” Igor Bargatin, assistant professor in the Department of Mechanical Engineering and Applied Mechanics, has been selected to receive a 2019 National Science Foundation (NSF) CAREER Award. This honor is the NSF’s most prestigious award and aims to support junior faculty members who embody the role of ideal teacher-scholars through the integration of education and research while supporting the mission of their organizations.
Bargatin’s award will fund research on “Thermal Transport in Ultrathin Metamaterials: Enabling levitation at the Macroscale,” which aims to study nanoscale structures that are able to produce photophoretic forces that are greater than their own weight. These forces enable the materials to levitate when light is shone on them.”