July 10, 2009

CHTM To Celebrate Silver Anniversary Aug. 14

UNM's Center for High Technology Materials is celebrating its 25th anniversary with a technical symposium and open house on August 14.

CHTM was one of five UNM Centers of Technical Excellence set up by New Mexico lawmakers in 1983. The center was to research electrical and optical devices, promote interaction between UNM, federal laboratories and businesses, and promote economic development.

The center's primary focus is still in the areas of electrical and optical research, although researchers explore areas such as quantum dots, quantum wells, and the application of nonoscale fabrication technologies to biological science. CHTM also works with Optical Science & Engineering and Nanoscience & Microsystems, both of which are interdisciplinary programs that allow students to draw from the expertise of a variety of faculty members.

The center functions as a laboratory for students who receive degrees from various departments and who are guided by CHTM's research faculty. ECE Professor Steve Brueck, director of CHTM since 1986, says that he is "most proud of the students that we have turned out. We?ve had somewhere between 350 and 400 students who have gotten advanced degrees, and that?s a pretty significant accomplishment." The center currently has sixty graduate students and six undergraduates.

Brueck says about 200 former students still live in the Albuquerque area, working at local companies, including Intel, or Sandia National Laboratories.

Since the founding of the center, researchers at CHTM have been awarded 65 patents, and research done there has spun off into eight companies, many of which have been absorbed by larger companies.

CHTM's website is here. To read the UNM Today story about CHTM's anniversary, go to this page.

Congratulations, CHTM!