UCLA Engineering Professor Receives Air Force Young Investigator Research Award

Sergio Carbajo, an assistant professor of electrical and computer engineering at the UCLA Samueli School of Engineering, has received a Young Investigator Research Program Award from the Air Force Office of Scientific Research in recognition of his work in laser and optical physics.

The award, which consists of a three-year grant of up to $450,000 for each recipient, is presented to early career investigators whose research is relevant to the Department of the Air Force. The grant will support Carbajo’s research on innovative quantum electrodynamics to enable new regimes in ultracompact X-ray lasers.

Carbajo leads the Quantum Light-Matter Center Cooperative (Q-LMC) at UCLA, which seeks to explore and advocate for the advancement of photo sciences and light-matter interactions across a broad range of applications.

A member of the California NanoSystems Institute at UCLA, Carbajo holds a joint faculty appointment in the Physics and Astronomy Department. He is also a visiting professor at Stanford University’s Photon Science Division at SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory. In addition to his research, Carbajo is interested in promoting equity, diversity and inclusion (EDI) in the scientific fields. He serves as the EDI officer of the Electrical and Computer Engineering Department at UCLA Samueli and is the founding director of the Queered Science and Technology Center.

Among the accolades Carbajo has received for his work in photon sciences are the 2021 Horizon Prize from the Royal Society of Chemistry, the 2021 SPIE Early Career Award and the 2019 Japan Society for the Promotion of Science Fellowship.

The Air Force Office of Scientific Research is the basic research arm of the Air Force Research Laboratory. The Young Investigator Research Program awarded a total of $25 million in 2023 to 58 investigators from 44 research institutions in the U.S.