Honors & awards

2011

Graduate students honored for outreach succes

On June 23, 20l1 a graduate student appreciation party was held to honor students who had contributed to

Prize winers Geoff Olynk, Yuri Podpaly, Roman Ouchokov, Christian Haakonsen, Zach Hartwig and PSFC Director Miklos Porkolab are joined by David Tax, his offical Bruins Stanley Cup cap time-stamping the day after the Bruins big win.

educational outreach activities at the Plasma Science and Fusion Center over the past year. PSFC Director Miklos Porkolab presented Tech cash awards to the 7 students who were most actively engaged in educating students and the general public about plasma and fusion research. Top honors went to Geoff Olynyk, who gave numerous overviews of the Center to students over the year. Also honored were: Bob Mumgaard, Ted Golfinopoulos, Zach Hartwig, Christian Haakonsen, Yuri Podpaly and Roman Ochoukov.

Two from PSFC Honored with Infinite Mile Awards

The PSFC's Mike Rowell and Frank Shefton have been selected winners of 2011 Infinite Mile Awards by the Office of the Provost along with the Office of the Vice President for Research and Associate Provost.

The Infinite Mile Award recognizes those individuals who have made extraordinary contributions within their own organizations to help ensure that the Institute carries out its mission, i.e., to advance knowledge and educate students in science, technology and other areas of scholarship that will best serve the nation and the world in the 21st century. Selections from nomination letters for these individuals appear below.

Frank Shefton, Project Technician Electromechanical for the Alcator Project.

Frank Shefton: Employed at MIT for 42 years, Frank embodies the MIT spirit in his unwavering positive attitude and willingness to do whatever is needed to contribute to the success of the Alcator C-Mod project. Frank has taken on additional responsibility for a vital component of C-Mod's experimental program that requires considerable skill and diligence. His expertise, dedication and reliability are exceptional. In addition to key technical support which enables reliable and safe operation, Frank is proactive and makes consistent, high-quality contributions to the project. He always suggests and implements ways to improve systems as well as the instruments' performance and reliability.

Mike Rowell, Alternator Supervisor for the Alcator Project.

Mike Rowell: Mike is a role model for professionalism and dedication to MIT. He has worked at MIT for 31 years, the last seven of these as Alternator Supervisor in the Plasma Science and Fusion Center's Alcator C-Mod group. Mike is the in-house expert, continually learning complex new systems and providing invaluable technical and supervisory support. His vast experience and good judgment allow him to swiftly resolve problems and make sound decisions about critical work that needs to be done. Mike is a team player, and his persistent positive attitude motivates the students, technicians, engineers and scientists who work with him on difficult tasks.

Prof. Anne White Receives DOE Early Career Research Award.

Assistant Professor Anne White has been selected by the DOE Office of Science to receive an Early Career Research Award.

Assistant Professor Anne White has been selected by the DOE Office of Science to receive an Early Career Research Award. The five-year awards are designed to bolster the nation's scientific workforce by providing support to exceptional researchers during the crucial early career years, when many scientists do their most formative work. The research awards also aim at providing incentives for scientists to focus on mission research areas that are a high priority for the Department of Energy and the Nation. The 65 awardees were selected from a pool of about 1,150 university and national laboratory-based applicants. Selection was based on peer review by outside scientific experts.

Prof. White's project is entitled Electron Temperature Fluctuation Measurements and Transport Model Validation at Alcator C-Mod.

DOE press release:
http://www.science.energy.gov/news/in-the-news/2011/05-06-11/

NSE press release: http://web.mit.edu/nse/newsandmedia/news.html#white_DOE

Munroe Paper Honored at PAC'11

Brian Munroe receives the Student Poster Award from Derek Lowenstein of Brookhaven National Laboratory, Chair of the PAC11 Student Poster Award Committee.

PSFC Graduate Student Brian Munroe was a winner of a Best Student Paper award at the 2011 Particle Accelerator Conference (PAC'11), which took place in New York City from Monday, March 28 through Friday, April 1, 2011

On Sunday evening, prior to the opening of the conference, student participants were invited to present their posters for judging. The posters were reviewed by a group of 12 judges, and on the significance and originality of their work, and presentation as a poster.

Monroe's poster, "Design and Testing of Advanced Photonic Band-Gap (PBG) Accelerator," described recent research on designing and testing accelerator structures based on photonic bandgap structure concepts. Brian was selected as one of three winners, receiving a $500 check and a letter of congratulations from the conference.

According to the PAC'11 website: "This conference is the latest in the highly successful series of Particle Accelerator Conferences and also the first regional North American PAC organized to attract accelerator scientists, engineers, students and industrial exhibitors interested in every aspect of the science and technology of particle accelerators. PAC'11 is hosted by Brookhaven National Laboratory, and jointly sponsored by the IEEE Nuclear & Plasma Sciences Society and the APS Division of Physics of Beams." <http://www.bnl.gov/pac11/>

Matthew Reinke Honored Twice by NSE

Graduate Student Matthew Reinke has been honored twice by the Department of Nuclear Science and Engineering.

Graduate Student Matthew Reinke has been honored twice by the Department of Nuclear Science and Engineering. He has received the Manson Benedict Award, for excellence in academic performance and professional promise by a graduate student in NSE. Earlier this year, on March 11, his poster, "Impurities in Tokamak Plasmas" was honored as Best Poster at the second annual Nuclear Science and Engineering's Doctoral Research Expo. According to the NSE website, "Matthew's research concerns the effect of small amounts of impurities on high temperature tokamak plasmas, like those in Alcator C-Mod." A full account of the Expo and Reinke's poster can be found on NSE's event website http://web.mit.edu/nse/events/nse-expo-2011.html .

Egedal Elected as APS Fellow

Jan Egedal elected APS fellow.

Associate Professor in Physics, Jan Egedal was honored as an APS Fellow at the American Physical Society - Division of Plasma Physics meeting, held in Chicago in November 2010. Egedal was cited "For pioneering contributions to understanding of driven and spontaneous magnetic reconnection in laboratory and space plasmas and the fundamental role played by trapped electrons."