Philip Kurian, a theoretical physicist and founding director of the Quantum Biology Laboratory (QBL) at Howard University in Washington, D.C., has used the laws of quantum mechanics, the fundamental physics of computation, and the QBL’s discovery of cytoskeletal filaments exhibiting quantum optical features, to set a drastically revised upper bound on the computational capacity of carbon-based life in the entire history of Earth. Published as a single-author research article in Science Advances, Kurian’s latest work conjectures a relationship between this information-processing limit and that of all matter in the observable universe.

Murphy, a National Academy of Sciences member and Texas A&M University System Regents Professor, is Texas A&M’s third recipient of the SEC’s highest faculty honor.

The $500,000 grant from the Appalachian Regional Commission wants to improve economic development in the region through sustainable non-timber forest farming practices.