Science and Technology

Volcanologists now have their own online network: VHub.org, which promotes collaboration among volcano researchers and community partners by providing a place to share everything from eruption data to ash cloud simulations.

A University at Buffalo faculty member has anonymously donated $1 million to the university to establish a fund that supports commercializing the discoveries and inventions of his UB colleagues. The donation will establish the Bruce Holm Memorial Catalyst Fund, named for the UB senior vice provost who died last year and whom UB President Satish K. Tripathi described as "the exemplification of researcher, educator, collaborator and entrepreneur."

By tweaking the smallest of parts, a trio of University at Buffalo engineers is hoping to dramatically increase the amount of sunlight that solar cells convert into electricity.

A new building on the Quisqueya University (UniQ) campus in Port-au-Prince, Haiti, provides some of the most powerful evidence yet that Haiti's engineering community, with international assistance from the University at Buffalo and MCEER, is undergoing a dramatic transformation.

In the images of fruit flies, clusters of neurons are all lit up, forming a brightly glowing network of highways within the brain. It's exactly what University at Buffalo researcher Shermali Gunawardena was hoping to see: It meant that ORMOSIL, a novel class of nanoparticles, had successfully penetrated the insects' brains.

University at Buffalo researchers racked up a diverse list of inventions in 2011, spanning fields from medical imaging to green energy. As of mid-December, UB was issued 14 new U.S. patents and filed 43 provisional patent applications in 2011.

The University at Buffalo Technology Incubator welcomed two new high-tech companies in 2011: TPF Enterprises, a consulting and product development firm that specializes in fields including clean tech and new materials, and Programmable Equipment Company (PEC), a firm that develops software that helps verify that defense or industrial equipment is operating or calibrated correctly.

The path of least emissions may not always be the fastest way to drive somewhere. But according to new research from the University at Buffalo, it's possible for drivers to cut their tailpipe emissions without significantly slowing travel time.

A fast-moving glacier on the Greenland Ice Sheet expanded in a geologic instant several millennia ago, growing in response to cooling periods that lasted not much longer than a century, according to a new Arctic study.

University at Buffalo PhD graduate Luisa Whittaker has won the Materials Research Society's (MRS) Graduate Student Gold Award, which recognizes excellence in academic achievements and materials research.