Diamond in the Rough: Using Diamond Flaws in Nanotechnology

Ania Blaszynski Jayich, award-winning research scientist and Assistant Professor of Physics at UCSB, kicked off Anacapa’s 2012-2013 First Thursday Breakfast Club series with an engaging discussion about the future of diamond-based nanotechnology. Ania’s path to nanotechnology started with a joint love of physics and biology in high school. She was always attracted by the rigor of science and the potential for concrete answers and solutions. During an impressive undergraduate career at Stanford University, where she also played on the varsity tennis team, Ania was impresssed by the role of physics in biotechnology. She continued to graduate school at Harvard and eventually a post-doctoral program at Yale before snagging her dream job at UCSB. As a professor, says Ania, she is free to pursue the questions that interest her most and set her own research agenda. The questions occupying her today involve the use of flawed diamonds to improve the resolution of Magnetic Resonance Imaging, or MRI, machines. By tracking the orientation of the diamonds relative to the scanned object, scientists would be able to create an image on the cellular level- a huge improvement from current MRI capabilties.

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