Colvin makes Esquire’s ‘Best & Brightest’ list

Colvin makes Esquire’s ‘Best & Brightest’ list
Chemist’s ‘nanorust’ listed among ‘ideas that will change the world’

BY JADE BOYD
Rice News Staff

Influential Rice University nanotechnology researcher Vicki Colvin was recognized as one of America’s 36 rising stars in Esquire magazine’s “Best & Brightest 2007” list, which appears in the magazine’s December issue.

VICKI COLVIN

Colvin, professor of chemistry and director of Rice’s Center for Biological and Environmental Nanotechnology (CBEN), is one of just eight women featured on this year’s list. Nanorust, a pollution-cleaning nanoparticle she co-discovered in 2006, is featured among “Six Ideas That Will Change the World” on page 191.

Esquire’s annual Best & Brightest list showcases the nation’s top minds in the worlds of science, culture, education, public service and the arts.

Colvin joined Rice in 1996 and became the director of CBEN five years later. CBEN was the first academic research center dedicated to studying the interaction of nanomaterials with living organisms and ecosystems. Under Colvin’s leadership, the center has spearheaded international efforts to get industrial, regulatory, academic and nongovernmental leaders to agree on research agendas for nanotoxicology and environmental nanotechnology. She has twice testified before Congress on those issues, most recently last month.

Her research group has conducted groundbreaking toxicological studies on fullerenes and other nanoparticles. With nanorust, Colvin collaborated with Civil and Environmental Engineering’s Mason Tomson, Physics and Astronomy’s Doug Natelson and others to unravel the mysterious magnetic properties of nanoparticles that can clean arsenic from drinking water. The discovery was named one of the Top Five Nanotech Breakthroughs of 2006 by Forbes magazine.