Apker Award Honors Three Undergrads.

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, an unusually large number of outstanding nominations were received. The selection committee responded by recommending three recipients to the APS Executive Board: two in the non-PhD category, and one in the PhD category.

On the left is Hugh Churchill of Oberlin College, whose senior thesis, done under the supervision of Stephen Fitzgerald, was on “Low-temperature infrared spectroscopy of H₂ in solid C₆₀.” He is now a graduate student at Harvard. In the middle is Huanqian Loh of MIT, who, working with James K. Thompson and Vladan Vuletic, wrote her senior thesis on “Applications of Correlated Photon Pairs: Sub-Shot Noise Interferometry and Entanglement”. She is spending this year working in a quantum optics laboratory in her native Singapore, and intends to begin graduate work in physics in the US next fall. At right is Stephanie Moyerman of Harvey Mudd College, who wrote her thesis on “Magnetic Structure Variations in Spin Valves with Pico-Scale Antiferromagnetic Layers” under the supervision of James Eckert and Patricia Sparks. Currently studying abroad on a Watson Fellowship, she will begin graduate school at UC Berkeley in the fall of 2007.