George N. Tzintzarov has been awarded the 2020 IEEE Nuclear and Plasma Sciences Society (NPSS) Paul Phelps Continuing Education Grant. The IEEE NPSS is the premier professional association for the advancement of the nuclear plasma sciences, sponsoring eight technical conferences and four peer-reviewed journals. A formal presentation of the award will take place virtually at the 2020 IEEE Nuclear and Space Radiations Effects Conference (NSREC), which will be held December 1-4.

The basis for awarding this grant is exceptional promise as a student in any of the fields of NPSS and showing exceptional work in those fields. Tzintzarov’s research focuses on understanding how radiation environments, specifically in space, affect the functionality and usability of silicon photonic circuits and systems for applications such as space optical communications and remote sensing.

Tzintzarov has accumulated over 1,000 hours of conducting radiation experiments at world-class radiation facilities such as the 88-inch cyclotron at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, focused X-ray micro-beam at Argonne National Laboratory, and focused high-intensity lasers at the U.S. Naval Research Laboratory. The results of these testing campaigns are used to analyze the survivability of current technologies and engineer future technologies to function in extremely high radiation-intense environments, such as those found around Jupiter’s radiation belts.

Tzintzarov received the bachelor’s and master’s of science degrees in electrical engineering from the Georgia Institute of Technology in 2016 and 2020, respectively. He is currently a Ph.D. student in electrical engineering, where he is advised by John D. Cressler, who holds the Schlumberger Chair in Electronics in the School of Electrical and Computer Engineering. 

Tzintzarov was awarded the NSF Graduate Research Fellowship in 2018 and has received numerous awards from Georgia Tech, including the Outstanding Electrical Engineering Senior Award and the Love Family Foundation Award, both in 2016.

Tzintzarov’s research has been supported in part by the Defense Threat Reduction Agency, the Jet Propulsion Laboratory, and the National Science Foundation, and has resulted in 16 authored/co-authored peer-reviewed journal publications with two conference oral presentations.