IUPAP: The International Union of Pure and Applied Physics
C5: News
2020 IUPAP Young Scientist Prize for the Commission on Low Temperature Physics (C5)
Dr. Samuli Autti
Lancaster University, UK
“For observations at low temperatures of half-quantum vortices, time crystals and magnon Bose-Einstein condensation in superfluid 3He”.
Samuli Autti is currently working as a post-doctoral researcher at Lancaster University in the UK, where he was also a Wihuri Foundation (Finland) post-doctoral fellow in 2017-2019. He received his Ph.D. in physics from Aalto University in Finland in 2017. His research is focused on experiments at ultra-low temperatures, in particular on superfluid 3He. The major discoveries he has authored include the observation of half-quantum vortices in 3He, concluding four decades of investigations, and one of the very first implementations of time (quasi) crystals, emerging from a quasiparticle Bose-Einstein condensate. He is also known for exploiting and publicizing the conceptual connections between superfluid 3He and other, seemingly distant fields, such as particle physics and cosmology.
Dr Ke Wang
University of Minnesota, USA
“For observations at low temperatures of single-electron silicon qubits, graphene electron-optics, a quantum transistor, and confinement of charged excitons in transition metal dichalcogenides.”
Ke Wang obtained his Ph.D. degree in Physics from Princeton University in 2014 after working with Prof. Jason Petta on first generation single-electron silicon quantum devices. During his post-doctoral research at Harvard University with Prof. Philip Kim, he studied novel gate-defined (vdW) nanostructures, in which he demonstrated relativistic electron-optics, quantum Hall tunneling spectroscopy, and quantum confinement of excitons in 2D van der Waals (vdW) materials. He joined University of Minnesota as an assistant Professor in Physics in 2018. His current research interests include exotic scorrelated behavior and mesoscopic quantum phenomena in novel gate-defined vdW material platforms.
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OLLI V. LOUNASMAA MEMORIAL PRIZE 2020 – Nominations due 20 December 2019!
Nominations are sought for the Olli V. Lounasmaa Memorial Prize for Low Temperature Physics and its Applications. This international prize is awarded once every four years and it is intended to recognize outstanding contributions to low temperature physics and related fields. The Prize, founded in 2004, is a tribute to the founder of strong Finnish research tradition both in low temperature physics and neuroscience.
Background information and previous Olli V. Lounasmaa Memorial Prize winners can be found on https://aalto.fi/ovl-memorial-prize. Since 2016, the Prize has been sponsored by Bluefors, the world’s leading manufacturer of ultra-low temperature refrigerators, and a spin-out of the Low Temperature Laboratory that was established by Lounasmaa in 1965.
The members of the 2020 Olli V. Lounasmaa Memorial Prize committee are Eddy Collin (Grenoble), Michel Devoret (Yale), Milena Grifoni (Regensburg), Pertti Hakonen (Aalto Univ.), Rich Haley (Lancaster), Koji Ishibashi (RIKEN), Jukka Pekola (Aalto Univ.), Valery Ryazanov (Chernogolovka), Anssi Salmela (BlueFors), Mika Sillanpää (Aalto Univ.).
Nominations and supporting letters should be sent (preferably electronically in .pdf format) to the Chair of the Prize Committee:
Prof. Pertti Hakonen
Attention: Olli V Lounasmaa Memorial Prize
Aalto University School of Science
Low Temperature Laboratory
Puumiehenkuja 2 B,
Espoo, P.O. Box 15100,
FI-00076 AALTO, FINLAND
E-mail: pertti.hakonen@aalto.fi,
The deadline for the receipt of nominations and supporting letters is December 20, 2019.
A letter of nomination should include all of the following:
– The basis for the proposed prize.
– Citations to publications on which the nomination is based.
– An assessment of the impact to the low temperature community.
– Relevant biographical information, and current institutional affiliation.
Letters (no more than 4) from knowledgeable colleagues supporting the nomination are welcome and should be submitted along with the nomination material.
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2017 IUPAP Young Scientist Prize for the Commission on Low Temperature Physics (C5)
Dr. Clifford Hicks
Max-Planck Institute for Chemical Physics of Solids, Dresden, Germany
“For his pioneering development of low temperature measurement techniques, notably concerning the application of uniaxial stress, and his experiments on unconventional superconductivity”.
Clifford Hicks received his Ph.D. from Stanford University in 2009, investigating unconventional superconductors. The work involved using a scanning SQUID magnetometer to search for chiral edge states in Sr2RuO4, and the development of a new method, based on local measurements using a scanning SQUID susceptometer, for measuring the penetration depth of superconductors. For his postdoctoral work at the University of St Andrews, with Professor Andrew Mackenzie, he focused in part on transport and cantilever torque magnetometry on delafossite oxide metals. He also developed a piezoelectric-based uniaxial pressure cell, and applied it to study the superconductor Sr2RuO4. In 2014, Clifford joined the Max Planck Institute for Chemical Physics of Solids, Dresden, to lead a new research group, focusing on the effects of uniaxial pressure on unconventional superconductors and magnets, and further development of the technique. Remarkably it was shown that strain can double Tc of the unconventional superconductor Sr2RuO4. With two former students from St Andrews, he has also co-founded a company that has successfully commercialized piezoelectric-based pressure cells.
Dr. Vlad Pribiag
University of Minnesota, Minneapolis, USA
“For his important contributions to two main areas of low temperature and nanoscale physics: superconductivity in the edge modes of two-dimensional topological insulators; spin-dependent quantum transport in one-dimensional semiconductors with strong spin-orbit coupling”.
His results have elucidated key aspects of the electronic properties of these novel materials, which are candidates for quantum and classical information processing.
Vlad Pribiag received his Ph.D. in 2010 from Cornell University, investigating the magnetization dynamics magnetic vortices driven by spin-transfer torques. For his postdoctoral work at the Kavli Institute of Nanoscience Delft, he focused on quantum transport in low-dimensional materials with strong spin-orbit coupling, including single-spin dynamics in quantum dots and superconducting transport in 2D topological insulator devices. During this time he was the recipient of a VENI award from the Netherlands Organisation for Scientific Research. Dr. Pribiag then joined the School of Physics and Astronomy at the University of Minnesota in fall 2014. His current work focuses on the physics of nanoscale devices based on novel low-dimensional materials, such as 2D topological insulators, complex oxide interfaces, and semiconductor nanowires. He has recently been awarded a Sloan Fellowship (2017) and an NSF CAREER Award (2016).
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OLLI V. LOUNASMAA MEMORIAL PRIZE 2016 awarded to Prof Michel Devoret
The Olli V. Lounasmaa Memorial Prize 2016 was awarded to Professor Michel Devoret from the Yale University (New Haven, USA), for his pioneering investigations and applications of macroscopic quantum phenomena at low temperatures. The prize was announced on August 16th 2016 at the international Quantum Fluids and Solids conference QFS2016 in Praque, Czech Republic.
Prof. Devoret was elected for the Prize by a Selection Committee consisting of Dr. Rob Blaauwgeers (founder and managing director of BlueFors Cryogenics Oy), Professors John Clarke (University of California, Berkeley, USA), Andrew Cleland (University of Chicago, USA), Vladimir Dmitriev (Kapitza Institute for Physical Problems, Moscow, Russia), Pertti Hakonen (chair, Aalto University), Kimitoshi Kono (RIKEN, Japan), Jukka Pekola (Aalto University), George Pickett (Lancaster University, UK), and Tuija Pulkkinen (vice rector of Aalto University).
Michel H. Devoret was born in France. He graduated from Ecole Nationale Superieure des Telecommunications in Paris in 1975, and received his PhD from Paris University in 1982. For more than four decades he has pioneered the discovery, understanding and application of quantum phenomena revealed in the low temperature regime. His contributions to the field of quantum electronics have set the stage for major advances in our knowledge of, and control over macroscopic quantum devices and systems. His scientific and technological foundations in superconducting circuits hold great potential to emerge as a dominant technology for quantum computation.
Prof. Devoret is a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences (2003) and a member of the French Academy of Sciences (2008). He has received the Ampere Prize of the French Academy of Science (together with Daniel Esteve, 1991), the Descartes-Huygens Prize of the Royal Academy of Science of the Netherlands (1996) and the Europhysics-Agilent Prize of the European Physical Society (together with Daniel Esteve, Hans Mooij and Yasunobu Nakamura, 2004). He is also a recipient of the John Stewart Bell Prize, which he received jointly with Rob Schoelkopf in 2013. In 2014, he has been awarded, together with John Martinis and Rob Schoelkopf, the Fritz London Memorial Prize.
The Olli V. Lounasmaa Prize Fund owes to the generosity of Kiti Müller and the members of Finnish Society of Sciences and Letters for the endowment of the revenues obtained upon publishing the Memoirs of Olli V. Lounasmaa.
Read more from the attached release.
About the Prize: http://physics.aalto.fi/en/about/olli_v-lounasmaa_memorial_prize/
Aalto PHYS news: http://physics.aalto.fi/en/current/news/2016-08-16-003/