Profs. Hariharan Srikanth and Manh-Huong Phan have received a $563,247 three-year grant from the U.S. Department of Energy.
Their research is on "Complex Magnetism and Emergent Phenomena in Correlated Materials." This is the pair's fourth successful renewal of DOE funding. Profs. Srikanth and Phan continue to produce an impressive amount of impactful research. Over the past three years (2017-2019), they have published 61 indexed journal articles and received over 2,000 citations to their past work. In the same period, they graduated at least four Ph.D. students. All of their graduates go on to successful careers, many in academic, government, or industrial research.
Distinguished Professor George Nolas has just received a grant from the II-VI Foundation
to study and optimize thermoelectric half-Heusler alloys.
This will be the eighth consecutive year the foundation has supported Prof. Nolas's research. The foundation rarely renews its awards, except for Prof. Nolas's. The grant will support both research and graduate education. New thermoelectric devices are anticipated to play a role in reducing energy consumption by increasing harvesting of waste heat, among other applications. Prof. Nolas's expertise in thermoelectrics and materials generally is recognized internationally and well funded from federal sources as well as this private foundation.
Prof. Denis Karaiskaj as the recipient of the 2019 Emery H. and Barbara B. Jewell
Faculty Excellence Award.
The committee selected Prof. Karaiskaj "for his contributions to time-resolved THz spectroscopy of solids in high magnetic fields and to the elucidation of optical and electronic processes in the solid state." The award is made in recognition of Prof. Karaiskaj's discovery of Dicke superradiance in a naturally occurring mineral, his exploration of multi-excitonic states in two dimensional dichalcogenides, and his probes of quantum coherence between Landau levels. The committee recognizes equally Prof. Karaiskaj's development of the ultrafast spectroscopic techniques that have supported his scientific work. As described in his recent article in Reviews of Scientific Instruments, he now has a broad-band device that can be brought to a high-magnetic-field facility, enabling him to probe systems in entirely new regimes of short time scales and high fields.
Prof. Ivan Oleynik in the Department of Physics has just been awarded a new three-year,
single-PI, $630K grant by the U.S. Department of Energy.
The project is to study "Phase Transitions under Dynamic Compression: Carbon, Silicon and Germanium." This grant continues Prof. Oleynik's work in the computational study of matter under extreme conditions and will bring his career external funding at USF to over $5M. Prof. Oleynik's interests in computational solid-state physics have spanned diverse topics, including diamond, graphene devices, high explosives, and the cores of planets. Prof. Oleynik and the department wish to acknowledge the institutional investment in computational infrastructure that has helped amplify his research.
Profs. David Rabson and Humberto Rodriguez Gutierrez have been awarded $388,312 through
March 2022 for the NSF-REU site in Applied Physics at USF.
This grant builds on the success of the REU sites in the physics department started in 2000 by Prof. Ivan Oleynik and continued by Prof. Sarath Witanachchi. Over nine years, the summer REU students have been co-authors on more than 22 peer-reviewed papers and over 30 conference presentations. Many of us in Physics look forward to working with REU students in the coming summers. The program also serves as a mechanism for recruiting highly effective and motivated applicants to our graduate program.
Physicists honored for global work.
Prof. Sarath Witanachchi was awarded the (unique) honorable mention for Global Research Achievement. The announcement was made at the awards ceremony by Vice President for USF World Roger Brindley and Assistant Vice President Kiki Caruson, who spoke at length about Prof. Witanachchi's research collaborations and educational programs in Botswana, Vietnam, Chile, and Peru. The award was presented by President Genshaft. At the same event, Prof. Dario Arena was recognized for his Fulbright fellowship, which took him to Sweden this past summer. Lastly, Dr. Sayandeb Basu (Director of the Office of National Scholars and a theoretical particle physicist) and his team won the group award for their work with undergraduates pursuing competitive scholarships for overseas study.