36 postdocs and graduate students from across 6 TANMS institutions competed for the top spot at the 2019 TANMS Perfect Pitch Competition in September.  Most postdoctoral and graduate students are accustomed to presenting their research on a poster at conferences or symposiums; however, it requires a completely different set of skills to "pitch" their research in 90 seconds flat while succinctly addressing three key questions -- What is the real-life problem that their research addresses? How does their research solve the problem in an unique way? What is the impact on society and in achieving the Center's mission? 

Congratulations to Nery Arevalos, Naim Wright and Connie Valles (pictured left to right) for being selected as the winners of the Research Experience and Mentoring (REM) Poster Presentations, at the 2019 Emerging Researchers National (ERN) Conference in Washington, DC. The three TANMS REM students completed the research project entitled, Growth and Characterization of Designer Magnetostrictive Thin Films for High Frequency Applications, in the laboratory of Professor Jane P. Chang with the guidance from graduate student mentor, and TANMS Fellow, Adrian 

TANMS welcomes Sonera Magnetics Inc. as the newest member of our Industrial Advisory Board.  Co-founded by TANMS alumnus, Dr. Dominic Labanowski, former graduate student in the Salahuddin Group at UC Berkeley, Sonera Magnetics is developing a magnetometer that can operate at room temperature and in portable form factors with sensitivity comparable to the best magnetic sensors available today.  The core technology of Sonera Magnetics is a magnetic sensor based off of results from Dr. Labanowski's graduate studies at UC Berkeley on acoustically-driven ferromagnetic resonance.  This sensor leverages the strong interaction between GHz-frequency sound waves and magnetic thin films where the coupling enables a device with comparable performance to SQUID and SERF magnetometers, but has the capability to operate in ambient environmental conditions.  

TANMS Education Director, Dr. Pilar O'Cadiz, has been selected to join the Advisory Committee for the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) Chair in Global Learning and Global Citizenship Education.  Global Citizenship Education (GCE) is a strategic area of UNESCO’s Education Sector program that aims to instill in learners the values, attitudes and behaviors that support responsible global citizenship: creativity, innovation, and commitment to peace, human rights and sustainable development. The Advisory Committee serves the inaugural UNESCO Chair for GCE, UCLA Distinguished Professor of Education Carlos Alberto Torres, in "[promoting] an integrated system of research, training, information and documentation on global learning and global citizenship education and foster excellence and innovation in research and practice." (https://bostonglobalforum.org/2016/02/ucla-establishes-new-unesco-chair-in-global-learning-and-global-citizenship-education/) 

TANMS is honored to have Dr. O'Cadiz as part of our team.

The November 2018 issue of Materials Research Bulletin journal will feature five articles written by distinguished researchers, organized by Professor Gregory Carman and Professor Nian Sun. The articles discuss the control of magnetism and are designed to encourage more research on magnetoelectrics, highlighting the potential of this research to impact society by efficiently controlling magnetism in the small scale. 

Research recently published by Dr. Roberto Lo Conte, postdoctoral researcher under Professor Jeffrey Bokor at the UC Berkeley Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science was featured online by Advances in Engineering (AIE).  The paper published in Nano Letters titled "Influence of Nonuniform Micron-Scale Strain Distributions on the Electrical Reorientation of Magnetic Microstructures in a Composite Multiferroic Heterostructure" was identified by AIE selection committee as a key scientific article contributing to excellence in science and engineering research.Composite multiferroic systems, consisting of a piezoelectric substrate coupled with a ferromagnetic thin film, are of great interest from a technological point of view because they offer a path toward the development of ultralow power magnetoelectric devices. The key aspect of those systems is the possibility to control magnetization via an electric field, relying on the magneto-elastic coupling at the interface between the piezoelectric and the ferromagnetic components. Accordingly, a direct measurement of both the electrically induced magnetic behavior and of the piezo-strain driving such behavior is crucial for better understanding and further developing these materials systems. In this work, we measure and characterize the micron-scale strain and magnetic response, as a function of an applied electric field, in a composite multiferroic system composed of 1 and 2 μm squares of Ni fabricated on a prepoled [Pb(Mg1/3Nb2/3)O3]0.69–[PbTiO3]0.31 (PMN–PT) single crystal substrate by X-ray microdiffraction and X-ray photoemission electron microscopy, respectively. These two complementary measurements of the same area on the sample indicate the presence of a nonuniform strain which strongly influences the reorientation of the magnetic state within identical Ni microstructures along the surface of the sample. Micromagnetic simulations confirm these experimental observations. This study emphasizes the critical importance of surface and interface engineering on the micron-scale in composite multiferroic structures and introduces a robust method to characterize future devices on these length scales.

TANMS graduate student, Zhuyun "Maggie" Xiao, has been named a recipient of the highly coveted Advanced Light Source (ALS) Doctoral Fellowship in Residence for 2018-19. This internationally recognized fellowship is awarded to only 8-10 students each year. During her fellowship year, Maggie will be working at the ALS, a division of Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (LBNL). LBNL is a national user facility that generates intense x-ray radiation for scientific and technological research. Students acquire hands-on scientific training and develop professional maturity to complement their doctoral research. Maggie will be hosted by Dr. Elke Arenholz, Senior Scientist and Deputy of Photon Science Operations and will continue to work on TANMS-related research.