Rice University’s Emilia Morosan has been selected as one of 11 scientists and engineers for the 2024 Vannevar Bush Faculty Fellowship (VBFF) to support her work on correlated topological materials. The fellowship is the Department of Defense’s (DoD) most prestigious single-investigator award and supports groundbreaking basic research with the potential to transform various fields.
The VBFF, a five-year fellowship with up to $3 million in funding, encourages innovative ideas where researcher creativity intersects with the unknown. Vannevar Bush Fellows represent a cadre of experts who provide invaluable direction to the DoD in its scientific efforts and also train the next generation of scientists and engineers.
Bindu Nair, director of basic research in the Office of the Under Secretary of Defense for Research and Engineering, highlighted the significance of the fellowship in the DoD announcement.
“The Vannevar Bush Faculty Fellowship is more than a prestigious program. It’s a beacon for tenured faculty embarking on groundbreaking ‘blue sky’ research,” Nair said. “Through this fellowship, the DoD empowers some of the nation’s most talented researchers to pursue ambitious ideas that defy conventional boundaries. The outcomes of VBFF-funded research have transformed entire disciplines, birthed novel fields and challenged established theories and perspectives.”
Morosan, a professor of physics and astronomy, and her research group focus on the design and synthesis of quantum materials with emergent properties. Their work includes studying unconventional topological fermions such as Kramers-Weyl as well as multidegenerate fermions and spin textures including skyrmions.
The team also explores superconductivity, density waves, Kondo materials and complex structures with 2D transition metal dichalcogenides. The group uses solid-state synthesis, vapor transport and flux crystal growth to discover new compounds with exceptional physics and potential applications.
The VBFF will provide Morosan with the resources to explore and discover new correlated topological materials, or materials that have symmetry-protected topological phases, with novel functionalities and control.
“New materials with novel fundamental properties are the foundation for many technological advances,” Morosan said. “Our project will meet the stringent need for new materials with innovations at both the synthetic step and the post-synthesis control, leading to a paradigm shift in low-dissipation energy technologies, quantum sensing and more.”
Morosan received a B.S. in physics from AIexandru Ioan Cuza University in Romania in 1999 and a Ph.D. in physics from Iowa State University in 2005. She joined Princeton University as a postdoctoral associate in 2005 and has been a faculty member at Rice since 2007.
The VBFF, named for Vannevar Bush who played a monumental role in shaping the defense research enterprise as the director of the Office of Scientific Research and Development after World War II, nurtures high-risk and innovative ideas that push scientists toward breakthrough discoveries.