LOCK HAVEN, Pa. - Jersey Shore resident Jacob Cox is the recipient of a prestigious National Science Foundation REU (Research Experience for Undergraduates) Scholarship. The Lock Haven University Physics/Applied Physics major will spend the summer doing research at The Pennsylvania State University. Jacob Cox is the son of Steven and Gina Cox.
The REU will run from June 1 to August 10, 2011. Students will be housed in university apartments and will receive a stipend of $5000 for the summer.

During his REU, Mr. Cox will work on a project related to the deterministic assembly of nanowires and sheets. The Penn State REU summer undergraduates will be working on two different subprojects. One project will involve understanding the minimum pitch between adjacent wires and the other involves designing and fabricating an integrated nanowire delivery system to improve assembly yield.

The Penn State undergraduate research web site describes the REU program. “The REU program gives visiting undergraduate students the opportunity to participate in frontier materials physics and materials research at a major research facility. Students work closely with a Penn State faculty member, together with graduate students and postdoctoral scholars in the research group. By participating, students experience the challenge and excitement of a career in research (and perhaps the occasional frustrations too). In addition students are able to acquire valuable skills, participate in seminars and join in a variety of extra-curricular activities.” Additional information is available at www.phys.psu.edu/undergraduate/research/reu/non_up.html

The 10-week REU will culminate in a mini-research symposium at which each student will deliver a presentation on his or her research to an audience of the other students and their faculty advisers.

“I am very excited about this fantastic opportunity,” said Mr. Cox. “I would like to personally thank my professors Dr. Marian Tzolov, Dr. Anura Goonewardene, Dr. John Reid and Dr. Indrajith Senevirathne for their help and support, without which none of this would be possible.”
At the 2011 meeting of the American Physical Society, Mr. Cox gave a poster presentation on his research titled “Cathodes with modified morphology for polymer light emitting devices” which focuses on some aspects of the degradation mechanism of this class of optoelectronic devices. He conducted his research in the Lock Haven University nanotechnology program under Dr. Marian Tzolov, associate professor in the Geology and Physics Department.
After graduation from Lock Haven University, Mr. Cox plans to attend graduate school and major in petroleum engineering. He hopes to do his graduate work at Penn State.

The Pennsylvania State University Department of Physics along with the Penn State University Material Research Science and Engineering Center (MRSEC) has been designated a Research Experiences for Undergraduates (REU) site by the National Science Foundation Division of Materials Research.