California Association for Research in Astronomy

In 2004, the Keck II Laser Guide Star Adaptive Optics (LGS AO) system was the first LGS system on a large telescope.  The primary goal of this project is to improve the scientific performance of the AO system by procuring and implementing a next generation laser.  Secondary goals include: (1) operational improvements (such as laser reliability and efficiency) associated with replacing an aging experimental laser with a commercial product; and (2) continued development of WMKO’s next generation AO system.  The existing AO system uses a 13 W pulsed dye laser to excite the sodium atoms in the mesosphere.  The level of AO correction is limited by the laser power and especially by the low coupling efficiency of a pulsed laser to the sodium atoms.  Continuous wave lasers have been demonstrated to have about 10 times the coupling efficiency of the dye laser.  The WMKO team has been collaborating with the European Southern Observatory and a consortium of U.S. observatories to develop a 20 W commercial continuous wave laser.  The resultant laser has been demonstrated in the lab by a consortium of two laser vendors, TOPTICA and MPBC, and has completed its final design.  This next generation laser, meeting all specifications, is now available and will sustain the Observatory’s leadership in LGS AO science for years to come.

Northwestern University

Protein complexes are cellular machines that manage and perform most functions in our cells and in all living organisms.  Scientists continue to struggle to understand their composition, their structure and how they can malfunction.  Because the most revealing and accurate approach—examining native complexes as entire units—has seemed virtually impossible, most analyses have used mass spectrometry of protein fragments, which may lead to partial or misleading results.  A team from Northwestern University, in collaboration with Thermo Fisher Scientific, plans to overcome this major barrier in disease research by developing a new kind of mass spectrometer that combines the advantages of Time-of-Flight (TOF) and Fourier Transform (FT) analyzers.  This instrument will be used to separate an intact protein complex from a mixture and then detect it directly or activate to release its subunits.  The instrument will then detect the intact masses of subunits and the fragmentation products that result from their stepwise disassembly.  To this platform, they will couple new separation strategies and software, followed by application of the combined system to mitochondrial complexes isolated from models of aging and kidney cancer.  This integrated workflow will constitute a major advance in protein mass spectrometry, accelerate the understanding of disease at a molecular level and address a key challenge of this century: to define the human proteome.

University of California, Berkeley

The Kepler Mission has demonstrated the existence of large numbers of Earth-size planets and smaller, but most of them reside over 300 parsecs away, making follow-up study of those planetary systems difficult at best. A team at Berkeley proposes to discover Earth-size planets around nearby stars (within 25 parsecs) to permit imaging and spectroscopy of those nearest planetary systems, and to allow measurements of their outer planets, zodiacal dust, and host star properties. They will build a novel "Habitable Worlds Spectrometer" designed specifically to detect the tiny Doppler shifts of nearby stars that can reveal the Earth-size planets orbiting them. The spectrometer will be deployed at the new 2.4-meter APF Telescope at Lick Observatory, for which the team has access 45% of nights. This spectrometer will achieve a Doppler precision of 0.3 m/s, which is 5x better than the spectrometer designed 10 years ago that is currently being commissioned on the APF. The proposed spectrometer enables the detection of Earth-mass planets. This will be accomplished with a design innovation that shrinks and stabilizes the spectrometer by employing an octagonal fiber that is split into four smaller fiber-optics, thereby slicing the stellar image to half-size. This design permits the detection of Earth-size planets orbiting inward of the habitable zones of nearby stars.

University of Houston

Investigators at the University of Houston and Rice University plan to develop a new chemical imaging system and will use it to study fundamental problems in surface chemistry that are otherwise inaccessible.  Systems to be investigated include the spatial distribution of surface molecules involved in pattern formation on surfaces such as catalytic reaction on metals or lipids, and Langmuir/Langmuir-Blodgett monolayers, which are important models of biological and cell surfaces.  The new technique will combine surface vibrational spectroscopy (sum frequency generation, SFG) and compressive sensing (CS).  The planned CS-SFG microscope will allow for the chemical identification and spatial location of molecules on a variety of surfaces and will be applicable to real world samples to provide a chemical map of the interface.  The technique will be useful for anyone wanting to characterize or study the surface chemistry of solid or fluid interfaces.  The team plans to fully document and publish details of the finished instrument so that others could, affordably, add this imaging modality onto their own systems.

University of Utah

Earth is being bombarded by extremely energetic cosmic radiation from within our galaxy and beyond.  It is clear that understanding the origins of these cosmic rays will require accurate models of the most violent processes in the universe.  Currently, cosmic rays are studied using detectors covering thousands of square kilometers of the Earth’s surface and costing tens of millions of dollars.  The sheer scale of these observatories is thus becoming a limitation to our understanding.  To overcome this limitation, the team will develop a remote sensing technique known as “bistatic radar.”  Evidence for the principle behind this technique was first collected by the MARIACHI project, which used high school based cosmic ray detectors and parasitic radar receivers in a very noisy environment to detect the radar echoes of cosmic-ray induced atmospheric plasmas.  The investigators on the present proposal aim to repeat the MARIACHI measurements in conjunction with a well-established cosmic ray experiment (Utah’s Telescope Array) in a radio-quiet location.  They will develop the detection of these atmospheric anomalies into a tool for studying particle astrophysics, thus enabling high-energy cosmic ray research to proceed into the next generation of sensitivity.

Drexel University

This project will develop a fundamental understanding of bio-molecular interaction pathways between strongly non-equilibrium electrical plasma and living cells.  The work is enabled by recently developed (at Drexel) nanosecond pulsed uniform non-equilibrium plasma (NEP), which makes possible not only the safe application of plasma directly to living tissues, but also accurate plasma characterization.  NEP has been found to produce a variety of important medical and biological effects; however, the mechanisms underlying these effects are not clearly understood.  The major goal of this project is to close the gap in the understanding of NEP characteristics and its effects on biomolecular events in cells.  The project team will study how active species in NEP can be modified through nanosecond control of applied voltage and gasses and determine how these species modulate the effects of NEP on living cells and biomolecules.  To study the effects of NEP on nucleic acids and proteins in solution and in cells, they will utilize biochemical approaches, including mass, Raman, NMR and infrared spectroscopies and small angle X-ray scattering in conjunction with electrical and optical plasma characterization.  Signal transduction pathways affected by NEP treatment of cells will be explored by a combination of biochemical techniques and chemical inhibitors, RNAi and genetically modified cells.

Princeton University

This is a multidisciplinary effort to obtain the best platform for topological quantum computing.  Such a quantum computer would be millions of times more powerful than the best current supercomputer because, using quantum mechanical phenomena, one could manipulate a vast amount of information with a relatively small number of qubits.  One way of defeating the biggest obstacle, decoherence of qubits, is through the use of topology: the information is encoded in a non-local way so that local defects do not affect the qubits.  Recently, it has been theoretically realized that among the best candidates for such topologically ordered phases are certain exotic states of electrons confined to two dimensions in a magnetic field, called fractional quantum Hall states.  The qubits are the quasi-particle excitations of these states, and their robustness to local decoherence is due to the fact that they might obey the so-called non Abelian statistics which describe how the system changes when exchanging indistinguishable excitations.  These states, however, are extremely fragile and their statistics are not known.  The solution to obtaining a viable topological quantum computing platform lies in a concerted effort that combines powerful experimental and engineering techniques with advanced theoretical physics and numerical simulations that will push the boundaries of today’s computing techniques.

University of California, Berkeley

The next generation of predictive models of the biotic response to environmental change must meet the challenge of incorporating the effects of complex interactions among organisms, climate, and their physical and biotic environments.  A great variety of data types are required to meet this challenge, including current and past species’ distributions, the increasing amount of associated data on their genotypes and phenotypes, and how these have changed in space and time, as well as empirical and modeled data on environmental and climate change.  The goal of this project is to develop a Predictive Biosystems Informatics Engine (PBIE), the informatics infrastructure needed to access, visualize, and analyze these rich data sets, thus providing the foundation for building the next generation of models of the biotic response to global change.  The unique combination of data in Berkeley’s Natural History Museums, Field Stations, and faculty labs, the University’s expertise in bioinformatics and the digitizing and serving of organismal and environmental data, and a world-class community of scholars and students make the unprecedented scale and complexity of the proposed effort possible.  The PBIE will innovate with cutting-edge technologies, and once operational, will enable cross disciplinary exploration of the vast and disparate data sources required to understand biotic response to global change.

University of California, San Diego

Approximately one third of the oxygen we breathe is generated through the photosynthesis of marine organisms discovered only in the last 30 years.  These organisms form the base of all marine food webs and are important in regulating the planet’s climate, yet almost everything known about them comes from bulk samples or laboratory experiments.  Their small size presents challenges that have made direct observation in the ocean using existing technology difficult, if not impossible.  A team at UCSD proposes to build the world’s first high resolution, 3D, in situ, underwater microscope.  The microscope will be configured with an inner imaging volume with high spatial resolution nested inside a larger, lower-resolution imaging volume.  Image analysis of data from the high-resolution inner volume will permit identification of marine nanoplankton, while analyses of the larger, outer volume will permit subsequent tracking and behavioral observations.  The microscope will also simultaneously image fluorescence to enable discrimination between zooplankton and different kinds of phytoplankton that are important in global carbon cycling.  The new device and its subsequent use will allow seeing, for the first time, the most abundant organisms on the planet in situ and how they interact with each other.

University of Chicago

Designing and synthesizing materials for efficient transfer of energy and information presents a grand challenge for modern science.  The notion of the chemical bond, developed in the early 20th century from the principles of quantum theory, revolutionized the ability to predict static and dynamic properties of molecules.  A team at the University of Chicago proposes to create a theoretical framework for synthesizing and assembling nanostructures with control of structure and function to yield materials with predictable properties and functions for the efficient transfer of energy and information.  The concepts of “atoms” and “bonding” can be generalized to enable the construction of functional materials from fundamental units of nanostructures – which they call “designer atoms.”  The team proposes to develop and rigorously test systematic rules, based on the principles of quantum mechanics, for assembling (or bonding) “designer atoms” into materials with a broad array of properties and functions.  Guided by recent research and using novel experimental and computational techniques, they will investigate the strong entanglement of electrons, emerging from subtle forces between nanostructures, to elucidate these fundamental principles and to design new materials.  If successful, the project may provide a new paradigm akin to the chemical bond to enable advances in chemistry, physics and materials research.

Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution

The Cascadia subduction zone offshore of Northern California, Oregon, Washington and British Columbia had its last major earthquake and tsunami over 300 years ago and has been building up strain for the next earthquake since then.  The majority of this fault, which could produce a Magnitude 9 earthquake at any moment, lies offshore, where there are currently no geodetic instruments set up for monitoring the buildup of strain.  Hence, scientists have relatively little ability to project the details of the next earthquake.  The project will install the first seafloor geodetic observatory above the locked, offshore portion of the Cascadia fault.  It will also mount state-of-the art geodetic instruments (tiltmeters) in an existing borehole offshore of Vancouver Island that will have real-time data availability through the NEPTUNE cabled observatory and will be co-located with already existing sub-seafloor hydrological monitoring equipment.  Together these instruments will enable new interdisciplinary studies of the fluid flow transients within the subduction system.  Additionally, a wider array of instruments for measuring the vertical deformation of the seafloor both at short and long time scales will be installed.  These pressure gauge benchmarks will allow a determination of whether the Cascadia fault is locked to shallow depths, and hence likely to rupture in a manner similar to the recent catastrophic Japanese earthquake.

Arizona State University

This project aims at developing a technology to measure one of the most fundamental and important quantities in nature, the mass of a single molecule.  The research question to be addressed is “How can we precisely measure the mass of a single molecule, identify the molecule based on its mass, and study its affinity properties without using labels?”  Unlike conventional microfabricated mechanical oscillators, this project proposes a self-assembled molecular oscillator approach.  The success of the project may lead to unprecedented capabilities for studying single molecules, allowing the limitations of the current mass spectroscopy and immunoassay technologies to be overcome and providing a detection technology to cover the “Terahertz gap” in the electromagnetic spectrum.  The research team at the Biodesign Institute at Arizona State University is dedicated to the study, control and detection of single molecules, the smallest building blocks of functional devices, and to transform these capabilities into functional devices for solving real-world problems.  The team has pioneered techniques to create and study single molecule junctions, and developed a plasmonic imaging technique for measuring nanoparticle surface interactions, which have prepared them to achieve the goals of this project.

Boise State University

The vision is to fundamentally change early-stage disease diagnosis and treatment on a global scale.  Using engineered biochemical tools, the team integrates biology with physics, chemistry, materials science and computer science to pioneer a novel disease detection system.  The goal is to detect disease via DNA reaction networks that report the presence of disease-specific micro-RNAs (miRNAs) found in human blood.  To offer flexibility and scalability, the approach uses modular reaction networks that consist of a translator, cross-catalytic amplifier and reporter.  The translator module accepts a target miRNA as an input signal and outputs a specific DNA sequence, which then acts as the input into the amplifier module.  The multiplied output of the amplifier module drives the reporter module.  The reporter module generates a colorimetric change in vitro based on relative miRNA concentrations signifying a positive/negative signal for disease, analogous to the results of a disposable pregnancy test.  Alternatively, when operated in vivo, an additional feedback module may prevent disease onset and progression.  As miRNAs are linked to over 270 diseases, this concept is broadly applicable to human health.  If successful, this diagnostic tool may reduce mortality through early screening, even where medical equipment and resources are scarce.

Northwestern University

Graphene, a one-atom-thick planar sheet of carbon atoms in a honeycomb lattice, has attracted substantial attention for its superlative electronic, thermal and mechanical properties.  A wide range of transformative applications, including electronic devices, sensors and composite materials, have been anticipated for graphene.  Graphene’s seemingly limitless potential was recently recognized with the 2010 Nobel Prize in Physics.  However, as has been shown in other materials systems, graphene’s potential could be dramatically enhanced by creating chemically modified variants of the parent material.  The team at Northwestern seeks to explore inorganic and organic chemical functionalization of graphene with the goal of establishing new classes of two-dimensional nanomaterials with tailored chemical, electrical and optical properties.  Rather than optimizing properties empirically, the approach will be to employ ultrahigh vacuum scanning tunneling microscopy to characterize and understand chemically modified graphene at the atomic scale.  These detailed studies will develop fundamental principles that will guide future efforts to exploit novel graphene-derived nanomaterials in numerous societally pervasive applications, such as information technology, biotechnology and renewable energy.

University of California, Davis

Establishing the “structure–mechanical property–function” paradigm at the single cell level is of critical importance in understanding individual and collective behaviors such as wound healing, tissue engineering, and cancer diagnosis and therapy.  Current advances have revealed a strong correlation within the paradigm.  This project will develop a simple and reliable method to enable exploration of the paradigm systematically and quantitatively.  Based on combined atomic force and laser scanning confocal microscopy, the new method develops specifically modified probes and accurate mechanical positioning to conduct high-resolution imaging and cellular mechanics of living cells in vitro.  The micro-mechanical measurements will be acquired at length and time scales relevant to cell function, and processed with custom written code to quantify mechanics such as Young’s moduli.  This approach will first be used to uncover the sub-cellular mechanism associated with the inflammatory responses of human aortic endothelial cells and lung macrophages following exposure to manufactured nanomaterials.  The outcome shall demonstrate that assessment of health risk is complex and multimodal, and that this paradigm at the single cell level provides a complementary and possibly more sensitive means for risk assessment.  Upon development, this technology will be made available in the W. M. Keck Spectral Imaging Facility to all researchers.

University of California, Los Angeles

This project will develop a new methodology that will enable ground-breaking tests of Einstein’s theory of General Relativity (GR) and black hole growth models never before possible.  Such cutting-edge tests are within reach, using the telescopes at the W. M. Keck Observatory equipped with Adaptive Optics (AO), a revolutionary technology that has begun to allow astronomers to overcome the blurring effects of Earth’s atmosphere.  While the AO system has dramatically upgraded our ability to see into space, it has not reached its full scientific potential.  Measurement precision from Keck AO observations is limited by lack of knowledge of how the atmosphere has affected each point in the image.  This kind of data is finally publicly available through new equipment that provides measurements of turbulence at multiple layers in the atmosphere.  The UCLA team proposes to develop a new methodology (AO-Optimization) for using this data in post-processing to dramatically improve AO measurement precision across the entire field of view.  It is imperative to begin this work now so that the Keck AO system can be optimized in time to detect the effects of GR that will be possible to measure from observations of the nearest star ever imaged around a supermassive black hole (SO-2), as it makes its closest approach with the black hole, between 2016-2020.  There will not be a comparable event to test GR until 2034.

University of California, Santa Cruz

This project will establish an Adaptive Optical (AO) Microscopy Center to develop enabling technologies and critical procedures to overcome long-standing barriers and vastly improve deep tissue biological imaging.  The approach is inspired by the highly successful use of AO in the W. M. Keck Telescopes, which allows astronomers to see much more clearly and deeply into space.  Members of the team have been at the forefront of these innovations in astronomy and are now working with biologists to apply the same principles to overcome similar barriers that inhibit deep-tissue light microscopy.  A critical aspect of the method involves direct wavefront sensing of biological “guide-stars,” coupled with the use of deformable mirrors, to adjust the optical system to correct for optical distortions that occur as light passes through the inhomogeneous specimen.  The team will create these guide-stars using genetically modified, fluorescently tagged proteins and develop the AO two-photon optical and sensing systems needed to take advantage of them, then test this technology in a mouse model system.  This project may enable dramatic improvements in imaging of the cellular universe, enabling biologists to examine crucial living processes deep within tissues and organs at a scale previously impossible, and lead to new biomedical interventions, such as stem cell therapies.

Arizona State University

This four-year project aims to build a novel, live-cell imaging instrument for basic and clinical science application. The 3D microscope called the “cell CT scanner” will provide functional images, revealing the molecular mechanisms underlying important metabolic and disease processes. Cell CT is analogous to diagnostic radiology CT in that it will reconstruct 3D images with isotropic, submicron resolution from hundreds of projections acquired from many angles as the cell is rotated. A key component of the research is to determine the best method for rotating cells, which must be done extremely precisely without harming the cell. The team will investigate several cell rotation methods including one that rotates an optically trapped cell in a microfluidic vortex and another that uses an infrared light beam having asymmetrical intensity distribution. They will use fluorescent antibody probes and fusion-protein constructs specific to the proteins of interest to label cells for emission CT scanning. The technology will be validated by studying cells from immortalized cell lines representative of various stages of epithelial cancers, and cells disaggregated from human biopsies spanning the same disease spectrum. Cell CT may enable for the first time rapid spatial localization of proteins, and assessment of their concentrations in subcellular compartments and microdomains, providing insights concerning relationships between cell structure, function and disease.

Boston College

The project is to develop a unique and powerful approach to nanoscale optical imaging, bridging near-field and far-field optics with deep sub-diffraction-limit resolution. When developed, this nanoscale coaxial optical microscope (NCOM) technique will facilitate rapid nanoscale optical imaging of micro- to macroscopic landscapes, under optical intensities well below those requiring laser illuminations, including the possibility of label-free imaging. The basic concept is a novel superlensing, guided wave metamaterial, consisting of an array of nanoscale coaxial waveguides. This array is arranged such that the spacing between the wire ends on one lens surface is smaller than the wavelength λ of visible light, while that on the other side exceeds λ. Each “nanocoax” at the object side collects light in its vicinity via an optical antenna effect and propagates it along the waveguide to the image side, where it emerges into the optical far-field. A conventional optical microscope, focused onto this projected image, can now resolve features with significantly greater resolution and lower optical intensity than current state-of-the-art techniques. This transformative NCOM technique, capable of noninvasively resolving features smaller than the diffraction limit, will find enormous utility in biological / living systems, in every field in medicine, including genetics, genomics, oncology, and pharmacology, and with wide applicability in the physical sciences.

University of California, Los Angeles

This project will develop tools having the potential to better understand cells in health and disease by providing precise pictures of the interacting molecules. Nano X-ray diffraction can reveal the 3D atomic structure of intracellular organelles and aggregates that mediate the metabolism and pathology of cells. In contrast, nearly all present information on the atomic structure of cellular constituents has come from purified molecules, removed from cells. The research group will exploit recent advances in the production of highly focused (nano) X-ray beams and free electron lasers, directing these beams onto biological cells and subcellular organelles, prepared by new methods for X-ray examination, and devise methods for collecting and interpreting the diffraction data. One application will be to learn the atomic structure of the carboxysome, the organelle that removes CO2 from the atmosphere, a process that is critical to sustaining life on earth as we know it. A second application will be to learn which types of cells contain aggregates of protein in the amyloid state, a state similar to the deposits formed in Alzheimer’s and Parkinson’s diseases, but in some cases apparently part of normal function. The same tools will be applied to microcrystals and microdomains of larger crystals with the potential to gain significantly more information than is presently possible.

University of California, Santa Barbara

A technology able to separate, detect and analyze nanoparticles and molecules according to size and charge has significant implications for future medical diagnostics and nanoparticle technology. If these operations could be performed cheaply and quickly, the technology could result in new tools to be used, for instance, in a doctor’s office for rapid and precise molecular based diagnoses. At the same time, applications toward efficient nanoparticle and molecular synthesis, purification, and characterization could be of major importance to the burgeoning nanomanufacturing industry. The goal is to develop a new platform capable of detection, analysis and sorting of biological and synthetic nanoparticles, based on the integration of two complementary techniques: 1) Size-based detection and sorting of individual unlabeled nanoparticles, and 2) gel-free electrophoretic separation of nanoparticles in nanochannels. The interdisciplinary nature of the group has a diversity of perspectives offering the potential for new insights and approaches for the development of novel solutions.

University of Texas, Austin

The goal is to enable large-scale fabrication of graphene/ultrathin graphite (‘G/UG’) films/foils. The influence of structure and particularly grain boundaries on the physical properties of such foils will be elucidated. Studies on processing (delaminating, cutting, folding, laminating with other films, making fiber strips, wetting, etc.) will accelerate the use of these new materials in existing applications and foster innovation in new applications. A new method of heating the metal substrates that G/UG films grow on will be implemented and optimized to produce material with minimum defects, largest grains and best grain boundaries. Optimized G/UG foils are not expected to be brittle and their specific strengths may far exceed those of any materials now available. This will motivate their use in new structural applications, as well as in thermal management, as compliant transparent conductive electrodes, in nanoelectronics (the carrier mobility in graphene is very high), in micro- and nano-electromechanical systems as actuators, strain gauges, pressure sensors and others. Applications will be realized through active collaborations and an ensuing effort will help to ensure benefit to society through the eventual factory-level production of G/UG materials.

Yale University

Yale researchers propose an innovative approach to achieve a long-standing goal in the field of chemistry – the construction of bona fide artificial enzymes.  It will apply methods from four related fields: organic chemistry, carbohydrate chemistry, enzymology, and biophysics.  Catalytic substrates known as β-peptides bundles will be created to mimic carbohydrate-processing enzymes.  The investigators will optimize three steps that define the catalytic cycle: (1) substrate binding, (2) chemical reactivity, and (3) product release.  To optimize substrate binding, β peptide bundles will be assembled that contain an extended phenyl boronic acid “docking site.”  To optimize chemical reactivity, the researchers will assemble in parallel β-peptide bundles appended with 2-3 carboxylate side chains (of various structure and acidity) in positions that mimic their spacing in carbohydrate processing enzymes.  Optimizing the product release will make use of traditional or stopped-flow kinetics methods as well as surface plasmon resonance.  These features will then be combined into first-generation catalysts to optimize their properties through the application of combinatorial, catalytic, activity-based screens.  These catalysts will then be optimized through the application of combinatorial, catalytic activity-based screens and studied in detail using both biophysical (calorimetry, crystallography) and spectroscopic (NMR) methods to identify and explore relationships between catalytic efficiency, cooperative folding, and protein dynamics.

Brandeis University

Columbia University

The Columbia University Keck team proposes to develop a fundamentally new type of energy conversion process, one in which a single absorbed photon creates two or more electronic excitations in a suitable nanostructured material. The physics of this process will be carefully studied and optimized, through control of nanostructure design, by an interdisciplinary team with expertise in chemistry, physics and engineering. This program will build and electrically characterize individual nanoscale photovoltaic devices based on semiconductor nanocrystals and carbon nanotubes. This project has the potential to dramatically improve both basic understanding of non-traditional energy conversion processes and the practical production of electricity and fuels from sunlight.

Stanford University

This project seeks to advance early theoretical and experimental work on the quantum spin Hall system, a newly discovered type of material inside which the laws of electricity and magnetism are dramatically altered. Discovery of such new states of quantum matter could have profound implications on not only fundamental science but also computing technology. When electrons flow through metals or semiconductors, they dissipate energy as heat, causing devices to draw extra power and limiting computer processor speed. Such power dissipation is already the greatest roadblock to scaling semiconductor devices according to Moore’s Law. It is possible to move electrons without dissipation, but known methods have proved impractical, involving extremely low temperatures or large magnetic fields. Recently, a new type of dissipationless transport based on electron spin, rather than charge, has been discovered: the so-called quantum spin Hall (QSH) state in HgTe quantum wells. So far this phenomenon has been limited to cryogenic temperatures. The Stanford team proposes to experimentally test their theoretical prediction that a new class of materials could display the QSH effect at room temperature. Such a breakthrough would deepen understanding of this new state of matter and open the door to new dissipationless computing devices that would manipulate electrons by both charge and spin.

University of California, Berkeley

The next scientific frontier in time-resolved dynamics is the production and utilization of pulses of light in the attosecond time domain (l attosecond = 10-18 seconds). These pulses of light, which can now be generated in the soft X-ray regime of the electromagnetic spectrum, allow scientists to address dynamics on the timescale of electronic motion directly for the first time. The goal of this project is to apply isolated attosecond pulses for the first time to the science of solid-state materials, with particular future applications to solar photovoltaic and related semiconductor materials. The first steps in the formation of charge carriers in photovoltaic devices occur on exceptionally short natural timescales, governed by the rearrangements of electrons in orbitals and electronic bands in materials. By developing a laser laboratory dedicated to the measurement of such solid state electron dynamics, the project will (1) advance the field of short time processes through understanding electron dynamics on an unprecedented level, and (2) unearth mechanisms that will ultimately improve the efficiency of photovoltaic devices. While considerable sources of support are available for short-term exploration of devices and materials, such advances considered here may play a key long-term role in developing newly efficient energy production schemes in the decades to come.

University of Chicago

One of the grand-challenge questions in the physical and biological sciences is how molecular interactions can enable processing of complex information. The answer requires transcending the advances of the genomics and proteomics revolutions to probe and analyze the function of networks of regulatory interactions in cells directly. While there are various means for detecting the presence of molecules, even in spatially and temporally resolved fashions, there is no reliable, standard way to elucidate the collective molecular dynamics that lead to function. We propose to develop the prototype of just such a robust and systematic method – a “chemical perturbation spectroscopy” – that we envision would become a widely used tool for revealing the underlying design and control structures of molecular networks. If successful, the research would be transformative, introducing a totally new approach for probing regulatory interactions systematically, elucidating design principles for cells, developing a theory for driven complex systems, and even enabling the control of cellular dynamics for a broad range of purposes.

California Institute of Technology

Based largely on recent observations of the Cosmic Microwave Background (CMB), cosmologists believe that the entire observable Universe was spawned in a fraction of a second by the superluminal “inflation” of a sub-atomic volume. This paradigm presents a remarkable opportunity. Inflation produced a Cosmic Gravitational-wave Background (CGB) that may be detectable now via a faint signature imprinted in the polarization of the CMB. To do so could probe the very moment at which the Universe sprang into existence and explore energies far higher than will ever be achieved in terrestrial accelerators. This project will search for the signature of the CGB due to inflation using a set of novel, microwave polarimeters sited at the South Pole. A prototype experiment now in its third year of operation at the South Pole has proven the methodology. A full set of more capable polarimeters is proposed to be built. This technique will allow a search for the CGB with sensitivity exceeding that targeted by the Task Force on CMB Research for a future orbital mission, at least a decade earlier and at ~ 1% of the cost of an orbital mission. A detection of the signature of the CGB would be an historic achievement for both cosmology and high-energy physics.

Princeton University

This grant proposes to develop a novel microscope to probe and manipulate quantum dynamics in real time on the nanometer scale and use it to identify the physical processes that limit the implementation of materials in quantum computing applications. Scanning tunneling microscopes (STMs) have evolved into powerful tools that can image and manipulate single atoms and are now routinely used to unveil phenomena at the nanoscale. These instruments operate by mapping on the microscopic scale interaction between a sharp probe and the sample. However, the most advanced nanoscale microscopes developed to date cannot probe quantum dynamics in real time, as they operate at low frequencies and are insensitive to phenomena that occur on faster timescales. Development of a high-frequency STM will enable a new generation of experimentation in which quantum dynamics can be measured and manipulated on an unprecedented scale. This instrument will allow researchers to characterize directly processes that limit the use of materials for quantum computing applications and to correlate these limitations with the nanoscale properties of the materials. Beyond quantum computing, the proposed microscope breaks new ground in the measurement of properties of matter and should create opportunities for discovery across a wide range of areas.

University of California, Santa Cruz

What if costly, high-end microscopes could be replaced with tiny chips that detect, analyze, and manipulate single biomolecules, in a spirit similar to the replacement of bulky vacuum tubes with planar transistors that created the integrated circuit? Single biomolecules and macromolecular complexes are nanoscale objects, and to build, manipulate and observe objects of this size requires specialized tools. A team at the University of California, Santa Cruz will obtain cutting-edge, versatile nanofabrication equipment and bring together an interdisciplinary group of leading experts and their students spanning the range from device engineering to molecular biology. They will define nanoscale features on integrated optofluidic chips in order to optimize them for single particle studies. These chips will then be the basis for comprehensive studies of properties and functions of some of the basic building blocks of life: ribonucleic acids (RNA) and their macromolecular complexes.

University of Hawaii at Manoa

The overall goal of this project is to comprehend the chemical evolution of the Solar System. This will be achieved through an understanding of the formation of carbon-, hydrogen-, oxygen-, and nitrogen-bearing (CHON) molecules in ices of Kuiper Belt Objects (KBOs) by reproducing the space environment in a specially designed experimental setup. KBOs are small planetary bodies orbiting the sun beyond the planet Neptune, and are considered as the most primitive objects in the Solar System. A study of KBOs is important because they resemble natural “time capsules” at a frozen stage before life developed on Earth. The methodology is based on a comparison of the molecules formed in the experiments with the current composition of KBOs; such an approach provides the potential to reconstruct the composition of icy Solar System bodies at the time of their formation billions of years ago. The significance of this project is that it will elucidate the origin of biologically relevant molecules and help unravel the chemical evolution of the Solar System. Since KBOs are believed to be the main reservoir of short-period comets, which are considered as “delivery systems” of biologically important molecules to the early Earth, the project will also bring a better understanding of how life might have emerged on Earth.

University of Maine

Ice cores provide highly robust, sub-annually resolved, multi-millennial reconstructions of past chemical and physical climate essential to understanding climate change because instrumented climate records barely cover the last 100 years and significantly longer perspective is required to assess current and predict future climate. Researchers at the University of Maine Climate Change Institute have longstanding experience in ice core research and have contributed to major climate science realizations. The team has a vision for the future of climate research that includes: completion of a global array of ice cores before many of these records are destroyed by warming; development of interactive climate data search engines utilizing ice core records as a framework; and, through the proposed work, cutting edge innovations. These innovations require purchase of a laser ablation inductively coupled plasma spectrometer and associated development of an innovative cold stage sampling system to allow unprecedented increase in sample resolution, efficiency, and through flow for over 40 elements. Support is also sought to develop radically new, in situ ice core measuring capability utilizing novel thin film chemical sensors embedded in an ice core drill, and a “disposable” GPS system for remote sampling in extremely hazardous environments needed for ice core site reconnaissance and interpretation.

University of New Mexico

The quest to visualize ever smaller biological structures has driven scientific progress. Spatial resolution and contrast, essential factors in imaging, are limited by the wavelength and the intensity noise, respectively. While shorter wavelengths (X-rays, electron beams) can improve resolution and fluorescent labeling can increase contrast, these benefits come at the expense of harmful radiation and invasive sample preparation. The project team proposes an optical instrument based on making differential measurements on the phase of two circulating ultrashort laser pulses in order to achieve unprecedented spatial resolution and sensitivity. The underlying physical principles, established in prior research programs at UNM, are the conversion of phase (or distance) as small as a billionth (10^-9) of a wavelength inside a laser to a measurable frequency and the discovery that the injection of even one trillionth (10^-12) of one pulse into the other is sufficient to change measurably the frequency of the latter. Equipped with mechanical nano-positioners, the complete instrument, which will be called the Scanning Phase Intracavity Nanoscope (SPIN), will provide three-dimensional images of biological objects with a spatial resolution of 1 nm. To be housed in the Cancer Research and Treatment Center Microscopy Facility, SPIN has the potential to serve the biomedical community by opening a new window to the intra-cellular nanoworld.