Prize Recipient
Jerry D. Tersoff
IBM T. J. Watson Research Center
Citation:"For insightful, creative theoretical descriptions of surface phenomenology; particularly of crystal growth dynamics, surface structures and their probes."
Background:Dr. Tersoff received his BA in physics from Swarthmore College in 1977, and his Ph.D. from the University of California at Berkeley in 1982. He then spent two years as a postdoc at Bell Laboratories before taking his current Research Staff position at the IBM Thomas J. Watson Research Center. He has worked in a variety of areas relating to surface and interface physics and materials physics, including theories of scanning tunneling microscopy, Schottky barriers, heterojunction band lineups, model interatomic potentials, stress effects at surfaces and strain relaxation in epitaxial thin films. Most recently he has addressed ways in which, during heteroepitaxial growth, strain can lead to controllable self-assembly and self-organization of nanostructures such as "quantum dots" and "quantum wires".
Dr. Tersoff is a Fellow of the American Physical Society, and a member of the Materials Research Society and the American Vacuum Society. His work has previously been recognized by the Peter Mark Memorial Award of the American Vacuum Society and the Materials Research Society Medal.
