Asher Preska Steinberg ’13, who majored in both chemistry and physics at Brandeis, has been awarded a National Science Foundation Graduate Research Fellowship in materials research. The fellowships, which are awarded based on a national competition, provide three full years of support for Ph.D. research and are highly valued by students and institutions.
At Brandeis, Asher worked on his senior thesis in chemistry with Professor Milos Dolnik as part of the Epstein Group. They studied the growth dynamics of Turing patterns in photosensitive reaction-diffusion systems. As part of the 2011 NYU MRSEC Research Experiences for Undergraduates (REU) program Asher worked with Paul Chaikin to study active colloids, and they recently published an article in Science entitled “Living Crystals of Light-Activated Colloidal Surfers”. The article received attention from the press, including the LA Times, Wired, and Ars Technica. Last summer Asher participated in the Columbia EFRC Research Program for Undergraduates (RPU) and studied silver plasmonic nanoparticles with Louis Brus.
Asher will be attending California Institute of Technology this coming fall in the field of Chemical Physics.
