This twelve-month award allows the PI to participate in planning visits to assess resources available for international collaborative research on ultrafast dynamics in at the European Laboratory for Non-Linear Spectroscopy in Florence, Italy and at the University of St. Andrews in St. Andrews in Scotland.
The PI will orchestrate an international collaboration of complementary groups in the US, Italy, and Scotland on the optical properties of a new generation of transparent ceramics in which quantum mechanical effects play a role. The visit will allow assessment of research capabilities and responsibilities of the respective US, Italian, and Scottish groups and clarify individual strengths in equipment and infrastructure required to structure an international cooperative research proposal on multifunctional ceramics.
The primary expectation of the international collaboration is to advance the development of a versatile new class of high performance optical materials and to find unanticipated applications for them. The planning visit will also help develop an ongoing program of exchange visits by graduate students of the participating laboratories.
