Women Physicist of the Month - 2012

About CSWP Woman Physicist of the Month Award

May

Christine Nattrass, University of Tennessee at Knoxville
Christine Nattrass is a post doc on the ALICE experiment at CERN at the University of Tennessee at Knoxville.  She is also on the PHENIX experiment at RHIC.  Her current focus in ALICE is EMCal support and work studying transverse energy in the EMCal.  She has worked on testing and commissioning front end electronics for the EMCal and co-led the ALICE analysis working group on transverse energy.  In PHENIX she helped with assembling the read out electronics for the VTX.  She also works extensively with the graduate students and organizes the UT/ORNL journal club.

Most recently, Dr. Nattrass chaired the organizing committee for the 2012 Southeast Conference for Undergraduate Women in Physics (CUWIP) at the University of Tennessee at Knoxville.  This conference featured a tour of ORNL; panels on women in physics, undergraduate research, graduate school, careers in physics, and minorities in physics; student presentations; astronomy demonstrations; and technical talks on physics.  The Southeast conference was one of the largest of the regional CUWIPs with over 100 students attending.  Dr. Nattrass exhibited leadership and professionalism during her role as chair of the organizing committee, especially when the huge demand made planning, logistics, and budgeting extremely difficult.

In addition to her leadership with the Southeast CUWIP, Dr. Nattrass is also an up-and-comer to the heavy ion physics outreach community.  She plans to work with an established author on a children's book on high energy physics, and she is in the initial phases of a project where students from the Pratt Institute would make videos to explain relativistic heavy ion physics to the public.

April

Kathleen Stebe, University of Pennsylvania
Kathleen Stebe is renowned as one of the world experts on surface tension. From her work on characterizing and controlling Marangoni forces, responsible for the tears in a wine glass and unwanted water spots on integrated circuits, to her recent work on alignment effects at fluid-air interface, Kate’s work is creative, elegant, and intellectually thorough. Dr. Stebe only publishes work that she completely understands from the top down and the bottom up – fortunately for us, her high standards have resulted in both a deep and broad oeuvre for the community.

In addition to her research program, Dr. Stebe has served as Chair of her department since 2006, first at Johns Hopkins, now at the University of
Pennsylvania. Her record as chair highlights another one of her strengths – Kate is a graceful leader who promotes her students, colleagues, and faculty while maintaining her rigorous research program and speaking schedule. Regarded as a clear and enthusiastic speaker, she has delivered named lectures around the country and invited talks, seminars, and colloquia around the world.

A fellow of the American Physical Society (2010) and winner of the APS Frenkiel Award for Young Investigators, Professor Stebe gives back to the community, organizing dozens of meetings and sessions at workshops and conferences, serving on numerous editorial boards and review committees, consulting with industry, and devoting time and energy to outreach and mentorship: a contributor across the board.

March

Sherry Yennello, Texas A&M University
If you could only choose one adjective to describe Sherry Yennello, it would be 'dynamic'.  Dr. Yennello has distinguished herself as one of the leaders in the field of nuclear reaction dynamics and equation-of-state studies.  Her aggressive approach to the solution of problems and intuition for instrumentation have permitted her to compile an unusually productive research record.  At the same time she has shown a deep commitment to science education at all levels and has maintained a highly visible and extensive role in both the academic and professional communities.

At Texas A&M, Dr. Yennello has developed an internationally-recognized program focused on the study of intermediate-energy nuclear reaction mechanisms.  Her research has made unique contributions to understanding the density dependence of the symmetry term in the nuclear equation of state, of critical importance to the study of astrophysical phenomena.  Also, she recently initiated and was one of the principal organizers of a successful effort to publish a volume that summarizes the current status of the field of nuclear reaction dynamics.  

Dr. Yennello's enthusiastic and energetic approach to the teaching of nuclear science is also an important aspect of her professional life.  At the graduate student level she has attracted numerous students, especially females, to her research program and has consistently had one of the largest groups of graduate students of any nuclear chemistry program in the country.  Her success has been widely acknowledged by the several awards she has received for both research and teaching, most notably the ACS Garvan-Olin Award and Fellowship in the American Physical Society (APS) and American Chemical Society (ACS).  She has also received numerous teaching awards, as well as NSF and Sigma Xi Young Investigator Awards.  She is equally active in her service activities: inside the university, in organizing conferences, in the Nuclear Chemistry Division of the ACS, the Division of Nuclear Physics in the APS, and as a rotator at the National Science Foundation.

February

Elizabeth Simmons, Michigan State University
Elizabeth Simmons is the complete package.  She is an eminent theoretical physicist, a highly successful dean of a college, a terrific communicator with the ability to convey the excitement of physics to her students and to the general public, and she is an outstanding mentor for junior women in science.  

Elizabeth received her degrees from Harvard (A.B. '85, Ph.D. '90) and Cambridge (M.Phil. '86).  Dr. Simmons' work in theoretical particle physics focuses on electroweak symmetry breaking, with a recent emphasis on Higgsless physics at the LHC, and on phenomenology at the LHC.  She has authored over 120 publications in particle physics, but also several papers each in condensed matter theory, condensed matter experience, education and outreach, academic leadership and faculty development, and on women in science.  

Professor Simmons' numerous awards include the National Merit Scholar ('81), NSF Graduate Fellow ('85), Curie ('93), NSF CAREER ('95), DOE OJI ('95), APS Fellow ('02), and AAAS Fellow ('11) awards, as well as continuous grant funding from the NSF and DOE throughout her faculty career.

What makes Elizabeth's career truly remarkable is that she has also excelled as an administrator, serving as Director ('03-'07) of MSU's Lyman Briggs School, guiding it to College status, and serving as its first Dean (since '07).  At the same time she is a volunteer mentor to the 11 other female faculty members in MSU's Department of Physics and Astronomy, and has taken on various outreach assignments with the primary purpose of engaging more girls and young women in physics.

January

Helen Caines, Yale University
Helen Caines is one of the top scientists working in the field of Relativistic Heavy Ion Collisions.  Dr. Caines is also an exceptional scientist and mentor.  She is a creative and forward thinker when it comes to collecting, evaluating, and interpreting experimental data, and as a member of a large collaboration, she has distinguished herself as a primary driving force behind many analyses.  

Dr. Caines serves as an example of a hubris-free approach to doing science that is pragmatic and inspiring.  She is also a hands-on mentor, spending her working and after hours helping junior scientists at all levels of their science journey--from writing code, to helping direct analyses, to honing presentation and writing skills.  Helen has spent a prodigious amount of time editing papers, debugging code, preparing students for conferences and polishing theses.  

For many years Helen served as one of the STAR experiment's physics working group conveners, then as deputy spokesperson, in addition to her duties on the faculty at Yale.  She is an elected Fellow of the Institute of Physics, she co-manages the STAR upgrades and she is the Deputy Chair of the STAR Council.

Despite her many commitments Helen Caines is incredibly generous with her time when it comes to students and post-docs.  One does not have to be in her Yale group to seek advice and benefit from her wisdom and foresight.  Moreover, Helen is an exceptionally reliable and kind person.  She has become a friend to all of her students, whether they have stayed in the field or moved on.  For young people in the field, she is a welcome example of how one should comport oneself, be low-key, yet successful, dedicated, and forward-looking in one's science career.