Victor Galitski

Congratulations to Assistant Professor Victor Galitski, who was awarded the National Science Foundation’s CAREER Award. Dr. Galitski’s proposal, entitled “Fluctuation Phenomena Near Quantum Phase Transitions,” was awarded based on scientific and technical merit. NSF funds research in science and engineering through grants, contracts and cooperative agreements.
For more information on NSF Awards visit: http://www.nsf.gov/about/

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UM Tops in Defense Dept. MURI Grants for Third Year

UM Tops in Defense Dept. MURI Grants for Third Year:  Physics Professors Head All Four MURI Projects
Department of Physics faculty have won four primary program awards from the highly competitive federal Multidisciplinary University Research Initiative (MURI) program.  Physics alone received more MURIs than the total awarded to any other university. The MURI program supports multidisciplinary basic research in areas that have potential both for defense and commercial applications.  The two lead researchers in CNAM are:
Michael Fuhrer, Physics and Maryland Nanocenter, “Tailoring the electronic properties of graphene at the nanoscale.”
Richard Greene, Physics, “Searching for New, Practical Superconductors.”

Das Sarma Publications Noted

Sankar Das Sarma, of CNAM, the Condensed Matter Theory Center, JQI and Physics has received accolades for several publications.  Physics Review B listed two articles by Das Sarma in their 2007 Top Ten most-cited papers, “Dielectric Function, Screening and Plasmons in Two-dimensional Graphene” and “Many-body Interaction Effects in Doped and Undoped Graphene: Fermi Liquid Versus Non-Fermi Liquid.”  The papers were listed numbers 1 and 3 respectively.  Also of note, Reviews of Modern Physics identified his paper “Spintronics: Fundamentals and Applications” as the most-cited in the decade, 2000-2009:  Physical Review A listed “Hilbert-space Structure of a Solid-state Quantum Computer: Two-electron States of a Double-quantum-dot Artificial Molecule” as the 4th most-cited article in 2002 and Physical Review Letters identified “Carrier Transport in Two-dimensional Graphene Layers” as the 5th most cited paper in 2007.

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Lobb, Galitski Win IARPA Funding

CNAM faculty Christopher J. Lobb and Victor Galitski are leading an interdisciplinary research collaboration, centered at the University of Maryland (UMD) at College Park, with a $2.8 million award from the Intelligence Advanced Research Projects Activity (IARPA) through the Army Research Office (ARO) to devise, fabricate, study and test a new kind of key component for quantum computing. The scientists will work on novel methods of constructing the crucial, ultra-thin insulating barrier that lies between two superconductors to form a “Josephson junction.” A network of such junctions, employed as quantum bits, or “qubits,” is an extremely promising candidate to serve as a basis for a quantum computer that could solve certain kinds of problems exponentially faster than today’s best supercomputers.   Awardees: Chris Lobb (PI)  Victor Galitski (Co-PI) and Maryland Nanocenter Director Gary Rubloff (Co-PI).
http://www.jqi.umd.edu/images/stories/newsletters/june09newsletter.pdf

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Williams on Congressional Committee

Ellen Williams, CNAM, Physics and IPST, co-authored, as a member of the Congressional Commission on the Strategic Posture of the United States, the final report “America’s Strategic Posture” which provides over 100 findings and recommendations on critical issues related to U.S. nuclear strategy.  The Commission was tasked by Congress to "examine and make recommendations with respect to the long-term strategic posture of the United States."

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Appelbaum in Chemistry World

Ian Appelbaum, CNAM and Physics, was mentioned in Chemistry World, May 2009, in an article on researchers around the world endeavoring to develop advanced computers based on electrons’ spin, rather than just their charge.

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