College of Chemical and Life Sciences researcher Sang Bok Lee is working on highly controlled ways to make disease-targeting "magnetic nanotubes." These tiny cylindrical structures, which may be visualized with magnetic resonance imaging, contain a minute dose of medication, while their outer surfaces are covered with biological markers that can detect a disease in even its earliest, most treatable, stages. When the markers attach the nanotubes to diseased tissues, the medication is released, providing treatment when and where it can do the most good.
Contact: (301) 405-7906; slee@umd.edu

Michael Fuhrer of the College of Computer, Mathematical and Physical Sciences holds the world record for room-temperature mobility in a semiconductor, using a carbon nanotube device. Semiconducting carbon nanotubes act as transistors, the basic switching components in computers. His work may take electronic systems to a new level of efficiency-even super-fast computer memory whose "bits" consist of single electrons.
Contact: (301) 405-6143; mfuhrer@umd.edu

The Clark School of Engineering's Elisabeth Smela uses biocompatible "conjugated polymers" (which combine characteristics of both semiconductors and plastics) to create tiny actuators that can move within fluid microenvironments. Her work may lead to the creation of new medical implants that serve as alternatives to stitches for joining severed blood vessels or help people afflicted with urinary incontinence. Last year Smela won a Presidential Early Career Award for Scientists and Engineers. She was cited for her research to develop a new type of microscopic artificial muscle, or autonomous actuator, technology. Incorporated into micro-electro-mechanical systems (MEMS), this technology could advance new micro robotic devices .
Contact: (301) 405- 5265; smela@eng.umd.edu