It takes a lot of gumption to tackle big questions in physics, especially if you’re not enlisted in one of the small armies of researchers working at the world’s largest particle accelerators and observatories. Investigating these topics often takes expensive equipment and lots of time, both of which are easier to muster on an international project. But, UC Santa Barbara assistant professor Andrew Jayich has gumption in droves.
Jayich’s work with trapped radium molecules has earned him a prestigious National Science Foundation CAREER award as well as a $1.3 million grant from the W.M. Keck Foundation. The funds will enable him to expand his team and their equipment, making his grand experiments possible. Indeed, the group just published a paper in Physical Review Letters describing the first instance in which a radium ion was used to create a super precise optical clock.