Rice University today named nanotechnology pioneer Naomi Halas director of the Richard E. Smalley Institute for Nanoscale Science and Technology. Halas, one of Rices most cited and renowned researchers, said she plans to expand the institutes scope, engage more faculty and students and foster new collaborations at the frontiers of science.

The landscape in science changes year by year, Halas said. Many exciting efforts that define the frontier of science in 2015 have emerged in the last five years. Its important for us to broaden our scope in order to build on and communicate that excitement and to stay engaged, not only with our local intellectual community but with our regional and national communities as well.

Halas, one of the foremost experts in nanophotonics, is Rices Stanley C. Moore Professor in Electrical and Computer Engineering and a professor of biomedical engineering, chemistry and physics and astronomy. She is the director of the Rice Quantum Institute (RQI) and is the first person in the universitys history to be elected to both the National Academy of Sciences and the National Academy of Engineering for research done at Rice.

As the director of the Smalley Institute, Naomi Halas is going to bring both vision and energy to the organizations research, education and outreach efforts, said Rice Provost George McLendon. Rice has a rich history of solving difficult problems in advanced materials, quantum magnetism, plasmonics, photonics, biophysics, ultracold atomic physics, condensed matter, chemical physics and all areas of nanoscience and nanotechnology. Dr. Halas will be in a unique position to foster Rices continued success and leadership in all of those areas.

Halas succeeds Dan Mittleman, professor of electrical and computer engineering, who has been serving as interim director of the institute since 2012.

Halas was recruited to Rice by Smalley Institute namesake Rick Smalley. She said it is an honor to direct the interdisciplinary research institutes Smalley founded at Rice. Smalley shared the 1996 Nobel Prize in Chemistry with Rice University Professor Emeritus Robert Curl and Florida State University Professor Harold Kroto for the discovery of carbon fullerenes at Rice in 1985.

Nano, as fostered by the National Nanotechnology Initiative, was a resounding success, Halas said. Nano is everywhere now, in virtually all disciplines, and has become a foundation that enables us to both envision and conduct research in entirely new ways. Nano is an essential foundation for our scientific and technological futures.

She said that from their inception, the Rice Quantum Institute and the Smalley Institute were designed to foster research at the frontiers of science.

Rick was always keenly aware that science is a rapidly evolving and highly dynamic enterprise and that research at Rice grew and developed in a very interdisciplinary and cross-cutting way, Halas said. As we move forward, we can always anticipate the unanticipated new discoveries, surprising insights, entirely new fields emerging from our research.

Halas said Rice Quantum Institute and the Smalley Institute serve essentially the same broad community of fundamental and applied physical sciences at Rice, with a focus on emerging materials, their properties and applications. She said there are many new opportunities for new initiatives and for coordinated programs with common goals. She also said the institutes directions and activities will be driven by their faculty membership.

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Rice's Naomi Halas to direct Smalley Institute