Air Force Office of Scientific Research : engineers select Air Force basic research program manager for fellowship

Defense AT&L, Sept-Oct, 2007 by Maria Callier

ARLINGTON, Va. -- A June announcement from the Air Force Office of Scientific Research indicates that the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers Inc., Board of Directors has named an AFOSR program manager as a Fellow for its class of 2007.

The board selected Dr. Harold Weinstock, AFOSR's quantum electronic solids research program manager, on factors that included leadership and research in the field of superconducting magnetometry, a tool for analyzing metallic structural integrity.

"I was one of the originators of using superconducting magnetometry for non-destructive evaluation, which I first did during a sabbatical when I was a professor of physics at Illinois Institute of Technology in Chicago," said Weinstock. "I also did it while on sabbatical at the Naval Research Laboratory."

Weinstock said being selected for the fellowship was a pleasant surprise.

"I had been an IEEE member for only five years, the minimum time required to be eligible," he said. "I was somewhat overwhelmed by the number of people from around the world who took the trouble to congratulate me on receiving this honor."

The IEEE Grade of Fellow is conferred by the board of directors upon a person with an extraordinary record of accomplishments. IEEE is the world's largest technical professional society with 365,000 members in 150 countries. The society is a leading authority on a wide variety of areas ranging from aerospace systems, computers and telecommunications, to biomedical engineering, electric power, and consumer electronics.

Weinstock, who joined AFOSR in 1986, currently manages a portfolio that focuses on materials that exhibit cooperative quantum electronic behavior, with the primary emphasis on superconductors. He also focuses on any conducting materials with surfaces that can be modified and observed through the use of scanning tunneling and related atomic-force microscopic techniques, the ultimate goal being the creation of new nano-devices and structures.

He continues to conduct his own research in electronics and electronic materials that relate to superconductivity, magnetism, and nanostructures. Originally, he began his work in superconducting magnetometry because he found it an "intriguing and important phenomenon."

Callier writes for Air Force Office of Scientific Research Public Affairs.