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Awards and Prizes

Awards:

Prestigious National Fellowships to IPST Graduate Students

Ed O'Brien, a Chemical Physics graduate student working with Professor Dave Thirumalai, was awarded an NSF Postdoctoral Fellowship for three years. He will use this award to visit Cambridge, England. He also recently won the Best Graduate Poster Award at the Biopolymer Gordon Conference.

Dr. Patrick Hughes, a Research Associate with Dr. Michael Coplan, was awarded an NRC Postdoctoral Fellowship to work at the NIST National Center for Neutron Research (NCNR). Dr. Hughes received his Ph.D. in Physics in December 2007 under the direction of Dr. Coplan and has been working with him since.

Space Studies Board's James A. Van Allen Lectureship
Dr. Frank B. McDonald has been selected by the Space Studies Board's Executive Committee, National Academy of Sciences, as the recipient of the James A. Van Allen Lectureship for Space and Earth Science.  Dr. McDonald will present his lecture, entitled Explorer 1:  Gateway to the Never Ending Wonders of Space Science, at an invitation-only event at the National Air and Space Museum on June 26 as part of the Space Studies Board's celebration of 50 years of space science and the Board's 50th birthday.

2008 Dean's Outstanding Non-Exempt Employee Award
Mr. Ed Cole, Engineering Tech III in IPST, has been selected as the recipient of the 2008 Dean's Outstanding Non-Exempt Employee Award. This honor is in recognition of his exceptional service and professionalism in his duties for IPST since starting employment in 1990.

Arpita Upadhyaya is a 2008 Sloan Research Fellowship Award Winner.
Assistant Professor Arpita Upadhyaya of IPST/Physics was among the list of 2008 Sloan Research Fellowship Award Winners. These awards are intended to enhance the careers of the very best young faculty members in science. A total of 118 fellowships are awarded annually. For more information, visit: http://www.sloan.org/programs/scitech_fellowships.shtml

Thomas D. Wilkerson, Professor Emeritus, Awarded
2007 Utah Governor's Medal for Science and Technology
Utah State University research professor Tom Wilkerson, a senior scientist with the university's Space Dynamics Laboratory, is the recipient of a 2007 Utah Governor's Medal for Science and Technology.  He received the award during a ceremony hosted by Gov. Jon Huntsman, Jr. at Salt Lake City's Clark Planetarium Nov. 13. It is the highest honor awarded by Utah for scientific and technological achievements.  Prof. Wilkerson taught Physics and Mathematics at the Univesity of Maryland for 34 years, and was a member of the Institute.

2007 Poole and Kent Teaching Award for Senior Faculty
Mikhail Anisimov  is the winner of this year's Poole and Kent Teaching Award for Senior Faculty.
Comments by Sheryl Ehrman, Selection Committee:  To me, Mikhail is such a great example of a true scholar and educator who both recognizes the potential of all of our students  and helps them however he can to achieve their goals.  And by all students, I mean not just the very bright ones that would excel anywhere with minimal input from us, but also the students who are earnest, curious, and willing to work hard.  

Eitan Tadmor, Distinguished University Professor
Professor Tadmor has been awarded the title of Distinguished University Professor.
This award is in recognition of his work in the area of numerical analysis of time-dependent problems and is the highest academic honor that our university confers upon a faculty member.  He is a member of the Department of Mathematics; Institute for Physical Science and Technology; and Director, Center for Scientific Computation and Mathematical Modeling.

Distinguished Scholar Teacher Award 2005-2006
Professor Howard Milchberg has been selected to be one of the 2005-2006 Distinguished Scholar-Teachers at the University of Maryland at College Park.
http://www.faculty.umd.edu/FacAwards/dstlist.html


Prizes:Monroe H. Martin Prize
The Monroe H. Martin Prize was established to commemorate the  achievements of the late Professor Emeritus Monroe H. Martin, former Director of the Institute for Fluid Dynamics and Applied Mathematics, and Chair of the Department of Mathematics, University of Maryland. 

Previous prize  winners are Neil E. Berger, Department of Mathematics, University of Illinois at Chicago Circle (1975); Marshall  Slemrod, Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute (1980); Jonathan Goodman, Courant Institute of Mathematical Sciences, New York University (1985); Marek R. Rychlik, Department of Mathematics, University of Arizona (1990); Andrew M. Stuart, Division of Applied Mechanics, Stanford University (1995); Zhihong Xia, Center for Dynamical Systems and Nonlinear Studies, Georgia Institute of Technology (1995); Yury Grabovsky, Department of Mathematics, Temple University (2000); Robert J. McCann, Department of Mathematics, University of Toronto (2000); C. Sinan Güntürk, Courant Institute of Mathematical Sciences, New York University (2005); and Jared Tanner, Statistics Department, Stanford University (2005).

J. R. Dorfman Prize for Undergraduate Research

The J. R. Dorfman Prize for Outstanding Undergraduate Research was established in 1989 to honor Professor J. Robert Dorfman of the Department of Physics and the Institute for Physical Sciences and Technology upon the occasion of his resignation as Dean of the College and his appointment as Vice President for Academic Affairs and Provost.

APS Dissertation Award in Plasma Physics

Congratulations to Dr. Kiyong Kim, recent graduate of the University of  Maryland Department of Physics and  former student of Professor Howard  Milchberg (IPST and ECE)! Dr. Kim has won the 2004 American Physical Society Dissertation Award in Plasma Physics for his exceptional research conducted in the Institute for Physical Sciences and Technology (IPST). He is the second winner from the University of Maryland.  Dr. Tom Clark, also a former student of Dr. Milchberg's working in IPST, was the 1999 recipient. Maryland's Intense Laser Matter Interactions research group, led by Dr. Milchberg, is the only research group to win the award more than once since the award was established in 1986.

Updated 6/18/09

Chaos Group: Picture of fractal foam.

Chaos Group: Fractal foam.