RCSA Names Two Dozen 2019 Cottrell Scholars

Research Corporation for Science Advancement (RCSA), America's first foundation dedicated wholly to science, announces 24 recipients of its 2019 Cottrell Scholar Awards. These Awards provide $100,000 to each recipient identified as a leader in integrating science teaching and research at a top U.S. research university or a primarily undergraduate institution.

“The Cottrell Scholar (CS) program champions the very best early career teacher-scholars in chemistry, physics and astronomy by providing these significant discretionary awards,” said RCSA President and CEO Daniel Linzer.

Linzer added the program is also designed to foster synergy among faculty at major American research universities and primarily undergraduate institutions through an annual networking event. This year’s Cottrell Scholar Conference will be held July 10-12 in Tucson, Ariz., and is expected to draw about 100 top educators from around the U.S.

“Outstanding candidates are admitted to the ranks of Cottrell Scholars through a stringent peer-review process based on their innovative research proposals and education programs,” said RCSA Senior Program Director Silvia Ronco. 

This year’s Cottrell Scholars include:

Victor M. Acosta, Physics, University of New Mexico, "Hyperpolarization and Detection of Nuclear Magnetic Resonance Using Nitrogen Vacancy Centers in Diamond"

The research plan seeks to develop techniques for using Nitrogen-Vacancy (NV) centers in diamond to generate and detect nuclear magnetization in external fluids. NV-doped diamond films will be used to polarize analyte nuclear spins and detect their magnetic resonance signatures via pulsed optically-detected magnetic resonance methods. An outstanding challenge in this field is to overcome the small thermal polarization of ambient nuclear spins by transferring spin polarization from the diamond to external analyte (hyperpolarization). The proposed research plan will investigate new approaches to tackle this problem involving polarization transfer through intermediate spin systems. The results will improve our fundamental understanding of quantum sensing protocols and the flow of spin polarization across solid-liquid interfaces.

The education plan seeks to develop a graduate study curriculum to train a diverse range of students for careers in computational optics and imaging. While there is strong demand for industrial and academic research in computational optics/imaging, there are presently barriers to collaboration between optical and computational scientists due to a lack of common language and training. My long-term goal is to implement a comprehensive computational optics/imaging graduate training program that includes students with computer science, physics, and engineering backgrounds. Towards this end, I will design a capstone course that includes crash courses on optics and computational methods and introduces students to current research topics in computational optics. I will teach portions of this course as 1-credit summer classes and use preliminary assessment and feedback to refine plans and apply for major training grant funding.