October 4, 1996 Contact: Robert Irion (408) 459-2495; irion@ua.ucsc.edu

UC SANTA CRUZ PHYSICIST CAPTURES $500,000 PACKARD FELLOWSHIP

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

SANTA CRUZ, CA--For the third year in a row, a faculty member at the University of California, Santa Cruz, has earned one of the most sought- after awards for young American scientists: a David and Lucile Packard Fellowship for Science and Engineering, worth $100,000 per year for five years.

This year's recipient is assistant professor of physics Sue Carter, who came to UCSC in April. She is among twenty recipients of the 1996 Packard Fellowships, which recognize scientists who have shown unusual creative abilities in the first three years of their academic careers.

The David and Lucile Packard Foundation of Los Altos launched its fellowship program in 1988 and now awards $10 million per year to support the research of 100 active fellows. The foundation invites about 50 universities to compete for the awards; each university nominates two scientists. The 1996 winners, announced today (October 4) by the foundation, represent institutions such as MIT, Caltech, Yale, Johns Hopkins, Duke, and five campuses in the UC system: UCLA, San Diego, San Francisco, Santa Barbara, and Santa Cruz.

Only four institutions have received a Packard Fellowship each year for the last three years: Caltech, the University of Chicago, UC San Francisco, and UCSC.

"Without question, the Packard Fellows are among the brightest group of young people in the nation, if not the world," says former presidential science adviser Allan Bromley of Yale. "Prior to World War II, almost all the leading scientists and engineers in the country were educated through the generosity of the Rockefeller and Carnegie foundations. I believe the Packard Foundation is poised to play the same role as we move into the 21st century."

Carter studies the chemical and physical properties of substances that could form the next generation of materials in microelectronics and optical displays. Today's TV and computer screens, semiconductors, and other technologies rely on inorganic materials, such as silicon. Carter examines the relationship between structure and electrical properties in mixtures of inorganic and organic (carbon-based) compounds. Such substances offer a tantalizing promise: the durability and reliability of traditional inorganics combined with the flexibility and environmental advantages of the atoms and molecules that compose living things.

"The next generation of optoelectronic materials almost certainly will be both organically and inorganically based," Carter says. "Each type of material has limitations and advantages, and the key is to combine the best of both."

Carter creates her own inorganic-organic composites in her lab at UCSC. She probes the behaviors of long strings, or polymers, of the composites under different conditions of temperature, chemical composition, and ultraviolet light. Of particular interest are the shapes, sizes, and orientation of the particles, as well as their reactions to electrical impulses.

Eventual applications include new technologies for information storage, light-emitting diodes (LEDs), and liquid-crystal displays (LCDs). For instance, a polymer-based LED may lead to flat-panel displays which, unlike LCDs, are equally viewable from any angle. "Electronic paper" is another goal: portable, foldable black-on-white displays that could profoundly change the way we access information.

"Inorganic-organic composites should allow researchers to develop 'smart' materials that respond to changes in their surroundings in ways that purely inorganic materials cannot," Carter says.

Carter will use her $500,000 award to hire a new postdoctoral researcher and graduate research assistants. She also will purchase a sophisticated instrument called a scanning tunneling microscope, which can take images on the scale of individual molecules.

Carter, age 30, earned her B.A. magna cum laude in physics, chemistry, and mathematics from Kalamazoo College and her Ph.D. in physical chemistry from the University of Chicago. She worked for two years as a postdoctoral researcher at AT&T Bell Laboratories-Lucent Technologies in Murray Hill, New Jersey. Before joining UCSC's faculty, she held a six-month appointment as the Center for Polymer Interface and Macromolecular Assembly Young Investigator Fellow at IBM's Almaden Research Center, near San Jose. Her research program will include extensive ties with collaborators at the Almaden Research Center and in other high-tech industries.

Preceding Carter as Packard Fellows at UCSC were two members of the Center for the Molecular Biology of RNA, a leading research group on campus: biochemist Joseph Puglisi in 1994 and molecular biologist Charles Wilson in 1995. Both researchers study the structure and function of RNA, a cousin of DNA that carries out critical tasks in every living cell.

The David and Lucile Packard Foundation, created in 1964, supports and encourages organizations that depend on private funding and volunteer leadership. It awards grants to programs in the arts, community, marine biology, environment, population, education, and children's health.

Editor's notes: You may reach Carter at (408) 459-3657 or sacarter@cats.ucsc.edu. A photo of Carter is available from the UCSC Public Information Office.

This release is also available on the World Wide Web at UCSC's "Services for Journalists" site (http://www.ucsc.edu/news/journalist.html) or via modem from UC NewsWire (209/244-6971). UCSC Packard Fellowship - -

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