New College Physics Professor Awarded Prize for Top Paper at International Conference

A paper by Mariana Sendova, professor of physics at New College of Florida, was awarded first place at the Fourth International Conference “From Nanoparticles and Nanomaterials to Nanodevices and Nanosystems.”
Sendova’s paper, “BaTiO3 Nanoparticles: Temperature-Dependent Micro-Raman Spectroscopy,” was chosen from a field of 71 presenters, from countries including Belgium, Bulgaria, China, Greece, Israel, Italy, Mexico, Portugal, Serbia, Turkey, Romania, United Kingdom and the United States. The conference was held June 14-16 on the island of Corfu, Greece.
As the award winner, Sendova spoke before the assembly of some 200 scientists and told them of her research program with undergraduate students at New College, she said.
Sendova’s work examines how the dielectric properties of materials, used in devices like capacitors and flash memory, transform as they scale down in size and as their temperature changes. She and her New College postdoctoral associate, Dr. Brian Hosterman, have developed spectroscopic methods for accurately measuring those properties with an aim of determining why the properties change and developing new materials that will overcome those obstacles.
At the conference, Sendova met with leading nanomaterial researchers, including Dr. Daniel Schectman, Israeli Institute of Technology and the 2011 Nobel Laureate in Chemistry, and Prof. Stan Vebrek of the Technical University of Munich, Germany.
With her prize, Sendova received a $1,000 prize and invitation to speak at the next conference. The award was sponsored by the Electrochemical Society, the academic society for solid-state and electrochemical science and technology.
Sendova has been a faculty member at New College since August 2000. She started the College’s first experimental physics research laboratory and her work has attracted funding from the National Science Foundation, Collaboration in Basic Science and Engineering, the Department of Education and the Army Research Laboratory.