Construction of Flex Lab SEMINAR Construction of Flex Lab The Flex Lab will be a new advanced laboratory building located south of (behind) the Birck Nanotechnology Center. It will face Gates Drive, across from the Sun statue and DLRC, occupying the space where two former Married Student Housing buildings currently stand. Those buildings will be demolished and a third building will be used for the construction office. This new building will provide needed laboratory space for the College of Engineering. They will be overseeing the construction in conjunction with PUPF, Jacobs Engineering (designers), and Pepper Construction (contractor). The new Flex Lab building project will begin on April 4, 2016, with the erection of the construction fence. At that time, the gravel parking lot and the A lot behind the building will close permanently. As the construction progresses, there will be other parking and road closures behind the BNC, but we have made arrangements for all types of deliveries to be made during and after construction. During the demolition process of the former Married Student Housing buildings (137, 138) it is inevitable that there will be vibration-causing work. We are to be informed of the actual dates and times of this work and will pass it along as we receive it. The impact of these activities is not known, but it must be assumed that we will not be within our current vibration criteria during work periods. The current plan is for demolition to begin April 6, 2016. Pepper Construction has given us a preliminary plan and will continue to give us updates. We will pass those on to you as we receive new information. Thank you in advance for your patience during this construction project. John Weaver John R. Weaver Strategic Facilities Officer Birck Nanotechnology Center 1205 West State Street West Lafayette IN 47907 (765) 494-5494 jrweaver@purdue.edu<mailto:jrweaver@purdue.edu> nano.purdue.edu SEMINAR Nanoscale Thermal/Thermoelectric Energy Conversion (NT-TEC) Seminar Speaker: Prof. Tongcang Li Topic: Nanoscale temperature sensing with diamond nitrogen-vacancy centers Date: Thursday, March 24 2016 Time: 12-1pm Location: Birck 1001 Purdue Lectures in Ethics, Policy, and Science We're excited to announce that Dr. Julia Bursten (San Francisco State University) will be joining the Purdue Lectures in Ethics, Policy, and Science on Wednesday, March 23rd to present her talk "Boundary Work: Nanoscience Meets Philosophy" at 5:30pm in MRGN 121. As always, pizza and beverages will be provided. Dr. Bursten's research starts with the basic idea that there is more to the goals of science than just describing nature. She shows how these goals influence scientific theories, concepts, and explanations. She specializes in the philosophy of nanoscience, which is a branch of chemistry and physics that has grown up around the development of practical technologies aimed at solving extra-scientific problems, including medical imaging and the energy crisis. To solve these problems, nanoscientists are synthesizing new materials with never-before-seen properties and using scientific reasoning to figure out how to manipulate and control these properties in new machines, devices, and medical therapies. Title: Boundary Work: Nanoscience Meets Philosophy Date/Time: March 23 at 5:30pm Location: MRGN 121 ABSTRACT: Nanoscience is an inherently interdisciplinary field of study. Because it developed around a scale of investigation, rather than a set of laws or phenomena, it invites research programs from fields as diverse as materials science, biology, physics, chemistry, engineering, and design. For instance, gold nano-cubes are synthesized and characterized by chemists and physicists; modeled on computers by mechanical engineers; studied for their color-changing properties in stained glass by art historians, designers, and materials scientists; and manipulated for smarter drug delivery by chemists and biologists. This scale-centric character of nanoscience means that knowledge in nanoscience is often grouped not along disciplinary lines, but rather around instrumentation techniques, around individual materials, as described above, or around particular applications. Consequently, the structure of knowledge in nanoscience is better understood as clusters of what Peter Galison has termed "trading zones," rather than a taxonomy of laws, theories, models, and heuristics. These trading zones permit contributions from diverse research perspectives-including those from history and philosophy of science. I have spent 4 years working with a nanoscience laboratory with the aim of understanding the structure of knowledge in nanoscience. Through this work I have become convinced that philosophers and historians of science can impact the development of new knowledge in nanoscience alongside practitioners in STEM fields. In this talk, I show how contributions from philosophy of science can influence research in nanoscience by describing how philosophical reflection on the concept "surface" led to reforms in experiment design in my lab. I discuss how these reforms, in conjunction with regulations on the toxicity and environmental impact of nanomaterials, can influence the development of classification systems in nanoscience. Facebook Event Link: https://www.facebook.com/events/193480361024630/ We're looking forward to hearing more about this wonderful interdisciplinary research. Best, Lacey J. Davidson Alex R Gillham Purdue Lectures in Ethics, Policy, and Science