Navon wins 2017 Packard Fellowship for research on turbulence

Nir Navon, assistant professor in the Department of Physics, has been awarded a 2017 Packard Fellowship for Science and Engineering.

Navon will receive $875,000 over five years to fund his research into turbulence — one of the most mysterious phenomena in nature, with ramifications in biology, mathematics, and physics. The Packard Fellowships for Science and Engineering, one of the largest nongovernmental fellowships in the United States, was announced Oct. 16.

The David and Lucile Packard Foundation established the fellowships in 1988. Each year, the foundation invites 50 universities to nominate two faculty members for consideration in the following disciplines: physics, chemistry, mathematics, biology, astronomy, computer science, earth science, ocean science, and all branches of engineering.

Using a novel experimental approach, Navon’s research group synthesizes highly controllable quantum matter to explore complex many-body phenomena in extremely pure conditions, from the production of new quantum phases of matter to the study of turbulence in dilute quantum fluids.

“I will use the Packard Fellowship and its remarkable flexibility to explore daring directions in my field,” Navon said. “I am particularly excited to venture more deeply into the areas of synthetic quantum materials and quantum fluid turbulence.”

The Packard fellowships are intended to afford recipients the chance to pursue their research with few funding restrictions and limited reporting requirements.