This year, 165 students from 68 U.S. institutions were selected for this fellowship, which lasts for three years and covers tuition and fees for any doctoral program in the country. Participants also receive a monthly stipend and are paired with a research mentor who will guide them through their chosen project. At the end of the fellowship, students have the chance to present their research at the annual NDSEG Conference.

Since the program’s inception in 1989, more than 4,500 fellowships have been awarded to college students. This year’s UCF awardees are:

• Andrew DeRusha ’22, aerospace engineering
• Daniel Dyson ’21 ’22MS, aerospace engineering and Burnett Honors Scholar
• Alphonse Marra, physics

Andrew DeRusha ’22

DeRusha may not have his career path solidified yet, but he’s already following in his father’s footsteps. His dad worked as an engineer while DeRusha was growing up and introduced him to the ultimate space saga, Star Wars. His interest in the franchise, paired with the influence of his father’s career, led him to pursue a degree in aerospace engineering.

DeRusha walked across the UCF stage in Spring 2022 and has already completed the first year of his aerospace engineering doctoral degree. He says the NDSEG fellowship will help him explore his interests and entertain future engineering and research possibilities.

“The fellowship is the perfect opportunity to help me find out what I want to do,� DeRusha says. “All I know is that I love engineering and am passionate about research. I hope that whatever my career ends up being, I can continue to work in a research role.�

DeRusha will flex his research skills as he develops a multi-species laser-absorption sensor, used in diagnostics for combustion systems. He’ll also continue to work in the Vasu Lab, led by Professor of Aerospace Engineering Subith Vasu, an experience that led him to the NDSEG fellowship.

“I am incredibly excited and honored to have been selected for the fellowship,� DeRusha says. “It’s incredibly satisfying to receive recognition, but it also reminds me to be thankful for all the people who helped me on the path to being given this award.�

Daniel Dyson ’21 ’22MS

Like many aerospace engineering students, Dyson was drawn to the field of astronautics through the space shuttle program and the burning questions it posed in his young mind: How does a rocket function? How can it carry a payload from Earth to space?

His career path was set after attending the Florida Space Grant Consortium Engineering Academy, which allowed him to tour the UCF engineering labs, design and test model rockets, build popsicle-stick bridges, and code in Java.

“These projects and my mentors from this program encouraged me to pursue a degree in engineering and really kickstarted my development as an engineer and a researcher,� Dyson says.

After earning two degrees in aerospace engineering, interning at Northrop Grumman and working on research projects with Vasu, Dyson is now a full-fledged engineer and researcher. He’ll use the skills he’s honed at UCF to complete his NDSEG research project, which aims to reveal new insights regarding combustion and explosion dynamics.

Dyson will specifically study the combustion of burning fuel droplets that contain nitrogen and their effects post-detonation as well as the combustion process of nitromethane. But perhaps his most compelling discovery will come from the experience itself. Dyson says he looks forward to future mentorship from scientists and engineers and learning more about careers in research.

At UCF, the two-time alum will still be mentored by Vasu as he completes his doctoral degree in aerospace engineering. Dyson says he chose to attend UCF not only for its location and tuition support, but its reputation as SpaceU.

“Most importantly, I recognized UCF’s reputation as a leader in providing the Space Coast with new engineers ready to tackle the biggest challenges in industry,� Dyson says. “Remembering that it was outer space that initially encouraged me to pursue engineering in the first place, it seemed like I was destined to pursue engineering in Central Florida and become a Knight.�

Alphonse Marra

Physics doctoral student Marra’s research began with ultrafast physics during his undergraduate studies at the º£½ÇÖ±²¥ of Wisconsin-Madison. He became fascinated with the use of lasers to study phenomena at very short timescales.

“To me, physics is all about pushing the limits of our knowledge of the physical universe,� Marra says.

After graduating with his bachelor’s degree, Marra began working at UCF on a new project to build a laser alongside a well-respected group with a history of success. Marra’s focus on physics is attosecond science, and he works with Pegasus Professor Zenghu Chang. The next step in their research is to focus on generating few-cycle pulses capable of driving single-isolated attosecond pulses.

The NDSEG fellowship he’s received will give him greater flexibility with his research and allow him to travel to conferences like a seminar at the Air Force Institute of Technology, where he is presenting this fall.

“I’m grateful for the staff members in the Department of Physics and the sense of community in the department, Marra says. “I have a lot of people from UCF to thank, from machinists to fellow students to professors and many others. I especially am grateful to my PI (principal investigator), professor Chang, for his dedication to our research.â€�

Physics Assistant Professor Luca Argenti is one of 73 scientists across the nation and the only one from Florida selected for the program, which includes a $750,000 grant over five years.

Argenti’s work is in energy science. His goal is to advance the study of electronic excitations in matter, which are at the core of any chemical transformation, including those used to produce energy from fossil fuels or to harvest it from sunlight.

“Electronic excitations are extremely difficult to monitor in real time because they take place on a fantastically short timescale — tens or hundreds of attoseconds, where one attosecond is one billionth of a billionth of a second,� says Argenti, who has a joint appointment in the College of Optics and Photonics. “To give you an idea of the scale, one attosecond is to a second what a second is to twice the life of the universe.�

Argenti moved to the United States from Italy in 2016 to join UCF because of its reputation in this field, thanks to the pioneering work of Professor Zenghu Chang in the college’s Center for Research and Education in Optics and Lasers. Chang has twice set the record for fastest light pulse.

The Department of Energy award program, in its 13th year, is designed to bolster the nation’s scientific workforce by providing support to exceptional researchers during the early career years, when many scientists do their most formative work.

To be eligible, a researcher must be an untenured, 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 doctorate within the past 10 years.

View the and descriptions of their projects.

“Supporting our nation’s most talented and creative researchers in their early career years is crucial to building America’s scientific workforce and sustaining America’s culture of innovation,� says Department of Energy Secretary Rick Perry. “We look forward to their achievements in the years ahead.�

Last year, physics Assistant Professor Michael ChiniÌı’12±Ê³ó¶Ù was selected for the same award. Chini also works in the area of attosecond physics and together with Argenti they will co-chair the ATTO (Attosecond Science and Technology) conference in 2021. They will bring the most influential biannual world congress in this field to UCF that summer, a move to help bring attention to UCF as a powerhouse for this field of study.

“Federal agencies allocate their funds based on the recommendations of scientific leaders from all around the world,� Argenti says. “Holding ATTO 2021 here can go a long way to enhance UCF visibility abroad.�

Argenti holds multiple degrees including a doctorate in chemistry with a thesis in theoretical atomic physics from the Scuola Normale Superiore of Pisa in Italy. He was a postdoctoral fellow at Stockholm º£½ÇÖ±²¥ in Sweden and at the Autonomous º£½ÇÖ±²¥ of Madrid in Spain.

Enrique del Barco, a physics professor and associate dean in UCF , was selected for a $7.5 million Multidisciplinary º£½ÇÖ±²¥ Research Initiative Award. Three others were selected to receive money to purchase high-tech equipment to continue their work in the area of lasers and photonics.

“This award will allow us to develop new testing techniques and advance the theories behind antiferromagnets.� – Enrique del Barco, physics professor

More than 290 MURI proposals were submitted and only 24 were selected. The awards fund teams of top scientists to tackle some of the most complex issues in science. All branches of the military support the research program.

Del Barco’s project will look for ways to increase the complexity and speed of electromagnets in machines that can operate at trillions of cycles per second. Success could lead to faster computers and highly sophisticated security scanning among other applications.

He will lead the team that brings together experts from UCF, New York º£½ÇÖ±²¥, Oakland º£½ÇÖ±²¥, Ohio State º£½ÇÖ±²¥, º£½ÇÖ±²¥ of California at Riverside and at Santa Cruz.

“As of today, there are just some very basic, preliminary tests showing this is possible,� del Barco says. “This award will allow us to develop new testing techniques and advance the theories behind antiferromagnets.�

The three other UCF faculty members were awarded Defense º£½ÇÖ±²¥ Research Instrumentation Program awards – the most of any Florida university.

They are: Zenghu Chang, , $358,305; Mercedeh Khajavikhan, , $299,870, and Martin Richardson, College of Optics and Photonics and College of Sciences, $208,148.

A total of 669 proposals were submitted and 185 were awarded. The defense awards support the purchase of major research equipment to help universities stay current and able to conduct innovative research in science, technology, engineering and math. UCF’s faculty will use their funds – subject to final negotiation with the agency – to purchase equipment to further their research STEM areas.

The group led by Professor Zenghu Chang beat its own record set in 2012: a 67-attosecond extreme ultraviolet light pulse that was the fastest at the time.

At one-quintillionth of a second, an attosecond is unimaginably fast. In 53 attoseconds, light travels less than one-thousandth of the diameter of a human hair.

In the same way high-speed cameras can record slow-motion video of flying bullets, attosecond light pulses allow scientists to capture images of fast-moving electrons in atoms and molecules with unprecedented sharpness.

As reported today in Nature Communication, the pulses Chang has now demonstrated are not just shorter in duration, but also in wavelength. The new light reaches an important spectral region, the so called “water window,� where carbon atoms absorb strongly but water does not.

“Such attosecond soft X-rays could be used to shoot slow-motion video of electrons and atoms of biological molecules in living cells to, for instance, improve the efficiency of solar panels by better understanding how photosynthesis works,� said Chang, a UCF Trustee Chair Professor in CREOL, The College of Optics & Photonics, and the Department of Physics. Chang is the director of the Institute for the Frontiers of Attosecond Science and Technology (iFAST), located in the Physics Department, where the experiments were carried out.

X-rays interact with the tightly bound electrons in matter and may reveal which electrons move in which atoms, providing another way to study fast processes in materials with chemical element specificity. That capability is invaluable for the development of next-generation logic and memory chips for mobile phones and computers that are a thousand times faster than those in use today.

Producing attosecond X-rays requires a new type of high power driver: femtosecond lasers with a long wavelength. It’s an approach that Chang and his team have pioneered.

Chang’s team includes Jie Li, Xiaoming Ren, Yanchun Yin, Andrew Chew, Yan Cheng, Eric Cunningham, Yang Wang, Shuyuan Hu and Yi Wu, who are all affiliated with iFAST; Kun Zhao, who is also affiliated with the Chinese Academy of Sciences; and Michael Chini with the UCF Department of Physics.

The research was supported by grants through the DARPA PULSE program, the Army Research Office, and the Air Force Office of Scientific Research, and is based on work supported by the National Science Foundation.

Learn more about UCF’s Photonics Engineering Research and Graduate Programs.

Zenghu Chang, a distinguished professor of physics and optics who has appointments with both the College of Sciences and the College of Optics & Photonics, has been awarded $1.18 million to work with five other academic institutions.

The project is part of the department’s Multidisciplinary º£½ÇÖ±²¥ Research Initiative to research Strong-Field Laser Matter Interactions at Mid-Infrared Wavelengths.  

The selection means Chang’s lab, the Institute for the Frontier of Attosecond Science and Technology, will work to produce more-energetic X-ray photons, an area pioneered by Chang and professor Louis F. DiMauro of Ohio State º£½ÇÖ±²¥, the lead investigator on the award. The research will lead to developments in communications, medicine, materials and device manufacturing, and national defense, the researchers said.  

The U.S. portion of the proposal was funded for $7.5 million and also includes researchers from the º£½ÇÖ±²¥ of Texas at Austin, the º£½ÇÖ±²¥ of Arizona, and Louisiana State º£½ÇÖ±²¥. Imperial College in London is also participating in the project, with funding from a United Kingdom agency.

The DOD’s competitive program supports multidisciplinary teams in research identified for its potential of significant and sustained progress.

The DOD selected 22 projects out of 76 invited submissions, for a total of $149 million in awards. The selection process began with a solicitation for proposals in 19 topic areas important to the military, specifically the Army Research Office, the Air Force Office of Scientific Research, and the Office of Naval Research.

The awards, which could total $810,000, will outfit the university with state-of-the-art equipment to buttress its already strong programs in lasers and optics and advanced electronics.

The awards are the result of a merit competition jointly conducted by three Department of Defense research offices: the Army Research Office, Office of Naval Research, and Air Force Office of Scientific Research. Those offices will make the awards, which are subject to the successful completion of negotiations with the academic institutions.

UCF’s three awards are for:

UCF has received 16 of the highly competitive awards since 2012.

“These awards represent university competition at its finest and the fact that we are receiving them consistently illustrates our strength in some of the defining technologies of the future – specifically photonics and microelectronics,� said MJ Soileau, vice president for research and commercialization at UCF.

The three DoD research offices solicited proposals from university investigators conducting science and engineering research of importance to national defense. This includes research that underpins advances in materials, structures, and manufacturing science; quantum and nanosciences; computing and networks; electronics, electromagnetics, and electro optics; acoustics; neuroscience; fluid dynamics; robotics and autonomous systems; and ocean, environmental, and life sciences and engineering.

The DoD announced that 225 university researchers at 111 academic institutions have been selected to receive awards totaling $67.8 million. The three research offices collectively received 695 proposals requesting $257 million in support for research equipment.

In addition to the º£½ÇÖ±²¥ awards researchers from the º£½ÇÖ±²¥ of Miami, the º£½ÇÖ±²¥ of Florida and Florida Atlantic º£½ÇÖ±²¥ received one award each.

Zenghu Chang from the College of Sciences and the College of Optics & Photonics is the only researcher in Florida to receive a Department of Defense Multidisciplinary º£½ÇÖ±²¥ Research Initiative Award this year.     

Chang is the lead researcher on one project and is a co-investigator on another project. UCF, Yale º£½ÇÖ±²¥ and the º£½ÇÖ±²¥ of California, Berkeley, are among universities that received multiple awards.  

Chang’s lab holds the world record for the shortest laser pulse ever created at 67 billionths of a billionth of a second.  His lead research project will work to make pulses up to six times faster than his current world record.

Called attosecond lasers, research in this field can be used to study electrons and other molecules that researchers were previously unable to measure. The research will help scientists better understand the movements of electrons, eventually leading to faster computers and electronic devices. 

This project is funded for $7.5 million over five years.

“With this grant, we will be able to take attosecond science to the next level and see things that have never been seen before,� Chang said.

Chang’s second project, led by the º£½ÇÖ±²¥ of California, Berkeley, will help scientists understand the first step of many chemical processes. Through understanding chemical reactions — such as those that convert absorbed sunlight into electrical power — the research could lead to more efficient solar energy.  

Chang’s UCF team will receive $1.6 million over five years for that project.

The Army Research Office, the Air Force Office of Scientific Research and the Office of Naval Research provided $167 million to researchers across the country. Spread over five years, the 24 awards came from an initial pool of 661 submissions and will research areas important to the Department of Defense and the military.

Professor Zenghu Chang, from the Department of Physics and the College of Optics and Photonics, is leading a team comprised of researchers from the , (Professor Paul Corkum) and the , (Professors Steve Leone and Dan Neumark) to help the federal agency better understand the interaction of electrons in solids and, ultimately, create ultrafast sensors and detectors.

Chang said the funding builds from the 67-attosecond pulse of extreme ultraviolet laser light that his team at UCF generated last summer. That find gives scientists a new tool to view quantum mechanics in action – comparable to timing a flash on a camera to see some of the fastest electronic processes on Earth.

DARPA PULSE (Program in Ultrafast Laser Science and Engineering) is interested in going a step farther – investigating whether attosecond pulses of laser light can be applied to something like building electronic devices with ultimate speed.

“There have been a lot of new discoveries made in attosecond lasers in the last 12 years,� Chang said. “Now an opportunity has arrived to do something that has previously only been done in principle.�

Attosecond laser pulses can help scientists understand how energy can be harnessed to transport data or build stronger and more conductive materials. However, the intensity of the previous attosecond light was too low for many applications. Consequently, a strong femtosecond laser has to work together with an attosecond pulse in experiments. The new attosecond light source to be built will be strong enough to both excite and probe electron dynamics, which is considered to be the Holy Grail of attosecond science.

The first stage of the project will focus in building a new femtosecond laser capable of producing higher energy, pulses to drive the process of attosecond pulse generation. The laser will be housed in a 2400 square-foot space comparable to four standard labs in UCF’s Physical Science building and still, the laser beam will have to be “folded� multiple times to achieve the power the DARPA project is seeking, Chang said.

Such a facility will help the U.S. compete more effectively with European countries that have thus far dominated the landscape for attosecond laser research infrastructure.

DARPA, which is responsible for developing cutting edge technologies for the military, has increasingly set its sights on the power and potential of ultrafast lasers. A study last year by the National Research Council titled Light for America’s Future emphasized the imperative role optics and photonics will play in developing the technologies of the future and strongly recommended that the U.S. pursue becoming a global leader in the field.

UCF is buttressing its strength in the area as well and has recently announced the creation of an Institute for the Frontier of Attosecond Science and Technology (FAST) directed by Professor Chang to allow researchers from the Department of Physics and UCF’s College of Optics & Photonics/Center for Research and Education in Optics and Lasers to work closely together to compete for cutting-edge projects such as the DARPA grant.

“Attosecond science is addressing problems that are more and more complex,� said Chang. “By establishing an institute for collaborative research on attosecond science we create the potential for major breakthroughs in our understanding of the role of ultrafast electron dynamics.�

CONTACT: Barbara Abney, Office of Research and Commercialization, 407-823-5139 or barb.abney@ucf.edu

UCF Professor Zenghu Chang from the Department of Physics and the College of Optics and Photonics, led the effort that generated a 67-attosecond pulse of extreme ultraviolet light. The results of his research are published online under Early Posting in the journal Optics Letters.

An attosecond is an incomprehensible quintillionith of a second.  In other words it would take 15 million billion pulses of the size Chang’s team achieved to equal one second. The accomplishment is even more remarkable because the team did it without the use of specialized equipment including a mile-long particle accelerator or a Superdome-sized synchrotron.

“Dr. Chang’s success in making ever-shorter light pulses helps open a new door to a previously hidden world, where we can watch electrons move in atoms and molecules, and follow chemical reactions as they take place,â€� said Michael Johnson, the dean of the UCF College of Sciences and a physicist.  “It is astounding to imagine that we may now be able to watch quantum mechanics in process.â€�

Quantum mechanics is the study of physics at the microscopic level, specifically looking at energy and matter on this miniscule scale.

There is much excitement about the accomplishment and the promise Chang’s work holds for helping scientists understand how the world’s smallest building blocks actually work. The technique could lead scientists to understand how energy can be harnessed to transport data, deliver targeted cancer therapies or diagnose disease. The finding marks the first significant breakthrough in the laser pulse field in four years.

In 2001, attosecond pulses were demonstrated for the first time. Since then scientists around the world have been trying to make ever-shorter pulse durations because of the door they could open to understanding the subatomic world. The previous record of an 80-attosecond pulse was set in 2008 at the Max Planck Institute in Garching, Germany. This is the first time an American-led team has set the record.

“The quest for generating shorter and shorter pulses of light has been ongoing since the invention of the laser more than five decades ago,� said Bahaa Saleh, dean of CREOL, the College of Optics and Photonics. “Dr. Chang’s recent advance brings UCF to the forefront of this Olympic race and opens up new frontiers for seeing and recording ultrafast dynamic atomic phenomena.�

Chang’s team was able to accomplish the work at the Florida Atto Science &Technology (FAST) lab in UCF’s Physical Sciences building.

Using the unprecedented power of laser light enables Chang and his peers to conduct their high-level research in much smaller spaces.  Chang’s group created a technique called Double Optical Grating that allows extreme ultraviolet light to be cut off in a manner that concentrates the maximum amount of energy in the shortest possible pulse of light. With the affinity for acronyms shared by many ultrafast laser physicists, Chang named the technique DOG. In addition to creating the light pulse, he created an even faster camera to measure it, which is the Phase Retrieval by Omega Oscillation Filtering (PROOF).

The Department of Defense’s Multidisciplinary º£½ÇÖ±²¥ Research Initiative and the National Science Foundation helped fund the research.

Others who contributed to the team’s discovery include: Kun Zhao, Qi Zhang, Michael Chini, Yi Wu, and Xiaowei Wang, all at UCF.