Itai Cohen describes the challenge of building robots as consisting of two distinct parts: the brain of the robot, and the brawn. The brain refers to the microchip, and the brawn refers to the “legs,” or actuating limbs of the robot. Between these two, the brain – believe it or not – is the easy part. 

Over the next three to five years, each will receive approximately $400,000 to $600,000 from the program, which supports early-career faculty “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,” according to the NSF. Each funded project must include an educational component. Debanjan Chowdhury's Group will develop new theoretical methods for studying these electronic phases. The educational component will include a new podcast series on quantum materials research, workshops for high school science teachers, and undergraduate and graduate student mentoring.

Z. Jane Wang, a professor of physics at Cornell University who has studied some of da Vinci's pioneering analyses but was not involved in the current paper, said the new study revealed a man determined to find an iron law of nature that would shed light on the overall dynamics of falling objects.

Chowdhury is a theoretical physicist interested in addressing the fundamental principles that govern the emergence of new collective phenomena involving trillions of interacting electrons in solid-state materials. His main focus is developing theoretical methods that can describe and predict the quantum behavior of electrons leading to exotic forms of superconductivity and magnetism.

Debanjan Chowdhury (assistant professor, Physics and LASSP; Kavli Institute for Nanoscale Science executive committee member) find that "even a tiny amount of imperfection, inherent in any real-life material, plays a key role" to understanding the switch between a metal and an insulator within a single material. Understanding the physics behind this mysterious phase transition could lead to new complex microscopic circuits, superconductors and exotic insulators that could find use in quantum computing.

Research findings from the lab of Michelle Wang "provid[e] a fresh view into the ways a common chemotherapy agent, etoposide, stalls and poisons the essential enzymes that allow cancer cells to flourish." Co-lead authors and HHMI-funded researchers Dr. Tung Le and Dr. Meiling Wu published their findings in a paper published in Nature Chemical Biology on Jan. 30.

"Enter an education-focused position directly as a new faculty member, as did Natasha Holmes, a physics-education researcher at Cornell who studies the efficacy of laboratory courses. “There are more and more graduate students coming up the pipeline now,” says Holmes, another Wieman protégé."

Researchers from the Cohen Lab pinpoint the neuromuscular components that enable a fruit fly to stabilize its pitch, providing evidence for an organizational principle in which each muscle has a specific function in flight control.

Examining the precise, molecular-level mechanisms involved in Cas binding to DNA, Michelle Wang and colleagues give the first mechanistic explanation of how a motor protein (RNA polymerase) removes a bound dCas, a version of Cas engineered to recognize a DNA sequence without performing a cut.

New research by Prof. Eun-Ah Kim and recent grad Michael Matty describes a phase in between the liquid and the solid for electron crystals – a liquid crystal state.