The Nanotechnology Foundation of Texas has awarded Rice University doctoral student Vinit Murthy its 2006 George Kozmetsky Award for Outstanding Graduate Research in Nanotechnology. The award includes a $5,000 prize. Murthy and Shravanthi Reddy of the University of Texas at Austin earned top honors in the Kozmetsky competition, which drew stiff competition from the state's leading research universities. Only 14 out of a possible 600 points separated the top four finalists, which represented diverse fields, including medicine, engineering and natural science.

Murthy, a fifth-year chemical engineering Ph.D. student in the research group of Michael Wong, assistant professor of chemical and biomolecular engineering and assistant professor of chemistry, studies nanoparticle assembly. Along with Wong, he co-discovered a simple method to encapsulate any water-soluble compound easily and without damage.

The method is the most environmentally sensitive approach yet devised for making tiny hollow spheres called microcapsules. Microcapsule research is one of the most active fields in applied nanotechnology, with dozens of companies either developing or using the tiny containers – usually smaller than living cells – to deliver everything from drugs and imaging agents to perfumes and flavor enhancers.

( www.physorg.com)