UA Physics Professor Lands $1.8 Million Award For Breakthrough Nano Research
by October 3, 2014 5:13 am 110 views
Jak Chakhalian, a professor of physics at the University of Arkansas, has been awarded $1.8 million from the Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation to create and investigate novel quantum materials and the relationships at the interface between those materials on the nanoscale.
The five-year grant will allow Chakhalian to build a state-of-the-art facility to grow artificial quantum materials at the atomic scale, with the ultimate goal of controlling their properties. His findings could represent a breakthrough in the field of exotic magnetism and high temperature superconductivity, according to university officials.
Chakhalian’s project was funded after an intense national competition conducted by the Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation, based in Palo Alto, California.
Chakhalian, who was among those who were invited to enter the competition by the foundation, received the largest award made to a single principal investigator.
The Moore Experimental Investigators in Quantum Materials program awarded a total of $34.2 million to 19 scientists at 11 universities across the United States, including Harvard, Johns Hopkins, Princeton, Stanford and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.
“I’m very excited,” Chakhalian said. “This is amazing. It was a strong competition. Most importantly, any award is like an allowance given to a scientist. Money enables the science but it doesn’t do the science, so there is exciting, hard work ahead and a lot of responsibility that comes with this award.”
Quantum materials are substances in which the collective behavior of electrons leads to many emergent properties, such as high-temperature superconductivity and exotic forms of magnetism. New discoveries in this field could eventually lead to revolutionary applications in electronics, computing, catalysis and energy technology.
The Moore Experimental Investigator in Quantum Materials Awards are part of a $90 million EPiQS Initiative, short for Emergent Phenomena in Quantum Systems. It is one of the largest privately-funded initiatives in this field and provides support for highly talented scientists in three areas: experiment, materials synthesis and theory.
Chakhalian holds the Charles E. and Clydene Scharlau Endowed Professorship in the J. William Fulbright College of Arts and Sciences and directs the Laboratory for Artificial Quantum Materials at the University of Arkansas. He holds a doctorate in solid state physics from the University of British Columbia.