Light Years Ahead
Dr. Darin Ulness is giddy about molecules and it's easy to see why. His cutting edge research of ultra-fast liquid molecules and noisy light spectroscopy has led to a half-million dollar grant from the National Science Foundation.
Ulness, a Concordia-Moorhead alumnus and professor of chemistry, is one of four recent chemistry CAREER grant recipients, and the only one from Minnesota. The prestigious CAREER research grant recognizes outstanding young faculty, those who have earned their doctoral degrees within the past six years. Ulness used a portion of the $532,000 grant to create a modern laser lab for teaching and research.
Ulness teamed up with three Concordia-Moorhead Goldwater scholars for his research - Dan Biebighauser '02, John Gregoire '04 and Dan Turner '04 (link to their Know page). Biebighauser and Gregoire have since pursued graduate studies at Vanderbilt University and Cornell University, and Turner is studying at MIT.
"In my initial proposals, NSF said 'This is good, but undergrads can't do this,'" says Ulness. "We took away that argument by getting six papers published in top-tier, peer-reviewed physical chemistry journals. We proved we could do things here."
