Blacksburg, Va. -- Sir Harold Kroto, Nobel Laureate, will be the keynote speaker at the Edward Via Virginia College of Osteopathic Medicine Third Annual Via Research Recognition Day and Geriatric Update for Continued Medical Education on Oct. 5-6, 2006.

Kroto, a professor in the School of Chemistry and Molecular Sciences at the University of Sussex, will speak on "Architecture in NanoSpace." He received the Nobel in Chemistry in 1996 along with Robert F. Curl and Richard E. Smalley for the 1985 discovery of fullerenes (C60 Buckminsterfullerene), a new form of carbon in which the atoms are arranged in closed shells. Kroto's research areas in addition to fullerenes are spectroscopy of unstable species and reaction intermediates, cluster science, including carbon and metal clusters, microparticles, and nanofibers, and astrophysics, specifically interstellar molecules and circumstellar dust.

The focus on Thursday, Oct. 5, will be nanomedicine and biomedical applications of nanoparticles. Virginia Tech President Charles Steger will provide an introduction to biomedical research at Virginia Tech, where many of VCOM's faculty members are adjunct faculty.

Other speakers on nanomedicine will be Roop Mahajan, director of the Institute for Critical Technology and Applied Science at Virginia Tech, on "Nanotechnology and Modern Medical Science: Challenges and Opportunities"; Harry C. Dorn, professor of chemistry at Virginia Tech, on "New Nanoscale Multi-Modal Diagnostic and Therapeutic Approaches in Biomedicine"; and Ishwar Puri, professor and head of engineering science and mechanics at Virginia Tech, speaking about "Biomedical Applications of Superparamagnetic Nanoparticles in Microfluidic Systems."

Mahajan comes to Virginia Tech from the University of Colorado at Boulder and is the founder and co-director of MicroElectronic Devices in Cardiovascular Applications (MEDICA).

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Contact: Hara Misra
misra@vt.edu
540-231-3150
Virginia Tech
6-Sep-2006