Three physicists elected American Physical Society Fellows
Three Virginia Tech College of Science faculty were recently elected as Fellows into the American Physical Society.
Leo Piilonen, the William E. Hassinger Jr., Senior Faculty Fellow in Physics and chair of the department; Bruce Vogelaar, professor of physics and director of the Kimballton Underground Research Facility; and Uwe Tauber, professor of physics, were so honored in November.
Fellowship in the APS is limited to no more than one-half of one percent of membership.
“To have three of our faculty elected as Fellows is quite exceptional,” said Lay Nam Chang, dean of the College of Science, and himself a physicist. “To have three elected at the same time is a testament to the people of the department and the cutting edge nature of the research they conduct. I’m very proud of them and happy to see their work recognized so highly among their peers.”
Piilonen was cited by the APS “for his important experimental contributions in the areas of lepton physics, CP violation, the CKM matrix and quarkonia; and for his leadership of the Belle and Belle II Collaborations.”
A member of the Virginia Tech faculty since 1987, he received his bachelor’s degree from the University of Toronto, and a master’s degree and doctoral degree from Princeton University.
Vogelaar was cited for significant contributions to neutrino physics and underground science, especially through his leadership in calibrating the Borexino detector, with the first real-time detection of 7Be solar neutrinos, and his creation of the Kimballton Underground Research Facility which is opening up new opportunities for fundamental physics experiments.
He began working at Virginia Tech in 1998. He received his bachelor's degree from Hope College and a master's degree and Ph.D. from California Institute of Technology in 1989.
Tauber was cited for “seminal and sustained contributions to the understanding of non-equilibrium, universal properties of reaction diffusion processes and driven diffusive systems, with applications in materials science and biological systems.”
He earned his Ph.D. at TU Munchen (Germany), and arrived at Virginia Tech in 1999.
Leo Piilonen, Uwe Tauber, and Bruce Vogelaar
Leo Piilonen, Uwe Tauber, and Bruce Vogelaar
