Broader Impact
Student/postdoc training
Since the start of our prior DMREF project, our team has collectively provided comprehensive training for 2 K12 students, 5 REU students, 18 undergraduate students, 29 graduate students, and 9 postdocs across the breadth of disciplines (e.g., materials physics and modeling, materials chemistry and synthesis, complementary spectroscopies, nanofabrication and transport) through one-on-one mentoring, group meetings, biweekly DMREF team meetings, and informal discussions within and across the five groups. Some of them had additional trainings for using the Texas Advanced Computing Center, Advanced Light Source, and Stanford Synchrotron Radiation Light Source. Among these 63 trainees and advisees, 9 have obtained Ph.D. degrees, 10 have entered graduate school STEM programs, and 3 have become professors. Notably, Q. Wang was awarded the 2021 Steven Weinberg Research Award by the Texas Section of APS, and S. Talkington was awarded an NSF Graduate Research Fellowship.
Public engagement
(i) After the two-year pandemic, our team (including PI’s, students, and postdocs) had an in-person meeting on the UTD campus in October 2022. Besides discussing progress, exchanging ideas, and training students and postdocs, we collaborated with the NSM school of UTD to use all the monitors across the campus to introduce the MGI and DMREF programs, the key results achieved in our DMREF project, the NASEM’s report “Protecting US Technological Advantage”, and the CHIPS and Science Act. (ii) In January 2023, we organized a 2-day workshop, “Quasi-1D Topological Quantum Materials”, and 14 talks from leading experts on this theme were recorded and documented in our Youtube channel that is open to the public (@quasi-1d). (iii) Our team opened a twitter account (q1dtm) specific to quasi-1D topological materials to publicize relevant research results and other news, e.g., from NSF. (iv) Team members have given 118 invited talks at various institutes and conferences, and results in our DMREF project were disseminated in more than half of them. Our students and postdocs have given 30 oral presentations in APS March Meetings to present results in our DMREF project.
National policy
Birgeneau chaired the DOE committee on “The Scientific Justification for a U.S. Domestic High-Performance Reactor-Based Research Facility” in 2020, which mapped out a strategy for the U. S. for the next 50 years for nuclear reactor-based facilities where research ranging from neutrinos to quantum materials to nuclear submarines (but excluding nuclear power) is carried out. Birgeneau also served on the NASEM “Committee on Protecting Critical Technologies for National Security in an Era of Openness and Competition”, which examined the tensions between national security, economic competitiveness, and openness in research for the U.S.; of particular interest was the international makeup of the U.S. science and technology workforce. The committee issued a report in September 2022, “Protecting U.S. Technological Advantage”, which will have a major impact on the U.S. policy on research including the Congress and the White House, with profound implications for the future of the U.S. research enterprise.
Broad participation
Our team has been active in increasing the participation of under-represented groups in STEM education and research. Birgeneau has created a new endowed program for under-represented minority graduate students in physics at UC Berkeley, as well as a new endowed fund for under-represented graduate students in materials sciences and engineering (personally funded). Yi participated as a panelist on Diversity/Equity/Inclusion (DEI) during an Advanced Light Source meeting to discuss her experience balancing career and family as a woman in science. Birgeneau and Yi are members of their departmental DEI committees. Zhang supervised an LGBT graduate student whose Ph.D. dissertation includes the study of the optical properties of quasi-1D topological materials. Lau served in the OSU Physics Dept’s DEI committee and supervised a female graduate student who obtained her Ph.D. based on her research leading the fabrication and transport studies of quasi-1D topological materials. Lv mentored four undergraduate students who won the Undergraduate Research Awards at UTD; one is under-represented minority and another received an Air Force Research Lab Summer Internship in 2022.