Pasha Tabatabai receives NSF grant

Assistant Profesor of Physics Pasha Tabatabai, Ph.D., has been awarded a two-year grant from the National Science Foundation through the competitive “Launching Early-Career Academic Pathways” (LEAPS) program. The funding will enable Tabatabai to significantly advance his foundational work quantifying the rules that govern biological systems. Specifically, Tabatabai’s lab will define and characterize the mechanical properties of non-equilibrium schools of fish, thus allowing a comparison between traditional material science and living materials with the ultimate goal of inspiring new material design.

In addition to providing summer research assistantships to two undergraduate students per year, Tabatabai will establish an innovative eight-week educational traineeship program in which Garfield High School students from backgrounds historically underrepresented in STEM will receive a stipend to join lab activities and participate in a virtual seminar series, thus providing exposure to a lab setting and "leveling the field" in terms of competitiveness for future opportunities including college admissions. 

You can learn more about the grant at NSF.