Malshe’s Group at Nano Institute Wins Best Paper Award

Professor Ajay Malshe and his group and collaborators won the Best Paper Award at the prestigious 40th North American Manufacturing Research Conference sponsored by the Society of Manufacturing Engineering.

“This is the first time such a prestigious manufacturing research award was won by an Arkansas group and possibly in the heartland of the U.S.,” Malshe said. This award certainly recognizes the leadership of the Institute of Nanoscale Science and Engineering in the field of nanomanufacturing.

“Professor Malshe’s research using the state-of-the-art facilities at the institute is just one of the breakthrough discoveries in nanoscience and engineering at the institute, and I congratulate professor Malshe for continued world-class research,” said Greg Salamo, director of the Institute of Nanoscale Science and Engineering.

Rajurkar of the University of Nebraska at Lincoln and Jahan, a research associate now on faculty in Kentucky along with Malshe co-authored the winning paper. This fundamental nanomanufacturing research paper was in the area of nanoscale machining and titled, “Experimental Investigation and Characterization of Nano-scale Dry Electromachining.”

During the summer, various manuscripts from leading national and international groups competed for this award, including  groups from Georgia Tech, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, University of Michigan and other leading manufacturing programs, but Arkansas took first place.

The discovery is the result of ongoing research by Mashe and his group for the past eight years. The first breakthrough came in 2005. For more details on it, see the National Science Foundation statement: “Researchers Carve with Electricity at the Nanometer Scale.”