Amherst Cinema Amherst, MA
Dr. Katherine Aidala
Associate Professor of Physics, Mount Holyoke College
Fantastic Voyage— Scientific Uses of Nanotechnology
Program Description
A discussion of the recent advances in and possible scientific uses of nanotechnology, such as targeted chemotherapy delivery just to the tumor and not the whole body.
Presented At
Amherst Cinema Amherst, MA
Film Synopsis
A scientist is nearly assassinated. In order to save him, a submarine is shrunken to microscopic size and injected into his bloodstream with a small crew.
The brilliant scientist Jan Benes (Jean Del Val) develops a way to shrink humans and other objects for brief periods of time. Working in the Soviet Union, Benes escapes from behind the Iron Curtain with the help of CIA agent Grant (Stephen Boyd), but is attacked en route. In order to save the scientist, who has developed a blood clot in his brain, a team of Americans in a nuclear submarine is shrunk and injected into Benes's body. They have a finite period of time to fix the clot and get out before the miniaturization wears off.
About the Speaker
As an undergraduate at Yale University, Dr. Katherine Aidala was a double major in applied physics and psychology. She went on to graduate school in applied physics at Harvard, where her thesis was on imaging electron motion in magnetic fields in a two-dimensional electron gas. This involved designing and constructing a cryogenic scanning probe microscope. Dr. Aidala continues to focus on scanning probe microscopy as a flexible technique to study a variety of nanoscale systems.
She is a recipient of the prestigious Presidential Early Career Award for Scientists and Engineers, as well as a National Science Foundation CAREER Award. In 2008, Dr. Aidala received the Cottrell College Science Award for beginning faculty members from the Research Corporation for Scientific Advancement. Her research has been published in Nature Physics, Physical Review Letters, and Nano Letters.