High honors for top scholars

Three faculty members have received Faculty Early Career Development Awards, one of the highest honors given by the National Science Foundation (NSF), to recognize and support those who are considered most likely to become future academic leaders.

The latest UD award recipients are Thomas H. Epps III, assistant professor of chemical engineering, Xinqiao Jia, assistant professor of materials science and engineering, and Michael Shay, assistant professor of physics and astronomy. Winners of the competitive funding award are selected based on high-quality research and its integration with education initiatives.

Epps’ five-year, $460,000 grant will support his research and education program on block copolymers. These self-assembling, nanoscale materials are formed by combining two or more distinct polymer chains. They are advancing the development of the next generation of high-performance materials, from more efficient fuel cells to clothing that is chemical-resistant but breathable.

The materials Epps is developing contain structures that are 1,000 times smaller than the diameter of a human hair and represent the “best of both worlds” because they combine the properties of two or more different polymers.

“An example is to take poly(isoprene), which is found in a rubber band, and chemically bind it to poly(styrene), which is found in a Styrofoam cup,” Epps says. “By combining these two polymers, you would get the properties of both, resulting in an elastic, rubbery material with structural and thermal stability, such as a passenger car tire.”

A component of his NSF award is devoted to increasing the participation of under-represented groups in science and engineering.

In April, Epps also received the 2007 Lloyd Ferguson Young Scientist Award from the National Organization for the Professional Advancement of Black Chemists and Chemical Engineers.

“I want to be able to walk into a classroom and show that anyone who wants to can become a chemical engineer and be successful,” he says. “I chose academia over industry because here you have the opportunity to influence young people, and you also have the ability to tackle the problems that you want to pursue.”

Jia’s $500,000 award will support her research over the next five years as she works to develop strong, yet soft and flexible, biomaterials that can be used to engineer damaged tissues, particularly the vocal folds. This basic research is essential to advancing the highly interdisciplinary field of tissue engineering, in which scientists hope someday to provide synthetic tissues for repairing or replacing damaged human organs.

Jia’s goal is to develop hybrid materials that can respond rapidly and reversibly to mechanical forces for long periods. Mechanically active tissue is found in many areas of the human body—the heart, for example, beats an average of 70 times a minute when resting, and the vocal folds vibrate more than 100 times a second during speech.

“To repair damaged vocal folds, we need ‘filler’ or scaffold material that’s very soft but very strong,” Jia says. “It’s very challenging to create material with both properties. We need to match not only the elasticity of the natural tissue, but also its ability to withstand prolonged mechanical stress.”

Jia credits her father, a self-taught engineer, and her high-school chemistry teacher with inspiring her to pursue a career in science. She says she hopes to have a similar impact on students through the educational component of her research.

She will be introducing students at Morgan State University, a historically black college in Baltimore, to her biomedical research. Middle- and high-school students from across Delaware also will be involved in hands-on research demonstrations in her lab.

For Shay, an estimated $470,000 in NSF funding over the next five years will support his research on magnetic reconnection, a process that can allow high-energy particles from the solar wind to enter the Earth’s magnetic field.

Barreling through space at more than a million miles per hour, the solar wind is made up of plasma, which comprises 99 percent of the visible universe. Plasma is the fourth state of matter—beyond a solid, liquid or gas. It’s what stars and lightning are made of.

Shay’s research on magnetic reconnection is fundamental to understanding space weather, the conditions and phenomena in the region of space surrounding the Earth. He says he hopes his research eventually may lead to a greater capability to predict space weather.

“If we want to send astronauts to the moon or Mars, they could be injured or even killed by radiation from a solar storm,” Shay says. “There are also many communications satellites orbiting the Earth, and the high-energy electrons in this plasma can damage them.”

Another important goal of his NSF project is to engage more students in space physics research.

Shay is advising three UD graduate students focusing on the topic, teaching a graduate course on plasma physics and planning a new course on space physics for undergraduates. He also is committed to working with high school students, particularly minorities, through Delaware Futures, a program that helps students with unrealized potential to become successful college applicants.