12/8/2000

Congratulations to Dave Haase and Steve Reynolds, both named Fellows of the American Physical Society. The citation for Dave Haase reads:

"For his vision in creating Science House and in defining a model for how research universities and public schools can interact to provide quality science education for all children."

The citation for Steve Reynolds reads:

"For contributions to high-energy astrophysics, including modeling relativistic jets in quasars, pulsar-driven supernova remnants, and electron acceleration to synchrotron X-ray emitting energies in young shell supernova remnants, and supporting observations."

The Physics Department now has 17 Fellows of the American Physical Society.

Congratulations to David Aspnes, recently elected as a Trustee of the American Vacuum Society. The results were announced at the AVS 47th International Symposium held last month in Boston.

NC State Physicists Get First Glimpse of Nanoscale Molecular Behavior. A team of NC State physicists including Hans Hallen, Assistant Professor, along with former students Eric Ayars, and Catherine Jahncke have discovered a new method for measuring the molecular properties of materials, which could assist in the development of a wide variety of cutting-edge nanostructure technologies.

Congratulations to Worth Seagondollar, who was honored with the first Francis Slack service award of the Southeastern Section of the American Physical Society. The award was presented at the 2000 meeting held recently at Mississippi State University.

Invitation to the Chancellor's reception. Faculty and staff are invited to attend a reception hosted by Chancellor Marye Anne Fox for Provost Kermit Hall on December 14, 4:00 to 6:00 PM, in the North Gallery of the Talley Student Center. Provost Hall has accepted the position of President, Utah State University, and will be leaving NC State at the end of December.

Turning a nanotube can control electrical flow. Congratulations to Marco Nardelli on his recent Science article (Paulson et al, Science, 290, 1742 (2000)) "Tunable resistance of a carbon nanotube-graphite interface". The work, result of an ongoing UNC - NC State collaboration, is featured in an NC State news release dated December 1, available with color illustrations on the NC State home page. Marco is the team's sole theoretical physicist. The work shows that momentum conservation, and not just energy conservation, needs to be taken into account in determining junction resistance in graphene systems.

Visitors for the Spring Semester. Please welcome our visiting faculty for the Spring: Jim York will be an Inter-institutional Adjunct Distinguished Professor of Physics for the calendar year 2001, on leave from UNC-Chapel Hill. Roya Maboudian and Carlo Carraro will be here on sabbatical leave from UC Berkeley February 1st through March 1st.

Chris Gould: to Kamioka, Japan, to join Diane Markoff and Jason Messimore in the installation and cabling of the outer detector photomultipliers for the KamLAND neutrino detector .