From Climate Monitoring to Next-Gen Fiber Optics: Habib Secures NASA Award and Nature Photonics Publication

Florida Tech 4 hours ago

NASA Research Initiation Award

The NASA Research Initiation Award (RIA) is a highly competitive and prestigious grant program that recognizes innovative and impactful early-stage research.

Assistant professor Selim Habib has been awarded $300,00 which will support graduate and undergraduate students. The project, “Energy-efficient, compact, and cost-effective sensor for continuous and real-time monitoring of critical atmospheric greenhouse gas emissions,” focuses on developing a next-generation fiber-optic sensor system capable of continuous and real-time detection of key greenhouse gases.

This work directly supports NASA’s Science Mission Directorate (SMD) goals by advancing cutting-edge environmental monitoring technologies essential for understanding and mitigating climate change.

Nature Photonics News & Views article

Habib and coauthors’ News & Views article on the recent hollow-core fiber breakthrough has been accepted in Nature Photonics and was published online in November 2025.

The article highlights a major milestone in optical fiber development: the demonstration of hollow-core fibers with transmission loss below 0.1 dB/km, surpassing the long-standing limits of conventional solid silica fibers.

The achievement opens new opportunities for ultrafast data transmission, low-latency communications and next-generation photonic systems.