Dear all,

Welcome back for the Spring semester!   Though it always seems
chaotic at the start (and finish), we should all take particular
pleasure at having the opportunity to open up perspectives to
our students at all levels.  It is a most pleasureable
challenge!   I do remind you that if you are unable to meet
any of your classes it is your responsibility to find a 
suitable substitute; if you are in trouble for this please
let me know and I'll try to help.

Some recent news and information:

1)  Seven high school students who have worked under 
Stony Brook supervision have been selected as one of
the semifinalists in the Intel Science Talent Search 
competition.  There were 300 of these nationally and
88 on Long Island.  An eighth semifinalist, Christina Hung
did preliminary research at the Laser Teaching Center and
completed the project with USB Chemistry.

Those working with Stony Brook Physics and Astronomy staff:

Peter Amendola, Kings Park HS
  "Design and Construction of An Optimized Optical Tweezers"
   with John Noe and Harold Metcalf

Molly Bright, Bayport-Blue Point HS
   "Characterizing Turbid Media using Mueller Matrix Images"
   with John Noe and Harold Metcalf

Michael Laufer, Ward Melville HS
   "Gamma ray Bursts: X-ray and Optical Band Afterglow Decay
    of Dark Bursts and the Fireball Model"
    with Ralph Wijers

Vladimir Djuric, Ward Melville HS
   "Analysis of Gamma-ray Burst Photon Count Data by
    Continuously Time-varying Poisson and Bernoulli Models"
    with Ralph Wijers

Kathrn Marie Rindress, New Hyde Park Memorial HS
   "Masses of Black Holes in X-Ray Binaries"
    with Madappa Prakash

Joshua Ruderman, Syosset HS
    "Spectroscopy in Orion's Belt: Discovery of New Stars"
    with Fred Walter

Sam Hall, Ossining HS
    "The Comparison between the Extrasolar Planet System and
    and Unbiased Sample to Determine the Statistical Distributions
    of the Extrasolar Planet System's Eccentricity, Period and
    Sub-stellar Mass Function", with Mike Simon.

Working with bright high school students is a real pleasure,
can have dividends in attracting good undergraduates to
Stony Brook, and is a very worthwhile outreach to our community. 
   
2)  Three individuals associated with the department received
American Physical Society fellowships this year:
Madappa Prakash
Jack Marburger
Steve Peggs (adjunct from BNL)

Our congratulations to all three!

In addition, Tom Weinacht who will join us this fall
received the APS prize for the best dissertation in
Atomic Molecular and Optical Physics.

3)  The January 14, 2002 issue of Phys. Rev. Letters
cover featured the plot of particle deficits from 
Au-Au collisions in the PHENIX experiment at RHIC.  
The analysis was spearheaded from Stony Brook.   (The 
Jan. 21 PRL cover featured a new analysis of K+ --> pi+ nu nu 
decays with a second candidate event.  This BNL experiment is 
the precursor to the KOPIO project).

	with regards,
	Paul