University Letter

UND's faculty and staff newsletter

‘Have you ever seen an atom?’ is topic of Nov. 20 Faculty Lecture

Nuri Oncel
Nuri Oncel

The UND Faculty Lecture Series continues Wednesday, Nov. 20, with “Have you ever seen an atom?” by Nuri Oncel, associate professor of physics & astrophysics. The lecture will take place at 4:30 p.m. in Education Room 7, with a 4 p.m. reception preceding the talk. Oncel will be introduced by Kanishka Marasinghe, Department of Physics & Astrophysics.

The lecture is free and open to the public. Free parking is available south of the Engineering complex.

About the talk
Have you ever seen an atom?

If your answer is no, you should consider attending my talk. My research involves making tiny objects that are a few nanometers in size. A nanometer is a billionth of a meter. In other words, if you take four silver atoms (think of them like tennis balls) place them side by side, they stretch about a nanometer. When things get that small, the laws of quantum physics win over the laws of classical physics. In our group, we use various experimental tools to make new low-dimensional nanomaterials and study their physical and chemical properties. These materials can have zero, one or two dimensions. Because of their reduced dimension and small size, these materials exhibit rather curious physical properties which makes them useful for various applications ranging from medicine to energy. In this talk, I will give a brief introduction to the field and present some of the research we do at UND.

Nuri Oncel
Nuri Oncel was born in Turkey. He got his Ph.D. in Physics at the University of Twente in the Netherlands. After that, he joined Prof. Steven Bernasek’s group at Princeton University as a post-doctoral research associate. In 2009, he joined the Physics and Astrophysics Department at UND as an assistant professor. Currently, he serves as an associate professor in the same department.

Thank you to the Chester Fritz Distinguished Professors Committee for speaker selection and scheduling. Funding for the UND Faculty Lecture Series is provided by the Offices of the President, the Provost & Vice President for Academic Affairs.