Scott Cushing Named a Moore Inventor Fellow

Scott Cushing, assistant professor of chemistry, has been named among the final class of five Moore Inventor Fellows by the Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation. This 10th cohort of fellows marks the fulfillment of a 10-year $35 million commitment by the Moore Foundation to support "50 inventors to shape the next 50 years." Cushing is the fourth Caltech researcher to be named to that list of scientist-inventors.

The fellowship was launched in 2016 to commemorate the 50th anniversary of Moore's Law, the groundbreaking prediction of exponential growth in computing power articulated by Gordon Moore (PhD '54) in Electronics magazine.

"Over the past 10 years, this fellowship has recognized the ingenuity and creativity needed to meet today's challenges and create a better future," said Harvey V. Fineberg, president of the Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation, in an announcement. "These early-career visionaries are poised to develop tools and inventions that can make a positive difference."

The distinction comes with three years of funding, which Cushing plans to use to advance his work on a new generation of wearable sensors. His idea is to develop on-chip photonic devices that use entangled photons to measure the natural fluorescence in cells as a way of measuring cellular health and even detecting disease onset and progression.

"Think of a smart watch with a heartbeat sensor," says Cushing. "Right now, it might say, 'Your heart rate seems to be off or your diet is off. You should probably go to the doctor.' Our new generation of sensors aims to identify the source of that problem. They will say, 'It seems like your body is starting to get sick. It may be one of these causes.'"

Cushing is well equipped for the undertaking. His group develops new laser-based scientific instruments utilizing everything from tabletop ultrafast X-rays to quantum light in order to solve problems in chemistry, physics, biology, and materials science. The instruments the group builds enable studies of topics as diverse as energy conversion and storage to quantum mechanical interactions between light and matter.

"I'm so excited by the opportunity given by the Moore Foundation fellowship because it allows us to take fundamental science developed in our lab and translate it into real technology," says Cushing.

Cushing earned his undergraduate and graduate degrees in physics at West Virginia University in Morgantown. After completing a postdoctoral position at UC Berkeley and Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, Cushing joined the Caltech faculty in 2018. He created and leads the Caltech Connection, a program that connects Caltech graduate students with undergraduate students from other universities and community colleges to establish mentorships that can help with research and transitions in the academic pipeline.

Cushing has received numerous awards and honors, including A Department of Energy Early Career Award, the Shirley Malcom Prize for Excellence in Mentoring, and the W. M. Keck Foundation Award. He has also been named a Rose Hills Foundation Innovator, a Cottrell Scholar, a Research Corp. Scialog Fellow, a KNI-Wheatley Fellow, a Camille Dreyfus Teacher-Scholar, a Sloan Fellow, and a DARPA Young Faculty Award Fellow.

The three other Caltech faculty members who have been named Moore Inventor Fellows in previous cohorts are Viviana Gradinaru (BS '05), David Van Valen (PhD '11), and Karthish Manthiram.