An ORNL researcher was recognized by a major publication for his commitment to a critical role for the scientific community.
Joseph Chapman, a research scientist in quantum communications at the Department of Energy’s Oak Ridge National Laboratory, was given the Physical Review Applied Reviewer Excellence 2024 award for his work as a peer reviewer for the journal Physical Review Applied. Published by the American Physical Society, the journal focuses on engineering and physics from academia and industry.
“I've been reviewing for this journal for several years now,” Chapman said. “This is the journal I’ve published in the most times, so I've gotten to interact with the editors through that as well as through reviewing for them.”
Chapman typically reviews articles exploring experimental quantum communication and optics for the journal. He stressed the critically important role reviewers play for the continued advancement of scientific achievement in peer-reviewed journals and said it’s standard practice for researchers publishing in these journals to also serve as reviewers. These referees, as they’re also known, work closely alongside journal editors.
“I signed up to be a reviewer because I want to contribute and I know it’s something you should contribute to,” Chapman said. “It’s part of the give and take of peer reviewed publications. I’m publishing, so I want reviewers to review my papers.”
A graduate of the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, Chapman joined ORNL in 2021 as a postdoctoral researcher. He now works as a research scientist in the Computing and Computational Sciences directorate as part of the Quantum Communications and Networking group. His research began with a focus on developing quantum light sources and characterization techniques to assess the feasibility of quantum light coexisting with the telecom infrastructure.
Chapman’s current research is more centered on quantum network hardware development. He contributes to several projects supported by the DOE’s Advanced Scientific Computing Research led by Nicholas Peters and Nageswara Rao, respectively, and has worked on projects exploring quantum internet and communications.
“The goal for all these projects is to develop methods and hardware for quantum networking,” Chapman said.
Along with Physical Review Applied, Chapman’s work has appeared in the journals Optics Express, Optics Continuum and Applied Optics. He also serves as a regular reviewer of the Optica family of journals and is a member of Optica (formerly the Optical Society of America) and the International Society for Optics and Photonics.
UT-Battelle manages ORNL for the Department of Energy’s Office of Science, the single largest supporter of basic research in the physical sciences in the United States. The Office of Science is working to address some of the most pressing challenges of our time. For more information, visit https://energy.gov/science. — Mark Alewine
