Rabin Promoted

The Department of Materials Science and Engineering (MSE), the Institute for Research in Electronics and Applied Physics (IREAP), the Maryland NanoCenter and the A. James Clark School of Engineering extend their congratulations to Oded Rabin, who was promoted to the rank of Associate Professor with tenure effective July 1.

Rabin's Materials and Interface Nanotechnology Lab (MINT) has grown at a brisk pace since his arrival in 2007, breaking new ground in thermoelectric materials and spectroscopy research. The group's goal is to discover how the unique properties and behaviors materials exhibit at the nanoscale can be used to create new products and improve nanomanufacturing techniques, with an emphasis on applied fields including energy, sensors, and bioimaging.

Rabin and his colleagues' and group members' notable accomplishments include the publication of a new, more accurate model for predicting the efficiency and performance of thermoelectric materials at the nanoscale; and demonstrating how pairs of silver nanocubes can enhance the effectiveness of surface-enhanced Raman spectroscopy (SERS), paving the way for improved sensor design. In 2012, Rabin won a NSF CAREER Award for a study that is exploring how pinwheel-like plasmonic (metallic and highly conductive) nanostructures can be used to detect and identify the orientation of chiral molecules—those that exhibit different properties based on whether they twist to the left or to the right.

Most recently, Rabin received a Technologies Research Gift from Agilent Technologies' University Relations Program to explore the use of engineered nanoparticle arrays to enhance SERS. Rabin will collaborate with Agilent researcher Miao Zhu on the project.

In July 2012 Rabin was invited to author Nature Nanotechnology's News and Views column, in which he commented on the development and impact of novel technologies for guiding the parallel self-assembly of nanoscale objects. That same year, his work also appeared on the cover of Nanotechnology.

Rabin has also collaborated with fellow members of the Maryland Nanocenter on energy research projects, and in 2010 was one of the co-PIs on a proposal that earned a $15 million grant from the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) to develop and implement a Postdoctoral Researcher and Visiting Fellow Measurement Science and Engineering Program.

Rabin received his Ph.D. from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) in 2004. Prior to joining the Clark School, he held postdoctoral positions with the Harvard Medical School at Massachusetts General Hospital, and with the University of California, Berkeley. He currently holds a joint appointment with MSE and IREAP.

Published July 7, 2013