As we move into our third year in the current phase of EFree, this edition of the our newsletter brings important news on both the scientific and administrativefronts.
We are pleased to report a number of important advances since our last newsletter. Starting with the simplest element, work begun at Carnegie in the first phase of EFree now shows that at the pressures and temperatures of planetary interiors, molecular hydrogen becomes opaque to visible light, but does transmit infrared radiation.At Caltech, graduate student Max Murialdo’s work on physisorption of gases on zeolite-templated carbon has resulted in a new "Law of Corresponding States" for physisorption, and graduate student Sally Tracy’s research in the Ion Transport project has provided new insights into how changes in structure affect the onest of fast electron dynamics. The early work of EFree Senior Investigator Roald Hoffmann is featured in a special issue of the Journal of Organic Chemistry, marking the 50th anniversary of the Woodward-Hoffmann rules. Finally, an EFree exploratory project on photocatalysis water splitting has led to the discovery of a new material, TiN2, which is intriguing for being both superhard and photocatalytic.
We welcome Konstantin Lokshin from Oak Ridge National Laboratory as a Technical Coordinator, focusing on transport measurements in the Light Elements project as well as the development of neutron techniques to support all of the EFree projects. Meanwhile, Chen Li, Neutron Scattering Coordinator for the past two years, has acepted a position as Assistant Professor in the Department of Mechanical Engineering at the University of California - Riverside. Also, congratulations go to EFree Senior Investigator Brent Fultz on receiving the award of Neutron Scattering Society of America Fellow. This honor was awarded at the American Conference for Neutron Scattering, which featured many presentations by EFree scientists. We look forward to having the entire Center gather together at our upcoming annual meeting, which will be held on October 3-5 at the Advanced Photon Source, Argonne National Laboratory. There will be much to discuss and plan for with respect to the upcoming two years.
Finally, as of July 1, I am directing EFree from my new position as a Research Professor in the School of Engineering and Applied Science at the George Washington University, which has been a partner in EFree. The rest of the EFree office and the scientific activity at Carnegie currently remain in place as we move forward with year three of the current phase of the Center.
Sincerely,
