IEN Exponential Electronics Seed Grant Winner Announced

The Institute for Electronics and Nanotechnology (IEN) at Georgia Tech has announced the 2024 IEN Exponential Electronics (IEN-EX) Seed Grant winner, Vida Jamali, Assistant Professor in the School of Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering at Georgia tech.  

The primary purpose of this program is to give early-stage research and development to create revolutionary electronic systems.

IEN-EX provides seed funding for Georgia Tech researchers to pursue “1000x” ideas within electronics or that bridge electronics with other technical domains. “1000x” ideas are those with the potential to improve one or more well-defined, but often overlooked or underappreciated performance metrics by at least 1000x.

In this brief Q&A, Jamali discusses her research, Compressed Super-resolution TEM using a Nanoelectronic Coded Aperture Device, how it relates to electronics research, and the impact of this initiative.

• What is your field of expertise and at what point in your life did you first become interested in this area? In situ liquid phase transmission electron microscopy. I started learning about this tool when I was a postdoc to develop it as a single particle tracking method. 
• Briefly explain your research: My research is focused on investigating the dynamics of nanoscale objects in their native liquid environment, from synthetic colloidal nanomachines to biological macromolecules, using liquid phase transmission electron microscopy. We develop experimental and computational tools to visualize and characterize dynamic behavior (equilibrium and non-equilibrium) at small length scales and in real-time.
• Who are the PIs: Me and Amirali Aghazadeh, Assistant Professor in the School of Electrical and Computer Engineering.
• What questions or challenges sparked your current research? Is it possible to use an electron microscope and capture the dynamics of nanoscale materials in time as they move and interact with each other and respond to their surrounding environment with a high spatiotemporal resolution?
• How is your research working to create revolutionary electronic systems? We design and develop a new nanoelectronic coded aperture device that once integrated into transmission electron microscopes can increase resolution exponentially.
• What are the broader global and social benefits of the research you and your team conduct? Once realized this technology opens a new window into dynamic phenomena at a scale inaccessible before. This unprecedented level of information will significantly advance areas from drug discovery impacting human health to achieving single crystalline materials for the semiconductor industry.
• How will this funding support your research? This funding will support graduate students who will be realizing this idea