Prize Recipient

Cindy Regal
University of Colorado, Boulder

"Experimental realization of BCS-BEC crossover physics with a Fermi gas of atoms"

Cindy Regal was raised in Duluth, Minnesota and attended Lawrence University in Wisconsin as an undergraduate where she worked on laser spectroscopy under Dr. John Brandenberger of the Lawrence physics department. In 2001 she earned her BA in physics from Lawrence and was awarded a Hertz Foundation fellowship for her subsequent graduate studies at the University of Colorado. Cindy's graduate dissertation presents experiments on ultracold potassium Fermi gases performed in the group of Dr. Deborah Jin at JILA, a joint institute of NIST and the University of Colorado, Boulder. These experiments, along with the work of groups studying lithium Fermi gases, pioneered the techniques necessary to achieve pairing and condensation in the crossover between Bose-Einstein condensation and BCS superconductivity. Since defending her dissertation in 2006, she has enjoyed a short project in the condensed matter group of Dr. Konrad Lehnert at JILA. In the fall of 2007 she will move to Caltech to join Dr. Jeff Kimble's group as a Millikan postdoctoral fellow.