awards

Kevin Qian of Montgomery Blair High School placed 2nd in the Physics and Astronomy category at the International Science and Engineering Fair (ISEF) 2019 with his research topic “Heisenberg-Scaling Measurement Protocol for Analytic Functions with Quantum Sensor Networks.” Qian worked with Adjunct Associate Professor Alexey Gorshkov and graduate student researcher Zachary Eldredge in the University of Maryland Department of Physics, the Joint Quantum Institute (JQI), and the Joint Center for Quantum Information and Computer Science (QuICS).

JQI Fellow Mohammad Hafezi has been named a finalist for the 2019 Blavatnik National Awards for Young Scientists.He is one of 31 researchers competing for three Blavatnik National Laureate Awards in the categories of Physical Sciences and Engineering, Chemistry and Life Sciences, and is one of 10 finalists in Physical Sciences and Engineering. Each of the three National Laureates will win $250,000—the world’s largest unrestricted prize for early-career scientists. The awards are sponsored by the Blavatnik Family Foundation and the New York Academy of Sciences.

JQI Fellow Vladimir Manucharyan has recently received the 2017 Young Faculty Award (YFA) from the Defence Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) to support his research on topological superconductivity. According to DARPA, the YFA program seeks to “identify and engage rising research stars in junior faculty positions at U.S. academic institutions”. During the 2-year support period, DARPA grants awardees with mentoring and financial support.

Carla Hermann Avigliano, a former postdoc with JQI Fellow Paul Lett, is one of two women scientists to receive the Chilean L'Oréal-UNESCO Award For Women in Science. She was selected for the prize out of 77 applications and cited for her research achievements during her early career. The award is part of a larger program that aims to internationally recognize women researchers in science and operates throughout the world. In Chile, 21 women from various areas of science such as physics, chemistry, biology, nursing, geology, forestry, biotechnology and ecology, among others, have received the prize since 2007.

Lauren Aycock, a recent JQI graduate researcher, has been awarded a Congressional Science Fellowship from the American Physical Society.The fellowship, which lasts for one year, aims to provide members of Congress with the scientific and technical expertise of trained scientists. In turn, fellows like Aycock get to learn first-hand about public policy and communicate with Congress on behalf of the scientific community. After an orientation sponsored by the American Association for the Advancement of Science, she will begin working either in a congressional office or on a committee.

Karina Jiménez-García, a former visiting graduate student who worked with JQI Fellow Ian Spielman, was one of 30 young women scientists to receive a 2016 L'Oréal-UNESCO For Women in Science fellowship. She was selected from a pool of more than 1,000 applicants and received the award for her ongoing research on the quantum behavior of ultra-cold atoms."This is a recognition that I owe to all those that have guided and inspired me and those who have supported me throughout my professional career, especially my family," says Jiménez-García, who is currently a postdoctoral researchers at the Kastler Brossel Laboratory at the Collège de France in Paris. She plans to use the funds from the fellowship to build a handful of physics demonstrations that will appeal to young students and to fund travel to conferences in Mexico, where she hopes to start her own research group in the future.The award, which launched in 2007, has given fellowships to more than 140 women in France who are either studying toward a Ph.D. in the life or physical sciences or working as postdoctoral researchers. The criteria for selection include a proven academic track record and the ability to inspire the next generation of scientists. For the first time since the fellowship launched, L'Oréal organized a public event, held on October 12, that included lectures and interviews with this year's winners.While at JQI, Jiménez-García worked on creating synthetic electric and magnetic fields for ultra-cold clouds of atoms. In a series of papers, she and a team of experimental colleagues showed that lasers could coax atoms without an electric charge into behaving like charged particles in magnetic and electric fields. The work is still a fertile area of research for Spielman and could enrich the toolkit for atomic physicists interested in simulating other quantum systems with clouds of atoms.

Jay Deep Sau, an assistant professor of physics at the University of Maryland and fellow of the Joint Quantum Institute, was awarded a Sloan Research Fellowship for 2016. This award, granted by the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation, identifies 126 early-career scientists based on their potential to contribute fundamentally significant research to a wider academic community.Sau, a theoretical condensed matter physicist interested in applying topological principles to create protected solid-state and cold-atomic systems for quantum information processing, will use the fellowship to further his research focus on predicting phenomena that could help pave the way for topological quantum computation.

JQI Fellow and NIST Scientist Gretchen Campbell has recently been announced as the IUPAP 2015 Young Scientist Prize recipient in the field of Atomic, Molecular, and Optical Physics. The organization cited her "outstanding contributions in toroidal Bose-Einstein condensates and its application to "atomtronic" circuits." 
The International Union of Pure and Applied Physics (IUPAP) was established in 1922 in Brussels with 13 Member countries and the first General Assembly was held in 1923 in Paris. More about the prize can be found at http://iupap.org/young-scientist-prize/

Michael Kossin, an undergraduate who works with JQI Fellow Luis Orozco, has been awarded an IPST Monroe Martin Prize for Undergraduate Research in Physics for his paper, "Production of a Polarizing Millimeter-Wave Fabry-Perot Resonator.” He also earned Departmental High Honors. This summer Kossin will work with Professor Alejandro Garcia at the University of Washington, whose research involves weak interactions in the nucleus. Kossin plans to attend graduate school in 2016. 
About the award:
Dr. Martin, a native of Lancaster, PA, studied mathematics at Lebanon Valley College before earning his doctorate at Johns Hopkins University. After completing a prestigious National Research Fellowship at Harvard University and a three-year post teaching mathematics at Trinity College in Hartford, Conn., he moved to the University of Maryland as an assistant professor in 1936. By 1943 he chaired the department of mathematics.

JQI graduate student Shuo Sun has won the Maiman Outstanding Student Paper Competition at CLEO, held annually in May. Sun's paper was titled "A solid-state spin-photon transistor." According to the website, "This competition was established in 2008 in memory of Theodore Maiman and in acknowledgement of his amazing invention, the first working laser, and his other outstanding contributions to optics and photonics.