Date: Mon, 12 Apr 2004 20:19:22 EDT From: Paul Grannis Subject: news of the department Dear friends, The spring semester is well along, and I have not sent out a summary of the accumulated news for a while. Here are the notes that I have collected. Thanks to all who contributed, and please keep sending me items that will be of interest to our alumni, students, faculty and staff. with regards, Paul Grannis ------------------------------------------------------------------- 1. Promotions: John Hobbs and Concha Gonzalez-Garcia have been promoted to Associate Professor; Axel Drees has been promoted to full professor. 2. Two new members of the faculty will be added to the department in the next academic year. Adam Durst, now a postdoc in condensed matter theory at Yale, will join us in January. Dominik Schneble, a postdoc in the Ultra Cold Laboratory at MIT will join the atomic, molecular and optical group in September or January. We are delighted with the prospect of their joining us. 3. Norbert Pietralla was awarded the Academy Prize of Physics for 2003 of the Academy of Sciences of Gottingen, for investigations of proton-neutron mixed-symmetry states with the nuclear resononance flourescence technique. 4. George Sterman has been named the "2004 Distinguished Alumnus" of the U. Maryland Physics Department. 5. On January 30, Barbara Jacak gave a 20 minute interview to the NPR program "Talk of the Nation: Science Friday" hosted by Ira Flatow on the recent studies of ultra dense and high temperature collisions of heavy ions at RHIC. This interesting review can be heard at: http://www.npr.org/rundowns/rundown.php?prgId=5&prgDate=30-Jan-2004 6. Miriam Forman, in her capacity as editor of Committee on Status of Women in Physics of the APS, has a lead article in the Spring 2004 newsletter: http://www.aps.org/educ/cswp/gazette/spring04.pdf 7. Adjunct professor Vladimir Litvinenko of Brookhaven Lab was named an APS fellow. The citation reads: "For fundamental and pioneering contributions to the physics of beams in electron storage rings and free-electron lasers, including demonstrating the optical klystron and advancing the short wavelength limit of FEL oscillators." 8. Marvin Geller, adjunct professor in the department and professor in the Institute for Terrestrial and Planetary Atmospheres of Marine Sciences Research Center testified on March 3, 2004 before the US Senate Committee on Commerce, Science, and Transportation regarding recent scientific activities concerning climate change impacts. Marvin was recently elected Fellow of the American Geophysical Union (AGU). 9. Emilio Mendez will take over as Director of Undergraduate Studies this summer. We appreciate the excellent work over the past two years of Chris Jacobsen in expanding our undergraduate program 10. The electronic news service "Interactions" picked up on a BNL Bulletin story of Feb. 6 that highlighted the recent successes of a group headed by Ilan Ben Zvi in accelerating electrons with strong laser electric fields. The article was written by Stony Brook Alumna Laura Mrgidichian who is now working in the BNL Media and Communications office. By a further nice coincidence, the election of Bill Weng as an IEEE fellow was announced in the same issue. Bill was a PhD student of Tom Kuo who made the transition to accelerator science after his degree. ( http://www.bnl.gov/bnlweb/pubaf/bulletin/2004/bb020604.pdf ) 11. The 2004 American Physical Society Dissertation in Nuclear Physics Award was given to Andrew Steiner, who received a 2003 PhD student, advised by Madappa Prakash. The citation reads: "For his in depth studies of the phase structure of dense matter containing quarks, neutrino-quark interactions, superconductivity in quark matter, and in particular for the delineation of the neutrino signals which are likely to reveal the structural components of dense matter." Andrew is now a postdoc at the University of Minnesota. 12. Graduate recruiting season is about finished (the deadline for notification is April 15). There is every indication that it will be a banner year. At the time of writing we already have 35 acceptances. Thanks to the Admissions committee of Jac Verbaarschot (chair), Vladimir Goldman, Barry McCoy, Michael Rijssenbeek, Gene Sprouse, Fred Walter and Bill Weisberger. 13. The university representative for College of Arts and Sciences Masters degrees hooding at the May commencement, will be Susan Metz (May M.S. in the Scientific Instrumentation Program). 14. This year for the first time, we are awarding two new fellowships made available by a grant from Renaissance Technologies. These fellowships carry a $7000 per year stipend for three years, to be used to supplement regular departmental support. 15. Five Intel Project semifinalists (out of 300 nationwide) were supervised by members of our department. They are: Yiyi Deng (Metcalf/Noe), Maanit Desai (Metcalf/Noe), Ahmed Mallik (Zahed), Oleg Polyakov (Metcalf/Noe), and Eduard Reznik (Lattimer). Reznik was subsequently chosen as one of 40 finalists for his paper "New Exact Solutions to Einstein's Equations") that gives astronomers a better understanding of a star's internal structure. 16. The departmental annual campaign has so far netted over $25,000 in support of activities of the department ranging from fellowships and prizes to funds for new faculty housing loans. More major gifts are still being discussed. We are extremely grateful to all who joined in giving to the department; our programs are much enhanced as a result. And I thank Janos Kirz, Gerry Brown, Pam Burris, Peter Kahn and Sara Lutterbie for their work in conducting the campaign. Its not too late to join in supporting the department! See http://www.physics.sunysb.edu/Physics/donate.shtml 17. The second Simons Lecturer series will feature Prof. Henk Stoof of the University of Utrecht. His colloquium on April 26 on "The Quantum World of Cold Atomic Gases" will kick off a month- long visit to Stony Brook, with seminars and interactions with our community to follow. Hal Metcalf will be Stoof's host. 18. The new department web site was rolled out this spring after much thought and work by the web committee chaired by Chang Kee Jung with and many contributions by Pam Burris, John Hasstedt, Chi Ming Hung, and Warren Siegel. The new site at http://www.physics.sunysb.edu has a much more visual feel to it. Suggestions for improvements should be sent to Chang.Jung@sunysb.edu 19. A letter signed by many of the faculty of the department on the plan to charge research grants for graduate student tuition may be found on the department information page. 20. The bus service between BNL and Stony Brook continues; the schedule of trips may be viewed at: http://www.stonybrook.edu/research/new/bus.html 21. Repairs to the air handling system and leaks on the roof have finally been fixed. The cooling trays were relined; four new drains were installed to deliver water to our sump system; several leaks were found in the roof and fixed. We are hopeful that we will be in good shape for the summer season.