Dougherty Receives NSF Career Award

Dr. Daniel Dougherty, assistant professor of physics, received an Early Career Development Award from the National Science Foundation to fund research on flaws in organic semiconducting films.

The Career Award, one of the NSF’s highest honors for science and engineering faculty, will provide $500,000 over five years for Dougherty’s research. His work focuses on finding structural disorder in organic thin films and measuring how these flaws may impact the films’ ability to efficiently conduct electricity.

Organic semiconducting films show promise for new low-cost devices for efficient lighting and solar energy conversion but are known to have structural disorders. Dougherty hopes his work will provide a better understanding of the interaction of film structure and electrical properties.

Dougherty earned a B.S. in physics at Texas A&M University and a Ph.D. at the University of Maryland at College Park. After conducting postdoctoral research at the University of Pittsburgh and the National Institute of Standards and Technology, he joined the NC State faculty as an assistant professor in 2008. In addition to the work conducted in his own lab, Dougherty is also a founding member of NC State’s NSF-funded Center for Molecular Spintronics.