Two University of Alabama faculty members received the National Science Foundation’s most prestigious early-career award for the 2025 academic year.
The NSF CAREER Award recognizes scientists and engineers who show leadership at the intersection of education and research. The awards provide funding for innovative research in science, engineering and technology that supports national priorities and shows a commitment to service through scientific leadership, education or community outreach.
Each project must feature both a research component and an educational component to provide science education opportunities for students in the university and community.
Across campus, 39 active faculty have received CAREER Awards during their tenure. Dr. James Harris, assistant professor of chemical and biological engineering, and Dr. Igor Fedin, assistant professor of chemistry, won the award this year.
Advancing the science of aviation fuel
Harris studies zeolites, a class of microporous crystalline oxides typically comprised of silicon and aluminum. Zeolites have a rigid, porous structure that can host active sites that enable chemical reactions necessary to transform ethanol into sustainable aviation fuel.
At the heart of Harris’s CAREER Award research lies a mystery around the rare earth metal yttrium. Other trivalent metals like aluminum, iron and gallium, when incorporated into zeolite frameworks, form Brønsted acid sites. “When you incorporate yttrium into a zeolite, it should generate a Brønsted acid site,” Harris said. “And it just doesn’t.”
In science, unexpected behavior means something new to learn about the material world. Harris’s lab has learned that because yttrium is bigger than silicon or aluminum, it likely distorts the nearby zeolite structure.
Harris plans to work with researchers from Johns Hopkins University to computationally model yttrium’s structure and compare it to his data on how it behaves in experiments. Understanding why and how yttrium-containing zeolites behave the way they do — and how we can take advantage of them — will help advance the catalysis science necessary for production of sustainable aviation fuel.
Exploring nanocrystal origins
Quantum dots are tiny, nearly spherical nanocrystals of semiconductors that emit light at specific colors based on their size. Each quantum dot is only a few nanometers – one billionth of a meter.
“A typical quantum dot contains hundreds or thousands of atoms, but typically, no two quantum dots are alike,” said Fedin. Because quantum dots are synthesized in a process that grows the nanocrystals up from a seed particle, they vary by a few atoms here and there. This means almost imperceptible changes in the spectrum of light the dots produce.
In his CAREER Award project, Fedin proposes to use electrochemistry to study the fleeting moments in which molecules begin to coalesce into quantum dots and other nanoscale semiconductors. His research team will develop electrodes capable of detecting chemical changes in real time as nanocrystals form, without disrupting the reaction. The project aims to provide an atomic-level understanding and full control over the creation of these nanoparticles.
“The goal is to produce quantum dots and other nanocrystals with predictable properties,” Fedin said. The success of his experiments has the potential to advance an array of technologies, including LED displays, solar energy and quantum communications.