News

Congratulations, Panče for being selected as an ACS Fellow for outstanding achievements in and contributions to science, the profession, and ACS! This appointment also recognizes the efforts of the local UAE Chapter of ACS in promoting chemistry and chemistry-related disciplines in the UAE and the region.

Congratulations to Nadia, Seonyeong and their supervisor, Maria, for winning the first award in the UAE's 8th Undergraduate Research Competition!

Jad Mahmoud Halabi is participating in the Moonshot Apprenticeship Program hosted by the UAE government. The program, which runs from April to July 2021, allows talented youth to collaborate with government officials to find innovative solutions to some of the world's most pressing problems.

Professor Naumov has joined the International Advisory Board of Angewandte Chemie. 

Professor Naumov hosted Associate Professor of Chemistry, Na'il Saleh, UAE University, as part of the NYUAD Chemistry Seminar Series. Professor Saleh's talk was titled Molecular Engineering of Cucurbitruil-Based Alginate Hydrogels.

The Smart Materials Lab (SML) had an article, Formation of Noncovalent Complexes between Complex Mixtures of Polycyclic Aromatic Hydrocarbons (Asphaltenes) and Substituted Aromatics Studied by Fluorescence Spectroscopy, published in the journal Energy & Fuels. The graphic art for this manuscript was also highlighted on the cover page of the journal. In this work, researchers from Professor Naumov's Smart Materials Lab, in collaboration with researchers from Khalifa University, propose an analytical method to study the aggregation between the chemical components that cause organic scale and chemicals that can be used as inhibitors of aggregation and prevent the formation of scale. The method is fluorescence spectroscopy, and its application is based on some common chemical features, or organic molecules called asphaltenes. The asphaltenes are an extremely complex, intractable mixture of organic molecules with a core of fused aromatic rings. It is exactly this structural feature that was of interest to the researchers from Naumov’s lab. 

Professor Naumov hosted Professor Linda Zou, Khalifa University of Science and Technology, UAE,  as part of the NYUAD Chemistry Seminar series. The title of the lecture was “Research and Applications of Nanomaterials in Water Technologies.”

In conjunction with the Center for Space Science, Professor Naumov also hosted Professor Tomce Runcevski, Southern Methodist University, Texas. The title of the talk: “Titan in a Jar.”

Our Graduate Student, Jad Mahmoud Halabi, received the 2021 Horizon Fellowship in the Natural and Physical Sciences from NYU’s Graduate School of Arts and Sciences.

Professor Naumov gave a Gerhardt M. J. Schmidt Memorial Lecture titled “The Rise of the Dynamic Crystals” at the Weizmann Institute of Science in Israel. The lecture included about ~50 distinguished speakers, including Nobel Laureates such as Dorothy Hodgkin (Schmidt's Ph.D. advisor), Vladimir Prelog, Dan Shechtman, Jean-Marie Lehn, and, more recently, Eugenia Kumacheva and Takuzo Aida. 

Professor Naumov gave a lecture, “Global Performance Indices: Bringing Dyanamic Crystals Closer to Applications,” at an online symposium, Recent Advances of Crystal Engineering and Solid-State Chemistry. 

Our paper, Mechanically Compliant Single Crystals of a Stable Organic Radical, was published in Chemical Science. Organic radicals are normally highly reactive compounds that react with anything, even air, but with the right atomic structure, they can be stabilized. To make it more interesting, the compound was not only a stable radical but also a plastically bending crystal. It's rare enough to find either of these two effects alone, much less together, so we had to see how one affected the other. And so what happens when you bend an air-stable radical? We showed that the overall radical concentration increases in the sample when you bend it but decreases locally at the bent region. We rationalized this was caused by radicals reacting at the bent region and molecules moving closer together generally in the sample. 

Wegood gave an online talk at the "Becoming an Engineer" session at American International School in Dubai.

Our former student, Yumi Gabrill, was accepted into the Security Studies Graduate Program at Georgetown University. Congratulations, Yumi!

Professor Naumov hosted an NYU Abu Dhabi Institute lecture, “Science Diplomacy in the Middle East: Challenges and Opportunities,” delivered by Professor Zafra Lerman from Columbia College and Malta Conferences Foundation.

Check out our paper published in Nature Communications. Mechanically Robust Amino Acid Crystals as Fiber-optic Transducers and Wide Bandpass Filters for Optical Communication in the Near-infrared discusses mechanically & thermally robust amino acids for signal transduction in the telecom range. These organic crystalline waveguides also transmit light in near-IR frequencies & are candidates for optical communications.

Professor Panče Naumov had a paper, Actuators powered by water hydrogen bonds, published in Nature Materials.

Our paper Performance of Deformable Molecular Crystalline Materials for Light-to-Work Conversion was published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the USA. Jad Mahmoud Halabi, an NYUAD graduate student, is the lead author, which is quite an extraordinary accomplishment and a testament to Jad's hard work and the quality of our Graduate program.

Azamat Alibekov, a high school student at Cranleigh Abu Dhabi, was featured in the 2019-2020 Undergraduate Research Report and discussed his internship with the Smart Materials Lab under the supervision of Professor Panče Naumov.

Researchers from NYUAD's Smart Materials Lab (SML) led by Professor of Chemistry Panče Naumov have conducted an exhaustive review of the scientific literature surrounding the natural production of light, called bioluminescence, and developed conclusions that will help others in the field direct their research to uncover the mysteries behind this fascinating natural phenomenon. In the new study The Elusive Relationship Between Structure and Colour Emission in Beetle Luciferases, which is featured on the cover of the journal Nature Reviews Chemistry, Naumov and colleagues provide the most comprehensive critical overview of the field of the bioluminescence of beetles, including fireflies, to date. 

Professor Panče Naumov delivered an invited online lecture at the University of Bologna, “Dynamic Molecular Crystals,” Alma Mater Studiorum - Università di Bologna, Bologna, Italy.    

Professor Panče Naumov was listed among the world’s top 2% of scientists in 2020 in different fields of study by researchers at Stanford University. 

Professor Panče Naumov had a paper published in the journal Dyes and Pigments. The Nature of the van Dyck “Crystal” investigates the complex chemical composition of ‘van Dyck crystals’ and shows that the two pigments are distinctly different, both in composition and in origin. Furthermore, we show that the coloured component of the ‘van Dyck crystals’ is not crystalline and should not be confused with the original pigment.

Professor Naumov gave an invited departmental seminar “Dynamic Molecular Crystals: The Bigger Picture” at the Indian Institute of Technology Delhi (IIT Delhi) as part of their International Webinar Series.

Cracking Under Internal Pressure: Photodynamic Behavior of Vinyl Azide Crystals Through N2 Release, just accepted for publication in the Journal of American Chemical Society, illustrates how “crystalline machines” could represent the macroscopic versions of molecular and nanoscale robots that operate via gas-generating chemical reactions.

Professor Panče Naumov was granted the UAE's 10-year golden residency visa in recognition of his outstanding contribution to scientific research. This year's announcement was covered by multiple news agencies, including Al Ittihad, Al Bayan, Emirates News Agency (WAM), Gulf News, Dubai Eye, Al Fajr, and more. Congratulations, Panče, for this well-deserved acknowledgment of your hard work and dedication to the advancement of research in the region!

Loss of ß-actin leads to accelerated mineralization and dysregulation of osteoblast-differentiation genes during osteogenic reprogramming, a collaboration between members of our chemistry and biology departments, was accepted for publication in Advanced Science.

Jad Mahmoud Halabi recently spoke with DiscoverPhDs about his experiences while pursuing a PhD at NYU Abu Dhabi. Check out the article, Smart Molecular Crystals: From Synthesis to Applications, to read Jad's advice for future PhD candidates.

Congratulations to Maria, Stefan, Durga, Anastasiya, and Pat, as well as our collaborators from AIST, for the acceptance of their paper in Angewandte Chemie! The article, "Mechanically Assisted Bioluminescence with Natural Luciferase" is an interesting, unique, and out-of-box research that combines bioluminescence and solid-state chemistry, two major fields that we have been working on in the past. We hope to be able to expand this work very soon and bring the two communities together. 

Research Scientist, Durga Prasad Karothu, gave an online talk entitled “Thermally Actuating Multifunctional Molecular Crystals” as part of the 6.5th Crystal Engineering and Emerging Materials Workshop of Ontario and Quebec (CEMWOQ). Durga’s presentation was well received and earned him an award for the Best Oral Presentation at the conference.

Rodrigo Silva Ferreira, recently graduated from NYUAD's Chemistry program, after successfully presenting his Capstone Project. Rodrigo will be working with the Naumov Group this summer as part of the Post-Graduation Practical Training Program (PPTP). Congratulations, Rodrigo!

Our article “Global Performance Indices for Dynamic Crystals as Organic Thermal Actuators” authored by Karothu, Durga Prasad; Halabi, Jad Mahmoud; Li, Liang; Colin-Molina, Abraham; Rodríguez-Molina, Braulio; Naumov, Panče* was highlighted on the back cover of the journal Advanced Materials.

Congratulations to Ejaz, Durga, Pat, and our external collaborators from Norway and the US! Their manuscript entitled "From Mechanical Effects to Mechanochemistry: Softening and Depression of the Melting Point of Deformed Plastic Crystals" was recently accepted for publication in the Journal of the American Chemical Society. This article describes a very fundamental phenomenon — the decrease of the melting point of organic compounds upon mechanical deformation of their crystals. 

The Naumov Group's paper entitled "Sequencing and Welding of Molecular Single-Crystal Optical Waveguides" has been accepted for publication in the journal Advanced Functional Materials.

Dr. Naumov was appointed as a Consultant of the Commission on Structural Chemistry, International Union of Crystallography (IUCr).

Preparations are underway for the Third Middle-Eastern Materials Science Conference to be held at NYU Abu Dhabi, November 9-11, 2020. Interested scholars please contact nyuad.memsc@nyu.edu.

The research project of one of our undergraduate students, Nadia Rabeh, was selected by the Federal Competitiveness and Statistics Authority (FCSA) in the FCSA Research Challenge 2020 to be granted intellectual property rights. Nadia is working with the Naumov Research Group on methods to remove microplastics from the seawater and beaches in Abu Dhabi.

Our latest paper, Micromanipulation of Mechanically Compliant Organic Single‐Crystal Optical Microwaveguides, has been accepted for publication in Angewandte Chemie International Edition. Congratulations to Professor Naumov, Durga, Luca, Ejaz and all of our collaborators!

Congratulations Professor Naumov on receiving a 10-year golden residency visa in recognition of your contributions to the UAE!

Good luck to Malak and Azamat from Cranleigh High School in Abu Dhabi who recently completed their internship with the Naumov Group at NYU Abu Dhabi. We're sure we'll be seeing more of these bright young students in the future.

The Naumov Group’s paper Global Performance Indices for Dynamic Crystals as Organic Thermal Actuators is a hot topic in the virtual issue of Advanced Materials as part of Hot Topics: Robotics. The article is co-authored by our graduate student, Jad Mahmoud Halabi.

Professor Panče Naumov presented an invited talk “Dynamic Molecular Crystals: The Bigger Picture”, University of Milano Bicocca, Milan, Italy, February 21, 2020.

We bid a tearful goodbye to our friend and colleague, Luca Catalano. Good luck, Luca, in your new home. Come back and visit us soon!

Professor Panče Naumov’s manuscript entitled: Efficiently Self-healing Boronic Ester Crystal was published in the journal Chemical Science, one of the leading chemistry journal published by the Royal Society of Chemistry, which is also listed in Nature Index.

Professor Panče Naumov has been invited to write a Perspective for potential publication in the Journal of the American Chemical Society, the flagship chemistry journal published by the American Chemical Society. JACS Perspectives are reviews that assess the current status of the field with a particular emphasis on identifying key advances being made or those advances that are needed. The JACS Perspective will primarily serve to inspire and help direct future research efforts.

The Naumov Group’s manuscript entitled: Supramolecular Organization of Model Polycyclic Aromatic Molecules: Comparison of 2D and 3D Assemblies was published in ChemNanoMat. This work is a collaborative effort between the Naumov group and researchers from AIST - National Institute of Advanced Industrial Science in Japan.

The Naumov Group’s research on Smart Crystals was selected as a top innovation in the 10th-anniversary edition of the NYU Abu Dhabi research report.

The Naumov Group's first article of 2020 entitled Global Performance Indices for Dynamic Crystals as Organic Thermal Actuators has been published in Advanced Materials. Congratulations to Professor Naumov, Durga, Jad and all our collaborators!

Jad Mahmoud Halabi will attend the GapSummit 2020 in March at the University of Cambridge, UK. The core objectives of this annual student-run, biotechnology leadership summit revolve around the discussion of pressing challenges facing the bio-economy and catalyzing innovation to solve these challenges. This year, 100 Leaders of Tomorrow from around the world were selected through a competitive process of interviews. Congratulations, Jad!