2008 News

Rutgers Physics Assistant Professor Seongshik Oh has been selected to receive an NSF CAREER award

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.

Associate Professor Valery Kiryukhin has won a Friedrich Wilhelm Bessel Research Award from the Alexander von Humboldt Foundation in Germany

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.

Weida Wu, Rutgers Physics Department Assistant Professor, has been awarded an NSF CAREER award for his proposal: "CAREER: Nanoscale Magnetic Phenomena and Coercivity Mechanism in Layered Magnets with Extremely Large Anisortopy"

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.

David Vanderbilt was appointed Board of Governors Professor at the Board of Governors meeting on December 12, 2008 in Winants Hall

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.

Sang-Wook Cheong, Professor II of Physics and Donald H. Jacobs Chair in Applied Physics, has received the Korean Broadcasting System (KBS) Overseas Compatriots Award

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

Congratulations to Jack Hughes who has just become a fellow of the American Physical Society

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

Len Feldman (Ph.D. 1967 under Gibson - Large Angle Elastic Scattering of Energetic Protons in Silicon Single Crystals) has been awarded the Graduate School Alumni Prize for Distinguished Accomplishments and Services in the Mathematical and Physical Scienc

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

Doug Boyd (Ph.D. 1968 under thesis advisor Donovan - The Proton-Neutron Final State Interaction ) will receive this year's Graduate School Award for Lifetime Achievement

Congratulations Doug!

Kristjan Haule has received the CAREER award from the National Science Foundation

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

Congratulations to Patrick O'Malley who will be receiving the Department of Energy National Nuclear Security Administration Stewardship Science Graduate Fellowship starting Fall 2008 for up to 4 years

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.

Charles Keeton has been awarded a CAREER award from the National Science Foundation

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.

David Maiullo demonstrates standing waves in NY Times article

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

Watch NY Times video videoicon

Vladimir Aksyuk, Ph.D. 1999, selected for the graduate school award for distinguished accomplishment by an alumnus early in his career

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.

Eric Gawiser has made some very interesting observations of small distant galaxies which are a step in the evolution of our own galaxy

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:

Eva Halkiadakis has received the CAREER award from the National Science Foundation

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.

Mark Croft, Misha Gershenson, and Matt Strassler have become fellows of the American Physical Society

  • 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."

Emil Yuzbashyan, Assistant Professor in our department and a emil condensed matter theorist, has won a Packard Foundation fellowship

emilThe 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:

Professor Karin Rabe has won the 2008 David Adler Lectureship Award of the American Physical Society

karinThis 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"