UCSD Physics Awards

The American Physical Society has announced that UCSD Physics faculty member Sunil Sinha is among the 149 people chosen as Outstanding Referees of the Physical Review and Physical Review Letters journals.

Initiated in 2008, the Outstanding Referee program expresses appreciation for the essential work that anonymous peer reviewers do for our journals. Each year a small percentage of our 60,000 active referees are selected and honored with the Outstanding Referee designation. Selections are made based on the number, quality, and timeliness of referee reports as collected in a database over the last 25 years. The program recognizes about 150 referees each year, although larger groups were selected in 2008 and 2009. A full listing and further details on the program are available here.

Click here to view the American Physical Society press release.

Twenty-five individuals, units and departments will be recognized for their contributions to diversity and equal opportunity at UC San Diego and in the community at a ceremony 2 p.m. Feb. 14 at the Price Center West Ballrooms. They will receive the 2011 Equal Opportunity/Affirmative Action and Diversity Awards.

The awards recognize individuals, departments and organizational units that have made outstanding contributions in support of UC Diego's commitment to diversity. A review committee composed of representatives from each vice chancellor area evaluated the nominations and recommended the recipients for approval by Chancellor Marye Anne Fox...Read More

My congratulations to all of the students recognized today who are receiving this award. The Dean's Undergraduate Awards for Excellence was established in 2004 to recognize undergraduate students who have demonstrated academic excellence and promise as researchers in the Division of Physical Sciences.

This award given to these exceptional students honors the caliber of their accomplishments as undergraduates enrolled in the various majors of the Departments of Chemistry and Biochemistry, Mathematics, Physics and the Environmental Systems Program. The faculty and staff of the Division of Physical Sciences are very proud of their successes and achievements.

In my more than two decades at UC San Diego, I have always been astounded by the extraordinary level of excellence of our students. This award is recognition of that excellence and the pride I have in the students here... Read More

Physics' recipients:
   Gurleen Bal
   Daniel Brownstead
   Kang Choi
   Vikrant Grewal
   Cameron Liang

Physics 120B is a projects-based course; students conceive, design, and build a microprocessor-based gizmo of their choice, with support from faculty and staff. The only constraints imposed are that the gizmo should measure something in the real world, process this information, and control something in the real world... Read More

Nine professors at the University of California, San Diego have been named 2011 Fellows of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, the nation's largest scientific organization.

Lu Sham, professor of physics, is a theoretical condensed matter physicist whose research is focused on the optical control of electron spins in semiconductor nanostructures for quantum information processing and spintronics. He is a member of the National Academy of Sciences and Academia Sinica. In addition, he is a Fellow of the American Physical Society and Optical Society of America.

Dmitri N. Basov received the M.S. degree (1988) from Moscow Engineering Physics Institute and the Ph.D. (1991) from Lebedev Physics Institute, Academy of Sciences of Russia. He was a postdoctoral Research Associate at the University of Regensburg (1991) and McMaster University (1992-1996). In 1996, he held an Assistant Physicist appointment at Brookhaven National Laboratory.

He joined the faculty of the University of California, San Diego as an Assistant Professor in 1997 and was promoted to Professor in 2001. At present, he serves as the Chair of the Physics Department.

Throughout his career, Basov has developed and used various infrared techniques to investigate novel electronic and magnetic phenomena in a wide variety of materials including high-Tc superconductors, transition metal oxides, ferromagnetic semiconductors, organic materials, and - most recently - graphene. A leitmotif of his research is to explore optical phenomena originating from many body effects and electronic correlations. Basov is a Fellow of the American Physical Society (2005). He was awarded the Ludwig Genzel prize in 2004 and the Humboldt Research Prize in 2009.

Dr. Coil will carry out three complementary research projects to tackle several key outstanding questions in galaxy evolution. Her goal is to uncover the physical processes behind the dramatic evolution observed in galaxies and AGN in the latter half of cosmic history, focusing specifically on the build-up of stellar mass in galaxies, the role of environment on AGN accretion, and the prevalence and importance of outflowing galactic winds. Her work will primarily use data from the PRIsm MUlti-object Survey (PRIMUS), the largest faint galaxy spectroscopic redshift survey taken to date, of which she is a co-I. She and her team will lead projects to measure the evolution in the galaxy stellar mass function, the clustering properties of AGN, and study the physical properties of outflowing galactic winds in distant galaxies.

The broader impacts of this proposal range from increasing student enrollment in the general astrophysics survey course at UCSD to increasing the representation of women in physics at UCSD and beyond. Dr. Coil has created a multi-tiered approach targeting women at several levels in the academic pipeline, focusing on middle school and graduate students, as well as postdoctoral researchers. She will expand the Women in Physics group she recently created at UCSD to use mentoring to both support and enhance the experiences of current graduate student and postdoctoral women in the physics department, as well as to recruit more women to the program. She will also engage female graduate students in outreach aimed at middle school girls, through the use of hands-on physics demos. This proposal will also train and mentor graduate students and a postdoctoral scholar in the research activities described above.

The National Academy of Sciences today elected three professors at the University of California, San Diego to membership in the National Academy of Sciences, one of the highest honors bestowed on U.S. scientists and engineers.

Professor Herbert Levine was among the 72 new members and 18 foreign associates elected to the academy today "in recognition of their distinguished and continuing achievements in original research."

They join 89 current members of the UC San Diego faculty who previously had been named to membership in the academy, which was established by Congress in 1863 to serve as an official adviser to the federal government on matters of science and technology.

Herbert Levine, a professor of physics, has long been a leader in the theory of complex systems, particularly in the formation of patterns. His early work focused on the branching structures formed by growing crystals and led to the development of new analytical methods and computational strategies. Among his findings is the observation that particular ways of perturbing these systems can impose additional structure, turning disordered fractal patterns into regular branching patterns, like those of snowflakes.

Levine then applied this framework for understanding the physical processes that drive patterns to biological systems. One of the founders and co-director of UC San Diego's Center for Theoretical Biological Physics, which translates insights from physical science into a more quantitative understanding of biology and medicine, Levine and colleagues have been able to explain the patterns formed by colonies of micro-organisms such as bacteria and amoebae and have correlated these with cellular processes controlled by genes. The principles he has helped to uncover explain a wide range of phenomena from the aggregation of amoebae into a slug-like multicellular organism to the waves of calcium that convey information across a single cell.

The Hellman Fellowship Program was established at UCSD in 1995 through the generosity of Chris and Warren Hellman. The program is designed to provide financial support and encouragement to young faculty in the core disciplines who show capacity for great distinction in their research and creative activities. Funds awarded are primarily intended to enhance the individual's progress toward tenure; therefore, faculty would be expected to have served at least two years as an assistant professor, but not yet have been recommended for tenure. Thirty-two proposals were submitted by Arts & Humanities and Social Sciences faculty, of which seventeen were selected for funding. Nine proposals were selected for funding out of twenty-eight submitted by the Biological Sciences, Physical Sciences, and Engineering Divisions. Given the current economic climate and the high caliber of proposals, the selection committees chose to partially fund several proposals in an effort to assist a greater number of promising young faculty.

This is an international interdisciplinary platform to present and discuss new scientific insight and knowledge of highly relevant themes within in the life sciences. This award is based on nomination by a German scientific advisory board and is completely funded by Leica Microsystems GmbH. Previous awardees include Roger Tsien and Mark Ellisman from UCSD. David will be giving his lecture in July, 2011.

Alison Coil, assistant professor of physics, was recognized for helping women navigate the transition from graduate student to independent scientist, a critical time when many women drop out of the field. She has gathered a group of graduate students and postdocs in physics who regularly meet to discuss career strategies. With a roster of visitors and among themselves, they have talked about how to apply for jobs and negotiate an offer, how to counter the often unacknowledged biases that can work against their advancement, and the variety of employment opportunities available to people with a doctorate in physics.

They also meet each spring with visiting prospective students, aiding the department's successful efforts to attract more women to the program. This thriving group now serves as a model for similar efforts to form communities among graduate students in other departments and for undergraduates.

Chancellor Fox will recognize Theimens and Coil with campus-wide 2010 Equal Opportunity/Affirmative Action and Diversity Awards at a ceremony to be held Tuesday, February 8.

December 14, 2010–Patrick Diamond, professor of physics, will share the European Physical Society's 2011 Hannes Alfvén Prize for outstanding contributions to plasma physics with Akira Hasegawa and Kunioki Mima, both of Osaka University in Japan. The three will be recognized "for laying the foundations of modern numerical transport simulations and key contributions on self-generated zonal flows and flow shear decorrelation mechanisms which form the basis of modern turbulence in plasmas." Diamond leads the plasma fusion group at UCSD. He founded and co-led the group with Marshall Rosenbluth, who was the 2002 recipient of this prize.

The Hellman Fellowship Program was established at UCSD in 1995 through the generosity of Chris and Warren Hellman. The program is designed to provide financial support and encouragement to young faculty in the core disciplines who show capacity for great distinction in their research and creative activities. Funds awarded are primarily intended to enhance the individual's progress toward tenure; therefore, faculty would be expected to have served at least two years as an assistant professor, but not yet have been recommended for tenure. A total of $375,000 will be available for awards during the 2010-2011 academic year. In accordance with the wishes of the Hellmans, at least two-thirds [$250,000] will be awarded in the physical sciences, life sciences, and engineering. Up to one-third [$125,000] will be awarded in the arts, humanities, and social sciences. Due to the outstanding caliber of the proposals submitted, the selection process was quite a challenge this year. Thirty-seven proposals were submitted by Arts & Humanities and Social Sciences faculty, of which twenty-two were selected for funding. Eight proposals were selected for funding out of twenty-four submitted by the Biological Sciences, Physical Sciences, and Engineering Divisions. Given the current economic climate, both selection committees chose to partially fund a number of these proposals in an effort to stretch the funds to assist a greater number of promising young faculty.

UCSD physics Professor Oleg Shpyrko has received an NSF Faculty Early Career Development Program (CAREER) Grant. The CAREER Program offers the National Science Foundation's most prestigious awards in support of junior faculty who exemplify the role of teacher-scholars through outstanding research, excellent education and the integration of education and research within the context of the mission of their organizations.
This Faculty Early Career Award will support research aiming to investigate the relationship between dynamical, mechanical, and structural properties of nanoscale-thick films, using synchrotron x-ray surface scattering probes at both the existing and the next generation light sources. Understanding the fundamental relationship between structure and function of materials such as biological membranes, self-assembled monolayers and thin polymer films at the nanoscale is crucial for many disciplines ranging from condensed matter and chemistry to biology, engineering and nanotechnology.
More information on Prof. Shpyrko's research is available at http://oleg.ucsd.edu

The Sloan Research Fellowships have been awarded since 1955 and is by far the oldest program of the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation, although those who receive the grants are among the youngest researchers the Foundation assists. The Fellowship program has grown in size and cost over the years and now includes several disciplines not covered in the beginning; but its purpose - to stimulate fundamental research by early-career scientists and scholars of outstanding promise - remains the same. The Sloan Research Fellowships support the work of exceptional young researchers early in their academic careers, and often at pivotal stages in their work," says Paul L. Joskow, President of the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation. Dr. Coil's field of research lies at the interface between large-scale structure and galaxy evolution, and she will receive a grant of $50,000 over a two year period.

Physics Professor Jose Onuchic has been elected a Corresponding Member of the Brazilian Academy of Sciences (Academia Brasileira de Ciências). Onuchic, who is co-director of the Center for Theoretical Biophysics, will officially be inducted to the academy on May 4, 2010 at Copacobana Palace in Rio de Janeiro.
The 620 member academy was founded in 1916 and remains the country's foremost scientific association.
More information on the academy's new members can be obtained at: Academic Brasileira de Ciencias

An astrophysicist at the University of California, San Diego whose wide-ranging research advanced our understanding of how stars, spiral galaxies and planetary systems form has been awarded the $1-million Shaw Prize in Astronomy. Frank H. Shu, a professor of physics UC San Diego, will receive the award "in recognition of his outstanding lifetime contributions in theoretical astronomy" by the Shaw Prize Foundation in Hong Kong, which announced the award today. The prize will be formally presented to him at a ceremony on October 7. The foundation's award, which includes a medal of the philanthropist Sir Run Run Shaw, is annually bestowed on individuals who have made "distinguished and significant" achievements in three categories: astronomy, life science and medicine, and the mathematical sciences. First awarded in 2004, it is sometimes referred to as the "Nobel Prize of the East." "This award is a significant honor for both Frank Shu and UC San Diego," said Chancellor Marye Anne Fox. "It's a validation of the tremendous impact that Frank has had on advancing the field of astronomy." "Frank has long been one of my scientific heroes," said Mark Thiemens, Dean of UC San Diego's Division of Physical Sciences. "This prize is one more validation of how significant his influence has been to astronomy, astrophysics and cosmochemistry." Just last month Shu was honored by the Astronomical Society of the Pacific, which announced that he had won its 2009 Catherine Wolfe Bruce Gold Medal for a lifetime of achievement in astronomy. Shu's work on the origins of stars over a span of 30 years generated a comprehensive and widely accepted theory that explains the main events in the birth and evolution of a star from the collapse of a cloud of molecules, to the accretion of a magnetized disk of material from which planets form to the appearance of jets and other outflows from a star system. The theory Shu and his students developed also predicted that comets, once thought to form from pristine materials in the coldest regions of interplanetary space, would contain bits of rock highly transformed by heat. Their unconventional view, put forth in 1996, was confirmed a decade later with the return of dust samples from Comet Wild. Shu received a bachelor's degree in physics from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in 1963 and a PhD in astronomy from Harvard University in 1968. He has served on the faculties of the State University of New York at Stony Brook and UC Berkeley. From 2002 to 2006, Shu served as president of National Tsing Hua University of Taiwan. He joined the faculty at UC San Diego as a distinguished professor of physics in 2006 and also holds the title of University Professor, a UC system-wide honor reserved for scholars of international distinction who are recognized as teachers of exceptional ability.

Thirty-three assistant professors at the University of California, San Diego have been named recipients of the 2009-2010 Hellman Faculty Fellows Awards to support their research and creative activities. The award program was established at UC San Diego through the generosity of Chris and Warren Hellman to provide financial support and encouragement to young faculty and enhance their progress toward tenure.
"Due to the outstanding caliber of the proposals submitted, the selection process was quite a challenge this year," said Paul W. Drake, senior vice chancellor, Academic Affairs. "Forty-two proposals were submitted by Arts & Humanities and Social Sciences faculty, of which 21 were selected for funding. Twelve proposals were selected for funding out of 24 submitted by the Biological Sciences, Physical Sciences and Engineering Divisions. Given the current economic climate, both selection committees chose to partially fund a number of these proposals in an effort to stretch the funds to assist a greater number of promising young faculty," Drake said.
Recipients of the Physical & Biological Sciences and Engineering awards include Ery Arias-Castro and Jiawang Nie, mathematics; Jennifer Cha and Liangfang Zhang, nanoengineering; Alison Coil, Olga Dudko and Oleg Shpyrko, physics; Joshua Figueroa and Michael Tauber, chemistry and biochemistry; Colin Jamora and Emily Troemel, cell and developmental biology; and Gert Lanckriet, electrical and computer engineering.
Arts & Humanities and Social Sciences awardees were Syed Ali, economics; Ivano Caponigro, linguistics; Robert Castro, theatre and dance; Dennis Childs, Amelia Glaser, Anna Springer and Luis Martin-Cabrera, literature; Nitin Govil and John McMurria, communication; Adria Imada, Sara Kaplan and K. Wayne Yang, ethnic studies; Nancy Kwak and Patrick Patterson, history; Lei Liang, music; April Linton, sociology; Edmund Malesky, IRPS; Sebastian Saiegh, political science; Clinton Tolley and Christian Wuthrich, philosophy, and Alison Wishard Guerra, education studies.

The Humboldt Research Award, valued at 60,000 euro, from the Alexander von Humboldt Foundation in Bonn, Germany grants up to 100 Humboldt Research Awards annually in recognition of a researcher's entire achievements and "whose fundamental discoveries, new theories, or insights have had a significant impact on their own discipline and who are expected to continue producing cutting-edge achievements in future."
Award winners are invited to spend a period of up to one year cooperating on a long-term research project with specialist colleagues at a research institution in Germany.

Astrophysicist Frank Shu, a professor of physics at the University of California, San Diego will receive the 2009 Catherine Wolfe Bruce Gold Medal for a lifetime of achievement in astronomy, the Astronomical Society of the Pacific announced May 1.
"It was a great pleasure to learn of Frank winning the Bruce Medal," said Mark Thiemens, dean of the Division of Physical Sciences at UC San Diego who works in related fields. "I have known his work intimately over the years, and he has always been a scientific hero to me. Its great and fitting that he has received this recognition."
Shu has made paradigm-shifting contributions to our understanding of how astronomical structures such as stars and spiral galaxies form. His work on the origins of stars over a span of 30 years has generated a comprehensive and widely accepted theory that explains the main events in the birth and evolution of a star from the collapse of a cloud of molecules, to the accretion of a magnetized disk of material from which planets form to the appearance of jets and other outflows from a star system.
The theory Shu and his students developed also predicted that comets, once thought to form from pristine materials in the coldest regions of interplanetary space, would contain bits of rock highly transformed by heat. Their unconventional view, put forth in 1996, was confirmed a decade later with the return of dust samples from Comet Wild.
Shu received a bachelor's degree in physics from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in 1963 and a PhD in astronomy from Harvard University in 1968. He has served on the faculties of SUNY Stony Brook and UC Berkeley. From 2002-2006, Shu served as president of National Tsing Hua University of Taiwan. He joined the faculty at UC San Diego as a distinguished professor of physics in 2006 and also holds the title of University Professor, a system-wide honor reserved for scholars of international distinction who are recognized as teachers of exceptional ability.
The Astronomical Society of the Pacific will present the medal at the annual meeting in Millbrae, California in September.
Media Contact: Susan Brown, 858-246-0161, sdbrown@ucsd.edu

UCSD physics Professor Olga Dudko has received an NSF Faculty Early Career Development Program (CAREER) Grant. The CAREER Program offers the National Science Foundation's most prestigious awards in support of junior faculty who exemplify the role of teacher-scholars through outstanding research, excellent education and the integration of education and research within the context of the mission of their organizations. Prof. Dudko received the award for her proposal to develop new theoretical approaches that will advance our understanding of fundamental physical principles that govern the structure formation and functioning of biological macromolecules at the single-molecule level. The proposed strategy is to use the great explanatory power of non-equilibrium physics to target for rapid advances the emerging field of single-molecule biophysics, and at the same time to motivate new physical concepts through the exploration of biological processes at the level of individual biomolecules. Prof. .Dudko's group uses theoretical and computational methods with the focus on quantitative, analytically tractable descriptions. More information on Prof. Dudko's research is available at http://dudko.ucsd.edu

Ivan will present the Faculty Research Lecture entitled, "When Things Get Small" Tuesday, April 14, 2009 at the Center for Molecular Genetics. The reception is at 3:30PM followed by the lecture at 4:00PM.
(Map to Lecture Location)
Ivan is being recognized for his contributions in transforming shake-and-bake metallurgy into a precise, nano-scale science. The award also recognizes his ability to present difficult concepts to both experts and lay people with excitement and humor. Schuller was the star of UCSD-TV's award-winning documentary "When Things Get Small" about nanoscience.
In addition to playing a wacky version of himself in that documentary, Schuller is a fellow of the American Physical Society and a member of the Chilean, Spanish and Belgian Academies of Sciences. He has won many awards, including the American Physical Society's Wheatley and Adler Awards, the German von Humbold prize, the Materials Research Society Medal and the Department of Energy's Lawrence Award. He also recently received a Doctor Honoris Causa from the oldest and largest university in Spain, Universidad Complutense. He has published more than 450 technical papers and patents, has given more than 250 invited lectures at international conferences and is one of the 100 most-cited physicists worldwide, out of 500,000, in the last 15 years.
The Academic Senate Faculty Research Lecturer Award was established in 1982 and started recognizing faculty for the 1983 academic year. At that time, the award went to one faculty member each year. In 1996, the senate decided to recognize two faculty members per year. Past recipients include Roger Tsien, Vilayanur S. Ramachandran, David Noel Freedman and Elizabeth Barrett-Connor, among more than 20 others.

Physics Professor Lu J. Sham has been named one of 61 members elevated to the rank of fellow of the Optical Society of America. Sham is being recognized for contributions to the theory of the optical properties of crystalline solids and of solid-state quantum information processing. Fellows are selected on a variety of criteria such as record of significant publications or patents related to optics, service to OSA and achievements in optics and management ability.
"OSA fellows are involved in the most innovative advances in optics and photonics today," said OSA President Thomas Baer. "Now more than ever, the achievements of these leaders in industry, academia, and government are not only benefiting others in the field of photonics, but also broader critical areas like medicine, alternative energy and the environment. On behalf of OSA, I am very pleased to acknowledge Lu's outstanding contributions and honor him with this well-deserved distinction."
This year's fellows represent the best and brightest in optics and photonics from all over the world with more than half of the chosen fellows hailing from outside of the United States.

The Centennial Medal was instituted in 1989 on the occasion of the 100th anniversary founding of the Graduate School. Shu was one of four medalists awarded the honor this year. Past medalists have included the economists James Tobin and Robert Solow, author Margaret Atwood, philosopher Susan Sontag, physicists Philip Anderson and Walter Kohn, chemist Richard Zare and writer Kevin Starr.

Associated Universities, Inc. (AUI), and the National Radio Astronomy Observatory (NRAO) have awarded the 2008 Karl G. Jansky Lectureship to Dr. Arthur M. Wolfe of the University of California, San Diego (UCSD). The Jansky Lectureship is an honor established by the trustees of AUI to recognize outstanding contributions to the advancement of radio astronomy.
Dr. Wolfe has made major contributions in several areas of astronomy. Along with Rainer Sachs, he predicted the Sachs-Wolfe Effect, a phenomenon which forms the basis for modern precision cosmology using the background radio emission left over from the Big Bang. In the 1970s, he discovered that light emitted by very distant galaxies is absorbed by hydrogen atoms in previously-undetected intervening gas clouds. From the 1980s until the present, he used optical light emitted by distant quasars to show that these clouds are the progenitors of stars found in modern galaxies. This phenomenon has since been used extensively to study the production of heavy elements and history of star formation in the Universe. He also did landmark research on whether the fundamental constants of nature, such as the charge of the electron and the masses of elementary particles, do, in fact, remain constant through cosmological time.
Dr. Wolfe was the Director of the Center for Astrophysics and Space Sciences at UCSD from 1997 to 2007. He joined UCSD as a Professor of Physics and Astronomy in 1989, leaving the University of Pittsburgh, where he had taught since 1973. He holds the Chancellor's Associates Chair of Physics at UCSD. Dr. Wolfe received his Ph.D from the University of Texas at Austin. He is a Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, and received the Sackler Fellowship of the Institute of Astronomy at the University of Cambridge, UK, in 2004.
As Jansky Lecturer, Wolfe will give a presentation entitled, Finding the Gas that Makes Galaxies, at NRAO facilities in Charlottesville, Virginia, Green Bank, West Virginia, and Socorro, New Mexico. The dates of these scientific lectures, which are open to the public, will be announced later.
This is the forty-third Jansky Lectureship. First awarded in 1966, it is named in honor of the man who, in 1932, first detected radio waves from a cosmic source. Karl Jansky's discovery of radio waves from the central region of the Milky Way started the science of radio astronomy. Other recipients of the Jansky award include five Nobel laureates (Drs. Subrahmanyan Chandrasekhar, Arno Penzias, Robert Wilson, William Fowler, and Joseph Taylor) as well as Jocelyn Bell-Burnell, discoverer of the first pulsar, and Vera Rubin, discoverer of dark matter in galaxies.
The National Radio Astronomy Observatory is a facility of the National Science Foundation, operated under cooperative agreement by Associated Universities, Inc.

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The Advanced Photon Source (APS) Users Organization has named Oleg G. Shpyrko of the University of California, San Diego, as the recipient of the 2008 Rosalind Franklin Young Investigator Award. The award recognizes an important technical or scientific accomplishment by a young investigator that depended on, or is beneficial to, the APS. Shpyrko will receive the award on May 5 at the 2008 Users Week at Argonne National Laboratory, where he will also present his work.
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Dr. Hanan Dery has been selected for inclusion in the sixth annual SCIENTIFIC AMERICAN 50. "This award honors 50 individuals, teams, companies and other organizations whose accomplishments in research, business or policymaking during 2006-2007 demonstrate outstanding technological leadership." Dr. Dery was selected as "a research leader fordeveloping a spintronics logic gate".
Dr. Dery, now an assistant professor in ECE, University of Rochester, did this work in Professor Lu Sham's group at UCSD from 2004 to 2007. This was part of the collaborative work on the theory of spintronics with Dr. Lukasz Cywinski (Ph.D. 2007), Mr. Parin Dalal (current graduate student), and Professor Sham.
The basic component of the theory is a three terminal device with three small magnet bars over a semiconductor. The strength of an electric current from one bar to another through the semiconductor should be strong when the two magnets point in the same direction and weak in opposite directions. When the medium is a metal, this constitutes the "giant magnetoresistance effect" (the subject of the Nobel Prize in Physics this year). But the large conductivity difference between the semiconductor medium and the magnet bars reduces the current differential to insignificance. Yet, semiconductor has the potential for electronics functions which metal would not possess. Calculation shows that in the semiconductor medium the magnet bars create a large difference between electrons of two difference spin directions. A third magnet bar can be made to manifest the current or voltage difference of the relative magnetic directions of the first two. Thus, the three terminal system is a basic spin transistor with a non-volatile memory carried by two of the magnets. The spin-dependent current amplification of the three terminal device has been demonstrated by Lei Zhu and Ed Yu at ECE, UCSD and by D. Saha,M. Holub, and P. Bhattacharyaat ECE, University of Michigan.
An addition of another pair of magnets carrying a second bit of information makes the five terminal device a spin-based logic gate. A circuit is then designed to cascade the information to a whole tree of similar spin gates. The work was published in Nature in 2007. This provides a vision of spin-based electronics with the potential to supplement and to supplant the current CMOS technology.

Dr. Wu will receive a grant of $50,000 over a two year period.
The Sloan Research Fellowships support the work of exceptional young researchers early in their academic careers, and often at pivotal stages in their work," says Paul L. Joskow, President of the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation.
The Sloan Research Fellowships have been awarded since 1955. Wu is studying novel phases and properties in various fields of condensed matter physics, including metal-insulator transitions, magnetism and superconductivity, and quantum computation.

Sackler Fellowship, University of Cambridge, 2004-2007

Chancellor's Associates Chair of Physics, 1997