For his work on how semiconducting nanowires grow and behave, Shadi A. Dayeh, a University of California, San Diego graduate student and PhD candidate in the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering at the Jacobs School of Engineering, has recently earned several awards. Nanowires -- crystalline fibers about one thousandth the width of a human hair -- hold promise as LEDs, photovoltaics, biological and chemical sensors, nanopipes for optical communications, and other applications, once fundamental questions are answered about how they work. At the Materials Research Society meeting in April, Dayeh was awarded the graduate student "silver medal" for his body of research on the synthesis and fabrication of compound semiconducting nanowires and devices for novel electronics, and a best poster award for research on field-, diameter-, and surface state-dependent transport behavior in semiconducting nanowires. In January 2007, Dayeh received a Young Scientist Award at the 34th Conference on the Physics & Chemistry of Semiconductor Interfaces for the systemic study of carrier transport properties in InAs nanowire field-effect transistors. He also won a best paper award at the 2006 Electronic Materials Conference for helping to resolve a debate regarding which mechanism governs the growth of III-V compound semiconducting nanowires. Dayeh and colleagues recently published research demonstrating the potential for using InAs nanowires for high-speed nanoelectronics and providing analysis that enables accurate parameter extraction from such devices.