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January 09 Issue - Employee Monthly Magazine Big-picture nanoscientistresearcher driven by biological questions
Gabriel Montaño holds a vial of a polymer mixture with photoluminescent properties. He uses fluorescence spectroscopy to determine the lifetime of the mixture. The data points on the computer monitor show how the mixture's fluorescent properties decay over time.
Photo by LeRoy N. Sanchez
Gabriel Montaño is something of a contradiction. For a young man, he sees the world from an unusually deep and timeless perspective. His specialty is not philosophy, however, it's nanotechnology--the science of building things on an extraordinarily tiny scale. Montaño directs a nanotechnology laboratory at the Center for Integrated Nanotechnologies' (MPA-CINT's) core facility in Albuquerque. "My interests in nanotechnology are driven by biological questions. I try to understand a biological process and then attempt to recreate it," he said. Montaño is intent on assembling microscopic mechanisms that convert light into energy. He takes his cue from simple, elegant structures in plants that have been converting the Sun's light into energy for more than 3,000 million years. Andrew Dattelbaum of MPA-CINT, his closest collaborator, explains that they are assembling proteins and other substances into photosynthetic membranes that are an astonishing 5 nanometers thick-that's 200 billionths of an inch. Montaño admits that his greatest breakthrough could have disintegrated in the laundry. As a graduate student, he was attempting to isolate a certain protein, a process that had confounded his peers. One day while relaxing, he jotted down a fresh concept on a cocktail napkin that almost got thrown in the wash. Fortunately, the correct solution was saved from the laundry just in time. Initially an English major at New Mexico State University, Montaño soon gravitated to chemistry. "Performing experiments, that's when it changed for me; that's where the love of science began," he said. And as a doctoral student in chemistry and biochemistry at Arizona State University, Montaño learned the advantages of working on a multidisciplinary team. Andrew Shreve of MPA-CINT said Montaño's "experience extends from molecular biology and biophysics to material science and chemistry. He is a valuable asset because of his breadth of knowledge across many fields." CINT's nanotechnology capabilities attract a broad spectrum of users from government, education, and industry. Although CINT's mission focuses on tiny microscopic materials, Montaño's versatility lets him see the big picture. --Editor's note: This is an excerpt from an article by Tom King that was published in the Materials Physics and Applications Division publication MPA Materials Matter (http://int.lanl.gov/orgs/mpa/materialsmatter.shtml (internal only)). Other Headlines
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