UCSD’s Chunhui Du Receives Air Force’s Young Investigator Research Program Award for Nanoscale Quantum Sensing
(UCSD) UC San Diego’s Chunhui Du is using defects in diamonds to work toward the goal of superconductivity to move charge currents through a material without resistance.
Out of more than 200 proposals submitted to the Air Force Office of Scientific Research (AFOSR), the assistant professor of physics is one of 36 scientists and engineers from 27 research institutions and businesses in the U.S. whose creative, basic research proposal was recently selected for the Air Force’s Young Investigator Research Program (YIP) Award. YIP seeks out individuals who show exceptional ability and promise for conducting basic research of military interest. Du was selected for her brand of “brilliance”—nanoscale quantum sensing, a technique developed by her and members of the Du Research Lab at UC San Diego.
Nanoscale quantum sensing uses quantum probes to measure the properties of materials. The advantage of this is that many quantum objects—for example, a single electron spin, which can function like a tiny magnet—are extremely sensitive to their environmental conditions and can out-perform their classical counterparts.