STROBE Awards

JILA Fellow Margaret Murnane was awarded the Science Foundation Ireland’s (SFI) prestigious St. Patrick’s Day Science Medal on 14 March 2018 in Washington D.C., for her significant contribution to academia, research and industry.

Murnane’s many achievements include designing some of the fastest lasers in the world and creating table-top affordable X-ray lasers. Applications of both works advance the wider research community.

The SFI St. Patrick’s Day Science medal is awarded annually to distinguished Irish scientists, engineers, or technology leaders living and working in the US.

Murnane was born and raised in County Limerick, Ireland, before moving to the US to complete her PhD in physics at the University of California at Berkeley. She continues to play a significant role in research and the promotion of science in Ireland, in her keen and ongoing support of the Tyndall National Institute of Cork.

From the SFI website: On accepting her SFI St. Patrick’s Day Science Medal, Prof Murnane said: “My passion and love for physics first came from my father who was a teacher, and this grew when I attended University College Cork and completed my Bachelors there. Today I am proud to say that the education I started in Ireland and continue to develop in the US has allowed me to follow my interests and create technology and systems which can be used across different areas of research in both countries today. In my work with the Tyndall Institute, I have seen first-hand the fantastic research taking place in Ireland which has applications around the world. As an Irish citizen living in America, it heartens me to see the continued collaboration between the two countries to ensure the research community in both Ireland and the US can produce the very best work. Today, I am very honoured to receive the SFI St. Patrick’s Day Science Medal.”

The award was presented by Taoiseach Leo Varadkar to both Murnane and David McCourt, Founder and CEO of Granahan McCourt Capital. Read more about the award on the SFI website.

We are happy to share the 2018 winner of the Karel Urbanek Student Paper Award at #SPIELitho, Robert Karl Jr., from JILA! His paper was entitled, “Characterization and Imaging of Nanostructured Materials using Tabletop Extreme Ultraviolet Light Sources”. KLA-Tencor is honored to be the sponsor of this annual award at this year’s Metrology, Inspection, and Process Control for Microlithography conference at SPIE Advanced Lithography 2018 in San Jose, California.

IOP is proud to recognize excellence in reviewing, and each year our journal editorial teams select the best reviewers of the year based on the quality, quantity and timeliness of their reviews.

Each journal chooses one person to receive the Reviewer of the Year Award, and selects a number of other excellent reviewers to receive Outstanding Reviewer awards.

A rarely given Special Creativity Award from the National Science Foundation has been recently bestowed to a pair of UCLA faculty members, along with a leading computer simulation expert at the University of Colorado Boulder, to continue their research on metal alloys for fuel cells.

The principal investigators on the grant are Jianwei “John” Miao, UCLA professor of physics and astronomy and also the deputy director, NSF STROBE Science and Technology Center; Yu Huang, UCLA professor of materials science and engineering; and Hendrik Heinz, an associate professor of chemical and biological engineering at the University of Colorado Boulder.  Huang and Miao are also members of the California NanoSystems Institute at UCLA.

Photo Credit: Reed Hutchinson/UCLA

Election to the National Academy of Engineering is among the highest professional distinctions accorded to an engineer.  Academy membership honors those who have made outstanding contributions to “engineering research, practice, or education, including, where appropriate, significant contributions to the engineering literature” and to “the pioneering of new and developing fields of technology, making major advancements in traditional fields of engineering, or developing/implementing innovative approaches to engineering education.”

Dr. Laura Waller, associate professor in the Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Sciences at University of California, Berkeley, is the recipient of the 2018 SPIE Early Career Achievement Award in the academic category. Dr. Waller is being honored for her contributions to biomedical and industrial science through development of computational imaging hardware and software for phase retrieval, 3D imaging, and partially coherent systems.

The inaugural group of 10 Washington Research Foundation (WRF) Postdoctoral Fellows has been selected. WRF will support the Fellows, all with recent doctorates, to carry out mentored research projects addressing some of the biggest challenges facing the public in areas including healthcare, climatology and engineering. Connor Bischak holds a doctorate in chemistry from the University of California, Berkeley and will be developing biological-electronic interfaces for medical applications at the University of Washington (UW).

Use this list of 200 colleges and universities to research where American Indians are going to school in significant numbers and where the community, Native Programs, and support are strong enough for these students to enjoy college and stay on to graduation. Unlike most “top colleges” lists, the focus here is on the Native Community and the support system, from admissions through graduation.