Dr. David Awschalom, professor of physics at the University of California, Santa Barbara has been selected as the recipient of the 2010 Materials Research Society Turnbull Award for research funded in large measure by the Air Force Office of Scientific Research.
The David Turnbull Award, one of the three highest honors bestowed upon scientists by MRS, will be awarded to Dr. Awschalom at the MRS Fall Meeting in Boston, Ma. for his achievements and leadership in establishing the field of semiconductor spintronics, including fundamental discoveries of spin transport and coherence in the solid state, developing new experimental techniques and materials engineering for spin-based quantum information science, and for excellence in communication through lecturing and writing.
Air Force Office of Scientific Research physics and electronics program manager, Dr. Harold Weinstock, has for many years funded Professor Awschalom’s fundamental research in Coherent Manipulation of Spins in Semiconductors, as well as Manipulation and Control of Nanometer-scale Magnetism for Multifunctional Information Processing. These two fields, in particular, have the potential to improve future Air Force systems through the utilization of quantum information processing.
Dr. Weinstock states that “Professor Awschalom’s research on the manipulation and control of electronic spin states in diamond films is leading the way to room-temperature-based quantum computing, opening a new generation of information science that will dwarf today’s state-of-the-art computing technologies.”
Dr. Awschalom has expressed appreciation for both the funding of his research by AFOSR and for this notable recognition by MRS.
“I want to thank Dr. Weinstock for his continued support and consistent encouragement of my research agenda, and AFOSR for having the patience and long-term vision regarding the critical nature of materials science for fundamental physics.”
ABOUT AFOSR:
The Air Force Office of Scientific Research (AFOSR), located in Arlington, Virginia, continues to expand the horizon of scientific knowledge through its leadership and management of the Air Force’s basic research program. As a vital component of the Air Force Research Laboratory (AFRL), AFOSR’s mission is to discover, shape and champion basic science that profoundly impacts the future Air Force.
