Engineering welcomes Law
Clare Boothe Luce Program supports young UD engineering professor
10:25 a.m., Oct. 9, 2014--Stephanie Law has joined the University of Delaware as the Clare Boothe Luce Assistant Professor of Materials Science and Engineering.
The Clare Boothe Luce Program, which began giving grants in 1989, is now the single most significant source of private support for women in science, mathematics and engineering.
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Law, who completed her doctorate in physics in 2012 at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, studies the use of new materials to control and manipulate light in the mid- and far-infrared ranges. Her work has applications in a wide range of areas, including thermal imaging, gas sensing, thermophotovoltaics, communications, and pharmaceuticals.
“We use a technique called molecular beam epitaxy to grow these materials layer by layer, which enables complete control over the structure of the material as well as its optical properties, allowing us to tailor the material to the application,” Law says.
“We plan to investigate how light behaves in these systems and then use them to create novel devices, such as coatings to enhance the efficiency of emitters or detectors in these wavelength ranges or hyperlenses for subwavelength imaging, which is useful for biological applications.”
Law explains that, while using a microscope allows one to see small features that are not visible to the naked eye, there is a limit to how small a microscope can “see.”
“Many structures inside a human cell, for example, are too small to easily be viewed using a normal optical microscope,” she says. “Instead, these cells must be killed and placed in vacuum and imaged using an expensive electron microscope. This limits researchers’ ability to view biological processes in real time. One application of my research is the creation of ‘hyperlenses,’ which bend light differently from normal microscope lenses and, when placed between the sample and the microscope, allow the imaging of tiny objects in real time using normal microscopes.”
Clare Boothe Luce, the widow of Henry R. Luce, was a playwright, journalist, ambassador, and member of Congress. In her bequest establishing this program, she sought “to encourage women to enter, study, graduate, and teach” in science, mathematics and engineering.
“We are most pleased to have been awarded a prestigious Clare Boothe Luce Assistant Professorship here in the UD College of Engineering, and we’re particularly pleased to welcome Stephanie Law to campus,” says Pam Cook, Unidel Professor of Mathematical Sciences and associate dean of engineering. “Her hiring represents even more progress in developing a stronger women-in-engineering faculty at UD.”
“Nationwide, and at UD, there is an extreme dearth of women faculty in the general area of ‘hard materials,’ an area represented in a number of disciplines, including materials science, mechanical engineering, and electrical engineering,” Cook adds. “The Clare Boothe Luce Assistant Professor will be strongly mentored and supported both from within the department and from the larger college community to further enable the career success of this most promising researcher.”
Babatunde Ogunnaike, dean of the College of Engineering, is grateful for the support of the Clare Boothe Luce Program, which, he says, is part of an ongoing effort within the college to drive a cultural shift for women in traditionally male-dominated science, technology, engineering and mathematics fields.
Law says she looks forward to working with faculty in her new home department as well as across the College of Engineering and the University.
“UD is a great fit for me, with several other faculty having expertise in areas that complement my work,” she says. “It’s a great collaborative environment, and I’ve really been welcomed here.”
Article by Diane Kukich
Photo by Kathy F. Atkinson