Project Manager Qualifications
 
Tianhong Cui is currently Distinguished McKnight University Professor at the University of Minnesota.  He is a Professor of Mechanical Engineering and an Affiliate Senior Member of the graduate faculty in Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering.  He joined the faculty of the University of Minnesota in 2003.  He was also a visiting professor at University of Freiburg in Germany and University of Paris East in France. He is an international leading expert on micro devices and advanced manufacturing with 26 years of research experience. He has more than 310 publications and 8 US patents. His research has been sponsored for more than 8 million dollars in the last few years by NSF, DARPA, NASA, DOE, and companies. As an editor-in-chief, he is also responsible for a Nature Journal, Light: Science & Applications, and recently he founded the first engineering journal of Nature Publishing Group titled Microsystems & Nanoengineering. He is also serving as an associate editor for Journal of Nanoscience and Nanotechnology and Journal of Nano Research, and he was a past editor for IEEE Sensors Journal.
 
Organization Description
 
Professor Tianhong Cui in Mechanical Engineering will serve as PI and project manager.  He will be responsible for overseeing the project, all reports, and deliverables.  He will supervise one Ph.D. student to work on design, fabrication, and characterization of small cheap filters to remove PAHs.  Professor Cui will hold weekly meetings with his advisees to ensure good progress of this proposed work, in addition to some daily technical discussion with his graduate research assistant.
 
Filters to remove PAHs including manufacturing and characterization will be performed at the University of Minnesota in the Technology Integration & Advanced Nano/Microsystems Laboratory (TIAN Lab), located in room ME4128 of the Mechanical Engineering Building, on the Minneapolis campus of the University of Minnesota.  Professor Cui is the director of TIAN Lab equipped with the state-of-the-art instrument and facilities to conduct the proposed research, with a variety of fabrication and characterization equipment and tools, sufficient for Professor Cui, his Ph.D. student to design, fabricate, characterize and analyze the proposed filters to remove PAHs.
 
The proposed other part of fabrication work of PAH filters will be partially done in Minnesota Nano Center (www.nfc.umn.edu) at the University of Minnesota in a 7000 square foot facility, including 3000 square feet of class 10 clean room. The Lab contains all of the major pieces of processing equipment. Minnesota Nano Center well maintains these systems, keeps safe operating procedures, and trains students.  State support, support from NSF through the National Nano Coordinated Infrastructure Network (NNCI), and industry usage allows Minnesota Nano Center to offer academic rates that are normally less than half of the actual cost of operation. In 2014, NFC took possession of a second clean room as part of a new Physics and Nanotechnology Building.  The new building is across the street from the ECE Building which houses the existing clean room.  At 5000 square feet under filter and almost 10,000 square feet gross, it is more than double the existing space. In addition to expanding the suite of clean room tools available, the lab will also operate two new non-clean core labs that support research in nanomaterials and nanotechnology.