In the news

Carnegie Mellon and the Tepper School of Business have long been leaders in transformational education, where researchers successfully challenge the status quo to create new technologies and processes that solidify our reputation as innovative thinkers and doers.

Sridhar R. Tayur, Ford Distinguished Research Chair and University Professor of Operations Management, believes that quantum computing will be one of the next consequential innovations to put the university’s name in the history books.

Three projects led by PQI professors in the University of Pittsburgh’s Swanson School of Engineering, James McKone, Feng Xiong, and Nathan Youngblood, recently received funding from the National Science Foundation. Additionally, Ken Jordan in the Pitt Department of Chemistry is Co-PI on an NSF-funded project led by Lei Li to use computational methods to understand the mechanisms of wetting transparency of graphene on liquid substrates and demonstrate the real-time control of surface wettability

As objects heat up, they not only glow but also emit acoustic energy. This “acoustic blackbody radiation” may be as ubiquitous as its more famous electromagnetic cousin but is typically faint and difficult to characterize. Now, a pair of researchers, Thomas Purdy and Robinjeet Singh, have used a nanomechanical resonator to detect acoustic blackbody radiation from a remote source [1]. They say their technique—the acoustic analog of remote infrared thermometry—could lead to improvements in applications ranging from metrology to quantum information.

The Innovare Advancement Center, a partnership between the Air Force Research Laboratory Information Directorate (AFRL/RI), New York State, and others, hosted a unique quantum-focused virtual pitch competition, the “Million Dollar International Quantum U Tech Accelerator,” on September 1-3 to launch their new open innovation campus in Rome, NY.

The goal of the competition was to encourage university researchers that pursue high impact projects in quantum timing, sensing, information processing/computing, and communications/networking to bring a new quantum phenomenon into the military while offering about $1,000,000 to the finalists.

Even with nearly 250 teams from 22 countries submitting proposals to take part in the competition, two PQI faculty, Dr. Tom Purdy and Dr. Gurudev Dutt, were among the top 36 selected to take part in the live pitch event, each giving a 10-minute presentation with Q&A (watch presentations from Tom and Gurudev). Ultimately, 18 finalists were selected for the $1M+ in basic research funds and Gurudev won in the topic of quantum sensing.

Reeja Jayan and her student Nathan Nakamura has made a breakthrough in our understanding of how microwaves affect materials chemistry. Unlike prior studies, which suffered from the inability to monitor structural changes while the microwaves were applied, Jayan developed novel tools (a custom-designed microwave reactor enabling in-situ synchrotron x-ray scattering) for studying these dynamic, field-driven changes in local atomic structure as they happen. By revealing the dynamics of how microwaves affect specific chemical bonds during the synthesis, Jayan is laying the groundwork for tailor-made ceramic materials with new electronic, thermal, and mechanical properties. Building on this concept, she is investigating how to use microwaves to engineer new materials.

The results of Jayan’s research were published in the Journal of Materials Chemistry A. The paper was recognized as part of the 2020 Emerging Investigators Issue of the journal.

Developing catalysts for sustainable fuel and chemical production requires a kind of Goldilocks Effect – some catalysts are too ineffective while others are too uneconomical. Catalyst testing also takes a lot of time and resources. New breakthroughs in computational quantum chemistry, however, hold promise for discovering catalysts that are “just right” and thousands of times faster than standard approaches.

University of Pittsburgh Associate Professor John A. Keith and his lab group at the Swanson School of Engineering are using new quantum chemistry computing procedures to categorize hypothetical electrocatalysts that are “too slow” or “too expensive”, far more thoroughly and quickly than was considered possible a few years ago. 

The Keith Group’s research compilation, “Computational Quantum Chemical Explorations of Chemical/Material Space for Efficient Electrocatalysts” was featured this month in Interface, a quarterly magazine of The Electrochemical Society.

Dr. Wissam Saidi, Associate Professor in the Department of Mechanical Engineering and Materials Science at the University of Pittsburgh, was selected to receive $600,000 of NSF funding over 3 years. The Saidi group develops and uses multiscale simulation tools, including force-field, density-functional theory, quantum Monte Carlo and quantum chemistry methods, to understand, predict, and design novel materials for applications in energy conversion and storage, surfaces and interfaces, spectroscopy, and nanoparticles.

The goal of the proposal, "DeepPDB: An open-source active-learning framework to enable high-fidelity atomistic simulations in unexplored material space", will be to offer an open-source toolkit with the ability to automatically generate estimates of force-fields parameters using advanced empirical-based computational tools.

David Waldeck, Professor in Chemistry at Pitt, was selected as one of the 2020 American Chemical Society (ACS) Fellows. The ACS Fellows program began in 2009 as a way to recognize ACS members for outstanding achievements in and contributions to science, the profession, and ACS. 

With regard to his science and profession, Dave is recognized for his fundamental contributions to the understanding of electron and spin transfer in molecules and their assemblies; and the positive impact of his administrative leadership and mentorship of junior colleagues.

Reeja Jayan was selected to receive the CMU 2020 Dean’s Early Career Fellowship in recognition for her exemplary contributions to her field. The Dean’s Early Career Fellowships are awarded to untenured faculty members who have been nominated by their department heads. They were selected to receive the fellowship after review and discussion by the College of Engineering Review Committee.

Reeja leads her multidisciplinary lab’s research in field-assisted materials growth, exploring different ways electromagnetic fields can synthesize materials previously unavailable for conventional synthesis routes. Her work has been awarded funding from the Department of Energy (DOE), Defense Advanced Research Project Agency (DARPA), and private sponsors. Jayan has earned numerous young investigator awards, including the 2018 National Science Foundation (NSF) CAREER Award, The Incline Who’s Next: Technology Award, and Pittsburgh Magazine’s 40 Under 40 Award.

Congrats Reeja!

Scientific communities rely on the international friendships and collaborations that we build and exclusion has no place here. PQI is 100% an international community based in Pittsburgh and we value and need the presence of international students and faculty. While the ICE measure impacting students has been rescinded for now, it was a drastic and serious upset to many student lives.

We've asked PQI members to pin the location of their hometown in the map below so that we can appreciate how far many of you have come to be an important part of our community. Thank you for being in Pittsburgh and part of PQI!