April 2008: Kristina Lipinska-Kalita and Oliver Hemmers received three shifts of beamtime from the Carnegie DOE Alliance Center (CDAC) to carry out studies of ceramic composites at high-pressures, at Sector 16, High Pressure Collaborative Access Team (HPCAT) of the Advanced Photon Source, Argonne National Laboratory (www.aps.anl.gov)

10 April 2008: a paper by Kristina Lipinska-Kalita and Oliver Hemmers entitled “Stability and Equation of State of a Nanocrystalline Ga-Ge Mullite in a Vitroceramic Composite: a Synchrotron X-Ray Diffraction Study”, was published in the prestigious journal Physical Review  B. (see: K. E. Lipinska-Kalita, P. E. Kalita,  C.  L. Gobin, O. A. Hemmers, T. Hartmann and G. Mariotto Phys. Rev. B 77, 134107 (2008)).

May 2008: Kristina Lipinska-Kalita and Oliver Hemmers : their ALS research proposal, entitled: “Nanocrystalline Composites at Extreme Pressures” at the Advanced Light Source, Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, was approved for a period of 2 years. The proposal was initially allocated 6 days of beamtime in the July 2008 - December 2008 running cycle.

May 6th 2008: Oliver Hemmers and Kristina Lipinska-Kalita met with Dr. A. Chkrebtii, professor at the University of Ontario Institute of Technology (UOIT) and Director of the Centre for Materials and Manufacturing/Ontario Centres of Excellence, to establish a new UNLV-UOIT collaboration in the field of renewable energy technologies.

May 19th, 2008: Kristina Lipinska-Kalita gave a talk entitled: “High-Pressure Synchrotron X-Ray Diffraction Study Of Nanocrystalline Composites: Exploring New Routes for the Development of Advanced Materials” by K. E. Lipinska-Kalita, O. Hemmers, P. E. Kalita, G. Mariotto, T. Hartmann, Y. Ohki, C. Segre, at the Glass & Optical Materials Division Meeting, ACERS 2008, Tucson, AZ, May 18-21, 2008. Final Program

May 21st, 2008: Kristina Lipinska-Kalita met on with Dr. M. Affatigato, Chair of the Glass and Optical Materials Division of the American Ceramic Society

to discuss their collaborative projects on materials for renewable energy technologies.

May 29, 2008: Oliver Hemmers and Kristina Lipinska-Kalita met with Mr. M. Flinders from CERAMATEC (Salt Lake City, UT) (http://www.ceramatec.com/) and discussed the ongoing collaborative projects on development of materials for fuel cells used for production of biofuels.

6 June 2008: a review paper by Kristina Lipinska-Kalita and Oliver Hemmers entitled:  “High-Pressure Structural Integrity and Structural Transformations of Glass-Derived Nanocomposites: a Review” was published in the Journal of Physics and Chemistry of Solids. (see: K. E. Lipinska-Kalita, O. A. Hemmers, P. E. Kalita, G. Mariotto, S. Gramsch, R. J. Hemley, T. Hartmann, J. Phys. Chem. Solids, available online, June 2008).