Director's Colloquium is May 9
Tuson Park of Condensed Matter and Thermal Physics (MPA-10) and Rolando Somma of Biological and Quantum Physics (P-21) and Complex Systems (T-13) are recipients of the annual Postdoctoral Distinguished Performance Awards.
The Postdoctoral Distinguished Performance Awards recognize outstanding and unique contributions by Lab postdocs that result in a positive and significant impact on the Laboratory’s programmatic scientific efforts and status in the scientific community. These awards also recognize unusual creativity, innovation, or dedication and a level of performance substantially beyond that which would normally be expected of a postdoc, said Mary Anne With of the Education and Postdoc Office (STBPO-EPDO).
Park has made significant discoveries in three areas. In 2005, he discovered glassy charge dynamics in a hole-doped insulating copper oxide, a discovery that led to new theoretical and experimental approaches. Later, Park explained unusual behavior of charge scattering in a Landau Fermi liquid, which forced scientists to re-examine assumptions governing such physics. Finally, Park discovered that the magnetic boundary, which suddenly disappeared in pressure-induced superconductivity, re-emerged with increasing magnetic field.
Park, a Distinguished Oppenheimer Postdoctoral Fellow, recently received the 2007 Outstanding Researcher Award from the Association of Korean Physicists in America. Joe Thompson of MPA-10 nominated Park for the postdoctoral performance award.
Somma has made significant contributions to quantum information theory and quantum metrology. He demonstrated a long-standing conjecture that entanglement is a necessary but not sufficient condition for a quantum algorithm to outperform a classical one. He established a general correspondence between finite temperature classical systems and zero temperature quantum systems, with implications for optimization theory. He also developed explicit quantum algorithms for optimal parameter estimation. This is a significant contribution to the emerging field of quantum metrology, according to review committee members.
Somma is a Director’s Postdoctoral Fellow and was nominated by Dana Berkeland of P-21 and Diego Dalvit of T-13.
Yonghao Zhao of the Superconductivity Technology Center (MPA-STC) received honorable mention for his research in mechanical properties and microstructures of nanostructure materials. Yuntian Zhu of MPA-STC nominated Zhao for this award.
Laboratory staff members can nominate postdocs for this award. Nominations are sent to a committee of senior technical staff members who review each candidate and submit their recommendations to the director for approval, explained With.
Park and Somma receive a certificate and a monetary award and also will discuss their work at a Director’s Colloquium on May 9 in the Physics Building Auditorium. The colloquium will not be broadcast on LABNET Channel 9.
For more information about the Postdoctoral Distinguished Performance Awards or about the Lab’s postdoctoral program, contact With at 5-5306 or with@lanl.gov by e-mail.
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