Daniel Brandenburg, an assistant professor in the Department of Physics, has been selected as one of 93 scientists across the country to receive funding from the U.S. Department of Energy’s Early Career Research Program.

“I am honored, humbled and excited to receive the 2023 DOE Early Career award (ECA). As a new professor at the beginning of my career, the ECA is more than just funding, it is the encouragement needed to enthusiastically tackle big questions and take on challenges in new frontiers,” Brandenburg said. “Receiving this award affirms the value and impact of my research, which is focused on understanding the behavior and fundamental nature of the strong nuclear force. Receiving this award enlivens me to continue to pursue excellence in research and leadership throughout my career.”

The money allocated to Brandenburg will fund his research in pioneering the use of a recently discovered quantum entanglement effect that enables new avenues for studying matter in unprecedented detail. 

“My research utilizes this recently discovered quantum effect in which entanglement enables wavefunction interference between distinguishable particles,” Brandenburg said when describing his research. “Hidden in these interference patterns is novel information about the way nuclear matter forms and behaves.”

Brandenburg was the only researcher in Ohio to earn this funding in 2023.

To be eligible for Early Career Research Program awards, a researcher must be an untenured, tenure-track assistant or associate professor at a U.S. academic institution or a full-time employee at a DOE National Laboratory who received a PhD within the past 12 years. Research topics are required to fall within the scope of one of the Office of Science’s eight major program areas: 

• Accelerator R&D and Production 
• Advanced Scientific Computing Research 
• Basic Energy Sciences 
• Biological and Environmental Research 
• Fusion Energy Sciences
• High Energy Physics
• Isotope R&D and Production
• Nuclear Physics  

Awardees were selected based on peer review by outside scientific experts. The projects announced today are selections for negotiation of a financial award, and the final details for each are subject to final grant and contract negotiations between DOE and the awardees. 

“Supporting America’s scientists and researchers early in their careers will ensure the United States remains at the forefront of scientific discovery,” said U.S. Secretary of Energy Jennifer M. Granholm. “The funding announced today gives the recipients the resources to find the answers to some of the most complex questions as they establish themselves as experts in their fields.”