On Sept. 9, 1999, Alex Biris arrived in the United States to visit family and friends before he started his doctoral studies. During the trip, he heard from a professor in someplace called Arkansas. The professor had read some of Alex’s research papers. Would Alex like to do his Ph.D. in Little Rock?

He didn’t know anything about Arkansas or Little Rock except it was the home of then-President Bill Clinton.

“I came without expecting too much,” Biris said. “But I fell in love with Arkansas. I fell in love with Little Rock, and I fell in love with UALR.

Twelve years to the day he arrived from Romania, the 36-year-old Biris became UALR’s first Sturgis Chair in Nanotechnology, thanks to a $1 million endowment by the Roy and Christine Sturgis Charitable Trust.

The audience in the EIT auditorium for the investiture ceremony was filled with public officials, the city’s business elite. Mayor Mark Stodola was there and state Sen. Joyce Elliott. University officials from the Board of Visitors, vice chancellors, deans, faculty, and staff looked like proud parents or grandparents.

They have watched this wunderkind blossom into a world-class scientist who has built a high technology laboratory from the ground up and put Little Rock and central Arkansas on the map as a force in the fledgling science of nanotechnology.

His own parents – his research scientist father and high school principal mother – couldn’t make the trip for the investiture ceremony. But they watched it via Skype on their son’s smart phone.

His discoveries and patents are creating new products and companies, and his teaching and mentoring of kids as young as junior high are helping to grow a new generation of Arkansas scientists.

All he wants is to thank his adopted hometown.

“UALR, Little Rock and Arkansas have given so much to me. Also, I met my wife here,” he said. Thank you to UALR for giving me so much. This is a wonderful university.”