Physicist David D. Awschalom heads the Center for Spintronics and Quantum Computation.

David D. Awschalom, professor of physics and of electrical and computer engineering, has been awarded the 2005 Oliver E. Buckley Prize for fundamental contributions to experimental studies of quantum spin dynamics and spin coherence in condensed matter systems.

The Buckley Prize is given annually by the American Physical Society to recognize and encourage outstanding theoretical or experimental contributions to condensed matter physics.

At UCSB, Awschalom is director of the Center for Spintronics and Quantum Computation, and is associate scientific director of the California Nanosystems Institute. He and his research group have pioneered experimental techniques that made possible the discovery of long-lived electron spin lifetimes and coherence in semiconductors and nanostructures.

Last month, Awschalom, materials professor Art Gossard, and graduate students Yuichiro Kato and Roberto Myers announced in a paper that they had observed a theoretically predicted effect of electrical current known as the spin Hall effect. Their evidence ended a 33-year hunt for experimental proof of the phenomenon.

The Buckley prize was endowed in 1952 by AT&T Bell Laboratories (now Lucent Technologies) to recognize outstanding scientific work. Only 70 other scientists have received the award, and 13 of them have gone on to win a Nobel Prize.

"We’re enormously proud of David Awschalom," said Martin Moskovits, dean of the Division of Mathematical, Life and Physical Sciences. "David and his coworkers are pioneer founders of a new branch of physics, dubbed ‘spintronics,’ which exploits a previously underused property—a kind of fundamental magnetism—of the electron."

He added, "This magnetism could be harnessed to create a whole new technology for carrying out computation, communication, and control. This accomplishment could, one day, rank alongside the discovery of the transistor in its impact."

Awschalom joined UCSB’s faculty in 1991. Among his other honors are the IBM Outstanding Innovation Award and the 2003 Magnetism Prize of the International Union of Pure and Applied Physics.

The spintronics center that Awschalom heads is affiliated with the California Nanosystems Institute, one of four California Institutes for Science and Innovation supported by the state and private industry. The CNSI is a joint project of UC Santa Barbara and UCLA. Evelyn Hu, the institute’s director at UCSB, said Awschalom "continues to make groundbreaking contributions to the field of spin dynamics and spin coherence"

—Barbara Bronson Gray