It’s that time of year again, when APS members have the opportunity to elect next year’s leadership from a slate of candidates selected by the APS Nominating Committee. Brief biographical descriptions for each candidate can be found below. Those elected will begin their terms on 1 January 2007. Members will elect a Vice President, Chair-Elect of the Nominating Committee, and two General Councillors. All votes must be entered by Noon, Central Daylight Time, September 1, 2006.
FOR VICE PRESIDENT
Wick Haxton University of Washington
Haxton received his PhD from Stanford in 1976. After a year as a researcher in Germany, he joined the Theory Division in Los Alamos in 1977. In 1984 he joined the University of Washington, where he is Professor of Physics and Adjunct Professor of Astronomy. In 1990, with Ernest Henley, he helped found the Institute for Nuclear Theory, a Department of Energy visitor center. He has been the Institute’s director since 1991. Haxton chaired the APS Division of Astrophysics in 1997 and the Division of Nuclear Physics in 1993, served as Councillor-at-large during the years 1991-95, and chaired the Nominations Committee in 1997-98. He was elected to the National Academy of Sciences in 1999. He was awarded the APS Hans Bethe Prize in 2004 for contributions to neutrino astrophysics. He currently serves on the National Academy’s Board on Physics and Astronomy.
Haxton’s research focuses on theoretical aspects of neutrino and nuclear astrophysics, low-energy tests of symmetries and conservation laws, and many-body techniques. His work includes the description of nuclear reactions in the high-temperature plasmas found in stellar cores and supernovae; the detection of astrophysical neutrinos and their importance as a probe of neutrino mass and mixing; tests of CP violation and hadronic parity violation through atomic electric dipole and anapole moment measurements; modeling the core-collapse supernova mechanism; and the adaptation of effective field theory methods for the solution of nonrelativistic many-body problems. He has dabbled, somewhat unsuccessfully, in the area of deep underground science facilities, discovering in the process that experimental physics is more complicated than theory.
Cherry A. Murray Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory
Murray has been Deputy Director for Science and Technology at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory since December, 2004, leading the Laboratory’s science and technology activities. She received her PhD in physics in 1978 from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Formerly Senior Vice President for Physical Sciences and Wireless Research at Bell Labs, Lucent Technologies, she first joined Bell Labs in 1978 as a member of the technical staff. She held a number of management positions over the years, including department head for low temperature physics, department head for condensed matter physics, department head for semiconductor physics and director of Bell Lab’s physical research lab. In 2000, Murray became vice president for physical sciences and then senior vice president in 2001.
Murray is an experimental condensed matter physicist who has worked in surface and low temperature physics, light scattering and phase transitions in complex fluids. Discover Magazine named her one of the “50 Most Important Women in Science” in 2002. She served on the APS Executive Board and Council from 2001-2004, and has been an active member of many APS taskforces, divisions and forums. In 1989, she won the APS Maria Goeppert-Mayer Award, and in 2005, the APS George E. Pake Prize. She was a member of the 2005 National Academies Committee on Prospering in the Global Economy of the 21st Century, which was responsible for the NRC report “Rising Above the Gathering Storm–Energizing and Employing America for a Brighter Economic Future.”
FOR CHAIR-ELECT, NOMINATING COMMITTEE
Charles Clark National Institute of Standards and Technology
Clark is Chief of the Electron and Optical Physics Division, Physics Laboratory, National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST), in Gaithersburg, MD. He serves as acting Program Manager for Atomic and Molecular Physics, U.S. Office of Naval Research, and is active as an Adjunct Professor in the Institute for Physical Science and Technology, University of Maryland at College Park. His previous service to APS includes: Chair, Division of Atomic, Molecular and Optical Physics (DAMOP); member, Fellowship Committee, Physics Policy Committee, and Davisson-Germer Prize Committee. Clark received a PhD in physics from the University of Chicago. He spent two years as a postdoc at Daresbury Laboratory in the U.K., then joined the National Bureau of Standards (now NIST), where he is now a member of the U.S. Senior Executive Service. He is an advisor to the production team of the forthcoming movie, Absolute Zero and the Conquest of Cold.
Philip W. Phillips University of Illinois
Phillips is a professor of Physics and a Bliss Faculty Scholar in the College of Engineering at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. A theoretical condensed matter physicist, Phillips studies quantum phase transitions and strongly correlated electrons. In particular, he focuses on novel metallic phases in two dimensions and high-temperature superconductivity. Phillips is a recipient of the Society’s Edward A. Bouchet Award (2000). He was an APS general councilor (2000–2002) and executive councilor (2002–2004). He also served on the APS Committee on Committees for the APS (2002–2004). Phillips received his PhD from the University of Washington in 1982. After a Miller Fellowship at Berkeley, he joined the faculty at Massachusetts Institute of Technology (1984-1993). He came to the University of Illinois in 1993.
FOR GENERAL COUNCILLOR
Robert H. Austin Princeton University
Austin received his PhD in physics from the University of Illinois Champaign-Urbana in 1976. He did a post-doc at the Max Planck Institute for Biophysical Chemistry from 1976-1979 and has been at Princeton University since 1979, achieving the rank of Professor of Physics in 1989. He has chaired the APS Division of Biological Physics, and has served as the biological physics editor for Physical Review Letters. He won the 2005 APS Edgar Lilienfeld Prize. He has a wide-ranging set of interests in the field of biological physics. He remains interested in the subject of the conformational dynamics of proteins, particularly in the mid and far infrared range, and has carried out an extensive set of experiments probing picosecond protein dynamics at free electron lasers around the world. He also is interested in time-resolved conformational dynamics of proteins using ultra-fast mixing techniques and has carried out ultra-fast mixing experiments at accelerator light sources, using a technology based upon a microfabricated diffusional mixer he invented.
Elizabeth J. Beise University of Maryland
Beise is a professor of physics at the University of Maryland. She received her PhD in physics from MIT in 1988. She worked as a research fellow in the Kellogg Laboratory at Caltech from 1988-1992 prior to coming to the University of Maryland. Her research is on the use of electron scattering to study aspects of nucleon structure and light nuclear systems, particularly in kinematic regions where the strong interaction cannot be described using perturbative methods. In 1998 she received the APS Maria Goeppert Mayer award for her research in this area. She is presently on partial leave from the University of Maryland while completing a two-year appointment as a Program Director for Nuclear Physics at the National Science Foundation. Beise has served on the APS Division of Nuclear Physics executive, program, and nominating committees, and on the APS Committee on the Status of Women in Physics. She also currently serves on the editorial board for Physical Review C, and as an associate editor for Nuclear Physics A.
Deborah S. Jin JILA, University of Colorado
Jin is a NIST Fellow working at JILA in Boulder, Colorado. In addition to her position in the Quantum Physics Division of NIST, she serves as an adjoint associate professor of physics at the University of Colorado. She received her PhD in Physics in 1995 at the University of Chicago. Jin is an experimental atomic, molecular, and optical physicist whose research has focused on ultracold Fermi gases of atoms. She received the Maria Goeppert Mayer Award in 2002 and the I.I. Rabi Prize in 2005. Jin is a member of the executive committee of the APS Division of Atomic, Molecular, and Optical Physics.
Trevor A. Tyson New Jersey Institute of Technology
Tyson received his PhD from Stanford University in 1991. He worked as a postdoctoral researcher at the INFN national research laboratory, in Frascati, Italy, and then as a postdoctoral fellow at Los Alamos National Laboratory. In 1996, he became an assistant professor at the New Jersey Institute of Technology (NJIT). He currently serves as a professor of physics and as the director of the Materials Science and Engineering Program. His basic research focuses on understanding materials in which the spin, charge and atomic parameters are strongly coupled. In addition, he is involved in the development of novel spectrometers and detector systems. He is committed to the application of methods developed for basic science to the solution of real-world applied problems. This includes, for example, the application of spectroscopic techniques to complex metal hydrides for hydrogen storage and to understanding corrosion and developing protective coatings to inhibit it.
Murray has been Deputy Director for Science and Technology at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory since December, 2004, leading the Laboratory’s science and technology activities. She received her PhD in physics in 1978 from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Formerly Senior Vice President for Physical Sciences and Wireless Research at Bell Labs, Lucent Technologies, she first joined Bell Labs in 1978 as a member of the technical staff. She held a number of management positions over the years, including department head for low temperature physics, department head for condensed matter physics, department head for semiconductor physics and director of Bell Lab’s physical research lab. In 2000, Murray became vice president for physical sciences and then senior vice president in 2001.
