Physicist Honored at November Division Meetings

Ten physicists will receive five APS prizes and awards at two division meetings in November. The Excellence in Plasma Physics Award, the James Clerk Maxwell Prize, and the Marshall Rosenbluth Award will be presented at the fall meeting of the APS Division of Plasma Physics, to be held November 15-19 in Savannah, Georgia. The Fluid Dynamics Prize, and the Andreas Acrivos Award will be presented at the meeting of the APS Division of Fluid Dynamics, November 21-23 in Seattle, Washington.

James Clerk Maxwell Prize

Valery Godyak
Osram Sylvania 
Noah Hershkowitz
University of Wisconsin-Madison

Citation: "For fundamental contributions to the physics of low-temperature plasmas, including radio frequency wave heating, sheath physics, potential profiles, diagnostic probes, and the industrial applications of plasmas."

Godyak is a corporate scientist at Osram Sylvania. He received his PhD degree in plasma physics from Moscow State University in 1968. He joined the Laboratory of Fusion Engineering at the Institute of Electro-Physical Apparatus in St. Petersburg, where he conducted research on high-current relativistic electron accelerators, particularly on field emission and electron optics. He returned to MSU's physics department in 1972, but was expelled eight years later and forbidden to hold a professional job, working as an electrician in a Moscow hospital. He emigrated to the US in 1984 and joined GTE Corporation, now Osram Sylvania. Godyak has made many contributions to rf discharge physics and revolutionary products, including long life and compact rf lamps.

Hershkowitz is an experimental plasma physicist with current research interests in plasma-aided manufacturing, plasma physics, plasma diagnostics, and in fusion plasmas. He received his PhD in physics from Johns Hopkins University in 1966, and is currently director of the Center for Plasma-Aided Manufacturing (C-PAM), which provides important input to US industry. He also heads the Phaedrus Laboratory for Plasma Science, which investigates plasma applications.

Excellence in Plasma Physics Award

Liu Chen
University of California, Irvine
Chio Z. Cheng
Princeton University
William Heidbrink
University of California, Irvine
Edward Strait
General Atomics
King-Lap Wong
Princeton University

Citation: "For the theoretical discovery and experimental identification of toroidicity Induced Alfven Eigenmodes."

Chen received his PhD from the University of California, Berkeley, in 1972, and is presently a professor of physics and astronomy at the University of California, Irvine. His main research interest is in the area of instabilities excited by energetic particles in magnetically confined plasmas. These instabilities could explain not only observed electromagnetic wave perturbations, but could also lead to enhanced transport coefficients, which could impact fusion ignition conditions. He is currently developing particle simulation techniques to describe self-consistent nonlinear wave-particle interactions.

Cheng received his PhD in physics from the University of Iowa in 1975, and has been at Princeton University's Plasma Physics Laboratory ever since. He is currently the head of energetic particle physics and space plasma physics research areas. He has made significant contributions to fast ion physics, Alfven waves, ballooning modes, trapped electron modes, and disruption in tokamaks. In particular, he discovered the theory of Toroidicity-Induced Alfven Eigenmode (TAE) in toroidal plasmas. He has also studied solar flares and magnetosphere substorms.

After receiving his bachelor's degree from the University of California, San Diego, Heidbrink spent two years performing industrial research in pulsed power at Maxwell Laboratories before pursuing graduate studies at Princeton University. He received his PhD in physics in 1984, and worked at Princeton's TFTR tokamak and at the DIII-D tokamak at General Atomics before joining the physics department at the University of California, Irvine in 1988. He studies energetic ions in magnetic fusion experiments, as well as diagnostic development and measurements of fast-ion confinement.

Strait bio not available at press time.

Wong received his PhD from the University of Wisconsin, Madison in 1975, and after one year as a research associate at Columbia University, he joined the Princeton Plasma Physics Laboratory. His research involves linear and nonlinear wave physics associated with plasmas, and their effects on plasma current generation, heating and transport. Most recently, he has investigated MHD activity and density modification by high-power electron cyclotron waves, and current density profile modification due to redistribution of energetic ions induced by Alfven instabilities in the DIII-D tokamak.

Fluid Dynamics Prize

George M. Homsy
University of California, Santa Barbara

Citation: "For many important contributions in multiphase flows, interfacial phenomena, polymeric flows, and convection, including the stability of fluidized beds, viscous fingering in porous media, and thin film behavior."

Homsy received his PhD in physics from the University of Illinois in 1969 and spent one year as a postdoctoral fellow at Imperial College in London, England, before joining the faculty of Stanford University, where he remained for much of his career. In 2001 he joined the faculty of the University of California, Santa Barbara, as a professor of mechanical and environmental engineering. His research has spanned numerous areas related to the physics of fluids, including multiphase flows, porous media; thin films; viscoelastic flows; and most recently chaotic advection.

Marshall Rosenbluth Award

Kiyong Kim
University of Maryland

Citation: "For his development and application of intense laser pulses with novel plasmas, including those produced in nanoscale clusters."

Kim received his B.S. in 1995 from Korea University, and his PhD in physics from the University of Maryland, College Park, in 2003. His dissertation detailed the development of ultrafast optical diagnostics and their application to the measurement of ultrafast dynamics in the interaction of intense laser pulses with gases, atomic and molecular clusters, and plasmas. He is currently a postdoctoral fellow at Los Alamos National Laboratory, pursuing the study of coherent Terahertz radiation from intense laser-produced plasmas.

Andreas Acrivos Dissertation Award

Jacqueline Ashmore
Harvard University

Citation: "For elegant theoretical and numerical analyses of coating and free-surface flows''

Ashmore received her PhD in Applied Mathematics from Harvard in 2003, working with Howard Stone. She is currently a postdoctoral associate in the Department of Applied Mathematics and Theoretical Physics at the University of Cambridge, working on the analysis of transport in directional solidification of multicomponent fluids, and cavitation in lubrication flows.