August 3, 2011

Blewett Fellows Announced for 2011

College Park, MD – The Committee on the Status of Women in Physics (CSWP) of the American Physical Society (APS) announces the recipients of the 2011 M. Hildred Blewett Fellowship.  The Blewett Fellowship enables women to return to physics research careers after having had to interrupt that career. 

Silvia Luescher Folk
Folk is a Research Associate at the University of British Columbia in Canada, will work on testing theoretical predictions for non-abelian topological characteristics of the ν = 5/2 state.  Folk’s background is in experimental mesoscopic physics, and her PhD and postdoc periods were highlighted by 24 publications, many in top journals. 

The award will allow her to return to independent research and adapt her expertise to a new area of physics.  Folk earned her PhD from the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in Zurich, Switzerland.  She then completed postdoctoral positions at Stanford University and Delft University of Technology, The Netherlands.

Natalia Drichko
Drichko is a visiting Research Assistant Professor at Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore, Maryland, and a previous recipient of a Blewett Fellowship, will work on the connection between spin fluctuations and unconventional superconductivity.  Drichko’s research track record includes 53 publications in peer-reviewed journals and a patent registered in the Russian Federation. 

The 2011 award will enable her to further increase her independence as a scientific investigator and become integrated into the United States scientific community. Drichko earned her MSc from St. Petersburg State University in 1996 and her PhD from the Ioffe Physico-Technical Institute in St. Petersburg in 2002. 

About the Blewett Fellowship

The Blewett Fellowship award was established by a generous bequest from M. Hildred Blewett, a particle accelerator physicist who died in 2004.  Hildred Blewett was passionate about physics and recognized that women who have interrupted their research careers can face many obstacles when they try to resume that research.

The fellowship consists of a one-year award of up to $45,000 which can be used toward dependent care, salary, travel, equipment, and tuition and fees.  Applicants are selected by a sub-committee of CSWP. 
   M. Hildred Blewett Fellowship