A paper co-authored by Mukti M Rana, Ph.D. student, and Donald P Butler, Professor in Electrical Engineering, was selected for an outstanding student paper award in the 2004 IEEE Emerging Technology Conference held in Holiday Inn Select in Richardson, TX on 8-9 October, 2004.  The title of the conference paper was "Si_xGe_1-x and Si_xGe_1-xO_y thin films for microsensors applications".  This project was sponsored by National Science Foundation.  Mr. Rana started to work on this project with Donald P Butler in the fall of 2003.  This Si-Ge or Si-Ge-O will be new material to be used with IR sensors and thermal flow sensors.  They are in the process of fabricating IR sensor based on this material in the NanoFab Center.