The Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation has named Dali Sun, a professor and University Faculty Scholar in the Department of Physics and Astronomy, to the 2026 cohort of Experimental Physics Investigators. The cohort consists of 21 investigators, with each one receiving $1.35 million over the course of five years.

The Experimental Physics Investigators Initiative supports mid-career physicists in pursuing exploratory research that might not attract funding from conventional sources. To date, the Moore Foundation has awarded more than $105 million in Experimental Physics Investigators Initiative grants.

Sun’s research aims to determine whether conducting polymers can be used to generate and transport orbital angular momentum, an electronic property that could offer a new way to move information through materials. His approach uses doped-π-conjugated polymers, which may allow orbital effects to emerge in lightweight, solution-processed systems. His team will prepare these polymer films, build layered devices, and use electrical transport measurements to test how orbital signals are generated, converted and transmitted. 

His research could help establish whether polymers made from light elements can serve as a useful platform for the emerging branch of condensed matter physics known as orbitronics. If successful, it could expand the range of materials available for studying low-energy information transport and clarify how molecular chirality shapes electronic behavior in organic systems.

Sun won a Faculty Early Career Development Award from the National Science Foundation in 2021 and an Early Career Research award from the Department of Energy in 2020. In 2023, he and his colleagues received a $7.5 million grant from the Department of Defense to study quantum spin effects in chiral matter as part of the federal agency’s Multidisciplinary University Research Initiative. Sun joined the faculty at NC State’s College of Sciences in 2017. The Moore Foundation’s mission is to advance scientific discovery, environmental conservation and the special character of the San Francisco Bay Area.

Learn about the Experimental Physics Investigators cohort.