Zubin Jacob, associate professor of electrical and computer engineering

Prof. Zubin Jacob has been awarded a prestigious Director’s Fellowship from the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA). 

In 2017, Jacob won the DARPA Young Faculty Award (YFA), which aims to consistently establish and sustain groups of young scientists motivated to pursue high-risk, high-reward research by pairing them with DARPA program managers and providing them with funding for a two-year period. Winners are chosen in a range of research areas from engineering, physics, chemistry to computer and social science. The long term goal of the YFA program is to develop the next generation of academic scientists, engineers, and mathematicians who will focus a significant portion of their career on DoD and National Security issues.

At the end of his initial two-year period for the YFA, Jacob has been selected for the highly competitive Director’s Fellowship. The award extends his YFA research for a third year.

"Time and time again, DARPA has leveraged cutting edge science to create innovative technologies that have made lasting impact on society,” says Jacob. “Their track record is an inspiration for problem solvers worldwide so it’s a special honor to be recognized by DARPA for my team's work." 

Jacob’s research is in the area of thermal light sources, with the goal of designing new sources of thermal radiation that leverage quantum behavior of molecules even in the presence of heat. His research group plans to experimentally demonstrate such a new source of radiation in the short term.

As part of the research program, PI Jacob’s group has put forth the concept of a quantum maximum power transfer theorem and Thevenin’s equivalent for quantum networks.