This month, the U.S. National Science Foundation (NSF) announced six awards through its EPSCoR Research Infrastructure Improvement (RII) Program: Focused EPSCoR Collaborations (FEC), investing $29.2 million across 11 EPSCoR jurisdictions to strengthen research capacity and drive translational research across the nation. These four-year awards aim to catalyze transformative research and infrastructure enhancement in states that are historically underfunded in federal research.
Artificial magnetic semiconductors in a 2-dimensional “flatland”
Nebraska faculty collaborating on a current EPSCoR RII project, Emergent Quantum Materials and Technologies (EQUATE), are among the leaders on one of the new FEC projects. Harnessing artificial magnetic semiconductors in the flatland will unite experts in physics, chemistry, materials science and electrical engineering to combine materials synthesis, nanofabrication, scanning probe microscopy/spectroscopy, electronic band structure measurements, quantum transport and heterostructure fabrication to address the challenges of 2D magnets in fundamental physics and device technology. The design of next-generation 2D magnets will offer new quantum states and applications and will deliver devices with unique functionalities ranging from lithium-ion batteries, flexible electronics, wearable devices, sensors and functional membranes. The Nebraska team includes UNL Physics and Astronomy’s Christian Binek (Principal Investigator, or PI), plus Peter Dowben, Kirill Belashchenko, Xia Hong, and UNL College of Engineering’s Abdelghani Laraoui are designated as project Co-PIs. This project’s research team includes University of Kansas researchers, and begins August 15, 2025.
Sustainable water reuse systems to benefit Great Plains rural communities
In addition, two past recipients of Nebraska EPSCoR’s FIRST Award, and current colleagues at UNL’s Department of Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering, are collaborating on another newly-announced FEC award. Siamak Nejati (PI) and Mona Bavarian (Co-PI) will work on Circular waste resource recovery and water reuse systems to drive sustainability and resiliency of the Great Plains rural communities -- along with researchers at Kansas State University and Oklahoma State University. As the Great Plains region faces the need to conserve dwindling water reserves from the Ogallala Aquifer, the region annually generates more than 80% of the country's total livestock waste which degrades water quality and living conditions. Interdisciplinary researchers will collaborate on circular waste resource recovery and water reuse technologies to benefit primarily rural communities. The project focuses on building research capacity to create a circular resource recovery platform with water reuse, generating valuable co-products, substances that result from a production process, from livestock waste. New avenues for cross-convergent research between applied and fundamental science-based researchers and manufacturing and industry partners are also goals of this project.
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