In late September, members of the NSF-funded Partnership for Research and Education in Advanced Materials (PREM) Center, Collaborative Research and Education in Advanced Materials (CREAM) at North Carolina A&T State University (NCAT), and the DOE-funded Center for Electrochemical Dynamics and Reactions on Surfaces (CEDARS) attended the 71st American Vacuum Society International Symposium and Exhibition in Charlotte, North Carolina, where they presented their research.

“We made good use of this opportunity to interact with our colleagues at other institutions, make connections, share our knowledge, and also learn from them,” says Ikenna Chris-Okoro, graduate research assistant at NCAT.

The team earned recognition for their efforts—Chris-Okoro received third place in the Electronic Materials and Photonics Division for his poster, “Comparison of Experimental Analysis and Theoretical Calculation of the Lattice Dynamics, Phonon, and Vibrational Spectra of Titanium Nitride and Oxynitride.”

In a particularly notable achievement, a high school student who collaborated with Dhananjay Kumar, Professor in the Department of Mechanical Engineering at NCAT and Director of CREAM and CEDARS, over the summer earned an honorable mention in the undergraduate division for a poster titled, “Pulsed Laser Deposition and Characterization of Titanium Oxynitride Thin Films for Renewable Energy Applications.”