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JONESBORO, Ark. (AP) — As an Arkansas State University undergraduate, Brandon Kemp made straight A's in all of his electrical engineering classes except for one.
But, it was that course in electromagnetics, which includes the study of electricity, magnetism and light, that had the greatest impact on his professional career.
"I thought, 'This is actually interesting, mysterious stuff,'" Kemp told the Jonesboro Sun (http://bit.ly/1orxiZ7 ). "Being the curious person that I am, I took what was my weakest area in undergraduate and said, 'hey, I am going to learn more about this because it is intriguing.'"
Those lessons never stopped. Kemp, who graduated in 1997, is now an ASU associate professor of electrical engineering and director of a research-based graduate program in engineering. He joined the university five years ago.
As a part of the College of Engineering, Kemp's team applies theoretical advances to model existing applications and explores the feasibility of emerging technologies such as tractor beams, invisibility cloaking and controllable materials and surfaces.
When asked about the invisibility cloaking, he said they developed and published papers on it a few years ago. Their view is that to make an object look invisible, a person would need to wrap the object in a material that control light in such a way that the light is bent perfect around it.
But one of Kemp's proudest moments is the day he published "the most comprehensive and detailed theory of how momentum of light and stress induces materials into the world," he said.
His 2011 published research ended up as the cover story on the Journal of Applied Physics.
Kemp often has to explain what his work actually entails. He said it happens a few times each month.
"It has become more frequent, and I enjoy doing that," he added. "That is one of the things I enjoy about teaching is trying to take some very complex ideas and distill them down for students to understand them.
"I rely on experience from a lot of different areas, not just product development. I worked in defense in radar and other source localization. The whole idea of explaining things to people is a challenge I enjoy."
It is work he excels at. Kemp is the 2012 National Science Foundation CAREER award winner and a member of the Arkansas Experimental Program to Stimulate Competitive Research Center for Advanced Surface Engineering.
He was also named in late 2015 as one of five Arkansas Research Alliance fellows.
Kemp was first introduced to research as a 17-year-old. He said he was selected to work in a semi-conductor's lab at ASU. Their work was to develop solar cells to turn light into electricity.
That research led to Kemp staying at ASU for his undergraduate years before receiving his master's degree from the University of Missouri-Rolla.
He later worked in product development, although he said his main focus was in electromagnetic interference and electrical signals.
He went on to earn his doctorate in electrical engineering from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. It was there that he got into the idea of electromagnetic forces and optical momentum, or using light as a tool to actually move around matter.
Today, he considers his biggest challenge is his primary mission at ASU.
"I came to ASU five years ago to develop a research-based graduate program in engineering, which engineering has historically been an undergraduate college at ASU," Kemp said. "So with the graduate program, we needed research projects and funding for the graduate students to come in and do research and development theses and graduate."
Kemp said his goal is less about science and the things they are developing and more on trying to get funding and interesting projects for students.
"Our research is primarily in theory and analytical modeling," he added. "We don't do any experimental work. What that means is we work really in two different areas. One is we need to understand the theory, the basic science or physics of what is happening, so that we can identify that in modeling.
"The other thing we do is the development of the theory to apply to models and then we look for what type of interesting stuff could potentially come of that," he added. "What type of emerging technologies could we predict or interesting stuff to come out of science."
It is working. He said the two-year, master of science program has grown from two students in 2014 to six students last year — the first year students graduated from the program. There are 16 students this year.
"Currently all of our students are funded," Kemp added, "meaning they have a research assistantship that pays their tuition and pays them a salary to do their research work."
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Information from: The Jonesboro Sun, http://www.jonesborosun.com
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