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Faculty Notes
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Mathematics professor Angela Cheer, teaching a course.
MPS faculty are known worldwide for the teaching and research excellence in their fields. They are sought by media for their opinions on the latest research, and are published in major international journals. Here is a glimpse of what MPS faculty are doing today.
Motohico Mulase, a professor of mathematics, is the recipient of the Distinguished Teaching Award for Undergraduate Students, given by the UC Davis Academic Senate.
Alessandro Pizzo, an assistant professor of mathematics, was invited to give a plenary talk at the XVI International Congress on Mathematical Physics in Praque, August 3-8, 2009. Dr. Pizzo spoke on "The Infrared Problem in Nonrelativistic QED" and was one of 16 plenary speakers at the largest mathematical-physics conventions (held on a triennial basis).
David Pines, professor of physics at UC Davis, has been awarded the 2009 John Bardeen Prize for Superconductivity Theory for his ground-breaking work in elucidating the phonon-mediated pairing of electrons in conventional superconductors and superfluidity in nuclear matter. The award was presented on September 9, 2009, at the 9th International Conference on Materials and Mechanisms in Superconductivity in Tokyo, Japan.
Jacquelyn Gervay Hague, a professor of chemistry, was inducted as a fellow in the American Chemical Society's Fellowship program. She was in the first class of fellows for the society. The ACS Fellows Program was created by the Board of Directors in December 2008 "to recognize members of the American Chemical Society for outstanding achievements in and contributions to Science, the Profession, and the Society."
Physics professors John S. Conway and Steven Carlip have been elected fellows of the American Physical Society, an honor bestowed on fewer than 15 percent of the society's 40,000 members. The society cited Carlip for his contributions to black hole physics and to the study of gravity in the dimensions of space and time. Conway was recognized for outstanding contributions in the search for a sub-atomic particle known as the Higgs boson and his work using high-energy particle accelerators.
The Camille and Henry Dreyfus Foundation recently selected Xi Chen, an associate professor of chemistry, as a 2009 Camille Dreyfus Scholar-Teacher. The $75,000 unrestricted award will support Dr. Chen's research program.
The Royal Society of Sciences at Uppsala has elected Distinguished Professor of Physics Charles Fadley a Foreign Member of the society in its class for Physics and Mathematics. It is the oldest learned society in Sweden, founded in 1710. Past members include Charles Darwin and Anders Celsius.
David Pines, distinguished professor of physics, has received the John Bardeen Prize for 2009. It is awarded by the international superconductivity research community and as of this year is funded by the UIUC Department of Physics. The prize will be conferred at this year's Materials and Mechanisms of Superconductivity meeting in Tokyo in September, and includes an award of $6,000 to the recipient.
Susan Kauzlarich, professor of chemistry, has received the Presidential Award for Excellence in Science, Mathematics, and Engineering Mentoring for 2009. She was one of 100 science, math, and engineering teachers and mentors. They will receive their awards in the fall at a White House ceremony.
The Camille and Henry Dreyfus Foundation recently selected Dr. Xi Chen, a member of UC Davis' chemistry department, as a 2009 Camille Dreyfus Teacher-Scholar. The award provides a $75,000 unrestricted grant to young faculty in the chemical sciences who are within the first five years of their academic careers. These young faculty have created an independent body of outstanding scholarship and demonstrated a commitment to education. The frontier research accomplishments of the 2009 award recipients span the broad range of what is now contemporary research in the chemical sciences.
Kai Liu, professor of physics, was awarded a $330,000 grant by the National Science Foundation for the emerging field of spintronics. It has already revolutionized information technology, particularly in the explosive growth of the magnetic recording areal density. At the heart of spintronics are spin-valves that permits low field applications and a spin-transfer torque (STT) effect that allows local electrical manipulation of magnetic states. They enable a host of fascinating spin-based electronics applications. The STT effect has so far been exclusively studied in ferromagnets, until the recent proposals of antiferromagnet (AF) based STT effect. This project aims at investigating the AF-STT effect in multilayered nanowires and building a novel type of nanowire spin-valves for AF spintronics explorations.
Robert Svoboda, professor of physics, has been approved for a grant to design a large neutrino detector. The amount for the proposal was $5.8 million over three years, but the final amount that will be awarded has not been given as some of the proposal is being funded by the Department of Energy through BNL (about $1.2 million).