1. Wonjin has published a paper in Nanotechnology, entitled "Influence of the photothermal effect of a gold nanorod cluster on biofilm disinfection." The gold nanorod cluster is directly applied to the biofilm and its effects on bacteria are measured before and after near infrared laser irradiation. The photothermal effect of gold nanorods on the biofilm structure results in a considerable reduction of cell viability and biofilm thickness. Scanning electron microscopy images of the irradiated bacteria show obvious morphological damages such as rupture or collapse of the bacterial cell membrane in the biofilm. These results indicate that gold nanorods are useful and a potential material for use in photothermal treatments, particularly biofilm disinfection. (May 2013)

2. Kevin in collaboration with Prof. Joshua Edel at Imperial College London and Prof. Per Jemth has published his work on detection single molecule protein folding in Nature's Scietific Reports. His work is the first study to map the different folding states of a protein in the presence of an electric field! It was speculated that an electric field may affect the state of a protein due to their positive and negative charge composition however it was mainly based on theory prior to his work. This project has been supported by Human Frontier Science Young Investigator Program and NSF Graduate Research Fellowship Program. (April 2013)

3. Wonjin has presented an improvement in the electrical properties of silica nanotubes by coating metal nanoparticles on their surfaces. By incorporating gold, palladium and iron oxide nanoparticles, the metallized silica nanotubes gain electrical properties with the potential to create unique nanoelectronic materials. The current-voltage characteristics show remarkably improved electrical conductivities depending on the type of metal nanoparticle loading and nanotube network concentration. In collaboration with National Nanofab Center and Sungkyunkwan University in Korea, this finding has been published in Nanotechnology, entitled "Electrical property measurements of metallized flagella-templated silica nanotube networks." This work is funded by the Army Research Office Young Investigator Award (W911NF-10-1-0173). (March 2013)

4. Kevin has published a paper in Analytical Chemistry, entitled "Single molecule studies of intrinsically disordered proteins using solid-state nanopores." In collaboration with Imperial College London and Uppsala University, we performed single-molecule experiments by translocating disordered proteins through a nanopore embedded within a thin dielectric membrane to shed light on the conformational heterogeneity of disordered protein domains and their complexes. This work was supported by Human Frontier Science Program and National Science Foundation Graduate Research Fellowship. (February 2013)

5. Kiran's paper has been published in Physics of Fluids, "Mechanics of swimming of multi-body bacterial swarmers using non-labeled cell tracking algorithm." To better understand the survival of bacterial swarmers at low Reynolds number, a non-labeled cell tracking algorithm was used to quantify the mechanics of multi-body flagellated bacteria, Serratia marcescens, swimming in a motility buffer. (January 2013)