Scott Cushing Receives DOE Early Career Award

Scott Cushing, assistant professor of chemistry, has been chosen as one of this year's recipients of funding through the Department of Energy (DOE) Office of Science's Early Career Research Program. Cushing is one of 73 scientists to receive such a grant this year. The grants, awarded annually, provide $150,000 in funding to scientists.

Cushing's award will fund his project that is developing ultrafast entangled photon sources to explore interactions in chemical, biological, and solid-state systems. Cushing received his PhD in 2015 from West Virginia University. He then worked as a DOE Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy Postdoctoral Fellow before joining Caltech as an assistant professor in 2018.

"I am really excited for my lab and the hard work we put into getting this project started. The students have made tremendous progress in the first year they were with me," Cushing says. "Our hope is that by merging ultrafast optics and quantum optics, we can begin to explore entangled interactions in messy, non-conventional systems."

The DOE's Early Career Research Program was created to "bolster the nation's scientific workforce by providing support to exceptional researchers during the crucial early career years, when many scientists do their most formative work," according to an announcement from the DOE. To be eligible for the award, a researcher must either be untenured, a tenure-track assistant, or associate professor at a U.S. academic institution, or a full-time employee at a DOE national laboratory who received a PhD within the past 10 years.

The program is now in its 10th year. Previous awardees from Caltech include David Simmons-Duffin in 2018; Clifford Cheung in 2013; Guillaume Blanquart, Julia Greer, Chris Hirata, and Ryan Patterson in 2011; and Victoria Orphan in 2010.