{"id":141535,"date":"2024-05-20T10:29:08","date_gmt":"2024-05-20T14:29:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.ucf.edu\/news\/?p=141535"},"modified":"2025-04-24T09:16:19","modified_gmt":"2025-04-24T13:16:19","slug":"two-promising-ucf-researchers-earn-2024-nsf-career-awards","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.ucf.edu\/news\/two-promising-ucf-researchers-earn-2024-nsf-career-awards\/","title":{"rendered":"2 Promising UCF Researchers Earn 2024 NSF CAREER Awards"},"content":{"rendered":"
UCF assistant professors Li Fang and Fan Yao have been named 2024 U.S. National Science Foundation (NSF) Faculty Early Career Development program (CAREER) award winners. The recipients were awarded funding through five years for their submitted projects.<\/p>\n
Fang, who is an assistant professor in UCF\u2019s Department of Physics<\/a> within the College of Sciences<\/a>, is using the CAREER award to study the precise movement of electrons induced by light and to help educate others in her field.<\/p>\n Yao is an assistant professor in UCF\u2019s Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering<\/a> within the College of Engineering and Computer Science<\/a> and a member of the Cyber Security and Privacy<\/a> faculty cluster. He\u2019ll use his CAREER award to identify lapses in computer processing security at the micro level and find ways to defend against them.<\/p>\n The annual award supports an estimated 500 early-career STEM faculty from either institutes of higher education or academic nonprofit organizations who have the potential to serve as academic role models in research and education and to lead advances in the mission of their department or organization.<\/p>\n Through their NSF CAREER awards, both Fang and Yao are continuing to build upon their research and contribute to key components of their respective fields.<\/p>\n Li Fang Li Fang is examining some of the smallest components of matter in some of the shortest amounts of time.<\/p>\n She studies how electrons move after their initial absorption of photo-energy as they attempt to interact, break or form a bond with other molecular components. The purpose of examining these molecular dynamics is crucial in better understanding physics and energy, Fang says.<\/p>\n \u201cThe dynamics of these charged particles will provide fundamental knowledge about energy absorption, dissipation and rearrangement in building blocks of materials and therefore is relevant to energy storage and harvest,\u201d Fang says. \u201cWe implement spectroscopic tools to track the extremely fast motion of these charges. An electron\u2019s motion is the first step in all chemical and photo reactions and ions are the subjects of chemical bonds that exist basically in all materials.\u201d<\/p>\n Fang measures these movements in attoseconds and femtoseconds, which are one billion billionths of a second and one million billionths of a second, respectively.<\/p>\n Attoseconds are the natural time scale for electrons moving inside an atom while femtoseconds are the natural time scale for measuring nuclei moving within a molecule.<\/p>\n Fang\u2019s NSF CAREER project will help her further uncover and measure how light can instigate changes at the molecular level and then share her research with the greater scientific community.<\/p>\n \u201cThe goal is to understand the ultrafast electron motion induced by intense laser beams and its correlation with the motion of the nuclei in a molecule,\u201d she says. \u201cAn equally important part of my NSF CAREER award is the educational subproject, the goal of which is to introduce my research field \u2018ultrafast science\u2019 to a broader audience through media and local events.\u201d<\/p>\n Fang came to 女仆AV in 2020 from the Ohio State University.<\/p>\n Since arriving, she has garnered significant funding and support for her projects. In 2020, Fang was one of 76 recipients \u2013 and the only recipient from Florida \u2013 to be awarded an early career research program grant from the U.S. Department of Energy<\/a>.<\/p>\nCapturing Energy in a Fraction of a Second<\/h2>\n
\n<\/strong>Department of Physics
\n<\/strong>Title:<\/strong> Photo-induced Ultrafast Electron-nuclear Dynamics in Molecules
\nAward:<\/strong> $813,981 over five years<\/p>\n