JILA News

Eric Coughlin has won the 2016 R. N. Thomas Award. The $1000 award comes from a fund established by Dr. Nora Andreasian, the widow of JILA co-founder Dick Thomas. Coughlin will also receive a book about Thomas’ storied career in astrophysics.

NRC Postdoc Ed Marti received an Outstanding Presentation Award for his presentation of the poster "Spin-Orbit Coupled Fermions in an Optical Clock" at the 2016  Boulder Laboratories Postdoctoral Poster Symposium held on July 20. This recognition was shared with NRC Postdoc Shimon Kolkowitz, who originally submitted the abstract as well as prepared the poster and a two-minute–two-slide synopsis of the work. Marti did a great job with both the oral and poster presentations even though he had just one day's notice after family matters kept Dr Kolkowitz from participating in the conference.

Jennifer Ellis won an Optical Society of America (OSA) award in recognition of her excellent oral contribution at the International Conference on Ultrafast Phenomena, held July 17–22 in Santa Fe, New Mexico. Ellis, who is a graduate student with the Kapteyn/Murnane group, spoke about her work on Femtosecond Dynamics of Solvated Electrons in Nanodroplets Probed with Extreme Ultraviolet Beams. She told how her group used EUV light to conduct time-resolved photoemission measurements of isolated nanodroplets in vacuum. With this technique, her group was able to observe what happens when nanodroplets absorb EUV photons. Ellis and her colleagues were able to watch the creation and relaxation of electrons surrounded by solvent molecules––inside the nanodroplets! Congratulations Jennifer!

Adam Kaufman has been awarded the 2016 DAMOP Thesis Prize for his outstanding thesis research on assembling neutral atoms in optical tweezers, work conducted in the Regal group at JILA. As part of this  work, Kaufman and his coworkers developed an experiment that allowed the team to use laser cooling to assemble arrays of ground-state neutral atoms in optical tweezers. 

Julia R.K. Cline was awarded an NSF Graduate Research Fellowship!  Congratulations, Julia!

Former JILAn Maithreyi Gopalakrishnan is one of two 2016 Outstanding Graduates for Service in the University of Colorado Boulder’s College of Engineering and Applied Science. Gopalakrishnan graduated from CU on May 7, 2016, with Bachelor’s and Master’s degrees in engineering physics. As part of her 5-year program of study, she spent two years working with the magnetics group in the Kapteyn/Murnane labs.

President Barack Obama announced on May 20, 2016, his intent to appoint Dr. W. Carl Lineberger to a second term on the National Science Board. The National Science Board serves as an advisory board to the President and Congress on issues involving science and engineering. Lineberger’s duties will include helping to establish the policies of the National Science Foundation. He is currently completing a five-year term on the National Science Board that began in August 2011.

Congratulations to Matthew Winchester who was awarded a 2016 Goldwater Scholarship! Matthew is majoring in Engineering Physics, and is working on an honors research project on super-radiant lasers in James Thompson’s lab. After graduating with his undergraduate degree, Matthew plans to pursue a Ph.D. in physics, conducting research in atomic, molecular, and optical physics with an emphasis on precision metrology and then teach at the University level.

Tom Perkins discusses his atomic force spectroscopy research in this SPIE (the international society for optics and photonics) video.

Graduate Student Matt Norcia (Thompson group) received a JILA Scientific Achievement Award on February 18. The announcement took place during a special snack time in the Sunrise Room of the JILA Tower.

When James Bond needs a new gizmo to carry out acts of spymaster derring-do, he heads straight for Q. CU scientists have a gadget team of their own.To the physicists and chemists of CU-Boulder, Hans Green (Hist’95) and the JILA team say this: If you conceive it, we will build it.

President Obama has selected JILA Fellow Jun Ye of NIST's Quantum Physics Division to receive a 2015 Presidential Rank Award. The award cited Ye's work advancing "the frontier of light-matter interaction and focusing on precision measurement, quantum physics and ultracold matter, optical frequency metrology, and ultrafast science."

Dr. Katharine Blodgett Gebbie, long-time JILAn and former director of the National Institute of Standards and Technology's (NIST's)  Physical Measurement Laboratory was honored by NIST on December 10. The most advanced laboratory building at the NIST campus in Boulder, Colo., was renamed after legendary laboratory director Gebbie.

Graduate student Chris Mancuso and senior research associate Dan Hickstein of the Kapteyn/Murnane group recently spoke with Amanda Grennell, a 5^th year PhD candidate in Chemistry at the University of Colorado Boulder. The researchers discussed the K/M group’s paper “Strong-field ionization with two-color circularly polarized laser fields,” which appeared in Physical Review A in March, 2015. The result is a delightful blog post of the K/M group’s groundbreaking research on imaging with circularly polarized laser fields. The story includes terrific animations prepared by Hickstein. The story was posted by the BioFrontiers Science Alliance.

JILA's Laser Guru Jan Hall spoke about Light, Atomic Clocks, and Testing Einstein’s Assumptions on Nov. 4, 2015, at the Keck Institute for Space Studies. A lively video of the talk can be found at http://kiss.caltech.edu/new_website/lectures/Hall_Lecture_2015.html

Deborah Jin and Jun Ye are Highly Cited Researchers for 2015, according to the Thomas Reuters website. The website states, "Highly Cited Researchers 2015 represents some of world’s most influential scientific minds. About three thousand researchers earned this distinction by writing the greatest number of reports officially designated by Essential Science Indicators as Highly Cited Papers—ranking among the top 1% most cited for their subject field and year of publication, earning them the mark of exceptional impact."

JILA Fellow W. Carl Lineberger has been awarded the 2015 Dudley Herschbach Prize for Experiment, which includes a Dynamics of Molecular Collisions Medal. Lineberger is E. U. Condon Distinguished Professor of Chemistry at the University of Colorado, Boulder. The 2015 Dudley Herschbach Prize for Theory and a Dynamics of Molecular Collisions Medal were given to Millard Alexander, University of Maryland Distinguished University Professor of Chemistry and Biochemistry.

Ana Maria Rey has been awarded an APS Fellowship by the American Physical Society. The award cited "her pioneering research on developing fundamental understanding and control of novel quantum systems and finding applications for a wide range of scientific fields including quantum metrology and the emerging interface between Atomic, Molecular, and Optical physics, condensed matter, and quantum information science." 

Carl Lineberger has won the 2015 National Academy of Sciences Award in Chemical Sciences. The award was given for his "development of molecular negative ion photoelectron spectroscopy, and the fundamental insights into molecular electron affinities and intramolecular dynamics derived therefrom." Lineberger is the E. U. Condon Distinguished Professor of Chemistry and Biochemistry at the University of Colorado, Boulder, and a Fellow of JILA. The award is presented with a medal and a $15,000 cash prize.

Fellow Dana Anderson has won a CO-LABS 2014 Governor’s Award for High-Impact Research in Foundational Technology. Anderson’s work in the commercialization of cold-atom technology also received an Honorable Mention for the development of a strong public/private partnership.