This year’s American Physical Society (APS) Fellows include six scientists from the U.S. Department of Energy’s Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (Berkeley Lab), four from the Accelerator and Fusion Research Division (AFRD) and one each from the Advanced Light Source (ALS) and Physics divisions. APS Fellows are elected by their peers for exceptional contributions to the physics enterprise, including outstanding research; important applications; leadership or service to physics; and significant contributions to physics education.

 

• John Byrd of AFRD is cited for “seminal contributions to accelerator science in the areas of collective beam behavior, coherent synchrotron radiation in storage rings, and femtosecond timing and synchronization of accelerator systems.”
• Derun Li of AFRD is cited for “his tireless efforts to promote collaboration and cooperation on accelerator science and technology between the US and China, and for his work towards the experimental demonstration of muon ionization cooling.”
• Zoltan Ligeti of Physics is cited for “major theoretical contributions to flavor physics, and, in particular, the extraction of fundamental information testing the validity of the Standard Model from analyses of particle mixing, oscillations, and decays – all processes in which the strong force obscures the details of the weak interaction.”
• Howard Padmore of the ALS is cited for “seminal contributions to X-ray optics, instrumentation, and research with synchrotron radiation.”
• David Robin of AFRD is cited for “fundamental advances to the understanding and control of the nonlinear beam dynamic behavior of electrons in particle storage rings, including the development of frequency map analysis and quasi-isochronous storage rings.”
• Carl Schroeder of AFRD is cited for “significant theoretical contributions to the physics of intense laser-plasma interactions, with applications to plasma-based accelerators and light sources.”
• John Byrd is program head for the Center for Beam Physics in AFRD. He joined Berkeley Lab after receiving his Ph.D. in accelerator physics from Cornell University in 1991, has contributed to the ALS and the PEP-II B-factory at the SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory, and focuses on synchronization for ultrafast light sources, including SLAC’s LCLS and Italy’s FERMI@Elettra.

 

Derun Li of AFRD is a leader in accelerator design, including neutrino factories and muon colliders, with a Ph.D. from Indiana University in 1995, plus degrees and teaching experience at Tsinghua University, Beijing. After postdoctoral work at UC San Diego he joined Berkeley Lab in 1997. He represents the Lab in US-China collaboration on accelerator physics and technology.

 

Zoltan Ligeti’s theoretical specialties include high-energy physics, heavy quark physics, and physics beyond the Standard Model. An undergraduate at Eötvös University, Budapest, with an M.Sc. and 1994 Ph.D. from Israel’s Weizmann Institute, he held academic posts there and at Caltech, UC San Diego, and MIT. He joined Berkeley Lab’s Physics Division in 2000 after a year at Fermilab.

 

Howard Padmore is ALS Division Deputy for Experimental Systems. Educated at Leicester University in the UK, with a 1977 Ph.D., he spent seven years at the Daresbury Laboratory and joined Berkeley Lab in 1993. More than 200 papers, plus service on synchrotron advisory committees around the world, testify to his wide-ranging experience in materials science and synchrotron x‑ray instrumentation.

 

David Robin of AFRD is the ALS’s deputy for Operations and Accelerator Development and Accelerator Physics Group Leader. He joined Berkeley Lab after degrees from Trinity College, Hartford; SUNY at Stony Brook; and a 1991 Ph.D. from UCLA. His notable contributions to accelerator physics and dynamics have concentrated on storage rings, synchrotron radiation sources, and ion-beam cancer therapy.

 

Carl Schroeder researches plasma-based accelerators, the physics of intense laser-plasma interactions, and novel radiation sources. After undergraduate degrees from the University of Maryland, he received his Ph.D. from UC Berkeley in 1999 and did postdoctoral research focused on the development of SLAC’s x-ray free-electron laser. In 2001 he joined Berkeley Lab as a member of AFRD’s LOASIS program.

 

Only half of one percent of APS members are elected Fellows in any given year. Berkeley Lab’s six Fellows, out of 250 announced for 2012, represent a high count for a single institution. See the announcement on the APS home page at http://www.aps.org/.