Spring 2002 -- Vol. 19, No. 1

HONORIS CAUSA

Department of Statistics Faculty Earn Schreyer Institute Collaborative Award

Several members of the Department of Statistics, who designed and implemented changes to an introductory class taken by more than 2,600 Penn State students each year, have been honored with a Schreyer Institute Collaborative Award by the Schreyer Institute for Innovation in Learning. The award recognizes the efforts of the individuals and the impact of the restructured class, which makes the educational process more engaging and meaningful to students, thereby improving their retention and understanding of course material.

Although the Schreyer Institute usually honors individuals with awards for innovation, it instituted a group award for the Department of Statistics because of the “remarkable collaboration” involved in the project. According to its mission, the Schreyer Institute works to promote partnerships among faculty, staff, and students to design and implement learning experiences that foster inquiry, initiative, and teamwork.

The redesigned class, Statistics 200, was initially implemented during the fall 2000 semester as the result of a grant from the Pew Foundation’s Learning and Technology Program with support from the Center for Academic Computing at Penn State and several years of preliminary planning and work. As a result, the class was transformed from its traditional classroom-and-lecture format to a highly interactive, technology-based environment that encouraged group activities and team learning. Instead of three lectures and two recitation sections per week, students attended one lecture and two computer laboratory sessions each week.

Statistics 200, a required course in about 60 majors, enrolls 2,200 students per year at the University Park campus, with an additional 400 students enrolled at other Penn State campuses. According to ongoing assessment efforts, the Schreyer Institute observed about a 20 percent improvement in tests of basic concepts compared to the traditional course and a reduction in the number of necessary teaching assistants from 12 to six.

Such classes could have far-reaching effects for the University in terms of potential monetary savings as well as increased opportunities for one-on-one instruction. Classes that utilize Web-based instruction could be a resource for other departments and University programs as well.

“There are benefits on each side,” said William Harkness, professor of statistics. “By focusing on drawing conclusions from statistics instead of just plugging numbers into formulas, we’re preparing students better. It’s interactive and real. There’s no question in my mind that it’s a more effective approach.”

Collaborators on the project from the Department of Statistics were: Patricia Buchanan, instructor; Mosuk Chow, assistant professor; Harkness; Matthew Herbison, graduate assistant; Robert Heckard, senior lecturer; and Laura Simon, instructor.

Biochemist Tan Honored as First Pew Scholar in Biomedical Sciences

Song Tan, assistant professor of biochemistry at Penn State, has been selected as a 2001 Pew Scholar in the Biomedical Sciences. He was one of just 20 scientists, selected from nominations from more than 120 institutions in the United States, to earn the award and is the first Penn State professor to be so honored.

The awards, provided by The Pew Charitable Trusts, a national philanthropy based in Philadelphia, are granted to “young investigators who show outstanding promise in the basic and clinical sciences.” The awards are intended to encourage scholarly innovation and to help scientists advance the state of knowledge in biomedical fields.

A member of the Penn State faculty since 1998, Tan uses X-ray crystallography to visualize proteins involved in gene regulation.

“I am deeply honored to have been selected and I owe much to the talented members of my laboratory, and to my colleagues in the Department of Biochemistry and Molecular Biology for the award,” Tan says. “This award will allow my laboratory to investigate how genes are turned on and off in normal and diseased cells.”

He uses X-ray techniques for personal and practical reasons. He says he likes the visual aspect of the work and appreciates the scientific insight gained from seeing what the biological molecules look like. Mixing fields of study and different techniques also defines much of Tan’s approach. He says he especially enjoys the interdisciplinary nature of the work, which often combines biochemistry, genetics, protein chemistry, protein expression, and physics to address biological questions.

“Determining the three-dimensional structure of a protein or complex is only the beginning,” Tan says. “You need to analyze the structure in context of available biochemical and genetic results to fully understand how the molecules function.”

Since 1985, The Pew Charitable Trusts have provided more than $69 million for the support of 340 scholars. Each of this year’s scholars, who are junior faculty members at medical schools and research institutions across the United States, will receive a total award of $240,000 over a four-year period.

“These young scientists are the lifeblood of the research community,” said Rebecca W. Rimel, president of The Pew Charitable Trusts. “We continue to see great value in nurturing outstanding young scientists to become tomorrow’s leading investigators at the forefront of their fields.”

Prior to his arrival at Penn State, Tan pursued postdoctoral work at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in Zurich, Switzerland. He earned his doctoral degree in molecular biology at the University of Cambridge, England, in 1989. He earned his bachelor’s degree in physics at Cornell University in 1985.

Rao Receives Honorary Doctorate from the University of Cyprus

Calyampudi R. Rao, professor emeritus of Statistics and former director of the Center for Multivariate Analysis, has received an honorary doctor-of-science degree from the University of Cyprus. He was recognized as “one of the pioneers of modern statistical theory.”

The award, the twenty-fourth honorary doctoral degree he has received from universities in fifteen countries, was presented on 23 April during the opening ceremony of the Meeting of the Executive Heads of the Association of Commonwealth Universities in Cyprus.

Rao is internationally acknowledged as one of the pioneers who laid the foundation of modern statistics, as well as one of the world’s top five statisticians with multifaceted distinctions as a mathematician, researcher, scientist, and teacher. His pioneering contributions to mathematics and statistical theory and applications have become part of graduate and postgraduate courses in statistics, econometrics, electrical engineering, and many other disciplines at most universities throughout the world.

He recently received Padma Vibhushan—the second-highest civilian honor bestowed by the country of India for outstanding contributions to science, engineering, and statistics—and has received numerous awards and medals for his pioneering contributions to statistics. Those include the Wilks Medal from the American Statistical Association, the Guy Medal in Silver of the Royal Statistical Society of England, the Megnadh Saha Medal of the Indian National Science Academy, and the Mahalanobis Centenary Gold Medal of the Indian Science Congress. He also has received the 2000 Emanuel and Carol Parzen Prize for Statistical Innovation. In addition, he has been honored by the Government of India as the namesake for a National Award to be presented to the country’s outstanding young statisticians.

He is a member of the National Academy of Sciences (USA), and a Fellow of the Royal Society (England). He has authored or coauthored 14 books and more than 300 scientific papers.

Castleman Earns Jost Memorial Award from German Chemical Society

A. Welford Castleman Jr., Evan Pugh Professor of Chemistry and Physics and Eberly Family Distinguished Chair in Science at Penn State, has been honored with the Jost Memorial Award from the German Chemical Society.

The award honors the memory of famous kineticist and solid-state chemist Wilhelm Jost and includes a lectureship tour of the seven universities in Germany where he spent his career. Those are: Berlin, Darmstadt, Goettingen, Halle, Hanover, Leipzig, and Marburg.

A member of the Penn State faculty since 1982, Castleman focuses on small clusters of molecules for the basis of his work as he examines many different systems and one central issue—why matter of nanoscale dimensions behaves differently from large systems. His research interests span areas ranging from fundamental issues of quantum confinement and solvation effects on reactions to problems in catalysis, materials science, and atmospheric chemistry. In 1992, his group created the first Metallo-carbohedrences, or Met-Cars, a combination of carbon and metal atoms expected to have applications as catalysts, superconductors, or the quantum wells in superconductor devices.

Prior to his arrival at Penn State, Castleman was a professor at the University of Colorado from 1975 to 1982 and a research group leader at Brookhaven National Laboratory from 1958 to 1975. He earned his doctoral degree and master’s degree at the Polytechnic Institute of Brooklyn in 1969 and 1963, respectively. He earned his bachelor’s degree in chemical engineering at Rensselear Polytechnic Institute in 1957.

Robinett Elected to APS Forum on Education

Richard Robinett, professor of physics, has been elected as a General Member-at-Large of the American Physical Society Forum on Education. The Forum on Education exists as a means to involve APS members in activities related to physics education at all educational stages, from elementary school to graduate school.

A member of the Penn State faculty since 1986, Robinett has developed a strong reputation as an educator. He earned the George W. Atherton Award for Excellence in Teaching in 1999, the Provost’s Award for Collaborative Instruction and Curricular Innovation in 1994, and the Penn State Society of Physics Students Teaching Award in 1992.

Prior to his arrival at Penn State, he was a research associate and lecturer at the University of Massachusetts from 1983 to 1986 and a research associate at the University of Wisconsin from 1981 to 1983. He earned his doctoral degree in physics at the University of Minnesota in 1981 and his bachelor’s degree—graduating magna cum laude with a double major in mathematics and physics—at the University of Minnesota in 1975.

He has served as assistant head of the Department of Physics since 1998. He is a member of the American Association of Physics Teachers and the American Physical Society.

Physicist Diehl Honored by Graduate Women in Science, Achieving Woman Award

Renee Diehl, professor of physics at Penn State, has been named an honorary member of Sigma Delta Epsilon/Graduate Women in Science. She was honored during the organization's national meeting at Chapman University in Orange, California.

An experimental physicist, Diehl studies the adsorption of atoms onto metal surfaces. She joined the Penn State faculty as an associate professor of physics in 1990 and was named professor in 1998.

The Penn State chapter of Sigma Delta Epsilon/Graduate Women in Science was founded in 1936, making it the oldest women's organization on campus. Membership in the organization is open to anyone with a bachelor's degree in a scientific field who has been involved in research.

Diehl received the Achieving Woman Award from Penn State's Commission on Women earlier this year. From the more than 70 nominations received, Diehl's was one of 14 chosen to be honored. The Achieving Woman Award recognizes women for their leadership and mentoring activities. Among the qualifications for nominees are: promotion to a high-level faculty or staff position; demonstrated commitment to customer service and improvement; demonstration of team spirit and managerial excellence; named recipient of an international, national, University or college-level award or winner of a major competition, such as one sponsored by a national association.

She was named a Fellow of the American Physical Society in 2000. In addition, her research and teaching honors include: the Distinguished Service Award from the American Association of Physics Teachers in 1999, the Provost's Collaborative and Curricular Innovations Award in 1997, and the National Science Foundation Visiting Professorship for Women Award in 1994.

She earned her doctoral degree in physics at the University of Washington in 1982 and her bachelor's degree in physics at Juniata College in 1976.

Wolszczan Honored by Polish Physical Society

Alexander Wolszczan, Evan Pugh Professor of Astronomy and Astrophysics at Penn State, has been honored with the Marian Smoluchowski Medal--the highest prize awarded by the Polish Physical Society.

Wolszczan became the first person to discover planets outside our solar system in 1992, when he used the 1,000-foot Arecibo radiotelescope to detect three planets orbiting a rapidly spinning neutron star. His discovery, which suggested that planets might be plentiful throughout the universe, opened the door to the current intense era of planet hunting.

Among Wolszczan's previous honors are the Gold Medal Award of the American Institute of Polish Culture in 2000, the Commander Cross of the Order of Merit Award from the president of Poland in 1997, the Casimir Funk Natural Sciences Award from the Polish Institute of Arts and Sciences in America, and the Beatrice M. Tinsley Award from the American Astronomical Society in 1996.

He also received the Penn State Faculty Scholar Medal for Outstanding Achievement in 1994, the Popular Science Award for "Best of What's New" in 1994, the Alfred Jurzykowski Foundation award in 1993, and the Annual Award of the Foundation for Polish Science in 1992.

Mizel Awarded Packard Fellowship

Ari Mizel, assistant professor of physics, has received a 5-year, $625,000 Packard Fellowship in Science and Engineering from the David and Lucile Packard Foundation. The fellowship provides unrestricted funds to young faculty members in science and engineering who have demonstrated unusual creative ability in research. Mizel is one of twenty-four nationwide who were selected to receive the award this year.

Mizel is a condensed-matter theorist who says his research interests concern bizarre quantum effects in solid materials. "Modern physics tells us that solid objects are actually swarms of quantum-mechanical particles capable of very bizarre behavior," Mizel explains. "My research program focuses on analyzing and potentially harnessing this bizarre quantum behavior in real materials."

His specific interests include the design of quantum computers, semiconductor electronics and spintronics, and vortex dynamics in superconductors. He says the support provided by the Packard Foundation Fellowship will enable him to pursue these endeavors by hiring a team of research personnel and equipping them with a powerful computational infrastructure.

Mizel, who joined the Penn State faculty in the fall of 2000, previously had been a postdoctoral researcher at the Technion, Israel’s Institute of Technology since 1999. He earned his bachelor’s degree in physics at Massachusetts Institute of Technology in 1994, his master’s degree in physics at the University of California at Berkeley in 1996, and his doctoral degree in physics at the University of California at Berkeley in 1999.

He worked as a physics instructor at the University of California at Berkeley from 1994 to 1999 and as an astronomy professor at San Quentin Prison, through Patten College, from 1998 to 1999.

He has received numerous awards, including a National Science Foundation Fellowship from 1995 to 1998, and was named Outstanding Graduate Student Instructor at the University of California at Berkeley in 1996.

The David and Lucile Packard Foundation fellowships were established in 1988 to develop future scientific leaders, to further the work of the nation's most promising young scientists and engineers, to encourage networking among these researchers, and to support efforts to attract talented graduate students into university research in the United States.

Coutu Receives Presidential Early Career Award

Stéphane Coutu, assistant professor of physics, has been named as a recipient of the 2002 Presidential Early Career Award for Scientists and Engineers (PECASE), the highest honor bestowed by the United States government on young scientists and engineers at the outset of their independent research careers. Coutu will receive the award at a ceremony and reception in his honor in Washington, DC.

Established by President Clinton in February 1996 and administered by the U.S. Office of Science and Technology Policy, the award provides up to five years of funding for research in support of critical government missions. Eight federal organizations select nominees whose accomplishments indicate their potential to broadly advance the science and technology that will be of greatest benefit to the mission of those federal agencies. Coutu was nominated for the award by the National Aeronautics and Space Administration.

Coutu is an experimental physicist whose primary research interests are elementary particles and fields. His projects include high-energy cosmic rays and air showers; particle astrophysics; and the origin, propagation, and composition of high-energy cosmic particles--both matter and antimatter. "I am interested in experimental high-energy particle astrophysics, which is the study of the universe at the point where the mind-boggingly vast meets the infinitesimally tiny, and at energies beyond the reach of terrestrial particle accelerators," he explains.

Coutu is involved in several NASA-supported missions including the High-Energy Antimatter Telescope (HEAT) program, a series of high-altitude balloon-borne experiments flown to the very edges of the atmosphere, essentially into space, to study antimatter in cosmic radiation. "The ongoing HEAT effort has yielded the world's best high-energy positron and antiproton measurements, which have taught us much about the origin and propagation of cosmic rays," he says.

He also is involved in the Cosmic Ray Energetics And Mass (CREAM) project, an effort to build an advanced balloon payload to measure the mass composition of very-high-energy cosmic rays. "This will be the first experiment to take advantage of an emergent technology for ultra-long-duration balloons, which will allow instruments to stay aloft for up to 100 consecutive days," Coutu explains. "These new balloons will increase the total exposure possible for the study of rare-particle phenomena, and will permit the resolution of long-standing questions such as the exact make-up of the high-energy particle flux."

Coutu also is a participant in studies for the next generation of space-borne high-energy cosmic-ray detectors, such as NASA's ACCESS detector scheduled to be launched in about 2007, which could be operated on the International Space Station. Says Coutu, "While NASA has been generous in its support of my research activities, there never seem to be enough resources to carry out all of the activities we could and would dearly love to. This award, and the additional support it provides, will allow us to go the extra mile, not only to extract all the best possible science out of these various projects, but to expand their scope significantly as well."

Coutu's non-NASA activities include participation in the Pierre Auger Observatory project. This is a large international undertaking with contributions from twelve countries. The U.S. effort is supported by the National Science Foundation and the Department of Energy. "Auger is an ambitious plan to construct two huge arrays of detectors, each the size of Rhode Island, one in the northern hemisphere, and one in the southern, to study the highest-energy particles in the Universe and to open up a new window on the physical world," he explains. Construction of the southern array has begun in western Argentina, and should be completed in about four years, around which time construction of the northern site should have just begun.

Coutu earned his bachelor's degree with first-class honors in physics in 1987 at McGill University in Canada. He earned his master's degree in 1989 in physics and his doctoral degree in physics in 1993 at the California Institute of Technology. He was a postdoctoral research fellow at the University of Michigan until he joined the faculty of Penn State in the fall of 1997.

Awards Given to Staff of Eberly College of Science

The Eberly College of Science has honored three staff members with awards for excellence in recognition of their contributions to the college and the University during a recent Staff Recognition Reception at the Nittany Lion Inn on the Penn State University Park campus. The award winners include Robert Fedorchak, coordinator of the Eberly College of Science academic advising program; Barbara Baum, staff assistant in the Department of Mathematics; and Connie Boob, staff assistant in the Department of Chemistry. Each award winner received a plaque and monetary prize.

The college also awarded certificates of excellence to seven staff members, including: Karen Brewster, staff assistant in the Department of Physics; Dori Eakin, staff assistant in the Department of Chemistry; Judy Flynn, staff assistant in the Department of Chemistry; Christine Foster, staff assistant in the Department of Physics; Barby Singer, staff assistant in the Department of Physics; Eric Younken, assistant research engineer in the Department of Chemistry; and Jeri Ann Zitek, staff assistant in the Department of Physics.

Charles Fisher Honored With C.I. Noll Award for Teaching

Charles Fisher, professor of biology, has been selected as the winner of the C.I. Noll Award for Excellence in Teaching.

Sponsored by the Eberly College of Science Student Council and Alumni Society, the award represents the highest honor for undergraduate teaching in the college. The winner is chosen by a committee of students and faculty from nominees suggested by students, faculty, and alumni. The award includes a monetary grant and the inscription of recipient's name on a plaque alongside previous winners.

"It is very gratifying to receive this recognition from my colleagues and students," said Fisher, who has taught a broad range of biology and ecology courses at Penn State since he joined the Penn State faculty in 1990. In addition to his teaching in the classroom, Fisher also offers students the opportunity of participating in research as a member of his research team. Approximately fifty-four undergraduate students have worked in Fisher's laboratory in just the past five years, and every undergraduate student who has been a co-author on one of his research papers has gone on to either medical school or graduate school.

Fisher's research interests include the ecology of hydrothermal-vent and cold-seep organisms living on the ocean floor, including the wide range of symbiotic and chemical processes on which their life depends. In the past 19 years, he has made 75 deep-sea dives in research submersibles and has spent another 54 days at sea working with deep-diving remotely operated vehicles.

He recently was elected to chair the steering committee of the National Science Foundation RIDGE 2000 Program, which is designed to study the mid-ocean ridge system and to enhance the understanding of the relationship between the geological processes that lead to planetary renewal in the deep ocean and the life forms that thrive there in the absence of sunlight. The program designed to foster an interdisciplinary research community involving geoscientists and biologists from universities and research institutions around the country. As a result of Fisher's election, the program office for the RIDGE program has been located on the Penn State University Park campus.

Fisher also participates in the Research and Education: Volcanoes, Exploration, and Life (REVEL) program designed to provide research experiences for middle-school and high-school teachers. In addition, he serves as assistant department head for graduate education in the Department of Biology.

In addition to the Penn State C. I Noll Award for Excellence in Teaching in 2001, Fisher has received numerous honors for his research and teaching, including recognition among "The Year's Best" from Popular Science in 1997 for making one of the top 100 discoveries in science and technology. He earned the the Penn State Faculty Associates Award in 1997, a Collaborative Instructional and Curricular Innovation Award from Penn State in 1996, and a Presidential Young Investigator award from the National Science Foundation in 1991.

Fisher joined the Penn State faculty in 1990 as an assistant professor and was named associate professor in 1995 and professor in 1999. He earned his doctoral degree in biological sciences at the University of California at Santa Barbara in 1985 and his bachelor's degree in biology at Michigan State University in 1976.

Jain Wins Oliver E. Buckley Condensed Matter Prize

Jainendra K. Jain, the Erwin W. Mueller Professor of Physics at Penn State, is one of three physicists selected by the American Physical Society to receive the prestigious Oliver E. Buckley Condensed Matter Prize in 2002. He and two of his colleagues, Nicholas Read of Yale University and Robert Willett of Lucent Technologies, will be honored for their theoretical and experimental work in "establishing the composite fermion model for the half-filled Landau level and other quantized Hall systems," according to the society.

Jain is a condensed-matter theorist who is interested in the physics of low-dimensional systems, especially those states in which electrons behave in cooperative ways leading to unexpected behaviors. The major focus of his research has been a quantum fluid obtained when electrons at the interface of two semiconductor materials are cooled to a low temperature and exposed to a strong magnetic field. The most surprising feature of this system appears in its transverse resistance, known as the Hall resistance: in all other systems, as the magnetic field is increased the Hall resistance goes up like a smooth ramp, but here it goes up in steps. Furthermore, the resistance on the flat parts of the steps is spectacularly accurately quantized at certain very simple values, which are characterized either by integers (the integral quantum Hall effect) or fractions (the fractional quantum Hall effect). The integral and fractional effects, discovered in 1980 and 1982, were honored by Nobel Prizes in physics in 1985 (von Klitzing) and 1998 (R.B. Laughlin, H.L. Stormer, and D.C. Tsui). The former turned out to be easy to explain: In very high magnetic fields the kinetic energy of an electron becomes quantized—a consequence of quantum mechanics—into levels known as Landau levels, named after a great Russian physicist who first studied this problem several decades ago; the integral effect occurs at magnetic fields when an integral number of Landau levels are fully packed by electrons, with no room to spare. But the fractional effect represents an entirely new, collective state of matter, adding to the previously known collective states like superconductors and superfluids.

To elucidate the physics of the fractional quantum Hall effect, Jain predicted in 1989 the existence of a new kind of bizarre particles, which he named "composite fermions," wherein electrons absorb magnetic flux quanta to form new entities. "The fractional Hall systems exhibit absolutely marvelous properties, which are entirely unexpected and inexplicable when you think of them as a collection of electrons, but which become obvious when you think of them as a collection of composite fermions," Jain says. In particular, "the fractional quantum Hall effect is simply understood as the integral quantum Hall effect of composite fermions."

Subsequent theoretical and experimental research by numerous physicists worldwide established the existence of composite fermions, and showed that they not only exhibit the fractional quantum Hall effect, but form many other states. A beautiful application of the composite fermion idea was carried out in a 1993 theoretical prediction by Bertrand Halperin, Patrick Lee and Read of a Fermi sea for the Half filled Landau level. This state was confirmed by Willett later in the same year. "Even though a high magnetic field is necessary for producing composite fermions, at certain values of the field the composite fermions gobble up all the incoming flux of the huge magnetic field so, in effect, they behave as if they do not experience the external magnetic field at all," Jain says. "That is why they form a Fermi sea, which is something fermions do when they are free from any magnetic field."

The Oliver E. Buckley Prize of the American Physical Society is considered to be one of the most prestigious awards in the field of condensed-matter physics. The prize was endowed in 1952 by AT&T Bell Laboratories, now Lucent Technologies, and is named in honor of an influential president of Bell Labs.

Jain earned his bachelor's degree from Rajasthan University in India in 1979, his master's degree from the Indian Institute of Technology in 1981, and his doctoral degree from the State University of New York (SUNY) at Stony Brook in 1985. Jain was a postdoctoral research associate at the University of Maryland from 1986 to 1988 and an associate research scientist at Yale University from 1988 to 1989. He joined SUNY at Stony Brook as an assistant professor in 1989, was promoted to associate professor in 1993, and to professor in 1997. He joined Penn State in the fall of 1998 as Penn State's first Erwin W. Mueller Professor of Physics.

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