Episode 16: The Spinmaster

In this episode of Voices from DARPA, physicist Rosa Alejandra “Ale” Lukaszew, a program manager who is just finishing her first year with the Agency’s Defense Sciences Office (DSO), recounts how her interest in quantum phenomena took root at the age of 10 when already she could write down the equations of uncertainty. Now, at DARPA, she is channeling what became a lifelong fascination with fundamental physics into opening new pathways toward understanding and harnessing electronic ensembles and the correlated ways these diminutive entities “spin” and otherwise behave in various material settings. In her role as a program manager, Ale would like to make it possible for the researchers working on her DARPA programs to forge next-generation paradigms in electronics for applications in memory, logic, energy conversion devices, and sensors.