2010-03-01 Alfred P. Sloan Research Fellow 2010

Joshua Folk

Congratulations to Joshua Folk, who has been awarded Alfred P. Sloan Research Fellow!

To quote P.L.Joskow, President of Sloan Foundation,

The Sloan Research Fellowships support the work of exceptional young researchers early in their academic careers, and often at pivotal stages in their work,

Joshua was one of the two Fellowships to go to UBC. There were a total of 118 Fellowships awarded to early career scientists, mathematicians, and economists in 56 colleges and universities in the United States and Canada.

Joshua has been with Physics & Astronomy since 2005 and leads the Qunatum Devices Group. The research measures the electronic properties of nanometer- and micron-scale devices at temperatures from 0.01K to 1K, where electronic transport is dominated by quantum mechanical effects.

2010-02-27 Maud Menten New Principal Investigator Prize

Carl Hansen

Congratulations to Carl Hansen, who was awarded $1,000 as a finalist in the CIHR Institute of Genetics, Maud Menten New Principal Investigator Prize and an addition $5000 as a CIHR New Investigator.

These awards are in support of Carl's research in "Deciphering signalling complexity at the single cell level using high-throughput microfluidic imaging.

2010-02-16 UBC Killam Research Prize

Andrea Damascelli

As posted by Doug Bonn

It is my pleasure to let you all know that Andrea Damascelli has been selected this year to be a recipient of a UBC Killam Research Prize. Well done, Andrea!

Andrea joined the dept in 2002 as an CRC Tier II Assistant Professor and has been since promoted to Associate Professor in 2007.

Andrea's research involves the understanding of the electronic properties of complex systems which differ substantially from those of conventional metals and insulators. Strong electron-electron correlations, in concert with electron-phonon interactions, can give rise to a large variety of fascinating phenomena, including high-temperature superconductivity, and colossal magneto-resistance.

A complete list of UBC Killian Awards is available.

2009-05-12 Faculty of Science Achievement Awards 2009

Jeff Young

Jeff Young is rewarded for five years of tirelessly service as deprtment head.

2009-05-12 Faculty of Science Achievement Awards 2009

Shaun Woodruff

Shaun's service to the department is well-known to anyone teaching or taking courses that benefit from his herculean efforts in the Hebb Demo room.

2009-05-12 Faculty of Science Achievement Awards 2009

Mya Warren

Graduate student, Mya, led the team that developed our Teaching Assistant Training program, which has become a model for such activities across the faculty of Science.

2009-05-12 Faculty of Science Achievement Awards 2009

Alan Robinson

Alan Robinson has been a strong voice for undergraduates as President of our Physics Society, as well as his work as Managing Editor of the Canadian Undergraduate Physics Journal.

2009-02-23 Alfred P. Sloan Research Fellow

Robert Raussendorf

Congratulations to Robert Raussendorf, who has been awarded Alfred P. Sloan Research Fellow!

To quote P.L.Joskow, President of Sloan Foundation,

... this is an extraordinarily competitive award, involving nominations for most of the very best scientists of your generation from the United States and Canada. I hope that your selection from this remarkable group of nominees will give you particular personal satisfaction, and convey a clear indication of the high esteem in which your past work and future potential are held by your fellow scientists.

Robert has been an Assistant Professor in Physics & Astronomy since 2008-January. His research involves quantum computation and in particular computational models

2009-02-10 2008 Physics and Astronomy Staff Service Award

Derek Gagnier

Congratulations to Derek Gagnier, who was awarded the 2008 Physics & Astronomy Staff Service Award at the department's christmas party on December 16, 2008.

Derek is the undergraduate program coordinator and as such is the dept's "point man" with the current undergraduate students and prospective students. In this past year the role of the coordinator has expanded with the task of course scheduling and given the staff shortages, the department owes much to Derek for his superb service.

2009-01-22 Killam Faculty Research Junior Fellow

Andrea Damascelli

Congratulations to Andrea Damascelli, whose research is honour with this award. Select recipients of the Killam research awards will be profiled at the Celebrate Research Gala on March 12.

Andrea is a leader in the Quantum Materials Lab whose research concerns the fabrication and study of novel complex systems and nanostructured materials. in particular, Andrea's research focuses on the study of the low-energy electronic structure and of the interplay between the spin, charge, and orbital degrees of freedom in novel complex systems, and one and two-dimensional nanostructures. Our primary tools are angle-resolved photoemission spectroscopy (so-called ARPES) and other highly-advanced synchrotron-based spectroscopies.

2009-01-22 Killam Faculty Research Junior Fellow

Steven Plotkin

Congratulations to Steven Plotkin, whose research is honour with this award. Select recipients of the Killam research awards will be profiled at the Celebrate Research Gala on March 12.

Steven's interests range from the study of dynamics and disorder in the theory of protein folding and function, to genetic and phylogenetic networks, to studies of pattern formation and symmetry breaking in morphogenisis.

2008-05-20 Fellow of Royal Society

George Sawatzky

Congratulations to George Sawatzky, who has been named a Fellow of the Royal Society. This is fantastic news, and of course very richly deserved.

The Royal Society's citation points to George's work (both experimental and theoretical) in understanding important transition metal oxides.

See the Royal Society site for details.

2008-04-02 Early Career Scholar

Kris Sigurdson

Congratulations to Kris Sigurdson, who has been appointed as an Early Career Scholar of the Peter Wall Institute for Advanced Studies (PWIAS) for the 2008-2009 academic year and as a permanent faculty associate of the PWIAS.

Ten UBC researchers were selected at the Assistant Professor level representing five different Faculties.

Congratulations Kris!

See PWIAS Program for details

2008-02-19 Sloan Research Fellowship

Scott Oser

Please join me in congratulating Scott Oser, who has received an Alfred Sloan Research Fellowship Award. Only 22 such awards were given to physicists across North America this year, and Scott received one of only two awarded to researchers at Canadian Universities. Congratulations for receiving this richly deserved honour Scott!

See http://www.sloan.org/programs/fellowshiplist.shtml/ for details

2007-11-22 Henry Marshall Tory Medal

George Sawatzky

Congratulations to George Sawatzky who received the Henry Marshall Troy Medal from the Royal Society of Canada, The Academies of Arts. Humanity & Science this past weekend. He joins a very select group of scientists.

See RSC site for details.

2007-07-28 NASA Group Achievement Award

Mark Halpern

Professor Mark Halpern has been recognized, along with his colleagues on the WMAP mission, with a prestigious NASA Group Achievement Award.

Wilkinson Microwave Anisotropy Probe (WMAP) has been continously making observations of the cosmic microwave background for 3 years. The interpretation of these observations support the concept of inflation, which poses that the universe expanded many trillion times its size in less than a trillionth of a second at the outset of the big bang.

See NASA's WMAP site for details.

2007-07-26 Killam Teaching

Mona Berciu

Congratulations Mona Berciu for having been awarded a Faculty of Science Killam Prize for Excellence in Teaching.

2007-07-27 Faculty of Science Achievement Awards

Sophy Zhang

Sophy is an undergraduate studying Physics

2007-07-27 Faculty of Science Achievement Awards

Stan Knotek

Stan is Electronics Shop Manager and Engineer

2007-07-27 Faculty of Science Achievement Awards

Marina Milner-Bolotin

Marina is a Research Associate with the department.

2005-06-13 2006 CAP Medal for Lifetime Achievement

Ian Affleck

The citation reads (in part)...

The Canadian Association of Physicists (CAP) is pleased to announce that the 2006 CAP Medal for Lifetime Achievement in Physics is awarded to Dr. Ian Affleck, University of British Columbia for application of conformal field theory to quantum magnetism, spin chains, the Kondo effect and flux phases in superconductors.

Ian Afflecks interests cover many areas including superconductivity, low dimensional magnetism, and quantum phenomena. He began working in high energy theory and often applies techniques from this field to condensed matter problems. Over a period of 25 years, he has many major research accomplishments, and his papers are cited widely and often.

2007-06-03 Career Investigator Awards from the Michael Smith Foundation

Vesna Sossi

Vesna was awarded as a Senior Scholar in Clinical field. Her project is "Imaging studies: Towards understanding the complications related to advanced monoaminergic disease and treatment"

See the Michael Smith Site

2007-06-03 Career Investigator Awards from the Michael Smith Foundation

Carl Hansen

Carl was recognized as a Scholar in Biomedical field. His project is titled "Microfluidic instrumentation for single-cell chemical genetics"

See the Michael Smith Site

2007-05-03 2007 Presidents Service Award for Excellence

Bridget Hamilton

Congratulations to Bridget Hamilton who has been awarded the President's Service Award for Excellence for outstanding contributions to campus life.

Bridget and the other recipients will receive a gold medal and $5,000 in a presentation during Spring Congregation. This years awards are the first to be presented by new UBC President Stephen J. Toope.

See the Public Affairs site for details.

2006-02-23 Sloan Fellowship

Mona Berciu

Congratulations to Mona Berciu, who has been awarded a 2006 Sloan Research Fellowship. Mona is currently an Assistant Professor with the Dept working with the Condensed Matter and Theoretical Physics groups. Her research interests includes modeling High Temperature superconductivity, the understanding of Photonic Crystals & the Quantum Hall effect. See Mona's Research page for details.

2005-09-15 BC Innovation Council

Walter Hardy

Walter Hardy, Professor Emeritus, has been awarded the 2005 Chairman's Award for Career Achievement. Walter's main research interest is in the microwave and millimetre-wave electrodynamics of the cuprate superconductors. High-temperature cuprate superconductors consist of layers of copper and oxygen, separated by metal atoms such as yttrium and barium. The supercurrent flows through the copper oxide layers.

2005-07-13 Royal Society of Canada

Doug Bonn

Doug Bonn, has been elected as a Fellow of the Royal Society of Canada The citation reads in part...

Prof Bonn has done pioneering work in the properties of the electronic states in high temperature super conductors. This work provides the experimental basis for our understanding of the quasiparticle dynamics, which constitutes a key step in establishing the unusal nature of superconuctivity in these materials.

Doug joins a number of other dept members who are Royal Socity of Canada Fellows

2005-04-04 Killam Teaching

Janis McKenna

We congratulate Janis McKenna, who has been awarded a Killam Award for Excellence in Teaching. This is outstanding news, Kudos Janis!

In the 2004W academic session, Janis has been teaching Phys 353 Electric and Magnetic Fields and Phys 401 Electromagnetic Theory.

Janis's research is in experimental particle physics and involves the use of BaBar, a B-meson factory and the OPAL detector, a big general-purpose particle physics detector.

2005-03-30 Cap Medal 05

Andre Marziali

The 2005 CAP Medal for Excellence in Teaching is awarded to Andre Marziali, University of British Columbia for many exceptional qualities. Firstly there are his remarkable teaching assessments for a first year class who are typical harsh on their lecturers. He has developed a remarkable course using robots. Finally he uses cutting edge teaching techniques based on student-based learning which has produces a steady stream of senior colleagues attending his lectures.

2005-03-03 Sloan05

Fei Zhou

A Sloan fellowship has been awarded to Fei Zhou, who has been with UBC since 2003.

Fei describes his research ...

An atom when interacting strongly with others can loose its individuality and behave very exotically. Understanding atomic matter in this correlated limit is my current research interest. My students and I have recently found certain condensates of bosonic atoms support fractionalized half-integer vortices. We have also discovered that elementary excitations in various correlated states sometimes carry only part of quantum numbers of underlying atoms. Investigating these atomic states not only enriches theories in many-body physics but also appears to have potential impact on some fundamental issues in topological field theories, quantum gravity and cosmology.

2005-03-03 Sloan05

Mark van Raamsdonk

A Sloan fellowship has awarded to Mark van Raamsdonk who received a PhD from Princeton and has been with UBC since 2002.

The goal of my research is to work towards an understanding of the laws of nature at their most fundamental level. I would like to understand the physics that explains why we observe the particles and forces that we do, the physics that governed the very early universe and led to the cosmology we observe, and the physics of black holes and other situations that demand a quantum theory of gravity. To these ends, my research has focused on string theory, which I believe is the best candidate for a consistent description of quantum gravity and a unified understanding of all particles and forces in nature. I hope that my research will also lead to a better understanding of quantum field theories, which accurately describe the strong, weak, and electromagnetic forces of nature

2005-03-03 Sloan05

Steve Plotkin

A Sloan fellowship has been awarded to Steve Plotkin who received his PhD from University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign and has been with UBC since 2001.

Dr. Plotkin's work focuses on understanding biomolecular phenomena at a fundamental level. His work is interdisciplinary, applying tools and ideas from theoretical physics to systems central to molecular and cell biology. He has done seminal work on the protein folding problem, predicting several effects governing relaxation rates and folding mechanisms. His current interests range from studies of polymer translocation through nanopores, to genetic and phylogenetic networks, to studies of pattern formation and symmetry breaking in morphogenisis.

2005-03-02 ASP05

Kiefl, Robert Francis

Rob Kiefl has been elected as an Amercian Physical Society Fellow with the following citation:

For outstanding contributions to our understanding of the properties of materials through the use of muons.

Rob's research is involved with attempt to understand high temperature superconductors by using muon spin resonance