at Bell Labs, now Lucent Technologies, and became a Professor in the Physics and the Applied Physics Department of Columbia University. Stormer has worked on the properties of lower-dimensional electron systems and published more than 200 papers. He continues to study electronic transport, emphasizing nanosized structures, such as semiconductor wires and molecules. In 1998 he shared the Nobel Prize in Physics with D. C. Tsui and R. B. Laughlin for the discovery of the Fractional Quantum Hall Effect.
	Vicki Colvin is the Executive Director of the Center for Biological and Environmental Nanotechnology and Professor of Chemistry at Rice University. Prior to her start at Rice, she was a member of the technical staff at Bell Labs where she developed new materials for holographic data storage. She received her Ph.D. at U.C. Berkeley under the direction of Dr. Paul Alivisatos. During her time at the University of California, Berkeley, Colvin was awarded the American Chemical Society's Victor K. LaMer Award for her work in colloid and surface chemistry. Dr. Colvin has received numerous accolades for her teaching abilities, including Phi Beta Kappa's Teaching Prize for 1998-1999 and the Camille Dreyfus Teacher Scholar Award in 2002. In 2002, she was also named one of Discover Magazine's "Top 20 Scientists to Watch" and received an Alfred P. Sloan Fellowship.
	Bill Nye earned a degree in Mechanical Engineering from Cornell University in 1977 and has worked as a mechanical engineer on aviation, oil, and other projects. He has consulted for many clients including the U.S. Department of Justice. He originated Bill Nye the Science Guy as a radio show in Seattle in 1986, and he brought the show to television in 1992. Since then, he has worked on MTV Networks' Noggin Television and wrote, produced and performed "The Eyes of Nye" television series, originally for PBS. He has worked on the Mars Sundial project at Cornell University. He has won numerous awards including several Emmy Awards, several Environmental Media Association awards for Best Children's Live Action Show, the Council for Elementary Science International Science Advocate Award (2000), the Carl Sagan Candle in the Dark Award for the Development of Critical Thinking (1997), and the U.S. Forest Service Distinguished Award for Conservation.
	NanoDay co-host James T. Yardley is currently Professor of Chemical Engineering at Columbia University where he serves as Director of the Center for Integrated Science and Engineering. Dr. Yardley is also managing director of the Columbia Center for Electron Transport in Molecular Nanostructures, one of the NSF-sponsored Nanoscale Science and Engineering Centers. He received a BS in Chemistry from Rice University and Ph.D. in Physical Chemistry from University of California at Berkeley. He served as Assistant Professor and Associate Professor of Chemistry at University of Illinois, Champaign-Urbana from 1967 to 1977 where he received the Alfred P. Sloan fellowship and a Dreyfus Teacher-Scholar Award. Later he served as Vice President for Technology with AlliedSignal's Electronic Materials business. At AlliedSignal (now Honeywell International), Dr. Yardley created a research program to develop new optical materials and devices resulting in several business ventures in polymeric optics. He has published over 110 research papers and is co-inventor on more than 25 issued U.S. patents.
	NanoDay co-host Daniel L. Akins is a Professor in the Department of Chemistry at the City College of New York (since 1981) and director of the CUNY Center for Analysis of Structures and Interfaces, a center that has a broad range of fundamental and applied research aims involving molecules and atoms at interfaces and encapsulated within nanodimensioned structures. Prof. Akins was an undergraduate at Howard University (Washington, DC) and received his Ph.D. in Physical Chemistry from the University of California-Berkeley. He served as Assistant Professor and Associate Professor of Chemistry at the University of South Florida, Tampa, Florida, from 1970 to 1977. He then served for 2 years as Program Officer for the Dynamics Program of the National Science Foundation, followed by 2 years as a Senior Scientist at the Polaroid Corporation in Waltham, Massachusetts. His research focus is on quantum properties of molecular nanostructures and the exploitation of such properties for formulating new nanomaterials with uses in molecular photonic devices (MPDs) and/or chemical sensors. In 2000, Prof. Akins was the recipient of the Presidential Award for Excellence in Science, Mathematics, and Engineering Mentoring.