Prize Recipient

(Frank) Chio Zong Cheng
Princeton Plasma Physics Laboratory

"For the theoretical Discovery and Experimental Identification of Toroidicity Induced Alfven Eigenmodes."

Dr. Chio Z. (Frank) Cheng received a BS degree in physics from the National Cheng-Kung University, Taiwan in 1969, and a Ph.D. degree in physics in 1975 from the University of Iowa. Since 1975 he has been at Princeton University's Plasma Physics Laboratory. Currently, he is the head of energetic particle physics and space plasma physics research areas in the Theory Department. He has received the PPPL Distinguished Research Fellow and APS Fellow commendations. He is also a member of APS, AGU, and AAS/SPD. Dr. Cheng's expertise spans both laboratory and space plasma physics. In laboratory plasma physics, he has made significant contributions to fast ion physics, Alfven waves, ballooning modes, plasma transport due to drift waves and trapped electron modes, sawtooth stabilization and excitation of fishbone modes by energetic particles, and disruption in tokamaks. In particular, he discovered the theory of Toroidicity-Induced Alfven Egenmode (TAE) in toroidal plasmas. In space plasma physics, his work includes magnetospheric substorms, ballooning-mirror instability for compressional Pc 4-5 waves, field line resonances, kinetic Alfven waves and plasma transport at the magnetopause, 3D magnetospheric equilibria, solar flares and their homologous behavior, and the role of impulsive magnetic reconnection in solar flare non-thermal emissions and acceleration of coronal mass ejections. In computational physics, he developed the NOVA family of ideal MHD, resistive MHD, and kinetic-MHD global tokamak stability codes, a splitting scheme for accurate solutions of the Vlasov equation, a 3D toroidal particle simulation code, and a 3D magnetospheric equilibrium code.

Ronald R Parker (Chair), Alex Friedman (12/04), Siegfried Glenzer (03 Rcpnt)(12/04), Wendell Horton (vice chair) (12/05), Karl Krushelnick