Matthias Fuchs, assistant professor of physics and astronomy, has been selected to the Young Investigator Research Program by the Air Force Office of Secondary Research. The program supports promising researchers who have earned doctorates within the last five years by providing them with $360,000 in funding over the next three. Fuchs, who joined UNL in 2013, said the central goal of the research is the development of a novel technique that could shrink the size of high-power X-ray sources from a typical footprint of more than a dozen football fields to roughly that of a dining room table. The technique, he said, should significantly improve the quality of X-ray emissions by producing radiation at least a trillion times brighter than the sun’s. It will also generate X-ray pulses lasting only a few femtoseconds. Counting to one second by intervals of 60 femtoseconds per minute would take more than 31 million years.
“Such ultra-short pulses allow us to take a deep look into matter on the atomic scale,” Fuchs said. “We can spatially (examine) individual atoms, and with the extremely short duration of the pulses, we can look at atomic motion in real time. These combined properties allow us to make ‘molecular movies’ of atomic dynamics.”
This advanced insight into atomic processes, Fuchs said, could ultimately contribute to the next generation of clean energy, bolster the speed of information technology and inform the design of novel materials.
Waskar Ari, associate professor of history and ethnic studies, has earned a fellowship from the American Council of Learned Societies. The fellowship will supply a salary stipend to Ari during the Fall 2015 semester, which will allow him to continue working on his research project, Women’s Strategies of Autonomy: Segregation, Sexuality, and Agrarian Reforms in Bolivia 1870-1964. The ACLS is a leading private institution that supports scholars in the humanities and related social sciences at the doctoral and postdoctoral levels and has been awarding fellowships to scholars for nearly 90 years. Fellows and grantees in all programs are selected by committees of scholars appointed for this purpose.
Alecia Kimbrough, assistant dean for business and finance in the College of Arts and Sciences; and Lindsay Augustyn, outreach and communications coordinator in the center for science, mathematics and computer education, were honored at the University Association for Administrative Development's Founders Day celebration Feb. 20. Ron Yoder, associate vice chancellor of IANR, provided the keynote presentation and presented the annual Carl A. Donaldson and Floyd S. Oldt awards. Kimbrough received for the Carl A. Donaldson Award for Excellence in Management, while the Floyd S. Oldt Award for Exceptional Service and Dedication went to Augustyn. UAAD's mission is to provide leadership, networking, professional development and growth on behalf of UNL's managerial and professional employees. UAAD serves as a contributing partner to the university mission of teaching, research and outreach; for more information, go tohttp://uaad.unl.edu/welcome.
