The American Physical Society (APS) has inducted two Yale faculty into its 2010 class of fellows.
Priyamvada Natarajan, professor of astronomy, was selected “for key contributions to two of the most challenging problems in cosmology: mapping dark matter and tracing the accretion history of black holes. Her work using gravitational lensing techniques has provided a deeper understanding of the granularity of dark matter in clusters of galaxies. She has developed theoretical models to describe the assembly and accretion history of black holes.”
Natarajan was a JILA Fellow at the University of Colorado last fall and is currently on leave fulfilling a Guggenheim Fellowship. She will also complete a fellowship at the Rockefeller Bellagio Center in Italy in May and June. Her map of dark matter in galaxy cluster Abell 1689 was recently selected as one of the best NASA photos of 2010.
She was the 2009 recepient of the India Abroad Foundation’s “Face of the Future” Award and is the Caroline Herschel Distinguished Visitor at the Space Telescope Science Institute in Baltimore for 2010-2011.
Charles Ahn, recently named the William K. Lanman Jr. Professor of Applied Physics and professor of physics, was selected “for the elucidation of novel behavior in complex materials subjected to intense ferroelectric fields, and for seminal contributions to the understanding of nanoscale interfacial phenomena in complex oxides.”
Ahn’s research focuses on the physics of complex oxide materials that could play a role in the electronics of the future, including ferroelectric films, magnetic oxides and high-temperature superconductors. He is the interdisciplinary research group leader for the Center for Research on Interface Structures and Phenomena (CRISP), a National Science Foundation Materials Research Science and Engineering Center located at Yale.
His numerous honors include the American Vacuum Society’s Peter Mark Memorial Award, an Alfred P. Sloan Fellowship, a Yale Junior Faculty Fellowship, the David and Lucile Packard Fellowship in Science and Engineering, and a National Science Foundation CAREER Award.
Natarajan and Ahn were nominated and selected as APS fellows by their professional peers and will be recognized at the society’s annual meeting in Dallas, Texas, in March. Since its founding in 1899, the APS has bestowed the honor on no more than half of one percent of its members each year. This year, the society elected 233 fellows.
