Chodos is New Associate Executive Officer

Outgoing APS News editor Barrie Ripin (left) passing the 'baton' to new editor, Alan Chodos under the watchful eye of former APS President Henry Rowland. Photo by Kim Quigley

Alan Chodos, a senior research physicist at Yale University, will succeed Barrett Ripin as Associate Executive Officer of the APS. Ripin stepped down in January after serving five years in that position. Chodos will assume the office full-time in July, and will divide his time between Yale and the APS in the intervening months.

Among the chief responsibilities of the Associate Executive Officer are the editorship of APS News and the administration of prizes and awards. The AEO also works with the Executive Officer in the general management of Society affairs. In addition, Chodos will coordinate a new effort to enhance the APS presence on the Web, providing services not only to the APS membership and the physics community, but also to the public at large.

"Alan brings a great enthusiasm and a wealth of experience to the position of Associate Executive Officer. We are very pleased to have him join the APS staff," said Judy Franz, Executive Officer of the APS.

Chodos received his PhD from Cornell University in 1970, and held postdoctoral positions at the University of Pennsylvania and MIT before joining Yale in 1976. His research has concentrated in particle theory, and he is perhaps best known for his work on the MIT bag model and on Kaluza-Klein theories. He is also known to believe that the neutrino is a tachyon. Chodos was elected a Fellow of the APS in 1994.

During the last decade, Chodos has been active in Society affairs, serving on a task force on publications in the early '90s, on the Committee on Member Publications and briefly on the Membership Committee before joining the Publications Oversight Committee in 1997. He served as Chair of that committee in 1999.

"We are in a period of rapid change, both in the society at large and in the physics community," Chodos said. "The APS has been working hard to keep providing the services that its members need, and I want to help make sure that that continues."