2001 News

The relocation in September 2001 of about a half-dozen faculty members into new offices in the NPL signals the completion of a major renovation project begun about 5 years ago. Adjacent to the Serin Physics building, the NPL -- formerly the "Nuclear Physics Laboratory" -- had been underutilized since a Tandem Accelerator was removed more than a decade ago. Now rededicated as the "NANOPHYSICS LABORATORY", the building provides offices and laboratory space for experimental faculty and postdocs associated with the Laboratory for Surface Modification (LSM), as well as other condensed matter laboratories. LSM has extensive state-of-the-art instrumentation in NPL, ranging from ion beam accelerators for determining surface structure and composition, to scanning probe microscopes for atomic-scale surface measurements.

The NSF has funded a major proposal submitted by Gabi Kotliar, David Vanderbilt, Karin Rabe, and Christian Uebing to acquire and install a supercomputer facility consisting of a cluster of roughly 150 tightly-linked high-performance PC's. In addition to its targeted reasearch mission for computational studies of complex materials, the cluster will also be available for broader research and educational purposes.

• Profile(s): Kotliar, Gabriel, Rabe, Karin M., Vanderbilt, David

Dr. Basil Mchunu has arrived from South Africa as the the first Rutgers-SALT graduate fellow in astrophysics. He completed his undergraduate work at the University of Zululand in South Africa. This is a new fellowship program between Rutgers and the Government of South Africa.

Professor Valery Kiryukhin has been named a recipient of an NSF CAREER award. These awards fund junior faculty members who show exceptional promise of excellence in research and education.

• Profile(s): Kiryukhin, Valery

Professor Walter Kohn (U.C. Santa Barbara) received an honorary Doctor of Science degree from Rutgers University at the University Commencement on May 17, 2001. Kohn is widely acclaimed for his work on density-functional theory that led to the award of the 1998 Nobel Prize in Chemistry, in addition to a large number of other seminal contributions to condensed matter physics. In connection with his visit, he gave a joint Physics and Chemistry Colloquium and was toasted at a special reception that followed.

Joel Lebowitz has won the 2001 Volterra Award of the Academia Lincea in Rome, and will be giving the Vito Volterra Lecture there this spring.

• Profile(s): Lebowitz, Joel L.

Herbert Neuberger has been selected as a 2001 Guggenheim US/Canadian Fellow in Physics. The basis for this award is "unusually impressive achievement in the past and exceptional promise for future accomplishment."

• Profile(s): Neuberger, Herbert

Baki Brahmia has won the FAS Award for Distinguished Contributions to Undergraduate Education. Baki will be presented with the award at the FAS Faculty Meeting next week.

• Profile(s): Brahmia, Abdelbaki

Prof. Frank Zimmermann has been awarded the 2001 Board of Trustees Research Fellowship for Scholarly Excellence, given each year to a few Rutgers faculty members at the time of promotion for especially outstanding scholarship and research. The award carries a $2,000 research grant.

• Profile(s): Zimmermann, Frank M.

Congratulations to Michael Gershenson and Frank Zimmermann, who have been promoted to Associate Professor with Tenure, and to Ron Ransome, who has been promoted to Full Professor, effective July 1, 2001.

• Profile(s): Ransome, Ronald D., Zimmermann, Frank M.

Noemie Koller has been selected as the 2001 winner of the Rutgers University Daniel Gorenstein Memorial Award in recognition of her scholarly excellence in experimental nuclear physics research and 40 years of dedicated service, administration, and teaching at Rutgers.

• Profile(s): Koller, Noemie

David Merritt has been elected vice-chair of the Division of Dynamical Astronomy (DDA) of the American Astronomical Society (AAS). He will automatically become chair of the Division after one year.

Valery Kiryukhin as been chosen to receive an Alfred P. Sloan Research Fellowship for 2001. Kirkyukhin's research interests are in the area of experimental studies of novel materials with unusual superconducting and magnetic properties.

• Profile(s): Kiryukhin, Valery

An anonymous donor has made a major multi-million dollar gift to the Department of Physics and Astronomy at Rutgers University. These new funds will undoubtedly make a major impact on our programs. Among other things, it will be used for:

• Creation of the Peter Lindenfeld Chair in Experimental Condensed-Matter Physics as of September 1, 2001, by a cash gift and a 5-year pledge.
• $500K cash gift for the SALT telescope project as a matching fund.
• Enhancement of the Mary Wheeler Wigner Scholarship endowed fund so that about $5,000 can be provided to the best rising senior physics major each year.
• Enhancement of the Richard J.Plano Teaching Assistant Prize endowed fund to allow for the offering of two new $1,000 prizes each year.
• Creation of the Richard J. Plano Dissertation Prize providing $1,000 each year for the best Ph.D. dissertation.
• Creation of the Henry C. Torrey Graduate Fellowship in Physics and Astronomy which will provide an additional $8,000 for two years to the recipient of a Graduate School Henry C. Torrey Graduate Fellowship as an incoming student.
• Creation of six new undergraduate full-tuition scholarships for outstanding physics majors, to be named the Herman Y. Carr, Robert L. Sells, and Noemie Benczer Koller Scholarships.
• Creation of two Richard J. Plano Summer Research Scholarships of $4,500 each to be awarded annually for research to be carried out during the summer after the junior year.
• Creation of an annual $40,000 Undergraduate Instructional Equipment Fund to be used for the purchase and renewal of state-of-the-art equipment for our undergraduate teaching laboratories in physics and astronomy.