2008 News

Professor Oh won the award for his proposal "CAREER: Atomically-Engineered Complex Oxides and their Heterostructures for Novel Electronic Functionalities". This is the National Science Foundation's most prestigious award in support of early career-development activities with special emphasis on integrating research and education. The award provides long term funding stability (5 years). This is terrific news, and is the 5th such award to our department during the past twelve months.

• Profile(s): Oh, Seongshik

Award winners are honored "for their outstanding research record and invited to spend a period of up to one year cooperating on a long-term research project with specialist colleages at a research institution in Germany." Valery is planning to be working with colleagues at the Max Planck Institute in Stuttgart.

• Profile(s): Kiryukhin, Valery

This is the National Science Foundation's most prestigious award in support of early career-development activities with special emphasis on integrating research and education. The award provides long term funding stability (5 years). This is terrific news, and is the 4th such award to our department during the past twelve months.

• Profile(s): Wu, Weida

David's path breaking research, which has given him and Rutgers world wide acclaim, is matched by stellar accomplishments in teaching and service. Congratulations to David on this prestigious appointment.

• Profile(s): Vanderbilt, David

The award is given to ethnic Koreans living overseas who have made a distinguished contribution in promoting the image of the people and culture of Korea. The award is for ten million Korean won, or about seven thousand US dollars, and KBS will produce a documentary on his life and achievements.

Further information

• Profile(s): Cheong, Sang-Wook

This is a further sign of the great regard that Jack's work (and that of the entire astronomy group) is held in.

• Profile(s): Hughes, John P.

Len has recently rejoined the Department as the head of the IAMDN.

Congratulations Doug!

This award supports the early career-development activities of teacher-scholars who effectively combine research with education activities. This is the third such award given to our department for the academic year 2007/8, a record number.

More about Kristjan's work

• Profile(s): Haule, Kristjan

The scholarship is awarded annually to 300 students across the nation, across all of the natural sciences, math, and engineering. For more information, please visit the Barry M. Goldwater Scholarship and Excellence in Education Program website.

He will be receiving a very competitive stipend, full tuition and fee remission, plus an account for his research. Patrick is one of only 4 recipients from across the country. A second-year graduate student, Patrick is doing research in low-energy experimental nuclear physics with Jolie Cizewski.

This award supports the early career-development activities of teacher-scholars who effectively combine research with education activities. More info is available from the NSF.

• Profile(s): Keeton, Charles R.

2008 Alfred P. Sloan Foundation Fellowship

These very competitive awards are given annually in seven fields. The award is intended to enhance the careers of the very best young faculty members in these fields of science.

More about Kristjan's work

• Profile(s): Haule, Kristjan

David Maiullo demonstrates standing waves in NY Times article which appeared on the web on Feb 19, 2008.

Watch NY Times video

• Profile(s): Maiullo, David

Vladimir Aksyuk, Ph.D. 1999, under the supervision of Prof. Abrahams and Dr. Bishop of Lucent, has been selected for the graduate school award for distinguished accomplishment by an alumnus early in his career, for his contributions to telecommunications technology. Dr. Aksyuk is currently employed by Alcatel-Lucent Technologies.

He gave a news conference on January 8, 2008 at the American Astronomical Society meeting in Austin on Monday and the story has spread quickly. Related articles:

• Rutgers news release
• USA Today article

• Profile(s): Gawiser, Eric

This award supports the early career-development activities of teacher-scholars who effectively combine research with education activities. More info is available from the NSF.

• Profile(s): Halkiadakis, Eva

• Mark Croft is cited for "seminal contributions to correlated electron physics and electronic structure of rare earth and transitional metal compounds; novel applications of synchrotron radiation"
• Misha Gershenson is cited for "experimental studies of quantum transport and dephasing processes in disordered low-dimensional electronic systems."
• Matt Strassler is cited for "work extending the AdS/CFT gravity/gauge duality to QCD-like confining theories, and for insights into novel aspects of the physics of strongly coupled supersymmetric theories."

• Profile(s): Croft, Mark

The Packard Foundation awards extremely competitive fellowships to outstanding junior faculty members in science and engineering. Only the most prominent universities in the US are allowed to nominate candidates and the competition is extemely tough. This year, out of the 20 fellowships awarded, only two were given in physics in the entire country (last year, none). This is the very first Packard award not just in our department but in any department at Rutgers.

Related links:

• Packard Foundation Press Release
• Rutgers article about Emil's work

• Profile(s): Yuzbashyan, Emil

This award was established to recognize an outstanding contributor in materials physics, who is noted for the quality of his/her research, review articles and lecturing. The citation announcing Karin's award reads:

"For research, writings and presentations on the theory of structural phase transitions and for the application of first-principles electronic structure methods to the understanding of technologically important phenomena in ferroelectrics"

• Profile(s): Rabe, Karin M.