Please join the STEAM Factory in congratulating STEAM Factory member, Dr. David Penneys (Assistant Professor, Department of Mathematics) on his prestigious NSF CAREER Award. 
 

The NSF funds research and education in science and engineering, through grants, contracts, and cooperative agreements. The Foundation accounts for about 20 percent of federal support to academic institutions for basic research.
From the NSF, CAREER: The Faculty Early Career Development (CAREER) Program is a Foundation-wide activity that offers the National Science Foundation's most prestigious awards in support of junior faculty who exemplify the role of teacher-scholars through outstanding research, excellent education and the integration of education and research within the context of the mission of their organizations. Such activities should build a firm foundation for a lifetime of leadership in integrating education and research. The award amount is $420000, and it is a 5 year award.

This award provides funding for David to visit collaborators and for them to visit him. Even in today's modern world, some of the best ideas come from in-person collaboration. Nothing can match being able to share a chalkboard in the same room. In addition, a large portion of the award is for David's educational component, which includes funds to support undergraduate research and funds for holding summer schools at OSU in David's subject area. This will not only benefit my research area, but will also help to attract great graduate students and postdocs to OSU.

One of our challenges as mathematicians is to find the correct mathematical language to accurately describe nature. For example, the mathematical notion of a group describes symmetry, which is ubiquitous in nature and the sciences. In recent decades, we've seen the emergence of new quantum mathematical objects which have quantum symmetries. David studies mathematical objects called subfactors and unitary fusion categories which are said to encode quantum symmetry. One can think of unitary fusion categories as mathematical models of systems of elementary particles which merge and split. To a condensed matter physicist, this is the correct mathematical language to describe topological phases of matter, which could potentially be used to develop a topological quantum computer. Subfactors belong to the world of von Neumann algebras, which were first introduced in the 1930's by von Neumann to provide a mathematically rigorous foundation for quantum mechanics using operators on Hilbert spaces. These operator algebras provide an essential tool for constructing new examples of unitary fusion categories and classifying known examples.

The outreach component of the award includes several programs targeted at a variety of age and experience levels. In addition to the summer funding for undergraduate research, David will also hold summer schools for graduate students, postdocs, and early career faculty focused on quantum symmetries. These summer schools will help build and strengthen our developing research community. Additionally, along with Adam Fuller from Ohio University, David has just founded the annual Operators on Hilbert spaces In Ohio (OHIO) Conference at OSU, whose aim is to bring together researchers in operator algebras and operator theory in the state of Ohio. David will also partner with OSU's STEAM Factory, whose mission is to provide the public with a comprehensive, detailed experience of the extensive research and talent of the OSU community. Finally, David will use the learning materials from my mini-courses, reading courses, and summer schools to create a text-book style resource about his research area.

The submitted proposal was titled "Representing and Classifying Enriched Quantum Symmetry

Click on the link to see the full text of David's full award abstract

Congratulations, David!

.