Nov. 6, 2006 — Purdue University’s Discovery Park has appointed Timothy Sands, the Basil S. Turner Professor of Engineering, as director of the Birck Nanotechnology Center.

The center opened in 2005 and is considered one of the best university facilities for nanotechnology research in the nation. The $58 million center — a two-floor, 187,000-square-foot facility — involves more than 300 faculty, staff and graduate students from 36 schools and departments across the university. Sands began his duties on Wednesday, Nov. 1.

Sands, who has been at Purdue since 2002, has a joint appointment between the School of Materials Engineering and the School of Electrical and Computer Engineering. He earned bachelor’s, master’s and doctorate degrees from the University of California, Berkeley, in 1980, 1981 and 1984, respectively. He was awarded the 1988 Robert Lansing Hardy Gold Medal from the Minerals, Metals and Materials Society and was elected to the Bohmische Physical Society in 1997. He received the Seed for Success Award from Purdue in 2005 and a National Science Foundation Research Initiation Award in 1994.

Sands said the prospect of Purdue building a center dedicated to nanotechnology research was a factor in his decision to come to the university.

Sands was director of the Integrated Materials Laboratory at Berkeley and director of the nonvolatile memory research group for Bell Communications Research (Bellcore) in Red Bank, N.J.