Dr. Katherine Willets receives Air Force Office of Scientific Research Young Investigator Award

The Air Force Office of Scientific Research announced Oct. 17 it will award approximately $12.1 million in grants to 39 scientists and engineers who submitted winning research proposals through the Air Force's Young Investigator Research Program.

The program is open to scientists and engineers at research institutions across the United States who hold a doctorate or achieved an equivalent degree in the last five years and show exceptional ability and promise for conducting basic research.

The Young Investigator Research Program, or YIP, fosters creative basic research in science and engineering, enhances early career development of outstanding young investigators, and increases opportunities for the young investigators to recognize the Air Force mission and the related challenges in science and engineering.

Competition for the YIP award is intense. This year, the AFOSR broad agency announcement solicitation in major areas of interest to the Air Force resulted in 210 proposals. The areas of interest include: aerospace, chemical and material sciences; physics and electronics; and mathematics, information and life sciences. AFOSR officials select proposals based on the evaluation criteria listed in the broad agency announcement.

Dr. Katherine Willets will work on mapping local shape-dependent EM field enhancements in single metallic nanoparticles using stochastic optical reconstruction microscopy.