Dr. Mark Horn has successfully led a team of investigators and attracted a Multidisciplinary University Research Initiative program to Penn State and ESM. The proposal is entitled “Uncooled IR Detectors: Growth, Characterization, and Modeling of Monolithic Silicon Microbolometer Materials for Uncooled Infrared Detectors” and is supported by the Army Research Office. The project will attract approximately $5,000,000 over the next five years.

Osama Awadelkarim, professor of engineering science and mechanics, has been named a Jefferson Science Fellow.

Conceived by former Secretary of State Colin Powell in 2003, the Jefferson Science Fellows Program is designed to strengthen the science and technology capacity at the U.S. Department of State. The program, which is administered by the National Academy of Sciences, brings five experienced, tenured research scientists and engineers from the American academic community to join the State Department for a yearlong assignment in Washington, D.C., and/or at a U.S. missions abroad.

Though Jefferson fellows return to their academic careers after the assignment, they remain available to the State Department for five years as expert consultants for short-term projects.

A member of the Penn State faculty since 1994, Awadelkarim holds a bachelor's degree in physics from the University of Khartoum in Sudan and a doctoral degree in physics from Reading University in the United Kingdom.

Before coming to Penn State, he served as an assistant professor of physics at the University of Khartoum and as a research scientist at Linkoping University and the Swedish Defense Research Establishment in Sweden.

His research interests include nano-fabrication, microelectronics materials and devices, defects in crystalline and polycrystalline semiconductor materials, and thin film transistors for active matrix liquid crystal display applications.