August 12, 2009: Paul Weiss, nanotech scientists and recent editor of two nanotech-sector journals, has been named director of the California NanoSystems Institute at UCLA, for a five-year term. Coming from Penn State, his group’s work will focus on atomic-scale chemical, physical, optical, mechanical, and electronic properties of surfaces and supramolecular assemblies.
Leonard H. Rome, the CNSI’s interim director for the last two years and “played a significant role” in forging industry relationships including CNSI founding partners Abraxis BioScience, BASF, Hewlett-Packard, and Intel, will resume his previous role as associate director. Rome is also senior associate dean for research at the David Geffen School of Medicine at UCLA and a professor of biological chemistry.
Weiss has published more than 200 papers and patents and has given more than 400 invited and plenary lectures, with a handful of honors and awards including ones from the National Science Foundation, the American Chemical Society, and a John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation Fellowship (1997). He is a fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, the American Physical Society, and the American Vacuum Society, and a senior member of the IEEE. His background includes postdoctoral member of the technical staff at Bell Labs (1986-1988) and a visiting scientist at the IBM Almaden Research Center (1988-1989). Professorships include U. of Washington and Kyoto U. He also was senior editor of the IEEE’s Electron Device Letters (2005-2007) and founding editor-in-chief of ACS Nano (2007-present).
“Professor Weiss is a groundbreaking scientist, and we look forward to the key contributions that he and his wife, Professor Anne Andrews [newly appointed professor of psychiatry at UCLA], will make to research and education here,” said Joseph A. Rudnick, dean of the UCLA division of physical sciences, in a statement.