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Spring 2014, Vol. 8 Issue 2 APAM NEWS THE DEPARTMENT OF APPLIED PHYSICS & APPLIED MATHEMATICS THE FU FOUNDATION SCHOOL OF ENGINEERING & APPLIED SCIENCE, COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY IN THE CITY OF NEW YORK Prof. Adam Sobel was interviewed over the last year by several media sources on extreme Dear Alumni and events, including the severe cold in the US, Typhoon Haiyan and Hurricane Sandy (pictured Friends of APAM: above). He is also the AXA Research Fund’s first recipient of the AXA Award, given to him in Climate and Extreme Weather. See p. 5 for details. Spring semesters are bitter-sweet for acade- In This Issue mic institutions. While the faculty and staff • Message from the Chair look forward to a “less- than-hectic” summer • Student & Alumni News term, in which the corporeal and spiritual re- juvenation of the Department can be under- 2014 Simon Prize Winner: Dr. Sriharsha Aradhya taken, we also have to say good-bye to cher- Undergraduate Student Award Winners ished colleagues with whom we have been 2013-2014 Graduates working together for many years. Senior Spotlight: Victoria Chibuogu Nneji Most of our undergraduate and graduate stu- Alumni Updates dents finish their studies in May and depart to take their place in the outside world. In 2013-2014 APAM had 45 graduating seniors. • Faculty News In the same time-frame 57 graduate students, New York Times Taps Wiggins as Chief Data Scientist 11 with Ph.D. and 46 with M. Sci. degrees, Yu Receives Air Force MURI Grant received their diplomas. 2014 Latsis Symposium We at APAM are proud of all of our gradu- Weinstein Hosts Distinguished Colloquium Series ates, present and past, and wish them suc- Faculty & Adjunct Faculty Updates cess in their future endeavors. In addition, Sobel Wins AXA Award in Climate and Extreme Weather I, personally, would like to extend my best Billinge Named Fellow of Neutron Scattering Society of America wishes for a restful and productive summer to the entire APAM community. • Special Focus on Research Best, Climate Conditions Help Forecast Meningitis Outbreaks I. Cevdet Noyan • SEAS 150th: APAM Department Timeline Chair, APAM • Contact Us STUDENT NEWS 2014 Simon Prize Winner: Dr. Sriharsha Aradhya The Robert Simon Memorial Prize is awarded an- nually by the department to the graduate student who has completed the most outstanding disserta- tion. Dr. Sriharsha Aradhya, from the Venkataraman lab, is the recipient of this year’s award. Dr. Aradhya earned his B.S. from Indian Institute of Technology - Madras, Chennai, India in 2006 and M.S. from Purdue University, West Lafayette, Indiana in 2008, both in Mechanical Engineering. (left-right) Jane Faggen, Latha Venkataraman, Sriharsha Aradhya, I.C. Noyan, & Aron Pinczuk His research at these stages resulted in two U.S. patents. He joined APAM for his Ph.D. in Applied Physics in 2008. Shortly thereafter, he began working on his dissertation in the group of Prof. Latha Venkataraman and collaborating with scientists in the Chemistry Department and Brookhaven National Laboratory. Dr. Aradhya’s thesis on the ‘Interplay between Mechanics, Electronics, and Energetics in Atomic-scale Junctions’ is substantial and includes impres- sive original research that deserves the award of the Simon Prize. For his doctoral research, Dr. Aradhya assembled a conducting Atomic Force Mi- croscope (AFM) with force sensitivities that are superior to the best commercial units available. With this instrumentation he proceeded to measure bond rupture forces in single atomic and molecular junctions. He also created automated analysis protocols to extract useful physical parameters from a vast amount of experimental data which had been challenging to obtain before. Prof. Venkataraman highlights among other results the studies of bond rupture forces for pyridines, which bind to the gold electrodes through a gold-nitrogen bond as well as the van der Waals (vdW) interaction. The analysis of this data determined quantitative effects of vdW’s interactions at the single molecule level. This is the first time anyone has succeeded in providing a direct measure of the subtle vdW force at the single molecule level. Aradhya’s graduate work was outstanding and resulted in many publications including first author papers in Nature Materials, Nano Letters and ACS Nano as well as an invited review article about the state-of-the-art in this field of research inNature Nanotechnology. For his contributions Dr. Aradhya was awarded the Materials Research Society graduate student Gold Award in 2013. Dr. Sriharsha Aradhya is currently a post-doctoral researcher in the Departments of Applied Physics and Physics at Cornell University. Robert Simon (1919-2001) spent a lifetime making valuable contributions to the field of computer science. He received a B.A. degree cum laude in Classics from CUNY in ‘41 and an M.A. in Mathematics from Columbia in ‘49. He was a Lieutenant in the U.S. Armed forces serving in England, France, and Italy. He worked for 15 years at Sperry’s Univac Division in various capacities including marketing, planning, systems engineering, systems programming and information services. He also worked at the Fairchild Engine Division as Director of the Engineering Computer Group. He personally directed the establishment of several company computer centers at sites throughout the U.S. He was a partner with American Science Associates, a venture capital firm. He was a founder and Vice President of Intech Capital Corporation and served on its board and a founder and member of the board of Leasing Technologies International, Inc. until his retirement. The Simon Prize was established in 2001 by Dr. Jane Faggen with additional support from friends and relatives of Mr. Simon. Undergraduate Student Award Winners Outstanding seniors were recognized at the APAM Senior Dinner on May 8. Winners received a glass paper weight and a check for $250. Their names are also inscribed on plaques inside the Department. Kui Tang, Applied Mathematics Faculty Award Kui Tang is an exceptional student and researcher. He is an Egleston scholar, has served as president of Society for Industrial and Ap- plied Mathematics, and coauthored 5 papers during his time here. He spent the summer of 2011 as a HackNY Fellow working at the startup Hunch, which has now been acquired by eBay. Kui will be (left-right) Kui Tang, Matthew Miecnikowski, Rohit Prasanna, & Prof. Adam Sobel staying at Columbia to start his Ph.D. work with Prof. David Blei, who just joined the Institute for Data Sciences & Engineering (IDSE) Matthew Miecnikowski, Applied Physics Faculty Award from Princeton. Matthew Miecnikowski is an Egleston Scholar and an outstanding Rohit Prasanna, Francis B.F. Rhodes Prize double major in Applied Physics and Applied Mathematics with remarkable physical insight, quick wit, and humility. Though Matt Rohit Prasanna is an outstanding materials science major who ex- came to Columbia as a prospective engineering major, he became celled in his core courses, in his electives, and in his research proj- increasingly interested in physics. He did extremely well both in ects at the X-ray Research Group at Columbia and abroad at Ecole the classroom as well as in the lab, equally comfortable with theory Polytechnique in Paris. He is interested in materials chemistry, and and experiment and has already participated in two computational in the design, synthesis, and application of nanostructured materi- condensed matter research projects, one at University of Florida and als. He was accepted to the Ph.D. programs at MIT, Caltech, Stan- one at Columbia. He plans to attend graduate school at the Univer- ford, Northwestern, and Cambridge. He has decided to join Stan- sity of Colorado, Boulder, and intends to pursue a career in experi- ford for graduate study, and plans to focus on materials science for mental atomic, molecular, and optical physics. electronics and energy applications. APPLIED PHYSICS AND APPLIED MATHEMATICS DEPARTMENT: SPRING 2014 NEWSLETTER 2 ALUMNI NEWS Senior Spotlight: Victoria Chibuogu Nneji by Melanie A. Farmer, originally published by Columbia Engineering News Born in Lagos, Nigeria, but raised primarily in Durham, NC, Victoria Chibuogu Nneji, who immigrated to the U.S. at age five, 2013-2014 Graduates credits her hard-working mother for instill- ing early on the value of education. Victoria Chibuogu Nneji October 2013 “We actually lived in a trailer park in rural B.S. - Stefan Countryman (AM), Yasmin Vera (AM) South Carolina for some time but my mother never gave up on getting us into environments with greater educational resources,” recalls Nneji, 21. “Although M.S. - Larry Hu (AP), Yevgeniy Kalantarov (MP) I’m part of the first generation in my family to pursue higher education like M.Phil. - Sarah Angelini (AP), Pubudu Galwaduge (AP), Yu Gu (AM), this, my mother works so hard to ensure that I have everything I need to do Paul Hughes (AP), Michael Jenkinson (AM), Zhisheng Li (AP), Kerry well in school.” Along with her mother’s constant support, Nneji’s determination Stevens (AM) and intellect earned her admission junior year of high school to North Caro- Ph.D. - Sriharsha Aradhya (AP), Theodore Kramer (MSE), Jonathan lina School of Science and Mathematics (NCSSM) — a unique public boarding Widawsky (AP), Ningyao Zhang (AM), Xiang Zheng (AM) school that enables students of any socioeconomic background, like Nneji, an opportunity of a quality education. February 2014 Says Nneji, “The school’s motto is ‘accept the greater challenge,’ and that I did!” M.S. - Asma Ahmed (AM),