Physicist wins 2015 ASTech Technology Award for research into replacing transistors with nanotechnology

Professor Robert Wolkow has won the 2015 ASTech Award for Technology.

09 November 2015

Professor Robert Wolkow has won the 2015 ASTech Award for Technology.

Internationally renowned nanoscience leader Robert Wolkow won the 2015 ASTech award in Outstanding Leadership in Alberta Technology. Wolkow is a physics professor, an iCORE and Alberta Innovates Technology Futures Research Chair, the Principal Research Officer at the National Institute for Nanotechnology, and Chief Technical Officer at Quantum Silicon Incorporated. Through all this, his world gravitates around a singular point: nanotechnology.

The chemical physicist has made enormous breakthroughs in nanotechnology through learning how to control structure at the single atom level. "We can not only see materials at that level, but we can move atoms and position them as we like," he explains. "With computation and theoretical models, we can predict what would be useful atomic structures to build, and we build them."

Wolkow and his team at the University of Alberta and the National Institute for Nanotechnology (NINT) are building new devices that are useful in a wide range of industries. While the possibilities for nanotechnology are virtually endless, his main focus is a device that can replace conventional transistors found in electronics.

The Alberta Science and Technology Leadership (ASTech) Foundation is a not-for-profit organization founded through an industry initiative in 1989 to showcase the substantial achievements in science and technology in Alberta and to promote the importance of these activities to social and economic benefit. To date, 24 faculty members from the University of Alberta Faculty of Science have won awards.