Mahan, Schibli honored with prestigious NSF CAREER Awards

Schibli

Two University of Colorado Boulder faculty members have received prestigious CAREER Awards from the National Science Foundation.

NSF Faculty Early Career Development, or CAREER, Awards recognize talented young faculty members with grants to support outstanding research projects and to encourage the integration of teaching and research.

Kevin Mahan, assistant professor of geological sciences, and Thomas Schibli, assistant professor of physics and JILA member, both received grants that begin July 1. JILA is a joint institute of CU-Boulder and the National Institute of Standards and Technology.

The pair join three other CU-Boulder faculty — engineering professors Abbie Liel, Matthew Hallowell and Mahmoud Hussein — whose CAREER Awards were announced earlier this year.

Mahan

Mahan is being awarded $497,800 over five years for research that will help scientists better understand how seismic waves, such as those created by earthquakes, move through different types of rocks. Ultimately, the research may allow scientists to use seismic wave data to create detailed maps of the Earth’s crust.

Schibli is being awarded $400,000 over five years for research on creating the next generation of pulsed lasers, which will allow for more precise “optical frequency combs.” In the future, improved combs could help unravel a number of scientific mysteries, including a better understanding of dark energy in the universe.