Nov 07, 2008 - Claremont, Calif. - Harvey Mudd College (HMC) faculty recently garnered more than $1 million in grants from the National Science Foundation (NSF) and U.S. Army Medical Research Command.

In September, Professor of Physics Tom Donnelly was awarded a three-year, $166,000 grant from NSF for his research project, “RUI: Collaborative Research: Collisionless Heating During Strong Field Irradiation of Wavelengh-scale Particles.”

The grant is a renewal of a previous three-year grant for similar research Donnelly is conducting with co-principle investigator Todd Ditmire, professor of physics at the University of Texas, Austin (UTA).

Donnelly, along with his student research teams, have spent summers at UTA using Ditmire’s powerful lasers, along with targets created at HMC (tiny droplets of heavy water about one micron in diameter), to create fusion.

Other recent HMC grants and faculty recipients include:

Shenda Baker (Chemistry)
U.S. Army Medical Research Command
$40,501 for “Aerosol Decontaminant for Use in Patient Care Areas” (Aug. 2008)

Lori Bassman (Engineering)
National Science Foundation
$242,000 for “Materials World Network/Research in Undergraduate Institutions: The True Three-Dimensional Nature of Aligned Dislocation Boundaries in Deformed Metals” (Aug. 2008)

Kerry Karukstis and Gerald Van Hecke (Chemistry)
National Science Foundation
$270,000 for “RUI: Innovative Determination of Phase Diagrams of Green Surfactants in Water and Ionic Liquids” (July 2008)

Ran Libeskind-Hadas and Melissa O’Neill (Computer Science)
National Science Foundation
$292,921 for “REU Site: REU Site in Computer Systems” (May 2008)