Kin Fai Mak to receive Department of Energy Early Career Research Program funding

Kin Fai Mak, assistant professor of physics, has been selected by the U.S. Department of Energy's (DOE) Office of Science to receive funding for his research as part of the DOE's Early Career Research Program. With this funding, Mak will study a new method for transmitting information by controlling a parameter of electrons known as the "valley degree of freedom" in two-dimensional crystals. The research has potential application in next-generation electronic and optoelectronic devices, such as spin and valley transistors and polarization-sensitive LEDs. The DOE program, in its sixth year, is designed to bolster the nation's scientific workforce by providing support to exceptional researchers during the crucial early years of their careers, when many scientists do their most formative work. Awardees are chosen based on peer review by outside scientific experts and receive five years of research funding.

Mak's research combines techniques from nanoscale electronics and from optics to study the behavior of electrons in two-dimensional materials. His research is focused on understanding unusual electronic phenomena that occur when electrons are confined in crystals only a few atoms thick.

In 2013, Mak received the International Union of Pure and Applied Physics (IUPAP) Young Scientist Prize in Quantum Electronics. In 2012, Mak was honored with The Michelson Postdoctoral Prize Lectureship from Case Western Reserve University. Mak's research has been published in such journals as Nature, Science, Nature Physics, Nature Nanotechnology, Nature Materials, the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, Physical Review Letters, and Nano Letters.

Before joining Penn State, Mak was a Kavli Fellow in physics at Cornell University from 2012 to 2014 and a postdoctoral fellow at the Nanoscale Science and Engineering Center at Columbia University from 2010 to 2012. He earned a bachelor's degree in physics and mathematics at Hong Kong University of Science and Technology in 2005 and a doctoral degree in physics at Columbia University in 2010.