The Summer Undergraduate Research Scholars Symposium includes a three minute flash talk on the research project that each SURS student is working on in the summer 2018 class. Listen in for insights on STROBE research, interesting facts about the nature of imaging science research, and more!
Franklin Dollar, Ph.D., assistant professor for the Department of Physics and Astronomy, was awarded the prestigious five-year NSF grant valuing at $680,000 for his project titled CAREER: Coherent Laser Control for Compact Accelerators.
Dollar’s project supports a study of how to coherently control the physics of laser-driven particle accelerators by manipulating laser properties such as the laser wavefront. Advanced particle accelerators based on lasers have the potential to dramatically reduce the size and duration of such sources, and could have immediate applications in medical isotope production and radiography. This award will also support development of the Culturally relevant Accelerator Research and Engineering for Native Americans (CARE-NA) program, which will train students with broad practical skillsets with ties to community and culture.
“This project is one of those high-risk, high-return endeavors the NSF Division of Physics is particularly fond of supporting,” said National Science Foundation program officer Vyacheslav Lukin, who oversees Dollar’s CAREER grant. “We will look forward to seeing Dollar take this research from studies of underlying plasma physics and optics to breakthroughs that may enable tabletop accelerators — and their high-impact practical applications.”
“Accelerator science, and physics as a whole, can benefit tremendously from increased diversity and broad engagement with the public,” shared Dollar. “At UCI we wish to continue to lead in this arena across physical sciences.”
The National Science Foundation (NSF) has invested $150 million in 307 early career engineering and computer science faculty to advance fields from intelligent infrastructure and collaborative robots to secure communications and brain-related technologies.
Over the next five years, each researcher will receive up to $500,000 from NSF to build a firm scientific footing for solving challenges and scaling new heights for the nation, as well as serve as academic role models in research and education.
The National Science Foundation has instituted a Responsible Conduct of Research policy that must be followed by every person who participants in an NSF grant or center. JILA’s two NSF Centers—the Physics Frontier Center and the STROBE Science & Technology Center— are hosting this seminar to discuss what RCR means at JILA, within all institutions involved in STROBE, and the greater scientific community.
This seminar will answer questions such as:
Everyday transformations from one state of matter to another—such as freezing, melting or evaporation – start with a process called “nucleation”, in which tiny particles containing just a few atoms or molecules begin to coalesce. Nucleation plays a critical role in events as diverse as the formation of clouds and the onset of neurodegenerative disease. STROBE Deputy Director Jianwei (John) Miao, led an interdisciplinary team from Lawrence Berkeley Lab, University of Colorado Boulder, University of Buffalo and the University of Nevada Reno, to gain a never-before-seen view of nucleation—capturing how the atoms rearrange in the tiny seed particles at atomic resolution. Their findings, published in the journal Nature, differ from predictions based on the classical theory of nucleation that has long appeared in textbooks.
Visible microscopes can produce crisp images with a spatial resolution on order of the illuminating wavelength, because of the availability of near-perfect lenses in this region of the spectrum. Extreme ultraviolet (EUV) and soft X-ray (SXR) light has wavelengths 10-100 times shorter than visible light: thus, it should be possible to design a powerful microscope that can image structures that are too small or too opaque to be seen with visible light. However, EUV/SXR lenses are very lossy and imperfect, limiting the advantage of using shorter wavelengths, and blurring the resulting images to >8 times the theoretical limit. Fortunately, new techniques pioneered by STROBE scientists Kapteyn, Murnane and Miao make it possible to build lensless microscopes illuminated by coherent laser-like beams — a capability that is revolutionizing X-ray imaging worldwide. Very recently, the Kapteyn-Murnane group at CU Boulder used tabletop EUV beams at a wavelength of 13nm to achieve sub-wavelength spatial resolution imaging at short wavelengths for the first time – essentially demonstrating the first near-perfect X-ray microscope. Moreover, because the EUV source produces exceedingly short, femtosecond (~10-15 sec), bursts of light, it can now be used to make stroboscopic movies to observe how the nanoworld functions. STROBE graduate student Dennis Gardner received the American Physical Society Division of Laser Science Thesis Award for this work.
UCLA chemistry professor Jose Rodriguez has been selected among 22 Pew scholars in the biomedical sciences for 2018. The honor provides funding to outstanding young researchers whose work is relevant to the advancement of human health. The scholars, who were selected from 184 nominations, will receive four-year, $300,000 grants to advance their explorations of biological mechanisms underpinning human health and disease.
Scientists of the 21st century must be able to effectively communicate their research and utilize modern media elements to stay on the cutting edge of science and share their work with the world. Science videos can spark interdisciplinary collaborations with other researchers, add a media element to one of your journal articles, raise public awareness of the value of your work, and enhance your professional profile or website. This workshop will guide you through the basics of storyboarding, filming, and editing. Drs. Ryan Vachon and Dan Zietlow lead the workshop, drawing from their experience as hosts and producers of science shows with National Geographic and PBS. The workshop will feature Adobe Premiere for editing exercises.
Scientists of the 21st century must be able to effectively communicate their research and utilize modern media elements to stay on the cutting edge of science and share their work with the world. Science videos can spark interdisciplinary collaborations with other researchers, add a media element to one of your journal articles, raise public awareness of the value of your work, and enhance your professional profile or website.
This workshop will guide you through the basics of storyboarding, filming, and editing. Drs. Ryan Vachon and Dan Zietlow lead the workshop, drawing from their experience as hosts and producers of science shows with National Geographic and PBS. The workshop will feature Adobe Premiere for editing exercises.
Scientists of the 21st century must be able to effectively communicate their research and utilize modern media elements to stay on the cutting edge of science and share their work with the world. Science videos can spark interdisciplinary collaborations with other researchers, add a media element to one of your journal articles, raise public awareness of the value of your work, and enhance your professional profile or website.
This workshop will guide you through the basics of storyboarding, filming, and editing. Drs. Ryan Vachon and Dan Zietlow lead the workshop, drawing from their experience as hosts and producers of science shows with National Geographic and PBS. The workshop will feature Adobe Premiere for editing exercises.