December 21, 2004 — Four researchers at the Department of Energy's Oak Ridge National Laboratory have been elected fellows of the American Physical Society (APS), and another three have joined the fellowship of the Institute of Physics.
The four APS fellows are David J. Dean, Anthony Mezzacappa and Predrag S. Krstic of ORNL's Physics Division and Lal A. Pinnaduwage of the Life Sciences Division. Election to fellowship in the APS is limited to no more than one half of one percent of the annual APS membership and is in recognition of outstanding contributions to physics.
Glenn Young and Witold Nazarewicz of ORNL's Physics Division and Parans Paranthaman of the Chemical Sciences Division have been elected fellows of the Institute of Physics, based in London.
The APS recognized Dean for his important contributions to understanding of quantum many-body systems and for applications of computational quantum mechanics to the structure of atomic nuclei.
Dean resides in Knoxville with his wife, Brenda, and three children, Nathan, Lydia and Joshua.
Mezzacappa was cited by the APS for his pioneering work toward identifying the explosion mechanism of core collapse supernovae and his leadership in the development of U.S. computational science.
He resides in Knoxville with his wife, Mary Ellen Johansen, and his three children, Hannah, Noah, and Isabel.
The society recognized Krstic for his important and diverse contributions to atomic theory, in particular, to the theory of non-adiabatic heavy-particle collisions and of relativistic effects in ultra-strong laser-atom interaction.
Krstic resides in Knoxville with his wife, Vasika.
Pinnaduwage was cited for his work in developing microcantilever-based sensors for detection of explosive vapors and elucidation of fundamental physical principles underlying nanodeflagrations?he was part of this year's R&D 100 award winning team for a sensor for detecting explosives.
He resides in Knoxville with wife, Purnima, and two daughters, Sesha and Neesha.
The Institute of Physics elected Young, who directs the Physics Division at ORNL, for his experimental research that focuses on states of nuclear matter at very high energy density.
He resides in Oak Ridge with his wife Elise and their four children, Meredith, Lianne, Gavin and Josh.
Nazarewicz, whose nuclear theory research focuses on the description of nuclei far from stability, is scientific director of the Holifield Radioactive Ion Beam Facility as well as a professor at the University of Tennessee in Knoxville. He is among the most highly cited physicists worldwide.
He resides in Oak Ridge with his wife, Krystyna, and daughter, Natalia.
Paranthaman, a senior research staff member in the Chemical Sciences Division, shared an R&D 100 Award earned in 1999 for co-inventing the rolling-assisted-biaxially-textured substrates (RABiTS) technology to fabricate high-performance superconducting wires and has authored and co-authored numerous and frequently cited papers on superconducting technology.
He and his wife, Sathiya - a teacher at Knox County Headstart School - have two daughters, Nithya and Bhavya.
Oak Ridge National Laboratory is a multiprogram laboratory managed for the Department of Energy by UT-Battelle.