Masaru “Ken” Kuno, associate professor of chemisty and biochemistry, has recently published a textbook, Introductory Nanoscience Physical and Chemical Concepts. The book is aimed at upper-level undergraduate and graduate students and asks key questions about the quantitative concepts that underlie this new field. Topics include how the optical and electrical properties of nanomaterials are dependent upon size, shape, and morphology and how nano–metersized objects are constructed. Complete with solved examples throughout the chapters, and reinforcement of fundamental concepts via end–of–chapter problems and further reading, Kuno’s book shows to what extent we may predict the behavior and functionality of nanomaterials by understanding how their properties change with scale.
Kuno earned a PhD at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, followed by an NRC postdoctoral fellowship at JILA, University of Colorado at Boulder. Kuno’s research interests include single molecule microscopy of nanoscale materials and fluorescence intermittency of colloidal semiconductor quantum dots. He focuses on the synthesis and optical microscopy of solution–based semiconductor nanowires.