Awards

Heather Lewandowski to be Recognized as a 2019 Recipient of the Homer L. Dodge Citation for Distinguished Service to AAPT

Anonymous — Tue, 09 Oct 2018 21:09:41 +0000

Heather Lewandowski to be Recognized as a 2019 Recipient of the Homer L. Dodge Citation for Distinguished Service to AAPT Anonymous (not verified) Tue, 10/09/2018 - 15:09

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Margaret Murnane Awarded SFI St. Patrick's Day Science Medal

Anonymous — Fri, 23 Mar 2018 22:19:28 +0000

Margaret Murnane Awarded SFI St. Patrick's Day Science Medal Anonymous (not verified) Fri, 03/23/2018 - 16:19

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Jun Ye wins 2018 Rabi Award for research on optical lattice atomic clocks

Anonymous — Thu, 22 Feb 2018 22:38:46 +0000

Jun Ye wins 2018 Rabi Award for research on optical lattice atomic clocks Anonymous (not verified) Thu, 02/22/2018 - 15:38

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Professor Rahul Nandkishore Named 2017 Alfred P. Sloan Research Fellow

Anonymous — Tue, 21 Feb 2017 16:21:56 +0000

Professor Rahul Nandkishore Named 2017 Alfred P. Sloan Research Fellow Anonymous (not verified) Tue, 02/21/2017 - 09:21

Congratulations to Assistant Professor Rahul Nandkishore for winning a 2017 Alfred P. Sloan Fellowship. The award was announced on Tuesday, February 21.

"I feel honored to receive this prestigious award for my research in theoretical condensed matter physics” Nandkishore said.

According to their web site, the Sloan Research Fellowships seek to stimulate fundamental research by early-career scientists and scholars of outstanding promise. This year, 126 researchers were recognized for their distinguished performance and a unique potential to make substantial contributions to their field.

Dr. Nandkishore is a theoretical condensed matter physicist working on disordered many body quantum systems. He has made important contributions to several areas of condensed matter physics, including the study of Dirac semimetals, the phenomenon of many body localization, and investigations of unconventional superconductivity.

"I intend to use the award to continue exploring the behavior of quantum many body systems, both in and out of equilibrium,” Nandkishore said. “New frontiers in equilibrium many body physics are constantly being opened up by advances in materials science. Meanwhile, the study of out of equilibrium many body quantum physics is one of the great open frontiers for theoretical physics research, progress on which has recently been revolutionizing our understanding of quantum statistical mechanics. I am extremely happy that I have the opportunity to do research on a topic that is relevant for so many different areas of physics, and which offers the opportunity to make foundational contributions to our understanding of quantum phenomena."

The award comes with a $60,000 prize that Professor Nandkishore will use to further research the behavior of quantum many body systems, both in and out of equilibrium.

Rahul Nandkishore earned a bachelor’s degree and Master of Science degree from University of Cambridge in 2008 and a doctorate degree from MIT in 2012. Prior to coming to University of Colorado in 2015, he was a post doctoral researcher at the Center for Theoretical Science at Princeton University. Assistant Professor Nandkishore is a theoretical physicist working on some of the most important current topics in theoretical condensed matter physics with exciting implications for areas from quantum information to string theory. He has published thirty-five papers, including twenty since 2014, and he is first-author on nineteen published papers. He has two invited review papers.

Established in 1934 by Alfred Pritchard Sloan Jr., then-president and CEO of General Motors, the New York-based foundation is a philanthropic, nonprofit grant-making institution supporting original research and education in science, technology, engineering, mathematics, and economics.

View the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation Announcement

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Professor Margaret Murnane Wins Highest Medal from The Optical Society

Anonymous — Mon, 20 Feb 2017 18:42:31 +0000

Professor Margaret Murnane Wins Highest Medal from The Optical Society Anonymous (not verified) Mon, 02/20/2017 - 11:42

Congratulations to JILA Fellow and Physics Professor Margaret Murnane for winning the Frederick Ives Medal/Quinn Prize, the highest award of The Optical Society. The Award was announced on February 16, 2017.

According to their site, Murnane earned the award, “For pioneering and sustained contributions to ultrafast science ranging from femtosecond lasers to soft x-ray high-harmonic generation to attosecond studies of atoms, molecules and surfaces”. She is the first woman to receive this Medal in its nearly 90-year history.

The Frederick Ives Medal/Quinn Prize is the latest in a string of awards that Professor Murnane has earned, including the prestigious RDS Irish Times Boyle Medal, and a John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation fellowship, or “genius grant”.

“No one wins these awards alone in a vacuum,” Professor Murnane said. “I am so fortunate to be co-leading a team in AMO science and applications - with my husband Henry Kapteyn and a super-talented, amazing group of Graduate students and postdocs; all of whom are winning awards and trailblazing in their own careers.”

According to the OSA site, the Frederick Ives Medal/Quinn Prize, “was endowed in 1928 by Herbert E. Ives, a distinguished charter member and OSA President, 1924 and 1925, to honor his father who was noted as the inventor of modern photoengraving and for his pioneering contributions to color photography, three-color process printing, and other branches of applied optics.”

As part of the award process, Murnane will present a plenary address at OSA's Annual Meeting in September, 2017.

View the Award Information

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Physics Professor Loren Hough Awarded MIRA, Develops a New Way to Look at Cellular Shapeshifter Tubulin

Anonymous — Fri, 21 Oct 2016 23:19:17 +0000

Physics Professor Loren Hough Awarded MIRA, Develops a New Way to Look at Cellular Shapeshifter Tubulin Anonymous (not verified) Fri, 10/21/2016 - 17:19

Congratulations to Assistant Professor Loren Hough, who was recently awarded a New Investigator Maximizing Investigators’ Research Award (MIRA) from the National Institutes of Health this year to further vital research in the field of biophysics, specifically on studying the behavior of tubulin in his lab.

Tubulin, a protein found in your cells, quietly lends itself to many life processes. It sorts itself into long chains, forming tubes that provide scaffolding for living cells. A versatile shapeshifter, tubulin can arrange itself into different structures during different types of cell behavior. Tubulin gained prominence for medical applications when Taxol, a chemical first found in the bark of the Pacific Yew tree, was developed as a treatment for ovarian, breast and lung cancers. Taxol binds to tubulin and makes it hard for the tubes to grow and shrink, preventing cancer cells from proliferating.

“Tubulin is one molecule that does many things in cells,” says Hough, a member of the BioFrontiers Institute. “We're trying to understand how tubulin can play so many different roles."

Hough is focused on the ends of tubulin molecules, called the C-terminal tails. These tails coat the surfaces of the microtubules formed by tubulin. He is studying, in part, how much influence these tails exert on tubulin and its behavior. To answer some of the mysteries of tubulin, Hough developed a method to probe the C-terminal tails of tubulin using nuclear magnetic resonance spectroscopy, or NMR.

Hough wanted to measure how tubulin C-terminal tails influence cellular processes, but to do NMR he had to figure out how to get specific atoms into them first, as part of the isotopic labeling process. These atoms are easy to incorporate into bacteria, but tubulin cannot be made in bacteria because bacteria lack the suite of proteins that help tubulin fold into its correct shape. Hough brought in a helper: Tetrahymena thermophila. This small but mighty protozoan is common in freshwater ponds and is used frequently as a model organism in biological research. As it turns out, bacteria are a favorite snack of Tetrahymena, so Hough incorporated the isotopes into the bacteria, which were then devoured by the Tetrahymena. With the isotopes digested by the Tetrahymena, Hough was at last able to see the C-terminal tails in action using NMR, as described in a paper recently published in ACS Chemical Biology.

“There is beautiful physics regarding tubulin in general,” says Hough. “I thought the C-terminal tails might be affecting what we know about tubulin from a biophysical perspective. We think tubulin tails are like a knob the cell uses to control different features, but we don't know how the tails are used for this tuning. It’s exciting to be tackling these questions.”

The MIRA grant, from the National Institute of General Medical Science, is meant to support the work of young faculty. Hough’s $1.8 million MIRA grant will run five years.

“The MIRA is great. It’s going to give our lab the ability to push this project forward, as well as other research on disordered proteins,” says Hough. “We’re looking forward to taking this work on tubulin C-terminal tails even further over the next five years.”

The Hough lab is part of the physics department's Biophysics group. At the University of Colorado BioFrontiers Institute, researchers from the life sciences, physical sciences, computer science and engineering are working together to uncover new knowledge at the frontiers of science and partnering with industry to make their discoveries relevant.

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JILA/LASP Physics Fellows Receive Governor's Awards For High-Impact Research

Anonymous — Thu, 01 Sep 2016 22:29:31 +0000

JILA/LASP Physics Fellows Receive Governor's Awards For High-Impact Research Anonymous (not verified) Thu, 09/01/2016 - 16:29

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Physics Graduate Angel Martinez Wins Prestigious Glenn H. Brown Prize

Anonymous — Tue, 16 Aug 2016 01:13:24 +0000

Physics Graduate Angel Martinez Wins Prestigious Glenn H. Brown Prize Anonymous (not verified) Mon, 08/15/2016 - 19:13

Congratulations to Dr. Angel Martinez (Fall '14) for earning the prestigious Glenn H. Brown Prize from the International Liquid Crystal Society (ILCS). The prize was announced during the ILCS conference in early August 2016. The Glenn H. Brown Prize awards doctoral students whose PhD theses, "demonstrate an outstanding contribution to the science of liquid crystals."

According to their site, Martinez earned his award, "for his outstanding research contribution to enriching the toolbox for structural manipulation of soft matter based on the optical effect and its application to liquid crystal colloids and polymeric systems. His research pioneered a new trend in the artificial control of microscopic topological structures in liquid crystals that opens a novel avenue for self-assembly in soft matter with a wide range of future applications."

"Being his PhD advisor and watching him grow as a scientist were some of the most rewarding and enjoyable experiences in my own career at the ��«��Ƶ," CU Physics Professor Ivan Smalyukh said. "Angel highly deserves the recognition by the Glenn H. Brown Prize because of his unprecedented creativity and productivity, which make him perhaps the brightest superstar among the young researchers in the field of liquid crystals."

Dr. Martinez is now a Postdoctoral researcher with the University of Pennsylvania, where he continues to work on softmatter physics, liquid crystals and colloids.

"I am proud of helping Angel with initiating and helping to grow his interest and expertise in the experimental liquid crystal research," Professor Smalyukh said. "Dr. Martinez is now not just a talented young experimentalist but truly an experimental magician/wizard."

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CU Physics team shares in 2016 Breakthrough Prize for Fundamental Physics

Anonymous — Tue, 10 Nov 2015 01:50:55 +0000

CU Physics team shares in 2016 Breakthrough Prize for Fundamental Physics Anonymous (not verified) Mon, 11/09/2015 - 18:50

The 2016 Breakthrough Prize for Fundamental Physics was awarded November 8, 2015 for the discovery and study of neutrino oscillations, revealing a new frontier beyond the standard model of high energy particle physics. The $3M Prize is shared among the all of the scientific collaborators including CU-Physics Professors Eric D. Zimmerman and Alysia Marino, as well as CU postdoctoral researchers Robert Johnson and Stephen Coleman, and graduate students Scott Johnson, Andrew Missert, and Tianlu Yuan.

Neutrinos are the most elusive of all of the fundamental particles that make up the universe. They are produced in many nuclear reactions. Since they interact so weakly with other matter, they can travel all the way through the sun or the earth. Because of this, very large underground detectors have been built to catch and study these elusive particles. The CU team works at T2K in Japan, which generates an intense beam of muon neutrinos on the east coast of Japan using a device built at CU, and shoots them through the earth aimed at the Super-Kamiokande neutrino detector deep inside a mountain 180 miles away on the other side of Japan. Professor Marino was also a team member in the Sudbury Neutrino Observatory (SNO), one of the other collaborations cited in the prize. The Breakthrough Prize was awarded for the observation that muon neutrinos can oscillate into electron neutrinos by the time they reach the detector.

The Breakthrough Prize ceremony was broadcast live from the NASA Ames Research Center in California on Sunday. A one-hour version of the broadcast is scheduled for November 29. The Breakthrough Prizes were established in 2012 to recognize achievements in three fields:
Fundamental Physics, Life Sciences and Mathematics. Laureates receive $3 million each in prizemoney, making the Breakthrough Prizes the largest scientific awards in the world.

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Noah Finkelstein Named CU’s First Timmerhaus Teaching Ambassador

Anonymous — Tue, 10 Mar 2015 23:17:03 +0000

Noah Finkelstein Named CU’s First Timmerhaus Teaching Ambassador Anonymous (not verified) Tue, 03/10/2015 - 17:17

Congratulations to Professor Noah Finkelstein, who was named CU's first ever Timmerhaus Teaching Ambassador. The announcement was mad on March 4, 2015. This new outreach program is designed to tap educators to promote discussion of teaching and learning in schools and communities across the state.

After a lengthy selection process, Finkelstein was chosen because of his enthusiasm and accomplishments in teaching and learning, his leadership in his field of study, his success at advising and encouraging students, and his willingness to represent the enterprise of teaching and learning at CU. Professor Finkelstein is a President's Teaching Scholar and was recently named a faculty advisor for the CU ��«��Ƶ Office of Information Technology.

Finkelstein has published more than 100 peer-reviewed articles since coming to CU in 2003. His accolades include being named a systemwide Presidential Teaching Scholar (2012), the Outstanding Faculty Graduate Faculty Advising Award (2010), the ��«��Ƶ Faculty Assembly Excellence in Teaching Award (2007), first place in the National Science Foundation (NSF)/Science Magazine’s International Science and Engineering Visualization Challenge (2007), an NSF CAREER Award (2005), and many other national awards from the NSF including one to build a Center for STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering, Mathematics) Learning at CU.

His leadership extends to national policy, having testified before Congress regarding the state of STEM education and now serving on the Board of Trustees for the Higher Learning Commission, which accredits more than 1,000 institutions of higher education across the country.

“I’m profoundly honored by this award, and the explicit recognition and attention to education as a core enterprise of the University of Colorado,” Finkelstein said. “I seek to carry on Klaus Timmerhaus’ remarkable commitment to and legacy of engaging all Coloradans in education.”

The Timmerhaus Teaching Ambassador award honors the memory of professor Klaus Timmerhaus, a member of the faculty of chemical and biological engineering at CU-��«��Ƶ from 1953 until his retirement in 1995. Timmerhaus received many honors, including being named to the National Academy of Engineering and being selected to the first group of President’s Teaching Scholars at the university. An active and enthusiastic advocate of teaching, Timmerhaus provided a bequest to support designated faculty members in promoting discussion of education throughout Colorado.

This year, the Timmerhaus awardee was selected from the ��«��Ƶ campus, but in subsequent years, faculty across the four-campus system will be eligible to be honored with the ambassadorship, which includes a $25,000 award. During each two-year appointment, ambassadors will present talks about education and learning throughout Colorado at a variety of venues; audiences will include state lawmakers, the CU Board of Regents, educators, the media and the general public.

In consultation with the Timmerhaus Award Committee – which consists of teaching scholars from the College of Engineering and Applied Science at CU-��«��Ƶ; Klaus’ daughter, Carol Getty; and Klaus’ granddaughter, Kristina Getty – Finkelstein’s first order of business is to coordinate plans for travel around the state speaking about the essential role of education.

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