FAMU physics professor Mogus D. Mochena, Ph.D., has been awarded a $350,000 National Science Foundation (NSF) grant to study extremely tiny semiconductor structures known as nanostructures, which are expected to function as components of spintronics, the next generation of electronics.
The latest award, brings Mochena’s total grant funding awards up to $2 million since joining the FAMU faculty.
In addition to solving some of the world’s most complex scientific problems, Mochena uses his research to encourage students to seek careers in advanced technology industry to major in applied physics.
“We need students with physics backgrounds to work on challenging but very interesting problems,” Mochena said. “For instance, physicists work on complex problems involving biology. The current COVID-19 pandemic requires thorough understanding of its protein structure to develop a vaccine against it,” Mochena said. “That requires a fundamental knowledge of physics, biology, and computational science.”
Dean of the College of Science and Technology Richard Alo said the NSF grant will create great opportunities for students.
“Dr. Mochena’s grant provides wonderful opportunities to satisfy young people’s curiosity through the study of Physics,” said Alo. “We expect additional dimensions to our outstanding physics program.”
The research requires a lot of computational time and will take place at the Texas Advanced Computing Center (TACC) at the University of Texas, Austin.
Mochena also has a computing grant to conduct his research on Stampede2 at TACC, which is the fifth fastest computer in the world. TACC is funded by the NSF and is one of the highest performance computing centers in the nation, known as the Extreme Science and Engineering Discovery Environment established by the NSF.