JILA News

JILA Fellow Jun Ye was named the 2018 winner of the I. I. Rabi Award by the IEEE Frequency Control Symposium. Ye was recognized “for the development of stabile, reproducible, and accurate atomic clocks based on optical lattices, and the use of those clocks to probe fundamental atomic interactions and quantum many-body systems.”

The Chinese Academy of Sciences announced on November 29, 2017 the election of JILA Fellow Jun Ye as a Foreign Member, China’s highest honor for foreign scientists: The Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS) promotes scientific and technological advances across the world. CAS includes a network of more than 100 research and development organizations across the world; three universities; and a traditional merit-based academy analogous to the US National Academy of Sciences to recognize and convene scientific leaders from across the world.

The 5th annual JILA posterfest was a smashing success, thanks to the outstanding posters, as well as the snacks. The event, held this past Thursday, October 19, had 45 posters sharing the latest JILA research, from the very small (such as T. Thiele's,  "Toward Atomic Arrays Close to Nanoscopic Devices") to the very large (such as A. Zderic's "A Dynamical Instability in the Outer Solar System"). 

Former JILAn Dennis F. Gardner Jr. (Kapteyn-Murnane group) has been awarded the 2017 American Physical Society’s Carl E. Anderson Division of Laser Science Dissertation Award for his doctoral work in extreme ultraviolet (EUV) imaging. Gardner received $1,000 and a certificate citing his contribution to laser science.

Fellow Tom Perkins has won a 2017 Governor’s Award for High-Impact Research. Perkins will receive the award from Governor John Hickenlooper at an event sponsored by the CO-LABS consortium at the Denver Museum of Nature and Science on October 5, 2017. This year’s ninth annual event will honor Colorado’s top scientists and engineers for projects having a significant impact on society.

Ana Maria Rey has been appointed a NIST Fellow as of August 21,2017 by the Acting Director of NIST. JILA is a research and training partnership between the University of Colorado and NIST, and Ana Maria is one of the several JILA Fellows who are NIST employees. Ana Maria was named a NIST Fellow in recognition of her world-leading program in quantum theory, her pioneering work in quantum many-body physics, and her continuing powerful collaborations with experimentalists at JILA, at NIST, and across the world.

Leah Dodson won the Miller Prize at the 72nd International Symposium on Molecular Spectroscopy, held June 19–23 in Urbana, Illinois. Dodson is an NRC postdoc whose official advisor is Jun Ye, but who primarily works on molecular spectroscopy in the Mathias Weber lab. Her award-winning talk was entitled “Oxalate Formation in Titanium––Carbon Dioxide Anionic Clusters Studied by Infrared Photodissociation Spectroscopy.”

Bryce Bjork’s talk entitled “Direct Measurement of OD+CO-> cis-DOCO, trans-DOCO, and D+CO₂ Branching Kinetics using Time-Resolved Frequency Comb Spectroscopy” was selected by a panel of judges at the International Symposium on Molecular Spectroscopy as one of three winners of the 2017 Rao Prize. The prize will be presented to Bjork at the June 2018 Symposium.

Dr. Stephen J. Smith, Founding Fellow of JILA, passed away on June 10, 2017, at the age of 92. He is survived by his wife of 66 years, three of his five sons, and four grandchildren. Smith was one of seven NIST scientists who relocated to Boulder, Colorado, in 1962, to found the Joint Institute for Laboratory Astrophysics (JILA) with the University of Colorado Boulder Physics Department. The joint institute was officially launched April 13, 1962. Fifty years later, Smith contributed a delightful introduction entitled "Genesis: Inspiration for an institute" to the web book JILA: The First 50 Years.

Ana Maria Rey has been named the winner of the 2017 Alexander Cruickshank Award in Atomic Physics by the Gordon Research Conferences. The award recognizes international leadership and impact in the organization’s main areas of biological, chemical, and physical sciences. It was presented to Rey by the Atomic Physics Gordon Research Conference “From Quantum Control to Tests of Fundamental Physics,” held on June 11–16 in Salve Regina University, Newport, Rhode Island. Rey was nominated by Conference Chair Mariana Safronova.

NPR’s education reporter Eric Westervelt is excited about Nobel Laureate Carl Wieman’s passion for transforming how undergraduate science courses are taught. On June 7, 2017, Westervelt talked with Wieman about his new book Improving How Universities Teach Science: Lessons from the Science Education Initiative, which was published by Harvard University Press in May of 2017.

Eric Coughln has been named winner of the 2016 Ph.D. Thesis Prize from the High Energy Phenomena and Fundamental Physics Division of the International Astronomical Union. He will receive the prize at the next IAU General Assemply, which will be held in Vienna in August 2018. Coughlin is also winner of the 2017 Dissertation Prize from the High Energy Astrophysics Division of the American Astronomical Society. 

May 18 was a red-letter day for Fellow Dana Anderson and employees of the company he founded, ColdQuanta. For the first time ever, ultracold ⁸⁵Rb atoms soared above the Earth during an airplane flight with Anderson at the controls. The plane flew from Boulder to Fort Collins and back. University of Colorado Boulder Science Writer Trent Knoss was there and filed this exciting report from the scene. No word yet on how well the ultracold atoms fared outside of the laboratory!

The American Physical Society is memorializing Fellow Deborah Jin by renaming the APS Division of Atomic, Molecular and Optical Physics (DAMOP) Award for “Outstanding Doctoral Thesis Research in Atomic, Molecular, or Optical Physics." Henceforward, the award will be called the Deborah Jin Award for Outstanding Doctoral Thesis Research in Atomic, Molecular, or Optical Physics.

Christina Porter has won the 2017 Karel Urbanek Best Student Paper Award. The award consists of a wall plaque, honorarium, and trophy. The award was presented  on Thursday March 2, 2017, at this year's Metrology, Inspection, and Process Control for Microlithography conference at the SPIE Advanced LIthography in San Jose, California. The award is sponsored by KLA-Tencor.

Margaret Murnane has been awarded the 2017 Optical Society of America’s (OSA’s) Frederic Ives Medal/Quinn Prize. The award recognizes overall distinction in optics and is the highest award given by OSA. The award was given to Murnane “for pioneering and sustained contributions to ultrafast science ranging from femtosecond lasers to soft x-ray high-harmonic generation to attosecond studies of atoms, molecules, and surfaces.”

Ralph Jimenez received a Department of Commerce Bronze Medal for Superior Federal Service at a ceremony held in mid-December 2016. The Medal is the highest honor presented by the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST). Under Secretary of Commerce for Standards and Technology and NIST Director Willie E. May presided over the awards ceremony, which was held concurrently at NIST's Gaithersburg, Maryland, and Boulder, Colorado, campuses.

Deborah Jin and Katharine Gebbie are two of 10 prominent scientists featured in "Gone in 2016: Notable Women in Science and Technology" written by Maia Weinstock. The article appeared online in Scientific American blogs on December 28, 2016. Jin, who died on September 15, 2016 at age 47, was a visionary researcher in ultracold atomic physics. Gebbie, who died on August 17 at age 84, began her career as an astrophysicist at JILA, then rose through the ranks at the National Institute of Standards and Technology to become director of NIST's Physical Measurement Laboratory. The loss of both women in 2016 was a great blow to JILA scientists and staff alike.

Kevin Cox has won a prestigious Army Research Lab ENIAC Distinguished Postdoctoral Fellowship!  Congratulations, Kevin!