Sugarman Awards for Excellence in Graduate Student Research
The Sugarman Awards are made possible by a generous Sugarman Family endowment supplemented by significant donations from Nathan Sugarman's colleagues, friends and former students at the time of his death. The awards are a reminder of Nathan's many contributions to the University and the Enrico Fermi Institute. The cash awards, approximately $2,000, are given to advanced graduate students for excellence in research carried out at Chicago in any of the areas in which the Institute is active. Faculty of the EFI submit nominations of students to the Sugarman Award Committee who make the selections. Awards are presented at a special Institute seminar during the autumn quarter. After the award presentation, recipients give brief talks about their research.
"Nathan Sugarman was a Professor Emeritus in the Enrico Fermi Institute and the Department of Chemistry at the time of his death, September 6, 1990. For many years before that he was recognized as the Keeper of the great traditions of the EFI. He was its conscience and its memory. The life of joy that he found in his work, in his students and colleagues, and in being a part of the Institute and University is what these awards are meant to commemorate and it is hoped that the awardees will come to share it."
- from a tribute by Robert G. Sachs
| 2006-2007 | 2005-2006 | 2004-2005 | 2003 | 2002 | 2001 |
| 2000 | 1999 | 1998 | 1997 | 1996 | 1995 |
| 1994 | 1993 | 1992 | 1991 |
2006-07 Award Recipients & Citations
- Jahred Adelman - For his studies of the mass of the top quark, including the development of hardware to identify final states with displaced vertices.
- Alexander Paramonov - For his development of fast electronics for the Collider Detector at Fermilab, and his studies of rare top decays and anomalous gauge boson production.
- Douglas Rudd - For the development of new computational tools providing a factor of ten improvement in the precision of astrophysical simulations and for using these tools to study the influence of baryons on the distribution of matter in the universe.
2006-07 Undergrad Award Recipient & Citation
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Bihui Li- For undergraduate research with Professor Yau Wah in which she improved the world limit on the probability of KL???? by more than a factor of ten.
2005-06 Award Recipients & Citations
- Fang Peng (Astronomy & Astrophysics) – For studies in theoretical astrophysics of thermonuclear burning on neutron stars and of mechanisms associated with gamma ray bursts.
- Daniel Robbins (Theoretical Physics) – For studies in string theory, especially of a matrix model for the null-brane.
- Eduardo Rozo (Astronomy & Astrophysics) For the study of issues related to gravitational lensing.
2004-05 Award Recipients & Citations
- Timothy Donaghy (Experimental Cosmology) - For outstanding contributions to the HETE-2 mission that improved the accuracy and speed of GRB localizations and for analysis and modeling of GRB data that have provided significant constraints on the structure of GRB jets.
- David Morrissey (Theoretical Physics) - For outstanding research in the penomenology of particle physics, in particular his study of a minimal supersymmetric extension of the Standard Model, which showed that these models can induce a first-order electro-weak phase transition and accommodate a dark matter candidate.
- Argyro- Tasitsiomi (Astronomy & Astrophysics) - For outstanding research in cosmology, in particular her investigations of the possible observable signatures of dark matter in the Milky Way, the dark matter halos of galaxy clusters, and Lyman alpha emission from high-redshift galaxies.
2003 Award Recipients & Citations
- David Sahaykan - For innovative research in theoretical particle physics and string theory, in particular the study of string propagation near defects, and the analysis of strongly coupled supersymmetric gauge theories at long distances.
- Francesco Spano - For the measurement of the mass of the W boson using the full data sample of the OPAL experiment, thereby determining a fundamental constant and strengthening the predictive power of the electroweak theory.
2002 Award Recipients & Citations
- John Everett (Astronomy & Astrophysics) - For the development of a comprehensive model for the outflow of material from the disks of active galactic nuclei and for helping to unify the understanding of these objects.
- Florian Gahbauer (Physics) - For creative and dedicated work in preparing the TRACER cosmic ray detector and for using this instrument for the measurement of the flux of heavy cosmic ray nuclei to energies of several Tev/nucleon.
- John Kovac (Astronomy & Astrophysics) - For the invention and development of acromatic waveguide polarizers for the DASI telescope and for using this instrument to perform the first detection of the polarization of the cosmic microwave background radiation.
2001 Award Recipients & Citations
- C. Michael Lindsay (Chemistry) - For the development of a highly automated ion spectrometer of remarkable sensitivity and for using this tool for new observations of the infrared spectrum of the H3+ ion and related systems.
- Valmiki Prasad (Physics) - For his contributions to the observation of direct CP violation in the neutral K-meson system and for making this difficult measurement a compelling one.
2000 Award Recipients & Citations
- Jeffrey Berryhill - For innovative and careful probes of high energy proton-antiproton collisions, looking for new processes involving the production of the photon in association with the W and Z gauge bosons.
- Asantha Cooray - For exceptional breadth in contributions to cosmology and, in particular, the study of higher order effects in the cosmic microwave background and the large-scale structure of the universe.
- Nils Halverson - For outsanding contributions to the design, construction and deployment of the Degree Angular Scale Interferometer, and for leading the analysis effort to extract a definitive measurement of the Cosmic Microwave Background angular power spectrum.
- Benjamin McCall - For his major role in the observational studies of H+3 which plays the central role in interstellar chemistry. The observations have led to the surprising discovery of abundant H+3 in the diffuse interstellar medium.
1999 Award Recipients & Citations
- Robin L. Coxe - For outstanding work in measuring the mass of the W boson and thereby increasing the predictive power of the electroweak theory.
- Scott M. Oser - For excellence in experimental astrophysics as demonstrated by essential contributions to the design, development, and operation of the Solar Tower Atmospheric Cerenkov Effect Experiment (STACEE) and the first analysis of 100 GeV gamma rays from Crab Nebula and Pulsar.
- Daniel E. Reichart - For outstanding research in high energy astrophysics, in particular for his discovery of direct evidence linking gamma-ray bursts and supernovae, and his work showing that gamma-ray bursts may be a powerful probe of the very high redshift universe.
- Constance M. Rockosi - For outstanding graduate research in the area of astronomical imaging, for design, construction, deployment and observing with a five-color, wide-field CCD camera, used to discover the coolest stellar objects known, the most distant objects known and the shape and content of the Galactic halo.
1998 Award Recipients & Citations
- Gregory E. Graham - For outstanding work in the design, prototyping, construction, and commission of a large-scale Transition Radiation Detector which perofrmed amoung the best in the world. And for his excellent work in the pursuit of CP-violating kaon decays.
- James Andrew Hocker - For innovative contributions in the field of High Energy Physics on the OPAL experiment at LEP. In particular, for his development of b-quark and tau-lepton identification methods which have greatly improved our ability to search for the Higgs boson
- Gordon T. Richards - For observational work that challenges a critical, fundamental assumption in astrophysics, that absorption lines in quasi-stellar objects are primarily intergalactic, and presents a fascinating alternative.
- Vatche V. Sahakian - For the construction of the phase diagram of supersymmetric gauge theory in a torus geometry using black hole thermodynamics.
1997 Award Recipients & Citations
- Joseph W. Fowler - For outstanding graduate research in experimental astrophysics,in particular for the design, construction, and implementation of a large array of atmospheric Cherenkov detectors to determine the composition of cosmic ray particles at ultrahigh energies.
- Konstantin L. Gavrilov - For outstanding graduate research in experimental materials science, in particular for elucidating, by high resolution secondary ion imaging, the mechanism by which alumina ceramics become HF-corrosion-resistant through co-doping with silica and magnesia.
- David A. Toback - For detailed and systematic searches for physics beyond the Standard Model in final states involving vector gauge bosons.
1996 Award Recipients & Citations
- Alexander G. Abanov - For outstanding graduate research in theoretical condensed matter physics, in particular for his seminal analysis of topological phenomena and off-diagonal order in electronic liquids and his study of the multifractal character of the spectrum of Bloch electrons in an incommensurate magnetic field.
- Peter S. Shawhan - For outstanding graduate research in experimental elementary particle physics, in particular for his clever and elegant contributions to the detector and physics analysis for a precise study of CP violation."
- Daniel E. Vanden Berk - For outstanding work in observational cosmology, in particular in leadership in the development of direct determination of the clustering of matter on the largest scales yet achievable, overlapping with the epoch of galaxy formation.
1995 Award Recipients & Citations
- Mark Chun - For outstanding pioneering work in adaptive optics, in particular for the design development and programming of the very high speed processor which is the brains of the system.
- Craig Copi - For outstanding research in theoretical cosmology, in particular for developing the stochastic models of galactic evolution that added significantly to the robustness of Big Bang Nucleosynthesis.
- Eric Torbet - For exemplary work in experimental astrophysics, in particular for his leading role in the design, construction and implementation of the most sensitive instrument ever developed for measuring high energy positrons in cosmic rays.
1994 Award Recipients & Citations
- Roy A. Briere - For outstanding graduate research in experimental high energy physics and phenomenology, in particular for his precise tests of CPT symmetry and for his elucidation of the regeneration process.
- Charles Darren Dowell - For outstanding graduate research in photometry and polarimetry at far-infrared wavelengths, in particular for characterizing the thermal emission from interstellar clouds.
- David A. Schleuning - For outstanding research on the magnetic fields of giant molecular clouds, in particular for determing the configuration of the field in the Orion Nebula.
1993 Award Recipients & Citations
- Brian Fields - For outstanding graduate research in theoretical astrophysics, in particular for his research on the significance of beryllium and boron in Population II stars.
- Munir Humayun - For outstanding graduate research in cosmochemistry, in particular for his study of the isotopic chemistry of potassium in the early Solar System.
- David Saltzberg - For outstanding graduate research in high energy physics, in particular for his leading role in the CDF experiment's direct measurement of the mass of the W boson.
1992 Award Recipients & Citations
- Corbin Covault - For outstanding postdoctoral research in experimental astrophysics, in particular for his leadership role in the physical interpretation and analysis of data collected from the most sensitive air shower array ever constructed for gamma ray astronomy.
- Kevin McFarland - For outstanding graduate research in experimental high energy physics, in particular, his contributions to the clarification of the difficult issue of unitarity in neutral p‚on decay by a new measurement technique.
1991 Award Recipients & Citations
- Timothy McKay - For exemplary work in experimental astrophysics, in particular for his leading role in the construction and implementation of the most sensitive air shower array for gamma ray astronomy.
- Lawrence Gibbons - For exemplary work in experimental elementary particle physics, in particular for exceptional contributions to the most precise determination of the parameters of CP violation.
- Joseph R. Dwyer - For exemplary work in particle astrophysics, in particular for his crucial contributions to design, construction, and balloon flight of an instrument with unprecedented sensitivity in the determination of cosmic ray energy spectra.