Last fall, Assistant Professor Hua Chen received a three-year, $450,000 Early Career award from the National Science Foundation to support his theoretical work on Novel Electronic and Magnetic Dynamics and Responses in Non-collinear Magnetic Materials.
Dr. Chen is inherently fascinated by the many unexplored possibilities in such unconventional magnetic systems. This award gives his research group both an external impetus and essential resource to focus on this interesting topic. Also exciting is the educational component of the project that includes a summer school on the topic of symmetry in magnetism, which will help to get junior participants in and outside of CSU ready for the challenges of the quantum era.
Additionally, Dr. Chen has developed an introductory computational materials science course in the materials science program of CSU. This aims to help graduate students with different backgrounds get a glimpse of the frontier of this field through hands-on Python coding and database usage. As an objective of the teaching component of the award, Dr. Chen will also enrich the content of the course by including an introduction to machine learning applied to materials science.