The paper "Improving the Scan Rate and Image Quality in Tapping Mode Atomic Force Microscopy with Piezoelectric Shunt Control", co-authored by Matthew Fairbairn, Reza Moheimani and Andrew Fleming has been selected as a finalist for AUCC 2011 best student paper award. Congratulations to Matthew!

Congratulations to Dr. Yuen Yong for receiving this competitive fellowship.

Reza Moheimani has been elected as a Fellow of International Federation of Automatic Control (FIFAC) by the IFAC Fellow Selection Committee and approved by the IFAC Council in a vote taken in May 2011.

The award recognizes excellence in research and aims to encourage, reward and celebrate outstanding achievement in research by candidates in any area of research at University of Newcastle. Dr. Mahmood's recognition was due to the research included in his thesis, "Vibration and position control of piezoelectric tube scanners for fast atomic force microscopy".

Each year the IEEE Fellow Committee recommends a select group of recipients for one of the Association's most prestigious honors, elevation to IEEE Fellow. The IEEE Board of Directors at its November 2010 meeting, elevated Reza Moheimani to IEEE Fellow, effective 1 January 2011, with the following citation: "for contributions to control of nanopositioning systems"

These Awards aim to encourage and recognise the achievements of early and mid-career researchers. Research excellence is judged relative to career opportunity and candidates are judged by several criteria including: The originality of the research, the quality of the research output, the impact of research, success in attracting research funds, success in research higher degree supervision, peer recognition, and track record relative to opportunity.

Anthony Fowler has commenced working toward his Ph.D with LDCNS. He is working on energy scavenging systems at the MEMS scale.

Dr. Bharath Bhikkaji visits LDCNS for 3 months of collaborative research.

Aaron Hammond has commenced working toward his Ph.D with LDCNS after graduating from the University of Newcastle in 2009. His research will be in the areas of MEMS and nanopositioning.

Reza Moheimani has received the IEEE Control Systems Society's "2009 Control Systems Technology Award" for collaborative work done with IBM Zurich Research Labs.

Workshop on Dynamics and Control of Micro- and Nanoscale Systems, to be held in Zurich, Dec. 10-11, 2009 is co-organized with IBM Zurich Research Labs and is sponsored by IBM. It will be held on campus of ZRL. The program can be reached here.

A Joint Study Agreement has been signed with IBM Zurich Research Lab. The purpose of the research program is to develop new methodologies for fast nanopositioning.

The paper: A. J. fleming and S. O. R. Moheimani, "Sensorless Vibration Suppression and Scan Compensation for Piezoelectric Tube Nanopositioners". IEEE Transactions on Control Systems Technology, Volume 14, Number 1, page 33--44 - January 2006, has been put on the list of Highly Cited Papers in Engineering

The paper: S. O. R. Moheimani, A survey of recent innovations in vibration damping and control using shunted piezoelectric transducers. IEEE Transactions on Control Systems Technology, Volume 11, Number 4, page 482--494 - July 2003, has been put on the list of Highly Cited Papers in Engineering

The article, "Invited Review Article: Accurate and fast nanopositioning with piezoelectric tube scanners: Emerging trends and future challenges," published in Review of Scientific Instruments 79, 071101 (2008), has been selected for the August 4, 2008 issue of Virtual Journal of Nanoscale Science & Technology. The Virtual Journal, which is published by the American Institute of Physics and the American Physical Society in cooperation with numerous other societies and publishers, is an edited compilation of links to articles from participating publishers, covering a focused area of frontier research. You can access the Virtual Journal at http://www.vjnano.org -- You can download the review article from here. The review article was also featured on the cover of Review of Scientific Instruments -- You can see the cover here..

The paper, "Design, Analysis and Control of a Fast Nanopositioning Stage" co-authored by Yuen Yong, Sumeet Aphale and Reza Moheimani was selected as a finalist paper for the 2008 IEEE/ASME Advanced Intelligent Mechatronics Conference Best Paper Award.

Our recent collaborative research with University of Washington, Seattle has been featured as a news item on http://nanotechweb.org - a community website for nanotechnology professionals published by The Institute of Physics, UK. Read the news clip.

Reza Moheimani has been elected as a Fellow of the Institute of Physics (United Kingdom).

Andrew Fleming and Reza Moheimani win the 2007 IEEE Transactions on Control Systems Technology Outstanding Paper Award for their paper entitled, " Sensorless vibration suppression and scan compensation for piezoelectric tube nanopositioners"

Reza Moheimani and Rick Middleton win the largest ARC Discovery grant awarded to the University of Newcastle with funding to start from 2007. The Discovery grant, "Robust Control of Electrostatic Microactuators" brings $870,000 of funding to the lab over the next five years. It is aimed at developing advanced and robust controller design methodologies for handling instabilities in electrostatic microactuators used in MEMS.

A Polytec MSA400 MEMS characterization system will be installed in the lab in February 2007. This equipment is purchased using the ARC LIEF grant "Nanopositioning Facility for Nanoscale Measurement and Manipulation", and is the first one to be installed in Australia.

We have initiated collaborations with IBM Zurich Research Labs. Our collaborations are mainly in the area of controller design for probe-based data storage systems. In particular, development of controllers for self-servo writing process. Contact person: Reza Moheimani.

We have initiated collaborations with the University of Stuttgart . Our collaboration is focused on developing FEM models of piezoelectric tube actuators suitable for controller design purposes. Contact person: Andrew Fleming.

We have initiated collaborations with University of Glasgow. The main thrust of our collaboration is to utilize Bond graphs for modeling of nanopositioning stages, and their control. Contact person: Bharath Bhikkaji.