Youn Jue (Eunice) Bae, assistant professor of chemistry and chemical biology, has received a Department of Energy (DOE) Early Career Research Program award for her research on magnetic materials.
She is one of 67 researchers across the country who will receive a portion of the $96 million dollars being awarded, approximately $875,000 over five years for scientists at institutions of higher education.
“Groundbreaking science begins with empowering extraordinary people,” said DOE Under Secretary for Science Dr. Darío Gil in a statement. “These 67 early career researchers represent the very best of American ingenuity. DOE is proud to invest in their vision as they push the boundaries of knowledge and cement U.S. leadership in the technologies that will define our century.”
Bae’s project, “Excitonic Control of Angular Momentum and Dissipation in a Magnetic Semiconductor,” explores how light can control magnetism. When a material absorbs light, it can create excitons – pairs of an excited electron and the positively charged “hole” it leaves behind. Bae aims to understand how these pairs transfer energy and influence the tiny magnetic moments within a material. This understanding could offer a new way to use light to create, measure, and control the quantum properties of magnetic waves, whose smallest units are called magnons.
Bae group’s interest lies in exploring how the interplay of orbital, spin and charge degrees of freedom shapes interactions between excitons and magnetism. Her lab combines insights from chemistry and physics with the development of advanced optical and microwave spectroscopy tools to investigate spin dynamics in materials.
Her other honors include a 2026 Scialog award to investigate quantum entanglement.
