The committee selected two students to share the Malmberg Award, Alex Dooraghi and Agnieszka Cieplak, while Brice Dorman is the recipient of the Ma Award. Each of the students will receive a certificate and cash award of $750.

All three students have very high grades in their studies and have worked very hard to achieve this honor. Brice and Alex have only A+ and A grades in the Physics major courses while Agnieszka has excelled in experimental astrophysics.

Dr. Wolfe has made major contributions in several areas of astronomy. Along with Rainer Sachs, he predicted the Sachs-Wolfe Effect, a phenomenon which forms the basis for modern precision cosmology using the background radio emission left over from the Big Bang. In the 1970s, he discovered that light emitted by very distant galaxies is absorbed by hydrogen atoms in previously-undetected intervening gas clouds. From the 1980s until the present, he used optical light emitted by distant quasars to show that these clouds are the progenitors of stars found in modern galaxies. This phenomenon has since been used extensively to study the production of heavy elements and history of star formation in the Universe. He also did landmark research on whether the fundamental constants of nature, such as the charge of the electron and the masses of elementary particles, do, in fact, remain constant through cosmological time.

Dr. Wolfe was the Director of the Center for Astrophysics and Space Sciences at UCSD from 1997 to 2007. He joined UCSD as a Professor of Physics and Astronomy in 1989, leaving the University of Pittsburgh, where he had taught since 1973. He holds the Chancellor's Associates Chair of Physics at UCSD. Dr. Wolfe received his Ph.D from the University of Texas at Austin. He is a Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, and received the Sackler Fellowship of the Institute of Astronomy at the University of Cambridge, UK, in 2004.

As Jansky Lecturer, Wolfe will give a presentation entitled, Finding the Gas that Makes Galaxies, at NRAO facilities in Charlottesville, Virginia, Green Bank, West Virginia, and Socorro, New Mexico. The dates of these scientific lectures, which are open to the public, will be announced later.

This is the forty-third Jansky Lectureship. First awarded in 1966, it is named in honor of the man who, in 1932, first detected radio waves from a cosmic source. Karl Jansky's discovery of radio waves from the central region of the Milky Way started the science of radio astronomy. Other recipients of the Jansky award include five Nobel laureates (Drs. Subrahmanyan Chandrasekhar, Arno Penzias, Robert Wilson, William Fowler, and Joseph Taylor) as well as Jocelyn Bell-Burnell, discoverer of the first pulsar, and Vera Rubin, discoverer of dark matter in galaxies.

The National Radio Astronomy Observatory is a facility of the National Science Foundation, operated under cooperative agreement by Associated Universities, Inc.

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This is the first year of this very selective award, and only 534 out of our 42,000 active referees have been chosen. In subsequent years, they intend to add about 130 more each year to the list of "Outstanding Referees." The awardees chosen are truly exceptional in their contributions to the physics community by their hard work and careful attention to the peer review process. These faculty members are to be congratulated.

The complete list of 534 awardees and other information about the award can be found at http://publish.aps.org/OutstandingReferees. The APS wishes to thank these awardees, for their exceptional work as anonymous referees in service to the international physics community.

They provided two of the four measurements mentioned in number 7 on the list:

Given that the Tevatron involves about 1500 physicists across two competing experiments from many countries worldwide, it is remarkable that a group of 6 people from UCSD were responsible for 50% of the recognized results while the other two measurements were completed by small armies of people from both experiments.

The two postdocs and one graduate student who were the primary drivers of this work have all obtained prestigous appointments:

• Mark Neubauer joined the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign as an Assistant Professor last summer;
• Elliot Lipeles is joining the University of Pennsylvania as an Assistant Professor in July 2008; and
• Shih-Chieh Hsu has accepted a Chamberlain Fellowship at UC Berkeley, starting May 2008.

Two other UCSD students (Matt Norman, a 5th year Physics graduate student, and Rami Vanguri, an undergraduate Physics major) also participated in the research described above.

Professor Wuerthwein's group is now pushing out a number of other measurements, including the world's most sensitive Higgs search (Physical Review Letters in preparation). The group operates such that Rami, their undergraduate student, has the opportunity to contribute meaningfully to three papers, one of which was the WZ observation. For the two papers still in preparation, Rami is the primary author. Similarly, Matt has another paper in preparation for which he is the primary author, and there is one more paper in preparation for which Matt and Elliot are the primary authors.

The listings can be found at: http://www.aip.org/pnu/2007/split/850-1.html

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The survey ranked discrete mathematics and combinations at UCSD 4th in the nation, plasma physics 7th, biochemistry 9th, condensed matter physics 10th, geometry and topology 15th, physics 16th , chemistry 20th and mathematics 24th.

Information on how the magazine ranked other programs at UC San Diego can be obtained at: http://ucsdnews.ucsd.edu/newsrel/general/03-08UCSDReceiveHighRanks.asp#

Dr. Dery, now an assistant professor in ECE, University of Rochester, did this work in Professor Lu Sham's group at UCSD from 2004 to 2007. This was part of the collaborative work on the theory of spintronics with Dr. Lukasz Cywinski (Ph.D. 2007), Mr. Parin Dalal (current graduate student), and Professor Sham.

The basic component of the theory is a three terminal device with three small magnet bars over a semiconductor. The strength of an electric current from one bar to another through the semiconductor should be strong when the two magnets point in the same direction and weak in opposite directions. When the medium is a metal, this constitutes the "giant magnetoresistance effect" (the subject of the Nobel Prize in Physics this year). But the large conductivity difference between the semiconductor medium and the magnet bars reduces the current differential to insignificance. Yet, semiconductor has the potential for electronics functions which metal would not possess. Calculation shows that in the semiconductor medium the magnet bars create a large difference between electrons of two difference spin directions. A third magnet bar can be made to manifest the current or voltage difference of the relative magnetic directions of the first two. Thus, the three terminal system is a basic spin transistor with a non-volatile memory carried by two of the magnets. The spin-dependent current amplification of the three terminal device has been demonstrated by Lei Zhu and Ed Yu at ECE, UCSD and by D. Saha,M. Holub, and P. Bhattacharyaat ECE, University of Michigan.

An addition of another pair of magnets carrying a second bit of information makes the five terminal device a spin-based logic gate. A circuit is then designed to cascade the information to a whole tree of similar spin gates. The work was published in Nature in 2007. This provides a vision of spin-based electronics with the potential to supplement and to supplant the current CMOS technology.

The Sloan Research Fellowships support the work of exceptional young researchers early in their academic careers, and often at pivotal stages in their work," says Paul L. Joskow, President of the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation.

The Sloan Research Fellowships have been awarded since 1955. Wu is studying novel phases and properties in various fields of condensed matter physics, including metal-insulator transitions, magnetism and superconductivity, and quantum computation.

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The overall aim of the project is to quantitatively study three distinct and sequential stages of chemotaxis using an approach that integrates novel experiments and mathematical modeling. These stages include the initial directional sensing process during which several key signaling components localize subcellularly, cell polarity which leads to clearly distinguishable fronts, backs and sides of a cell and motility which includes actual cell movement.

Experiments performed as part of the project will rely heavily on the use of microfluidic devices, which consist of tiny canals on a microchip. Microfluidic devices will provide precise control over the chemoattractant stimulus--the chemicals that attract cells. The goal of the research is to better understand chemotaxis of eukaryotic cells. Advances in this field will benefit diagnosis and treatment of medical problems involving cell migration.

The grant also includes a subcontract to a microfluidics group at Cornell University (Carl Franck and Eberhard Bodenschatz).

Brian G. Keating, an assistant professor of physics, and Katerina Akassoglou, an assistant professor of pharmacology, were among this year's recipients of the Presidential Early Career Awards for Scientists and Engineers. They were given their awards, which consists of up to five years of research funding, at a White House ceremony today by John H. Marburger III, President Bush's science adviser and director of the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy.

Established in 1996, the Presidential Early Career Awards for Scientists and Engineers recognizes outstanding scientists and engineers who, early in their careers, show exceptional potential for leadership at the frontiers of knowledge. The award is the highest honor bestowed by the U.S. government on scientists and engineers beginning their independent careers. Nine federal departments and agencies annually nominate scientists and engineers who are at the start of their independent careers and whose work shows exceptional promise.

"These scientists and engineers have not only brought transformational ideas to their fields of study, they have also enriched the educational environment, especially in their roles as mentors," said Kathie L. Olsen, deputy director of the National Science Foundation.

Keating, who was nominated by the science foundation, is an astrophysicist at UCSD's Center for Astrophysics and Space Sciences who is one of the leaders of a collaboration building a telescope and observatory, called POLARBEAR, that will allow physicists for the first time to measure the "gravitational waves" that emanated from the universe during the first moments of its creation.

Katerina Akassoglou Akassoglou, who was nominated by the National Institutes of Health, is a researcher whose work involves molecular and cellular mechanisms that regulate nervous tissue regeneration. In 2007, her lab identified a receptor that is critical in liver regeneration. Her team also discovered that fibrinogen, a protein found in circulating blood and important in blood clotting, can promote multiple sclerosis when it leaks from the blood into the brain, triggering inflammation that leads to MS-related nerve damage.

"The implications of the research derived from this telescope will be unique and far-reaching," said Hans Paar, a UC San Diego professor of physics working on the project. "Our findings will capture the birth of the universe, providing a deeper understanding of one of the most compelling questions in all of science: How did our universe begin?"

After learning about the historic initiative and an initial $400,000 contribution from the James B. Ax Family Foundation to support the project, an anonymous donor gave UC San Diego's Divison of Physical Sciences the remaining $600,000 to advance the new research endeavor. Together, the two donations provide the funding needed to begin construction of the telescope for the project, dubbed "POLARBEAR" for Polarization of Background Radiation. Scientists from UC San Diego, UC Berkeley, Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory and the University of Colorado are collaborating on the project, along with several researchers from universities in Canada, Britain and France. The telescope will initially be located at a University of California research facility in the Inyo Mountains, east of the Sierra Nevada Mountain Range near Bishop, California.

The telescope will allow scientists to probe a previously unexplored epoch of the universe, according to Brian Keating, an assistant professor of physics at UCSD and leading collaborator on the project. "The POLARBEAR project is a daring one," added Paar. "We are pushing the limits of what is possible and that is how progress is made."

For more information, please visit the POLARBEAR Telescope website: http://physics.ucsd.edu/~bkeating/polarbear.htm.

Media Contact: Jade Berggren, 858-822-5309

Discovery May Pave the Way for a New Class of Diabetes Drugs
A multidisciplinary team led by researchers at the University of California, San Diego has determined the structure of a protein found in cells that shows potential as a target for the development of new drugs to treat diabetes.

The structural determination effort was led by Mark Paddock in the Department of Physics and Patricia Jennings in the Department of Chemistry and Biochemistry.

Full Article: http://ucsdnews.ucsd.edu/newsrel/science/08-07MitoNEETSS-.asp
Media Contact: Sherry Seethaler, (858) 534-4656

The International Union of Materials Research Societies presents the award biennially "for the most significant research on real materials conducted by an interactive group or team whose members are drawn from at least two continents."

The award is named in honor of Shigeyuki Sômiya, an emeritus professor at the Tokyo Institute of Technology. In addition to an award commemorating the occasion, the recipients receive free registration to the IUMRS International Conference on Advanced Materials. The winners also make a presentation at the conference.

The study, published August 6 in the on-line edition of the journal Physical Review Letters, extended Ulam's conjecture to the level of quantum objects. Ulam's conjecture, proposed in 1956 by American mathematician Stanislaw Ulam, is routinely used to guide spacecraft through the solar system by exploiting gravity. The researchers say that their calculations will make it possible to more precisely steer molecules using photons-or particles-of light.

A minimal series of energy expenditures can be used to transfer an object from one point to another more quickly than by spontaneous motion, according to Ulam's conjecture, because of certain characteristics of chaotic motion. To move spacecraft, that energy can come from the gravitational pull of celestial bodies.

Researchers already use light to guide molecules, just as gravity is used to steer spacecraft in the solar system. For example, they use laser tweezers to trap and probe particles, including individual atoms. However, there was previously no way, other than trial and error, to know how much light energy was needed to move a molecule from one state to the next, or to determine how the amount of light energy needed changed as the complexity of the molecules changed.

"We can wait for the best possible moment to use the least amount of energy," Gruebele said. "What we have is a fast and accurate method for computing the most efficient way of steering a quantum system between two specified states."

Additional information at: University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, College of Engineering

The Physics Department's REU program is funded with a Grant by the NSF with Dmitri Basov and Hans Paar as co-PIs and Patti Hey as chief administrator (thanks Patti). The students are embedded in research groups within the Physics Department where they learn first-hand about research in an academic setting.

Wolynes was cited for his "seminal work in areas as diverse as ion solvation dynamics, chemical reactions in condensed phases, the subtleties of quantum energy flow, the puzzles of glasses and the glass transition, and the vast challenges of biopolymers and protein folding and function."

The Council of the Royal Society generates a list of the strongest candidates who have been nominated by two Fellows of the Royal Society. Candidates are selected if they receive a two-thirds vote of fellows attending the Annual Meeting for the Election of Fellows. Wolynes and the eight other fellows selected this year will be formally admitted to the Society at a formal Admissions Day ceremony in July.

The award will be presented on August 1 at the 2007 Denver X-ray conference. Sinha is only the twelfth person to receive the award, which is presented biennially. It consists of $1,000 and a recognition plaque.

Sinha's research involves examining the structure and dynamics of polymer films and other novel liquids using X-ray and neutron scattering. He also studies novel magnetic and superconducting materials to understand how their chemical structure affects their magnetic and transport properties.

Founded in 1652, the Leopoldina is the "world's oldest academy involved in the natural sciences that has been permanently in existence." The number of members is limited to 1,000 total in 28 subject sections. Wolynes will belong to the subsection of Theoretical Physics.

Wolynes has developed the leading theory of how proteins fold, which has led to computer algorithms that allow one to predict the three-dimensional structure of a protein from its amino acid sequence. His work on the theory of energy landscapes has also impacted condensed matter physics, notably illuminating the nature of glasses and liquids.

Randy Kelley is a third year graduate student in the physics department at UCSD. His current research, with his thesis advisor Professor Aneesh Manohar, is on the production of W and Z Bosons at the LHC using soft collinear effective theories.

Randy Kelley is well known in the UCSD community for his brilliant teaching of the undergraduates. He obtained his B.S. in physics from the University of Virginia and before joining UCSD, he was a Lieutenant in the US Navy where he served as a nuclear engineering officer onboard the USS John C Stennis.

Funded by the National Science Foundation, the $40,000 fellowship award provides young theorists selected in a national competition with funds to underwrite the costs of their research, including travel and computing needs.

"The goal of these fellowships is to stimulate the work of theoretical physicists who will help interpret the treasure trove of data that will emerge from the Large Hadron Collider" said Jonathan Bagger, a leader of the LHC Theory Initiative. "Our initiative will help the high-energy physics community take full advantage of the LHC."

The Large Hadron Collider at CERN, the European laboratory for particle physics in Geneva, Switzerland, is expected to begin operation late this year. With its unprecedented energy and luminosity, the LHC promises to revolutionize particle physics and our understanding of the universe. It is expected to create new forms of matter as scientists search for the elusive Higgs boson and a host of new particles, as well as help answer some of the most fundamental questions of physics.

Prof. Ruderman is a distinguished theoretical astrophysicist who pioneered the science of neutron stars and pulsars; he has also contributed to elementary particle physics and to understanding of the earth's atmosphere. He has worked intensively on problems associated with collapsed objects in astrophysics, especially neutron stars. Recent work has focused on how neutron stars convert so much of their initial spin-energy into beams of high energy radiation. Prof. Ruderman received his PhD. from Cal Tech in 1951. He was elected to the National Academy of Sciences in 1972 and to the American Academy of Arts & Sciences in 1974.

Talk Abstract: Forty years after the discovery of the first pulsars important questions still remain about the structure and dynamics of these strongly magnetized, rapidly spinning neutron stars. Expected properties and observable phenomena will be presented for a "standard model" of them. It assumes a near solar mass core of superfluid neutrons, superconducting protons and very relativistic degenerate electrons, all enclosed by a thin solid metal crust. The model describes a distinctive evolution of neutron star magnetic fields during prolonged stellar spin-down (or spin-up) and, associated with it, two families of sudden jumps in the star's spin-down torque and spin-rate. Model expectations are consistent with observations. However, understanding other kinds of observations, commonly interpreted as evidence for very long period neutron star precession, and also presumed thermal x-ray emission from the stellar surface, raise problems for this standard model. Other interpretations of these observations will be suggested.

The Physics Department Memorial Lecture series was organized in memory of Prof. Norman M. Kroll, a pioneer in quantum physics and a founding member of the UCSD Physics department. During his forty year career at UCSD, Prof. Kroll made brilliant contributions to research in quantum electrodynamics, atomic physics, particle physics, free electron lasers and subatomic particle accelerators.

This lecture is generously supported by financial contributions from the Kroll family and friends, the Department of Physics, and the Institute of Physics & Applied Physical Sciences. The event is free and open to the public.

The Institute of Low Temperature and Structure Research was established in 1966 and is named after Professor W. Trzebiatowski, who played a key role in the establishment of the Institute, served as its first Director, and later became the President of the Polish Academy of Sciences. Professor Trzebiatowski is known for the discovery in 1952 of ferromagnetism in uranium hydride UH3. This came as a great surprise since metallic uranium was known to be completely nonmagnetic and, at that time, ferromagnetic ordering had only been found in metals and alloys of the iron group, as well as in gadolinium, one of the rare earth metals.

Professor Maple has collaborated with researchers at the W. Trzebiatowski Institute since 1976 and coauthored eight joint papers. His most recent projects with the Institute concern the nonmagnetic Kondo effect in actinides and the physics of strongly correlated electron behavior in lanthanide and actinide filled skutterudite arsenide compounds.

On behalf of the department, I extend to Geoffrey our congratulations as a recipient of this award from the National Academy of Sciences.

The citation, which will appear on the Fellowship Certificate, will read as follows:

"For her contributions to the understanding of the realization of flavor and spin symmetries for Baryons, through innovative application of the large Nc expansion."

The citation will be published in the March 2007 issue of APS News as well as appear on the Fellowship Page of the APS Home Page. The presentation of the certificate will be at the divisional annual meeting.

George Feher, a research professor at UCSD, will share the $100,000 prize with Ada Yonath of Israel's Weizmann Institute of Science" for ingenious structural discoveries of the ribosomal machinery of peptide-bond formation and the light-driven primary processes in photosynthesis." The award will be presented to the two scientists by the President of Israel at a formal ceremony at the Knesset, or parliament, in Jerusalem, on May 13.

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http://www.fnal.gov/pub/today/archive_2006/today06-11-16.html

From the Article:

"The mediators of the weak interaction, the massive W and Z gauge bosons, are readily produced at the Tevatron and have been studied extensively by the CDF and DZero experiments. But producing pairs of heavy gauge bosons is far more rare. While one W boson is produced in every 3 million Tevatron collisions, and one Z boson in every 10 million, WZ pairs are produced only once per 20 billion events. Facing these odds, it is no wonder that WZ has never been observed--that is, until now. The elusive WZ has finally been netted at CDF. We found it by searching for WZ production in its most easily observable signature, where 3 charged leptons are produced along with missing energy from a neutrino. CDF observed 16 of these signatures, and about 13 of them are expected to be WZ events. If WZ production was not actually happening in the Tevatron, the probability of getting this result would only be 2 in a billion. This indicates that our results are significant; and we have, in fact, observed WZ production. Finding the WZ pair is important because it teaches us about how gauge bosons interact with each other, and it confirms Standard Model predictions. Observing such a rare process at CDF also represents an important experimental milestone in our pursuit of the Higgs particle and new physics at the Tevatron. We look forward to a bright future as we continue to collect data from Run II!"

UCSD Physicist Lu J. Sham was awarded a Doctorate, honoris causa, from National Chiao Tung University, Taiwan, in June 2006. The citation in the certificate, honoris causa, reads "For his broad research contributions, including the quantum theory of molecules and solids, particularly, the co-founding of the Density Functional Theory, which has far reaching influence on computational physics and chemistry, and solid state quantum information and computation, particularly the optical control of spin interaction, which opens up another influential area."

National Chaio Tung University is in Hsinchu, Taiwan, the heart of the semiconductor industry, especially III-V compounds. The university is a powerhouse in telecommunications and optoelectronics.

The Department of Physics is pleased to announce the winners of this year's Ma and Malmberg awards, our department's awards to the top undergraduate physics majors.

This years Ma award goes to Ethan Brown and the Malmberg award goes to Matthew Bibee. In addition to stellar GPAs, Ethan had 5 A+ grades in upper division physics courses and Matthew had 6, truly outstanding records. Both will be going to graduate school this September, and have bright futures ahead of them. Ethan will be working on his PH.D. in physics at UCLA, and Matthew will be at Stanford in the Applied Physics Ph.D. program.

Congratulations and best wishes to Ethan and Matthew!

Kevin A. McCarthy, a senior who has worked hard to maintain a high standard of academic excellence in his classwork with a double major in Physics (BS) and Electrical Engineering (BS) at UCSD, has been named recipient of the 2006 Selma and Robert Silagi Award for undergraduate excellence in science by the Division of Physical Sciences at UCSD.

An award luncheon held on June 1, 2006 at the UCSD Faculty Club honored McCarthy where he was presented with a $5,000 award by Dean Mark H. Thiemens on behalf of Laura J. Silagi from Venice, California. Laura Silagi, one of the surviving children of Selma and Robert Silagi, attended the luncheon.

Professor Brian Keating and Professor Thomas Murphy, Jr. have been selected as recipients of the 2006-2007 Hellman Faculty Fellows Award. The Hellman Fellowship Program was established at UCSD in 1995 through the generosity of Chris and Warren Hellman. The program is designed to provide financial support and encouragement to young faculty in the core disciplines who show capacity for great distinction in their research and creative activities. Funds awarded are primarily intended to enhance the individual's progress toward tenure.

Due to the outstanding caliber of the proposals submitted this year, the selection process was quite a challenge. Twenty-three proposals were submitted by Arts & Humanities and Social Sciences faculty, of which eight were selected to receive awards. Seven proposals were selected for funding out of the twenty-three submitted by the Physical Sciences, Life Sciences and Engineering Divisions.

A team led by Physicist Massimiliano Di Ventra at the University of California, San Diego has shown the feasibility of a fast, inexpensive technique to sequence DNA as it passes through tiny pores. The advance brings personalized, genome-based medicine closer to reality.

David R. Smith, a physicist formerly at the University of California, San Diego, has been awarded the European Union's Descartes Prize for Excellence in Scientific Research for developing at UCSD a new class of composite materials with unusual physical properties that scientists theorized might be possible, but had never before been able to produce in nature.

Complete story at http://ucsdnews.ucsd.edu/newsrel/science/mcdescartes.asp

Dr. Shane Walker has been named a UCSD Faculty Fellow for 2005-2007. The Faculty Fellows Program is designed to prepare recent outstanding University of California Ph.D.s for faculty-track careers by providing mentored training and experience in the design and conduct of instructional courses to candidates who demonstrate promise for excellence in both teaching and research. It is a highly competitive program that awards only four or five fellowships per year.

Dr. Walker's research focus is in underwater acoustics, using a combination of applied and theoretical physics to understand details of sound propagation in shallow water environments. His work directly addresses the challenging problem of decoding sonar data in complex, unknown environments in the presence of background noise and reverberations. The ability to "see" much better with sound than has previously been possible can lead to advances in areas as disparate as communications, sea-floor mapping, and environmental biology.

Dr. Walker is an excellent teacher, with a great deal of experience in teaching physics to audiences at all levels. He has participated in "Preparing Future Physics Faculty" (PFPF) for several years, and has been a major contributor to PFPF-led outreach programs. During the term of his Faculty Fellowship, he will concentrate on teaching physics to biology and engineering majors. He will also develop and test interactive classroom demonstrations designed to stimulate student interest in science while improving their ability to learn by helping them to recognize and correct scientific misconceptions.

Shane's Faculty Profile

Professors Margaret Burbidge and Sally Ride were named to Smithsonian Magazine's "35 Innovators of Our Time" in the November 2005 issue. The article marks the 35th anniversary of the magazine by "...revisiting scientists, artists and scholars who've enriched the magazine and our lives."

Brian Keating, assistant professor of physics at UCSD's Center for Astrophysics and Space Sciences, won first place and $20,000 in the Young Scholars Competition at the Amazing Light: Visions for Discovery symposium this month at the University of California, Berkeley.

The competition at the conference honoring Nobel laureate Charles Townes' 90th birthday was intended to recognize young scientists from around the world with the potential to make such major breakthroughs as Townes' discovery of the laser.

Keating was selected for his essay and talk on a telescope which he and his colleagues are constructing at the U.S. South Pole Station, Antarctica. Starting in December the telescope will search for primordial gravitational waves produced after the Big Bang and will test the theory of cosmological inflation. Judges for the competition included Townes, Nobel laureate Arno Penzias, planet-finder Geoff Marcy of UC Berkeley and Donald York of the University of Chicago.

More information on the conference and competition can be found at: http://www.foundationalquestions.net/townes/ysc/young_finalists.asp

Kenneth Burch, UCSD Physics student, has been chosen for a GMAG Outstanding Dissertation in Magnetism Award for 2006. The award consists of a cash prize, certificate and invited talk in an appropriate session at the 2006 March meeting in Baltimore.

More information can be found at: http://www.aps.org/units/gmag/

Each year the Physics Department and its faculty host a number of undergraduates in its Research Experience for Undergraduates program. The students are selected from approximately 450 applicants. The program is funded by an NSF Grant (with Dmitri Basov and Hans Paar co-PIs).

Besides working hard in the labs and attending seminars and workshops, the students also take the Physics of Sailing course. The course consists of a classroom lecture and a laboratory component that takes place on the San Diego Bay in a 42' Catalina sailboat. The photograph shows the students, Charmaine Samahin and her husband Randy, and the instructor (Hans Paar).

The Department of Physics is pleased to announce the winners of this year's Ma and Malmberg awards, our department's awards to the top undergraduate physics majors.

This years Ma award goes to Kyle Armour. Kyle is graduating with a GPA of ... ok, university regulations prohibit me from telling you. Let's just say its within epsilon of 4.0, where epsilon is a small number. Also, he garnered 10 A+ grades in physics courses! He has already done significant research in particle physics in Jim Branson's group, and is heading to graduate school at U. Washington where he intends to continue working in particle theory.

The Malmberg award goes to Tyson Kim. Tyson has distinguished himself in our biophysics program, and is the lead author on an applied physics letter (along with David Kleinfeld and Alex Groisman) that is soon to appear. Tyson has not yet decided between biophysics/MD-PhD programs at Harvard, U. San Francisco and UCSD. (We hope he chooses to stay in San Diego!)

Congratulations and best wishes to Tyson and Kyle!

Attribution: Dan Dubin - Vice Chair for Undergraduate Education

Both programs recognize and support outstanding graduate students in the relevant science, technology, and mathematics disciplines. Fellows are expected to become experts who can contribute significantly to research, teaching, and innovations in science and engineering. The CSGF recipients receive payments of all tuition and required fees for up to 4 years of study, a yearly stipend, matching funds for a computer workstation, a yearly academic allowance, and yearly conferences. Among the requirements and benefits are a plan of study which includes course work in Applied Mathematics, Science and Computer Science, and a practicum at a national DOE laboratory. NSF fellows receive tuition, fees, a yearly stipend for up to 3 years of study, with no requirement beyond annual reporting.

Five faculty members at the University of California, San Diego have been named fellows of the American Academy of Arts & Sciences, the academy has announced. The five are among 196 new fellows and 17 new foreign honorary members in the academy's 225th class.

The new fellows from UCSD are Jack Keil Wolf, professor of electrical and computer engineering at the Jacobs School of Engineering; Ajit P. Varki, professor of medicine and cellular and molecular medicine; Linda Preiss Rothschild and M. Salah Baouendi, professors of mathematics; and Michael L. Norman, professor of physics.

They join 76 current AAAS fellows on the UCSD faculty.

It gives me great pleasure to welcome these outstanding leaders in their fields, said Academy President Patricia Meyer Spacks. Fellows are selected through a highly competitive process that recognizes individuals who have made preeminent contributions to their disciplines and to society at large.

Fellows and members are nominated and elected by current members, comprising scholars and practitioners from mathematics, physics, biological sciences, humanities and the arts, public affairs and business. The academy will welcome this years fellows and honorary members at its annual induction ceremony on October 8 in Cambridge, Mass.

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Prof. David Gross, recipient of the 2004 Nobel Prize in Physics will speak on The Future of Physics in the inaugural lecture of the Physics Department Memorial Lecture series. This event will be held at 4:00 pm on Thursday, April 21 at the Liebow Auditorium in Basic Science Building.

This annual lecture series organized in the memory of Prof. Norman M. Kroll, a brilliant pioneer in Quantum physics and a founding member of the UCSD Physics department. During his forty year career at the UCSD, Professor Kroll made brilliant contributions to research in quantum electrodynamics, atomic physics, particle physics, free electron lasers and subatomic particle accelerators. He served as the chair of the physics department from 1963 to 1965 and from 1983 to 1988. A short description of Prof. Kroll's life is at http://ucsdnews.ucsd.edu/newsrel/science/mckroll.asp

This lecture series is generously supported by the financial contributions from the friends and family of Prof. Norman Kroll. The event is free and open to the public. Parking is $3.

David J. Gross is Director of the Kavli Institute for Theoretical Physics (KITP) and the first incumbent of the Frederick W. Gluck Chair in Theoretical Physics at the University of California at Santa Barbara. Professor Gross was awarded the 2004 Nobel Prize in Physics for solving, in 1973, the last great remaining problem of what has since come to be called the Standard Model of the quantum mechanical picture of reality and discovered along with his co-recipients how the nucleus of atoms works. This lecture is also a part of the worldwide celebration of 2005 as the year of physics.

http://ucsdnews.ucsd.edu/thisweek/2005/apr/04_18_kroll.asp

By Kim McDonald | March 7, 2005

The Royal Astronomical Society in England has awarded physics professors Geoffrey and Margaret Burbidge the society's Gold Medal, its highest honor, for their contributions to astronomy during more than half a century.

The two astronomers at the Center for Astrophysics and Space Sciences are perhaps most well known for their work in the mid-1950s describing how stars synthesize nearly all the chemical elements in the universe, from iron and oxygen to carbon and copper.

The society cited the pair "for their joint contributions to astronomical research and their impressive record of service to the community, including Professor Geoffrey Burbidge's 30-year tenure as editor-in-chief of the Annual Review of Astronomy and Astrophysics, and Professor Margaret Burbidge's Presidency of the American Astronomical Society."

Ivan Schuller is also one of seven winners of the 2004 E.O. Lawrence Award, given for outstanding contributions in the field of atomic energy, broadly defined. Each winner will receive a gold medal, citation and $50,000 at a ceremony in Washington, DC on November 8, 2004.

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San Diego Union Tribune Article

We regret to inform you that our colleague Norman Kroll passed away on Sunday, August 8, 2004. One of UCSD's founding faculty, Norman was a member of the Department of Physics and one of its most distinquished emeriti. He was a brilliant theoretical physicist with deep physical insight and broad scientific interests.

He took an active interest in the Physics Department and served as Department Chair for two terms (1963-66 and 1983-1989). We will miss Norman's keen intellect and wise counsel. The Department will keep you informed of the wishes of Norman's family regarding his memorial.

Prof. Kroll was born in 1922 and was appointed professor in 1962.

Pictures from Norman's 80th Birthday Celebration are available at: Norman Kroll 80th Birthday Celebration

M. Brian Maple, Bernd T. Matthias professor of physics and director of UCSD's Institute for Pure and Applied Physical Sciences, and Charles S. Zuker, a professor of biology and of neurosciences at UCSD, were among the 72 new members and 18 foreign associates from 13 countries elected to the academy this morning in recognition of their distinguished and continuing achievements in original research.

Their election brings the number of current faculty members at UCSD who are members of the National Academy of Sciences to 71, ranking the university seventh in the nation in the number of academy members. The National Academy of Sciences, established by Congress in 1863, serves as an official adviser to the federal government on matters of science and technology.

Mark Thiemens, Dean of UCSD's Division of Physical Sciences, and Eduardo Macagno, Dean of UCSD's Division of Biological Sciences, noted that The election of Professor Maple and Professor Zuker to the academy today is a testament to their scientific achievements and underscores the intellectual vitality of UCSD's two science divisions.

It's often said that Roger Revelle built this university from the top down by recruiting members of the National Academy of Sciences to UCSD. But much of our scientific talent, as demonstrated by the election today, resides in the faculty who have developed and established themselves at UCSD, added the two deans.

Maple received his doctorate in physics from UCSD in 1969, working under the renowned UCSD physicist Bernd Matthias, and was named Distinguished Alumnus of the Year at UCSD in 1987. An expert on high-temperature superconductors materials that lose all resistance to electricity at commercially attainable, cold temperatures he presided over the celebrated high-temperature superconductivity session, dubbed the Woodstock of Physics, during the American Physical Society's March meeting in 1987. His research interests also include magnetism, low-temperature physics, high-pressure physics and surface science. Maple has been on the faculty at UCSD since 1973.

Zuker, a 46-year-old neurobiologist, was born in Chile and moved to the U.S. to obtain his doctorate in molecular biology from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Zuker is also a Howard Hughes Medical Institute Investigator and has been on the faculty at UCSD since 1987. Recently elected to the Academy of Arts and Sciences, Zuker and his colleagues in his laboratory employ a combined molecular, genetic, and physiological approach to investigate the biology of sensory transduction mechanisms in photoreceptors, mechanoreceptors and taste receptors.

Attribution: Kim McDonaldhttp://ucsdnews.ucsd.edu/newsrel/science/mcnas.asp

"In recognition of his outstanding career in Elementary Particle Physics, and in particular for his important contributions to the understanding of the decays of heavy quarks."

Background:
Born in Tehran, Iran in 1974, Rahatlou obtained his "Laurea in fisica" (the Italian undergraduate degree) from Universita` degli Studi di Roma "La Sapienza" in February 1998, with a thesis on the design and implementation of the simulation software for the central drift chamber of the BaBar experiment, which was under construction at SLAC. He joined UCSD in September 1998 as a graduate student to start his study of CP violation with the BaBar experiment, and received his PhD in October 2002, with a dissertation on the "Observation of matter--anti-matter asymmetry in the B0 meson system". This is the first observation of CP violation since its discovery, in 1964, in the kaon system. He is currently working at UCSD as a post-doc on BaBar. His main research interest is the measurement of the CKM angle gamma of the Unitarity Triangle, which is an important and promising measurement within the next two years at the PEP-II B-factory. He is also in charge of the Reconstruction program of the BaBar experiment.