This talk will describe our efforts in uncovering new electronic and optical phenomena at the nanoscale (1-10 nm) and mesoscale (100-1000 nm). I will describe our research progress in three areas: (i) the synthesis and characterization of inorganic and organic nanoscale materials, (ii) the development of nanofabrication techniques to manipulate nanostructures and mesostructures into functional assemblies, and (iii) the assembly of nanoscale building blocks into mesostructures that can exhibit novel optical behavior.

Teri W. Odom received her undergraduate degree in chemistry with honors at Stanford University (B.S. 1996).  Her undergraduate honors included election to Phi Beta Kappa and receipt of the S.S. & I.M.F. Marsden Memorial Prize for Chemistry Research in 1996.  As an NSF predoctoral fellow, she obtained her doctorate in Chemical Physics under the direction of Charles M. Lieber at Harvard University.   Her graduate work focused on the electronic properties of single-walled carbon nanotubes, which were characterized primarily by scanning tunneling microscopy.  Teri's thesis was recognized with the IUPAC Prize for Young Chemists (2001), an award given for outstanding Ph.D. theses in the chemical sciences internationally.  She has also written many invited Review Articles as well as book chapters on single-walled carbon nanotubes.

Teri received her postdoctoral training with George M. Whitesides at Harvard University under an NIH NRSA Postdoctoral Fellowship.  She developed new, unconventional methods to fabricate nanostructures using soft lithography and microlens array lithography.  In the Fall of 2002, Teri joined the faculty at Northwestern University as an Assistant Professor in the Department of Chemistry.  She is the inaugural recipient of the Dow Teacher-Scholar Award, received a Research Innovation Award (Research Corporation) in 2002, the Victor K. LaMer Award (ACS Surface Science and Colloids) in 2003, and a David and Lucille Packard Fellowship in 2003.