The University of Northern Iowa physics faculty has received national funding to support four projects focused on quantum information and computing, biomanufacturing, and engineering.
The National Science Foundation has awarded the university three grants; the largest is a five-year, $20 million grant in which UNI will partner with the University of Iowa, Iowa State University, Central College and Dordt University to use the state’s expertise in agriculture to strengthen industries biosciences and advanced manufacturing.
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According to a press release, UNI physics professor Tim Kidd will lead research efforts on fibers for flexible and rigid materials as principal investigator.
Kidd and fellow physics professor Andrew Stollenwerk received a three-year, $550,000 grant from the National Science Foundation to investigate how adding carbon to certain materials could affect their electrical and optical properties, according to the release. Texas Tech University professor Rui He will work with UNI faculty on the project.
“Not only are these funds helping to make Iowa more technologically competitive, but through extensive undergraduate research opportunities, students will learn practical skills that cannot be replicated in the classroom,” Stollenwerk said in the release.
ISU and UNI professors will also work together to study materials related to quantum information storage and processing, funded by an $800,000 grant from the National Science Foundation, of which UNI is among 20 universities in the country to support it. they will receive. According to the release, Kidd will work as principal investigator with ISU associate professor Lin Zhou as co-principal investigator and UNI faculty members Pavel Lukashev, Paul Shand and Ali Tabei.
The US Department of Energy also awarded Kidd, Stollenwerk, Lukashev and Shand a $500,000 grant to create “two-dimensional materials” to be used in quantum computing and future electronics. According to the statement, UNI is the only undergraduate university that receives funding for these objectives.
Shand said in the release that the opportunities these projects create will be open to students studying physics or enrolling in the university’s new materials science and engineering program launching in the fall.
“These awards are a sign of the constant high-quality research carried out by the UNI physics faculty over the past decade, which led to numerous publications in top-level scientific journals,” Lukashev said in the statement.
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