Professors Seth Bank and Mikhail Belkin were announced among the winners of the Air Force's Young Investigator Research Program, receiving almost $1.2 million in grants. The program awards approximately $14.6 million in grants to 38 scientists and engineers who submitted winning research proposals. Over 200 proposals were submitted this year.

Dr. Seth R. Bank received his award for “work on manipulating the interfacial electrical and optical properties of dissimilar materials with metallic nanostructures.” Dr. Mikhail A. Belkin won his award for investigating “tunable quantum electronic metamaterials for mid-infrared range.”

Professor Seth Bank has also won the Young Scientist Award at the 36th International Symposium on Compound Semiconductors. This award has been given out since 1986 to recognize “technical achievements in the field of compound semiconductors by a scientist under the age of forty.” Prof. Bank’s research is centered on molecular beam epitaxy (MBE) growth of dilute-nitride semiconductors (e.g. GaInNAsSb), metal/semiconductor nanocomposites (e.g. ErAs nanoparticles in GaAs), carbon nanostructures (e.g. graphene) and their application to silicon-based lasers, mid-IR lasers, THz generation and sensing, and high-speed transistors. A list of previous recipients The Young Scientist Award can be found here.