Three Undergraduates Receive APS Apker Awards

Nathaniel Craig

Matthew Paoletti

David Miller

The LeRoy Apker Award is given for outstanding research accomplishments in physics by an undergraduate. Two categories are recognized, one for an undergraduate at an institution that grants the PhD, and the other for an undergraduate at an institution that does not grant the PhD. Normally, there is one award each year in each category. This year, however, in an unusual but not unprecedented move, the selection committee recommended, and the APS Executive Board approved, three recipients: one in the non-PhD category, and two in the PhD category. The non-PhD recipient is Matthew Paoletti of Bucknell University, who, working under the supervision of Tom Solomon, did his research on "Experimental Studies of the Effects of Chaotic Mixing on Advection-Reaction-Diffusion Systems." At Bucknell, Paoletti won the Lowry Prize for most outstanding physics major, the Phi Beta Kappa Award for most outstanding research, and the Miller Prize for the best honor's thesis. He is now pursuing graduate studies at the University of Maryland. One of the PhD recipients is Nathaniel J. Craig of Harvard, who did his award-winning work in the laboratory of Charles Marcus, on "Tunable Non-local Spin Control in a Coupled Quantum Dot System". In a display of versatility, he intends to work on string theory in graduate school at Stanford. The other PhD recipient is David Miller of the University of Chicago. His research project, titled "Search for high energy axions with the CAST calorimeter" was carried out at CERN and was done under the supervision of Juan Collar. Like Craig, Miller will pursue his graduate work at Stanford, after completing his experimental work at CERN.