Vinit Murthy Receives George Kozmetsky Award

Vinit Murthy, a doctoral student at Rice University, has been selected to receive the 2006 George Kozmetsky Award for Outstanding Graduate Research in Nanotechnology.

The award, given by the Nanotechnology Foundation of Texas, includes a $5,000 prize and recognizes Murthy for his codiscovery of a simple method to encapsulate any water-soluble compound easily and without damage. Murthy is a fifth-year Ph.D student in the research group of Michael Wong. 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. Dozens of companies are either developing or using the structures to deliver everything from drugs and imaging agents to perfumes and flavor enhancers.

The Kozmetsky Awards are the first awards of their kind to be offered in the U.S. to students working in fields related to nanotechnology. They are given annually to the top two graduate students in Texas.