Invited by director Hui Yang, Dr. Rod Ruoff came to visit SINANO on April 5, 2012. He joined The University of Texas at Austin as a Cockrell Family Regents endowed chair in September, 2007. During his visit, he gave a fantastic talk on “Graphene-based and Graphene-derived Materials and their Properties”, reviewing the progress made by his group in the past few years. In his talk, three main research areas of his group are : (i) Growth of large area graphene on metal substrates, characterization and physical properties, and studies of devices having graphene as a central component; (ii) Generation, study, and use of graphene-based platelets (typically derived from graphite oxide) including as dispersed in liquids, and powders derived from such colloids or generated by microwave or thermal treatment of graphite oxide; (iii) Generation and study of new types of carbon derived from graphene-based precursors, such as “activated microwave expanded graphite oxide”, or ‘aMEGO’. After the lecture, Prof. Rod Ruoff had extensive discussions on graphene materials with research scientists from SINANO.

Rod Ruoff earned his Ph.D. in Chemical Physics from the University of Illinois-Urbana in 1988, and was a Fulbright Fellow in 1988-89 at the Max Planck Institute fuer Stroemungsforschung in Goettingen, Germany. Prior to joining UT-Austin, he was the John Evans Professor of Nanoengineering in the Department of Mechanical Engineering at Northwestern University and director of NU’s Biologically Inspired Materials Institute from 2002-2007. He has co-authored 280 peer-reviewed publications devoted to chemistry, physics, materials science, mechanics, engineering, and biomedical science, is co-founder of Graphene Energy, Inc. and the founder of Graphene Materials, LLC. and Nanode, Inc. Dr. Ruoff is on the editorial board of IEEE-Nano; Composites, Science, and Technology; Carbon; Journal of Nanoengineering and Nanosystems; and is a Managing Editor and Editorial Board Member of NANO. He was a Distinguished Chair Visiting Professor at Sungkyukwan University’s Advanced Institute of NanoTechnology (SAINT) for several years.

Prof. Rod Ruoff @ Presentation Photo by SINANO

Audience @ Presentation Photo by SINANO