Ertekin named new director of nanoMFG node

The National Center for Supercomputing Applications (NCSA) and the University of Illinois has announced MechSE associate professor Elif Ertekin as the new Director of nanoMFG, NCSA’s NSF-funded nanomanufacturing node, the first of its kind in the U.S.

“Our goal is to develop tools that are enabling for the nanomanufacturing community, and share those tools online using the Network for Computational Nanotechnology cyber platform,” said Ertekin. A current list of all tools developed by nanoMFG is available on their nanoHUB page. 

Ertekin takes over for Kimani Toussaint, who had led nanoMFG from its inception in 2017. Prior to her time at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, Ertekin served as a Postdoctoral Associate at both the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (Department of Materials Science & Engineering) and the University of California-Berkeley (Berkeley Nanoscience and Nanoengineering Institute).

“I’m very excited to lead this program to help make a lasting impact in emerging areas across nanomanufacturing,” said Ertekin. “We are excited about engaging researchers from academia, labs, and industry to develop computational software tools aimed at creating smart, model-driven, and experimentally informed nano manufactured products.” 

Through collaboration with NCSA, Ertekin hopes to leverage the center’s expertise in a variety of disciplines to continue and augment the two years of work already done by the nanoMFG node.

“At NCSA, we have a unique and powerful opportunity to develop powerful simulation tools by bringing together expertise around software development, computational methods, and experiments.” 

Keep up to date with the nanoMFG node here and watch an interview with former Director Kimani Toussaint below: