Nov. 10, 2008
Nanotechnology expert receives WiSys
Innovation Scholar Award
Michael Zach (’97), assistant professor of chemistry at the
University of Wisconsin-Stevens Point and guest faculty researcher
with the Argonne National Laboratory in Illinois, will receive the
2008 WiSys Innovation Scholar this week for his nanotechnology
research.
Zach also received a $48,363 UW System WiSys Technology Foundation
grant for his research project, “Going from a Scientific Curiosity
to a Commercializable Process with Wide Ranging Applications.” The
project builds on his existing research focusing on discovering the
rules of how nature wants to make organized patterns such as
crystals from individual atoms and ions.
“It is my hope to move this theory into practice and manufacture
items with better properties by intelligently providing the right
set of conditions for self-assembly using low-energy methods,” said
Zach. “My research targets new ways to produce patterned nanowires
that can be grown into circuits and components for manufacturing
materials that have greatly improved material properties.” said
Zach. “There are many ways to make large quantities of nanowires,
but most techniques result in large numbers of tangled masses of
wires. By dramatically improving nanowire patterned consistencies,
we can then apply that knowledge to numerous economic sectors
including healthcare, electronics and manufacturing.”
In medicine, nanotechnology could be used in treating cancer
utilizing a nano bullet technique rather than a shotgun approach
attacking all cells, according to Zach.
Zach and his students are working with some nanowires as small as a
few atoms wide. Such wires are so small a bundle of one million
nanowires would still not reach the thickness of a single strand of
spider web.
According to Ronald Singer, associate vice president for academic
affairs at UW System, “In addition to the technical merit, quality
of the research design and likelihood of successful completion, a
major criterion for (Zach’s) selection was the potential impact of
the project on Wisconsin’s economy.”
Zach has one year to complete his research project and report the
project’s findings. The WiSys Technology Foundation was founded in
2000 to support research and educational programs on the campuses of
the UW System.
Zach worked in Argonne’s Materials Science Division as the 2004
Glenn Seaborg Postdoctoral Fellow. He was a Miller Postdoctoral
Fellow at the University of California, Berkeley. Part of his time
at UC-Berkeley included a one-year joint appointment with NASA/Ames
Research Center.
During this time his research was featured on the cover of Science
Magazine. From 1998-2001 he was a head teaching assistant for
analytical, general and nuclear chemistry laboratories. In 2001-02
he received the national Merck Fellowship award from the American
Chemical Society’s Division of Analytical Chemistry.
He graduated in 1997 and received the Chancellor’s Leadership Award.
He received his master’s and doctoral degrees from University of
California-Irvine (UCI). Zach is a member of the Microscopy Society
of America, the American Association for the Advancement of Science,
The Electrochemical Society, and the American Chemical Society. He
resides in Stevens Point with his wife, Karen.
