A former Tar Heel was recently awarded an NSF Early CAREER Faculty Award, which is a prestigious grant recognizing faculty members’ leadership in research and education.
Johannes Pollanen is a 2002 graduate of the UNC Department of Physics and Astronomy. He earned a B.S. in physics and went on to receive a PhD in physics from Northwestern University.
While at UNC, he worked as an undergraduate researcher with Arthur Champagne and Christian Iliadis at the Laboratory for Experimental Nuclear Astrophysics (LENA).
“Those early research experiences taught me a lot about how to be an effective and creative scientist, and the mentoring provided by Art and Christian were really foundational in cultivating me as a scientist,” said Pollanen. “I had a truly fantastic time at UNC in general and in the Department of Physics and Astronomy specifically.”
Pollanen is currently an assistant professor and Jerry Cowen Endowed Chair of Experimental Physics at Michigan State University (MSU).
According to the MSU news release, the $500,000 award will support graduate student research in Pollanen’s Laboratory for Hybrid Quantum Systems.
Learn more about the NSF Early CAREER Faculty Award here.