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April 24, 2007
Three Texas Tech Professors Honored with CAREER Awards
National Science Foundation's most prestigious honor for young researchers.
Written by Ben Samples and Gretchen Pressley
Texas Tech University added not just one feather to the school’s academic cap, but three. The National Science Foundation awarded three Texas Tech professors with the prestigious Faculty Early Career Development Award.
"Texas Tech is very proud of these three individuals," said Dean Smith, vice president of research. "The CAREER award is NSF's most prestigious honor for junior faculty members. These generous awards will provide the opportunity to enhance their careers as teachers and scholars. In that context, Professors Dai, Morales and Weeks are making a tremendous contribution to Texas Tech's overall academic environment."
The award is a highly competitive honor reserved for outstanding scientists and engineers who, early in their careers, show an exceptional commitment to research and education. Fewer than 20 percent of the proposals submitted to the annual competition are funded, according to NSF.
“That Texas Tech received three of these prestigious awards is a testament to the quality of our faculty,” said Kathleen Harris, senior associate vice president for research. “These awards will allow the three recipients to build foundations for long and successful research careers. The awards also will directly benefit our students because each of these projects integrates research and education.”
Lenore Dai
Lenore Dai, assistant professor of chemical engineering, will receive $400,000 during five years to research her proposal, “CAREER: Heterogeneous and Competitive Self-assembly at Liquid-Liquid Interfaces.”
Dai’s research involves the study of solid-stabilized emulsions – one liquid dispersed into another, then stabilized by solid particles. In the past, most emulsions were stabilized using chemicals called surfactants.
Dai’s CAREER proposal contains three areas of focus:
- The use of nanoparticles, instead of surfactants, to stabilize double emulsions. Unlike nanoparticles, many surfactants are unstable and contain toxins, which make them difficult to use in fields such as the administration of drugs.
- The formation of heterogeneous ordered structures at emulsion interfaces. This technique can be used in the process of creating novel materials.
- The use of computational simulations to study the competition between nanoparticles and surfactants. Scientists have studied surfactants for years, but never the relationship between the two.
Dai also will establish research-related open-ended projects in existing courses, establish a new summer program to broaden the participation of minority groups and promote technology transfer.
Jorge A. Morales
Jorge Morales, assistant professor of chemistry, earned a CAREER award for his proposal, called “Building a Direct Dynamics with Coherent States.” Morales receives a total amount of $570,000 for five years starting on Feb. 1.
“We have been working on this project since my arrival at Texas Tech,” Morales said. “This award is the crowning success of all my research efforts for the last six years.”
Morales’ research involves inventing and developing new theories to computationally describe chemical reactions. The theory is then coded into a computer program to perform simulations of chemical reactions.
The proposal funds from the grant will pay for more computers to conduct the research and to support students and post docs developing the project.
“We are trying to recruit a couple of undergraduate students with the grant funds,” Morales said. “We are going to educate them in the science of quantum chemistry and to train them in the computer simulation of chemical reactions. So there is a very big educational component to this project. Those educational and scientific efforts will be primarily directed towards Hispanic students.”
Morales, who was recently granted a tenure position and will be promoted to associate professor on Sept. 1, is not only the second faculty member in the Department of Chemistry to earn a CAREER Award, but the first to receive such a distinction while being in the department since the beginning of his professional academic career.
Brandon Weeks
Brandon Weeks, assistant professor of chemical engineering, will receive $400,000 during five years for his research proposal, “Understanding Nanoscale Properties of Energetic Materials.”
Despite the widespread use of energetic materials throughout the resource and manufacturing industries, nearly 98 percent of recent government funding has gone toward military-based research, resulting in very few new industrial-based energetic materials being produced over the past 100 years.
Weeks will study the properties of energetic materials at the nanometer scale – a level invisible to the naked eye – then use the findings on the macro-level to develop new energetic materials.
“We use energetic materials in creating steel, plastics – even our roads,” Weeks said. “Through this research we hope to develop safer, more efficient explosives.”
Included in Weeks’ proposal were plans to participate in an undergraduate mentoring program, work with a seventh-grade teacher at Atkins Junior High School to introduce math and science activities, develop courses and a minor in energetic materials, and to participate in continuing-education activities. The goal is to cultivate students’ curiosity and encourage them to pursue education in science and engineering fields.
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Web layout by Gretchen Pressley