JILA Fellow Konrad Lehnert.
JILA Fellow Konrad Lehnert has been awarded the Vannevar Bush Faculty Fellowship, the Department of Defense’s most prestigious single-investigator award. With up to $3 million in funding, the VBFF is a five-year fellowship which supports basic research with the potential for transformative impact.
Formerly known as the National Security Science and Engineering Faculty Fellowship, the program changed its name in 2016 to commemorate the late Dr. Vannevar Bush, who was the director of the Office of Scientific Research and Development during WWII and the author of “Science, The Endless Frontier.” Bush was an ardent advocate for basic research who made innovative contributions to the national security. JILA Fellow Margaret Murnane won this Fellowship in its inaugural competition in 2008.
Lehnert’s proposed research aims to understand and quantum control phonons, the quantum packets of sound. While physicists have explored quantum control of light for new computers and electronics, sound waves behave quite differently than light waves, and in ways that could advance quantum information science. Sound is a hundred thousand times slower than light, so it can be used to create multiple modes in a smaller cavity—which could be used to store and process information on a smaller chip. Lehnert’s research group explores phonons’ potential for quantum computing, information processing, information security, and sensing.
Congratulations to Dr. Lehnert!
The Physics Frontiers Centers (PFC) program supports university-based centers and institutes where the collective efforts of a larger group of individuals can enable transformational advances in the most promising research areas. The program is designed to foster major breakthroughs at the intellectual frontiers of physics by providing needed resources such as combinations of talents, skills, disciplines, and/or specialized infrastructure, not usually available to individual investigators or small groups, in an environment in which the collective efforts of the larger group can be shown to be seminal to promoting significant progress in the science and the education of students. PFCs also include creative, substantive activities aimed at enhancing education, broadening participation of traditionally underrepresented groups, and outreach to the scientific community and general public.