Paul Braun, Director of MRL and Racheff Professor of Materials Science and Engineering, and David Cahill, Willet Professor of Materials Science and Engineering, have received Defense University Research Instrumentation Program (DURIP) awards.
The DURIP is designed to improve the capabilities of accredited United States institutions of higher education to conduct research and to educate scientists and engineers in areas important to national defense by providing funds for the acquisition of research equipment or instrumentation.
The research supported by these awards includes: Paul Braun, “Characterization Triad for Advanced Analysis of Charged Polymers, Capsules and Surfaces”; David Cahill, “Gigahertz Frequency Optical Pump-Probe (GFOPP) Metrology Tool for High Sensitivity Measurements of Acoustic Dissipation and Elastic Constants”; and Brian DeMarco, “Producing and Manipulating Ultracold Ground State Sodium-Rubidium Molecules.” All three projects will advance MRL research programs and facilities.
Braun’s DURIP award will enable important understandings of the self-assembly of responsive and adaptive charged polymers which can translate environmental stimuli the into meaningful actions.
Cahill’s DURIP will advance scientific understanding of the mechanisms that produce damping of mechanical vibrations at microwave frequencies. Materials with low mechanical loss at GHz frequencies are desired for signal processing and quantum computing devices.
Brian DeMarco, Professor of Physics, has also received a DURIP award supporting a new program to build a small quantum computer using qubits composed of single molecules cooled to millionths of a degree above absolute zero and trapped in an array of focused laser beams. Professors DeMarco and Gadway (Physics) will explore an alternative paradigm for quantum computing that harnesses measurements on special entangled qubit states to execute an algorithm.