The faculty Senate has bestowed its highest honor on David Awschalom, an internationally recognized researcher who is a professor of physics and of electrical and computer engineering at UCSB. Awschalom was named Faculty Research Lecturer for 2008 on March 6.

In announcing the award, the UCSB Academic Senate said Awschalom “has made remarkable contributions to our campus in the fields of physics and engineering.” Awschalom is director of the Center for Spintronics and Quantum Computation and associate director of the California NanoSystems Institute, a collaborative endeavor between UCSB and UCLA.

The Faculty Research Lectureship was established in 1955; Awschalom is the 53rd recipient of the honor. His free Faculty Research Lecture, the date of which has yet to be determined, will be delivered on campus and open to the public.

Last year’s recipient, neurobiologist Steven K. Fisher, presented the award to Awschalom in front of the Academic Senate’s Faculty Legislature. Fisher said the award’s selection committee picked Awschalom “for a combination of outstanding research contributions, scholarship, scientific leadership, broad contributions to enriching the intellectual stature of UCSB, and for his outstanding role as a teacher and mentor.”

Fisher noted that Awschalom’s dedication to teaching “will be one of his most lasting contributions to the stature of our campus.” Since coming to UCSB in 1991, Awschalom has mentored 59 postdoctoral fellows and graduate students, 15 of whom now hold positions in academe.

In acknowledgment, Awschalom said: “I am extremely surprised and deeply honored to receive this award. This level of appreciation from my colleagues across the campus means a great deal to me.

“Moreover, given the breadth of excellence and the wide range of faculty activities spanning our university, to be selected represents a special honor. I must share this recognition with my students, for it is a reflection of their excellence and dedication as well.”

Awschalom, who received his Ph.D. in experimental physics from Cornell University, works in the area of nanoscience known as “spintronics,” a discipline that deals with measuring and manipulating the endless spinning of electrons about their own axis.

“While this may seem to be a pretty rarified area to most of us,” said Fisher, “…its impact has been enormous.”

Understanding the behavior of electrons in materials affects the performance of semiconductors, critical components in computers, cell phones, and many other electronic devices.

In the related field of quantum information processing, Awschalom’s discoveries include creating and controlling quantum spin coherence in semiconductors, results that have generated international efforts aimed at exploiting this phenomenon for the construction of future quantum computers.

Another previous winner of the faculty research lectureship, Evelyn Hu, the director of the California NanoSystems Institute and a professor of electrical and computer engineering, expressed her “delight” at Awschalom’s selection. “This important recognition is a fitting tribute to the enormous scope and impact of David’s research,” said Hu.

A member of the National Academy of Sciences, Awschalom is also a fellow of both the American Association for the Advancement of Science and of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. In 2005, he received the Oliver E. Buckley Prize, given annually by the American Physical Society for fundamental contributions to experimental studies of quantum spin dynamics and spin coherence in condensed matter systems.

His research has been chronicled in more than 300 scientific journal articles as well as in newspapers and magazines.