News – Page 26

Three UCI School of Physical Sciences Faculty Earn Prestigious NSF Early Career Awards

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.”

Congrats to Franklin Dollar for Receiving an NSF CAREER Award

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.

Congrats to Jose Rodriguez on Being Selected as a Pew Scholar in the Biomedical Sciences

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 see inner workings of enzyme telomerase, which plays key roles in aging, cancer

Cancer, aging-related diseases and other illnesses are closely tied to an important enzyme called “telomerase.” UCLA researchers report in the journal Cell the deepest scientific understanding yet of this once-mysterious enzyme, whose catalytic core — where most of its activity occurs — can now be seen in near atomic resolution.

Berkeley Lab Paves the Way for Real-time Ptychographic Data Streaming

CAMERA/ALS/STROBE Collaboration Yields Novel Image Data Workflow Pipeline. Now an inter-government agency funded collaboration of scientists from Berkeley Lab’s DOE-funded Center for Advanced Mathematics for Energy Research Applications (CAMERA), the ALS and STROBE, the National Science Foundation’s Science and Technology Center, has yielded another first-of-its-kind advance for ptychographic imaging: a software/algorithmic pipeline that enables real-time streaming of ptychographic image data during a beamline experiment, providing throughput, compression and resolution as well as rapid feedback to the user while the experiment is still running.

Hands-on Learning: CU, FLC Scientists Bring Engineering to IMS

Yes, touch it, ask questions, and learn how it works. That’s part of the hands-on science experience that University of Colorado Boulder and Fort Lewis College faculty are taking on the road, encouraging students to consider careers in engineering and technical fields.

Photos: Emerging scientists learn about light and energy

Dolores School District students… try to figure out what is in the scanning electron microscope after shining a laser beam into it on Tuesday during the Light, Energy and Imaging STEM Workshop inSitter Hall at Fort Lewis College. About 60 students in sixth through 10th grades learned about scale and real-time imaging in the Nano-World, explored photosynthesis and solar energy at the nano-scale and learned about tools that change our perspective on the universe.

Congratulations to AJ Pryor for receiving the Peccei-Holmes Graduate Fellowship from UCLA

Benjamin L. Holmes and his wife, Carol Scheifele-Holmes, established the Roberto Peccei, Ben Holmes, and Carol Scheifele-Holmes Graduate Fellowship. Known as the Peccei-Holmes Fellowship, their gift honors Professor Roberto Peccei’s achievements in physics and their decades-long friendship.

Congrats to Kay Phelps on Being Awarded the Outstanding Environmental Educator Award by the Colorado Alliance for Environmental Education

Each year in March, the Colorado Alliance for Environmental Education (CAEE) hosts the Awards for Excellence in Environmental Education Awards Celebration, a recognition event that honors demonstrated leadership among individuals and environmental education programs that are unique, effective and collaborative.

Photo credit: Fort Lewis College

Henry Kapteyn Elected as 2018 Member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences

Henry Kapteyn has been elected as a 2018 member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. He joins some of the world’s most accomplished leaders from academia, business, public affairs, the humanities, and the arts, including JILA Fellows David Nesbitt (2013), Margaret Murnane (2006), Eric Cornell (2005), and Carl Lineberger (1995), and such luminaries as Benjamin Franklin (1781), Alexander Hamilton (1791), Ralph Waldo Emerson (1864), Charles Darwin (1874), Albert Einstein (1924), and Martin Luther King, Jr. (1966).

“I am delighted to congratulate Henry on behalf of all of JILA,” said JILA chair Thomas Perkins. “Henry, the taller half of the Kapteyn-Murnane partnership, has helped drive the development ultrafast laser sources since graduate school. His impact is seen in the application of ultrafast lasers to diverse application in attosecond non-linear optics, molecular dynamics, and nanoscale imaging as well as the many alumni of their group that have gone on to success in both academia and industry.”

The American Academy of Arts and Sciences elected 213 individuals to the class of 2018. The new members span a wide range of disciplines and professions, and include Netflix, Inc. CEO W. Reed Hastings, Jr.; actor Tom Hanks; 44th President of the United States Barack H. Obama, and CU professor of chemistry and biochemistry, Natalie Ahn.

Kapteyn joins one of the nation’s most prestigious organizations, which engages its members to share knowledge and address challenges facing the world. Its members make contributions to the arts, citizenship, education, energy, government, the humanities, international relations, science, and more.

“Membership in the Academy is not only an honor, but also an opportunity and a responsibility,” said Jonathan Fanton, President of the American Academy. “Members can be inspired and engaged by connecting with one another and through Academy projects dedicated to the common good. The intellect, creativity, and commitment of the 2018 Class will enrich the work of the Academy and the world in which we live.”