Alexey A. Petrov, assistant professor of physics at Wayne State University , received a National Science Foundation Faculty Early Development Award. The NSF CAREER Award is one of the highest honors granted by the NSF to young faculty members in the area of science and engineering, and is intended to support their career-development activities. The five-year, $400,000 grant was awarded to Petrov for his proposal, \"An Integrated Research and Education Program in Physics of Heavy Hadrons.\" Petrov will work with Detroit-area high schools to develop an educational program in computational science, while also conducting research into the balance of matter and antimatter in the universe. The studies have implications for particle physics, astrophysics and cosmology. Petrov said the practical applications of his work could be as fundamental as \"the practical applications of electricity to people in the early 1800s.\" Petrov received his doctorate and master\'s degrees from the University of Massachusetts at Amherst , and a diploma from St. Petersburg Technical University .