JILA graduate student Aaron Young wins the 2024 Deborah Jin Award for Outstanding Doctoral Thesis Research in Atomic, Molecular, or Optical Physics by the American Physical Society (APS)
Aaron Young, a recently graduated Ph.D. student in the lab of JILA Fellow, NIST Physicist, and University of Colorado Boulder Physics Professor Adam Kaufman, has been awarded the prestigious 2024 Deborah Jin Award for Outstanding Doctoral Thesis Research in Atomic, Molecular, or Optical Physics by the American Physical Society (APS) for his work done at JILA. The award was announced in Fort Worth, Texas, at the 2024 55th Annual Meeting of the APS Division of Atomic, Molecular, and Optical Physics (DAMOP).
The Deborah Jin Award recognizes doctoral thesis research of outstanding quality and achievement in atomic, molecular, or optical physics and encourages effective written and oral presentation of research results. The annual award was established in 1992 and was renamed in 2016 to honor the late Deborah Jin, a JILA Fellow. Finalists are invited to present their research at the annual DAMOP meeting. The award's endowment, bolstered by a supplemental campaign in 2016, also aims to enhance the diversity of student attendees at the annual DAMOP Meeting.
This prestigious award was given for Young's research on developing a new experimental setup to control and read out systems of many alkaline-earth atoms. By combining the techniques of optical tweezers, precision spectroscopy, and quantum gas microscopy, Young's work provided unprecedented control over many-body quantum systems. This innovative approach has significant implications for quantum simulation and metrology.
Now, Young is continuing this research as a postdoctoral fellow at Harvard University. Building on his work at JILA, he explores new frontiers in quantum information science, aiming to further understand and manipulate quantum systems for practical applications.
Written by Kenna Hughes-Castleberry, JILA Science Communicator
The Physics Frontiers Centers (PFC) program supports university-based centers and institutes where the collective efforts of a larger group of individuals can enable transformational advances in the most promising research areas. The program is designed to foster major breakthroughs at the intellectual frontiers of physics by providing needed resources such as combinations of talents, skills, disciplines, and/or specialized infrastructure, not usually available to individual investigators or small groups, in an environment in which the collective efforts of the larger group can be shown to be seminal to promoting significant progress in the science and the education of students. PFCs also include creative, substantive activities aimed at enhancing education, broadening participation of traditionally underrepresented groups, and outreach to the scientific community and general public.