Top Recruiters Honored in Membership Campaign

Two APS members were honored for their efforts at recruiting new members for the APS Member-Get-a-Member campaign instituted last year. Cosmin Deciu of Bucharest, Romania and Gonzalo Gutierrez of Santiago, Chile, will each receive a top recruiter incentive of $300 toward APS renewals and subscriptions. Deciu was chosen randomly to receive the grand prize of $500 toward travel to an upcoming APS meeting. Both men recruited five members each.

According to APS Membership Supervisor, Trish Lettieri, a total of 244 APS members participated in the campaign, 38 of whom brought in two or more new members; 300 new members were recruited in the six-month campaign.

Deciu is a graduate student in physics at the University of Bucharest in Romania. He has been an APS member since 1994. Interestingly, Mr. Deciu recruited his sixth member after the campaign was officially over. He said that his professor was "a little bit upset" at not being recruited earlier. Deciu says he plans to use the grand prize to attend the Minneapolis DPF Meeting in August.

Gutierrez is a graduate student in solid state physics at the Pontificia Universidad Catolica de Chile, having received an undergraduate degree in physics from the Universidad de Chile in 1985. He was involved with the pro-democracy movement against the Pinochet regime, working in environmental studies and other social projects before resuming his studies in 1991. He is presently on a four-month visit to the Concurrent Computing Laboratory of Materials Simulation at Louisiana State University.