2011 Graduate and Undergraduate Honors

From the 2011 Physics Alumni Newsletter

Physics graduate student, Yuan Li won the “Chinese Government Award for Outstanding Self-financed Chinese Students Study Abroad”. This award was founded by the Chinese government in 2003 with the purpose of rewarding the academic excellence of self-financed Chinese students studying overseas. Only those with outstanding performance in Ph.D. studies are considered by the award selection panel. Yuan works with Prof. David Carroll in the Center for Nanotechnology and Molecular Materials.

Physics graduate student, Jason Bates, applied for and received a grant from the National Science Foundation to study for approximately two months this summer with Professor Hing Tong Cho at Tamking University in Taiwan. Jason works with Prof. Paul Anderson. His research in Taiwan involved computing a two point correlation function which gives information about quantum fluctuations in the stress-energy (energy density, pressure, etc.) of quantum fields in a model in which the universe which is expanding exponentially in time. The work has potential implications for inflationary models, in which the universe undergoes a rapid expansion phase called inflation early in its history.

Physics graduate student, Andrea Belanger, was selected to be a National Research Service Awards predoctoral fellow for the 2011-2012 academic year. This award is part of a training grant from the National Institutes of Health for the Structural and Computational Biophysics Program that is led by Biochemistry professors Leslie Poole and Douglas Lyles. The goal of the program is to broaden the education of students in the biological or physical sciences. Andrea will be using physical methods to help understand the blood storage lesion (why old blood goes bad) in the lab of Prof. Dany Kim-Shapiro.

Physics graduate student, Ivan Azarov, earned the Gordon A. Melson Outstanding Doctoral Student Award for 2011. His research with Dany Kim-Shapiro explored how the important signaling molecule nitric oxide is maintained under normal physiological conditions, is compromised in disease, and how it can be restored through therapeutics. His dissertation is entitled “Nitric Oxide Bioavailability Regulation by Hemoglobin”. Ivan is now a postdoc in the group of Prof. Mark Gladwin at the University of Pittsburgh.

The Materials Research Society (MRS) awarded Joel Grim, a Physics graduate student, a Silver award for a talk he gave at the MRS Meeting in April. Joel works with Prof. Richard Williams. His talk was entitled “Nonlinear Quenching Rates in SrI₂, CsI, and NaI Scintillator Hosts”.

Claire McLellan, a rising senior in Physics, had an exceptionally successful year. In April she was awarded a prestigious Goldwater Scholarship. These are national scholarships for sophomore and junior students in all areas of science to encourage them to continue their studies in science and to recognize their achievements to date. Then in July, she received a Leadership Award from the Society of Physics Students, a national organization that promotes study in physics and the maintenance of high scholarship expectations for those who pursue physics education. The award is given to students who achieve high scholarship performance both in physics and overall studies, exhibit the potential and intention for continued scholastic development in physics, and who actively participate in SPS programs. This summer Claire worked as a science and technical intern at the Government Accountability Office in Washington, DC as part of the Wake Washington program.

Last December, a team of three undergraduate physics majors: Claire McLellan, C. Wesley Matthews, and Soham Banerjee won a Silver Medal in the first-ever University Physics Competition, an international physics competition for undergraduates sponsored by the American Physical Society and the American Astronomical Society. This competition involved solving one of two problems posed by a committee of professional physicists. They chose the problem entitled “Aerobraking a Space Probe at Neptune”. Each participating team had 48 hours to develop a solution to their selected problem, and submit a report explaining their solution. Altogether 58 teams submitted solutions in the 2010 University Physics Competition. Of these, 2 teams (3%) were ranked as Gold Medal Winners, 8 teams (14%) were ranked as Silver Medal Winners, 16 teams (28%) were ranked as Bronze Medal Winners, and 32 teams (55%) were ranked as Accomplished Competitors.

There were also two other awards given by the Physics Department at our last colloquium of the academic year. Jillian M. Bjerke received the award for outstanding teaching assistant, and C. Wesley Matthews received the William E. Speas Memorial Award. Jill just finished her Master’s degree in Physics this month (August) and also this month, Wes started graduate studies in Physics at NC State.

Back to the 2011 newsletter articles