ICAM Co-Directors Daniel Cox and David Pines learned in late May that the US National Science Foundation would renew funding for ICAM, including its International ICAM (I2CAM) International Materials Institute award, for the next five years with a substantial increase in funding. Read more »

Members of ITFA Amsterdam

The ICAM consortium is pleased to welcome colleagues from three Netherlands institutions who recently joined as a consortium:  the University of Utrecht (UU), which includes its Institute for Theoretical Physics (ITP) and the Debye Institute, Leiden University (LU), where the Instituut-Lorentz is the lead organization, and the University of Amsterdam (UvA), which includes its van der Waals-Zeeman Institute (WZI) and the Institute for Theoretical Physics Amsterdam (ITFA).   Cristiane Morais Smith and Rembert Duine from Utrecht University, together with Kareljan Schoutens from the University of Amsterdam, represented the consortium at ICAM’s annual meeting in January.  Kareljan Schoutens will serve on the Science Steering Committee and Cristiane Morais Smith is a member of the Board of Governors and of the Executive Committee. Read more »

The ICAM Fellows Selection Committee, chaired by Ka Yee Lee, has announced the awarding of one new Senior Fellowship, two individual Junior Fellowships (Track I), and two institutional Junior Fellowships (Track II).  These awards are intended to encourage research collaboration across disciplines and institutions and are funded by ICAM branch member institutional supporting costs. Read more »

Obama at NAS. Photograph by Matthew Scott.

If there were any lingering doubts that the current U.S. President understands the importance of science to the nation’s welfare, these were dispelled at the annual meeting of the U.S. National Academy of Sciences April 24-27. Members of the NAS heard directly from President Obama and four members of his science team about the multiple roles of science in the new administration. As reported by David Pines, one of the ten Academy members from ICAM Boards present at the meeting, the President’s speech, and the briefing by his leadership team, conveyed a clear sense of the value placed on science by the new administration and could not have been more enthusiastically received by the audience. Read more »

Cristian Staii

The basic working unit of the brain is the neuron, a specialized cell designed to transmit information to other neurons, muscle, or gland cells.  It consists of a cell body plus long threadlike axons that transmit electrical impulses, and shorter, thicker dendrites, which receive messages from other cells.  A daunting task in neuroscience is to figure out how as many as 100 billion neurons are produced, grow, and organize themselves into the truly wonderful information-processing machine which is the human brain.  Direct methods of observation (such as Computed Tomography, Magnetic Resonance Imaging, Positron Emission Tomography, etc.) and a battery of biological techniques (such as optical microscopy, fluorescence spectroscopy, etc.) have provided valuable insights into neuronal growth, development, and operation.  For example, it is now known that specialized proteins (extracellular matrix proteins and guidance factors) provide cues that influence transmission of information among neurons.  The precise spatial arrangement of these proteins plays a crucial role in guiding axons/dendrites to their targets.  However, the local environment faced by a growing neuron in vivo is so rich and complex that the collective influence of many guidance cues is extremely hard to decipher. Read more »

Two recent recognitions, one from the International Liquid Crystal Society (ILCS) for “Picture of the Month” (taken with a fluorescence confocal polarizing microscope), the other a SPIE Scholarship in Optical Science and Engineering, have come out of work done as part of an ICAM/I2CAM exchange.  The recipient of these honors is Rajdeep Deb, a graduate research assistant from Assam University, India, who spent the 2009 spring semester working with Professor Ivan I. Smalyukh at the Liquid Crystal Materials Research Center of the University of Colorado at Boulder.  Smalyukh has been collaborating with Deb’s mentor at Assam University, Professor Nandiraju V. S. Rao, on a study of novel azo- or ester-based liquid crystals having B phases, in which the letter B refers to the characteristic bent shape of the molecules, popularly called banana liquid crystals. Read more »