Maxim Dzero, Ph.D., assistant professor of physics in Kent State University’s College of Arts and Sciences, has been granted $302,796 from the National Science Foundation (NSF) for his project titled “Spins and Knots: The Rise of Topology in F-Orbital Materials.” The focus of this project is to conduct theoretical research aimed at better understanding electron-electron interactions and how they can create novel states of matter.

A Kent State University professor in the College of Arts and Sciences has received a grant from the Binational Science Foundation to continue his development of a combined LED (light-emitting diode) and organic transistor that could be used in flexible displays. Bjorn Lussem, Ph.D., an assistant professor of physics, was awarded $180,000 to use vertical transistors to create organic displays that are more power efficient and could potentially have a higher resolution. 

A physics professor in the College of Arts and Sciences at Kent State University recently received a $307,000, two-year grant from the U.S. Department of Energy to support the development of a novel approach to studying non-equilibrium dynamics in the quark gluon plasma (QGP). 

Using a local supercomputer that he built at Kent State, Michael Strickland, Ph.D., associate professor of physics, hopes to better understand the conditions of the early universe and the Big Bang. 

Kent State University researchers Jacob Barkley, Ph.D., and Andrew Lepp, Ph.D., as well as Kent State alumni Michael Rebold, Ph.D., and Gabe Sanders, Ph.D., assessed how common smartphone uses – texting and talking – interfere with treadmill exercise.

The researchers, from Kent State’s College of Education, Health and Human Services, found that when individuals use their smartphones during exercise for texting or talking, it causes a reduction in exercise intensity. 

Three top researchers in literary studies, liquid crystals and post-traumatic stress received Kent State University’s 2015 Outstanding Research and Scholarship Awards at a ceremony and reception held April 14 on the Kent Campus. The awards are sponsored by the University Research Council and Division of Research and Sponsored Programs.

How well does Twitter represent public perceptions and behavior in a public health crisis?

Researchers at Kent State University are conducting a National Science Foundation (NSF)-funded study of what social media activity on Twitter reveals about perceptions of last October’s Ebola scare on campus and how perceptions influenced behavior.

A Kent State scientist has received a $450,000 grant from the National Science Foundation (NSF) to lead a study of the workings and dynamics of a structure inside the human chromosome.

Hanbin Mao, Ph.D., associate professor of chemistry and biochemistry in the College of Arts and Sciences, will study G-quadruplex structures (GQs), which are located in the telomeres at the end of chromosomes.

A $952,000 National Science Foundation grant to researchers at Kent State University will result in a mobile device application to help visitors to Cuyahoga Valley National Park learn more about the park’s history and ecology and become “citizen scientists” by sharing their findings with others.

Two researchers at Kent State Universities have found that mindfulness-based stress reduction (MBSR) can reduce high blood pressure, which affects nearly 60 million adults in the United States.

MBSR, which involves the practice of meditation, body awareness and some gentle yoga, has been shown to be effective in preventing and treating depression and anxiety and alleviating stress, but scientific studies of its effects on blood pressure are rare.

Over the vast expanse of Lake Erie, sampling the water to test for potentially toxic algae blooms may seem like using a medicine dropper in an ocean. It takes days to collect enough data from enough spots to determine if the algae pose a danger.

To cover a larger area more efficiently and better predict future algae blooms, Joseph D. Ortiz, Ph.D., professor of geology in the College of Arts and Sciences, is gathering data from an instrument on board the International Space Station – a hyperspectral imager. From space, it can image the entire lake in two days.

A catastrophic landslide, one of the largest known on the surface of the Earth, took place within minutes in southwestern Utah more than 21 million years ago, reported a Kent State University geologist in a paper published in the November 2014 issue of the journal Geology.

Twenty years ago, Antal Jákli’s research specialty, bent-core liquid crystals, took him to Germany, where he and his lab mates joked that the material they were studying looked like opals – it was so solid and colorful, it could have been used in jewelry.