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Olexandr Isayev, Geoff Hutchison, and their team of researchers received a $1.7 million grant from the Department of Defense’s Office of Naval Research for their Multidisciplinary University Research Initiative. Their project aims to gain a better understanding of how organic molecules and polymeric materials degrade under stress. Isayev’s lab plans to develop a computational framework using fast simulations for degradation pathways, reaction networks and artificial intelligence. Hutchison’s lab will use a variety of methods to make massive automated quantum chemical calculations. The results will not only allow future materials to be better designed for stability, but also offer tools that will help chemists and materials scientists quickly predict degradation pathways and products.

Congrats Olexandr and Geoff!

Jeremy Levy, Hrvoje Petek, and their team of researchers received a $7.5 million grant from the Office of Naval Research for their Multidisciplinary University Research Initiative to develop more efficient quantum computers. Their project, titled “Topological Spin Qubits Based on Graphene Nanoribbons,” seeks to develop a new type of qubit based on tiny strips of carbon atoms called graphene.

As of yet, no approach has been able to decisively meet all of the requirements for a scalable quantum computer. The team aims to change that by combining lithographic capabilities with synthetic chemistry protocols to create and manipulate atomically precise graphene nanoribbons in ways that may be useful for future quantum computing architectures.

Congrats Jeremy and Hrvoje!

The Chancellor's Distinguished Research Award annually recognizes outstanding scholarly accomplishments of members of the University of Pittsburgh's faculty. Junior Scholars include faculty members who have demonstrated great potential through the quality of their early contributions.

Professor Michael Hatridge is an outstanding researcher and has made significant contributions to the field of quantum information and quantum computing.  He has won multiple awards including the 2020 Alfred Sloan Research Fellowship and the 2019 NSF CAREER Award, and his research has been published by Nature, Science, Applied Physics Letters, and more.

Congratulations Michael!
 

Congratulations to Professor Noa Marom for winning the Spring 2021 American Chemical Society (ACS) OpenEye Outstanding Junior Faculty Award! 

This prestigious award is given to junior faculty members who show promise in computational chemistry and modeling. Up to four applicants are selected to win a $1000 prize and the opportunity to present their work at the San Antonio ACS National Meeting. 

Marom’s research uses quantum mechanical simulations, machine learning, and optimization algorithms to design materials with desired properties for various applications. Her award-winning work specifically involves the structure prediction and discovery of molecular crystals with enhanced electronic properties.

Research led by David Pekker was recently featured in an article on Gizmodo titled “Physicists are Reinventing the Laser”. The work was from Pekker’s paper titled “A New Quantum Limit on Laser Linewidth,” co-authored with Michael Hatridge, Chenxu Liu, Maria Mucci, Xi Cao, and Gurudev Dutt.

Their research finds that the Schawlow-Townes limit, an equation used to find the coherence time limit for lasers, is no longer an accurate estimate and that it can be possible to build more coherent lasers. Pekker and his coworkers found that by placing a valve on a laser to control the flow of protons, the laser’s coherence time can be extended beyond the Schawlow-Townes limit.

Congratulations to a recent graduate from Hrvoje Petek's group, Dr. Yanan Dai, for winning the 2020 International Organization of Chinese Physicists and Astronomers (OCPA) Outstanding Dissertation Award! In addition to this award, his dissertation, “Imaging Light with Photoelectrons on the Nano-Femto Scale,” was also recognized and reprinted in Springer-Nature.

Dr. Dai’s dissertation includes his work on ultrafast microscopy techniques and recent applications. These projects included his development of an ultrafast photoemission microscope with sub-10 femtosecond and nanometer spatiotemporal resolution, which was subsequently utilized to probe for and ultimately discover topological quasiparticles. Using ultrafast optics, Dr. Dai was able to probe and observe topological meron and skyrmion-like plasmonic quasiparticles as well as their dynamics during a phase transition. 

Using these observations and technological developments, he offers an analytical theory of how these newly observed quasiparticles and the microscopy techniques used to address them could have further research applications. 

A reprint of his dissertation can be found in Sprinter-Nature.

Light travels at a speed of about 300,000,000 meters per second as light particles, photons, or equivalently as electromagnetic field waves. Experiments led by Hrvoje Petek examined ideas surrounding the origins of light, taking snapshots of light, stopping light and using it to change properties of matter.

Petek worked with student Yannan Dai and collaborators Prof. Chen-Bin (Robin) Huang of the National Tsing Hua University in Taiwan, and Atsushi Kubo of the Tsukuba University of Japan on the experiments. Their findings were reported in the paper, “Plasmonic topological quasiparticle on the nanometre and femtosecond scales,” which was published in the Dec. 24 issue of Nature magazine.

Prof. Lillian Chong and graduate student, Anthony Bogetti, were part of a multi-institution team effort that won the Association for Computing Machinery’s Gordon Bell Special Prize for High Performance Computing-Based COVID-19 Research, commonly referred to as the Nobel Prize of Supercomputing. A crowning achievement of this effort is the generation of atomically detailed views of how the spike protein of the coronavirus opens up before latching onto cells during infection.

The Nanoionics and Electronics Laboratory at the University of Pittsburgh’s Swanson School of Engineering has received $557,000 in funding from the National Science Foundation (NSF) for its work investigating a new type of two-dimensional material. The project, “Two-dimensional Polar Metals and Heterostructures,” is led by Associate Professor, Susan Fullerton, and Research Assistant Professor Ke Xu, both in the Department of Chemical and Petroleum Engineering.