research news

NERSC Users Win Awards for Scientific Accomplishments

The American Physical Society awarded four prizes to NERSC users:

David Chandler of the University of California, Berkeley, and Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory won the Irving Langmuir Prize in Chemical Physics “for the creation of widely used analytical methods and simulation techniques in statistical mechanics, with applications to theories of liquids, chemical kinetics, quantum processes, and reaction paths in complex systems.”

Uzi Landman of the Georgia Institute of Technology was awarded the Aneesur Rahman Prize for Computational Physics “for pioneering computations that have generated unique insights into the physics of materials at the nanometer length scale, thereby fostering new theoretical and experimental research.”

Ivo Souza of the University of California, Berkeley, received the George E. Valley Prize “for fundamental advances in the theory of polarization, localization and electric fields in crystalline insulators.”

Stanford Woosley of the University of California, Santa Cruz, received the Hans A. Bethe Prize “for his significant and wide ranging contributions in the areas of stellar evolution, element synthesis, the theory of core collapse and type Ia supernovae, and the interpretation of gamma-ray bursts — most notably, the collapsar model of gamma-ray bursts.”

The American Geophysical Union honored two NERSC users, both of whom have joint appointments at the University of California, Berkeley and Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory: Inez Yau-Sheung Fung was awarded the Roger Revelle Medal for laying the groundwork for the emerging area of biogeoscience and for “shaping our current view of the global carbon cycle”; and Garrison “Gary” Sposito received the Robert E. Horton Medal for his extensive contributions to subsurface hydrology, especially “for bridging the areas of aqueous geochemistry and physical hydrology.”

Two NERSC users received the Presidential Early Career Award for Scientists and Engineers: Brian Wirth of UC Berkeley for his work in computational modeling and experiments to determine the mechanisms responsible for defects in metals, and Margaret Torn of Berkeley Lab for her innovative research on climate change and the terrestrial carbon cycle. And the National Natural Science Foundation of China honored Lin-Wang Wang of Berkeley Lab with an Overseas Outstanding Young Researcher Award for his role in developing computational methodologies to study nanosystems.

Chandler	Landman	Souza	Woolsey	Fung
Sposito	Wirth	Torn	Wang