David Hilton, Ph.D., an assistant professor of physics, has received a National Science Foundation CAREER Award.

The five-year, $600,000 award benefits Hilton's ongoing UAB research into coherent manipulation in quantum systems. Coherence is a property of quantum mechanics that could complicate the design of future electronic components, like computer processors, as designers continue to reduce the size of components to the quantum scale in an effort to make them operate more efficiently. In particular, Hilton seeks to develop novel applications to facilitate computation on the quantum scale.