JILA News

JILA Fellow Murray Holland was recognized for his outstanding teaching skills this spring.

Dr. Thomas Perkins won a Gears of Government Award for his work in atomic force microscopy. 

Hard work pays off. Mike Bennett was honored by CU for expanding JILA's outreach efforts through the Partnerships for Informal Science Education in the Community. 

Chris Greene, professor of physics and astronomy at Purdue University and former JILA Fellow, was named to the National Academy of Sciences.

Delegates from the University of Colorado Boulder went to Washington, D.C. to discuss the CUBit Quantum Initiative.

High school students got a chance to show off their research at JILA.

Marit Fiechter, an undergraduate at the University of Groningen and former JILA student, won the SPIN prize for best undergraduate thesis project.

CU Boulder student and JILA undergraduate researcher Anna McAuliffe won the poster competition at the 2019 Conference for Undergraduate Women in Physics held at Utah State University.

McAuliffe’s poster detailed the build and installation of a cryogenic hexapole designed to mitigate clog issues in an OH decelerator. This work was the latest effort of researchers working under JILA Fellow Jun Ye to increase the density of the molecular beam.

Zetong Xue, a JILA undergraduate researcher and recent CU Boulder Honors graduate, was awarded the Stephen Halley White Undergraduate Research Award at the CU Physics graduation ceremony in December.

JILA Fellow John “Jan” Hall was named a 2018 Fellow of the National Academy of Inventors (NAI). Inventors of U.S. patents are nominated to NAI fellowship by their peers. To be named a NAI fellow is to receive recognition for outstanding inventions that have had a tangible impact on quality of life, economic development and the welfare of society.

JILA Fellow Margaret Murnane was one of 10 recipients of the Presidential Distinguished Service Award for the Irish Abroad. Tánaiste and Minister for Foreign Affairs Simon Coveney announced the names of the award winners on the 28th of November 2018. These awards, established in 2012, are meant to recognize the contributions of members of the Irish diaspora.

JILA Fellows Jun Ye and Deborah Jin (1968 to 2016) have been named Highly Cited Researchers for 2018 by Clarivate Analytics.The list of Highly Cited Researchers, published annually since 2014, recognizes scientists across the world who have demonstrated significant influence through publication of multiple highly cited papers during the last decade.

JILA Fellow Tom Perkins has been elected a Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS). Perkins was elected for his pioneering advances in high-resolution studies of single biological molecules.

JILA Fellow Dr. Earl Beaty passed away on November 3, 2018. Beaty was one of the original JILA Fellows who moved from the National Bureau of Standards (now the National Institute of Standards and Technology) in DC to Boulder, CO. Beaty helped shape the foundation of JILA as one of the 4 Fellows to serve on the By-laws committee.

The American Physical Society announced JILA Fellow Jun Ye as the recipient of the 2019 Norman F. Ramsey Prize in Atomic, Molecular and Optical Physics, and in Precision Tests of Fundamental Laws and Symmetries. Ye was recognized for his ground-breaking contributions to precision measurements and the quantum control of atomic and molecular systems, including atomic clocks.

Dr. Benjamin Brubaker won the 2019 Mitsuyoshi Tanaka Dissertation Award in Experimental Particle Physics from the American Physics Society (APS). Dr. Brubaker is currently a postdoctoral research associate at JILA working with Dr. Konrad Lehnert. Brubaker completed his doctoral thesis work at Yale, where he made outstanding contributions to the design and construction of, and detailed the first results from, the HAYSTAC (Haloscope at Yale Sensitive to Axion Cold) dark matter experimental detector. Brubaker’s thesis reports a major milestone in the progress to detect hypothetical particles called axions, which are leading candidates for “cold dark matter.”

The American Physical Society announced JILA Fellow Heather Lewandowski as the 2019 recipient of the F. Reichert and Barbara Wolff-Reichert Award for Excellence in Advanced Laboratory Instruction.

JILAn Dr. Tess Eidem was recognized by the University of Colorado Boulder for her work coordinating student understanding about roles and responsibilities related to their support funding. Eidem is the Associate Director of Education for STROBE, an NSF Science and Technology Center that is a collaboration between six universities, including the University of Colorado Boulder.

A CU Boulder researcher who investigates the unusual behavior of icy objects at the outermost edges of the solar system has been named a 2018 Packard Fellow. Ann-Marie Madigan is one of 18 scientists and engineers receiving this honor, which is handed out annually by the David and Lucile Packard Foundation. The award comes with a no-strings-attached, 5-year grant of $875,000 to support “the blue-sky thinking” of researchers across the country.

CO-LABS presented JILA’s ultrafast imaging team, led by Fellows Margaret Murnane and Henry Kapteyn, the 2018 Governor’s Award for High-Impact Research. Murnane and Kapteyn were honored for their work in revolutionizing ultrafast and nanoscale imaging through the research and development of tabletop x-ray sources. These advancements enable real-time imaging of the structure, chemistry, and dynamics of materials at the level of small collections of atoms. The applications range from improving semiconductor devices and magnetic storage to understanding the fundamental physics and chemistry of complex materials. By designing, developing, and eventually enabling the availability of this technology through KM-Labs, Murnane and Kapteyn have enabled many curious researchers to further their discoveries.