Martin Bojowald and Jun Zhu Win NSF CAREER Awards
Two assistant professors in the Penn State Eberly College of Science have received a Faculty Early Career Development (CAREER) award from the National Science Foundation (NSF). The CAREER award is the most prestigious award in support of junior faculty members exemplifying the role of teacher-scholars through outstanding research, excellent education, and the integration of education and research. The recipients are Martin Bojowald, assistant professor of physics, and Jun Zhu, assistant professor of physics.
The CAREER awards provide five years of funding from the NSF for each of the researchers. The awards are given by the NSF directorates at different times during the federal government's fiscal year, starting in October. Eligibility for the CAREER award is restricted to assistant professors. Over the past five years, 19 other Penn State researchers have received this prestigious award.
Bojowald's research focuses on quantum gravity and cosmology using the loop-quantization approach developed primarily at Penn State. His work has revealed several candidates for cosmological observations of the effects of quantum gravity. He is interested in developing detailed calculation tools for comparing predictions with collected data, such as those anticipated from the Planck satellite scheduled to be launched in 2008 by the European Space Agency. His new methods, called effective equations, can be used to improve the teaching of quantum mechanics. Bojowald also is interested in dynamical coherent states for quantum systems, field theory, and Poisson geometry and its applications in gravity.
Zhu is an experimental physicist who focuses on the electronic properties of structures just above the atomic scale and in the nanometer range. She combines electric-transport measurements and scanned-probe studies. Zhu looks at single-atomic-layer two-dimensional graphene to see how that system behaves differently from gallium arsenide and composite materials that already are well understood, including the silicon metal–oxide–semiconductor field-effect transistor (MOSFET). She also looks at one-dimensional carbon nanotubes and nanowires.