Celebrating Achievement in Physical Science Research

Winners announced for 2008 Lee-Osheroff-Richardson North American Science Prize, 2008 Nicholas Kurti European Science Prize and 2007 Sir Martin Wood Japanese Science Prize, sponsored by Oxford Instruments

The winners have recently been announced for the 2008 Lee•Osheroff•Richardson North American Science Prize, the 2008 Nicholas Kurti European Science Prize and the 2007 Sir Martin Wood Japanese Science Prize.  Oxford Instruments is proud to sponsor these prizes. Oxford Instruments is a world leader in the supply of low temperature and high magnetic field environments, metrology instruments and fabrication tools for scientific research.

The prizes are primarily aimed at young scientists. Each award is intended to recognise and promote outstanding achievements of young scientists in the field of physical sciences research, to support their career development.

The Lee Osheroff Richardson North American Science Prize, endorsed by the British Embassy Washington DC, is named after David M.Lee, Douglas D. Osheroff and Robert C. Richardson who were joint winners of the Nobel Prize in Physics in 1996, for their discovery of superfluidity in 3He.  The prize winner receives $8000, a unique trophy, a certificate and travel assistance.  Nominations are assessed by a committee of senior scientists from across North America; the committee chairman is Prof Bruce Gaulin, McMaster University.

Dr. Eunseong Kim is the 2008 recipient of the Lee Osheroff Richardson North American Science Prize.  Dr Kim was presented with the prize at the Oxford Instruments Socialise with Science event at the APS 2008 March show in New Orleans by Professor Gaulin.  Dr. Kim is recognized for seminal contributions to the understanding of solid helium.  He performed this work while a graduate student and post doctoral research assistant at the Pensylvania State University and is continuing related research founding his own experimental group at KAIST in his native South Korea.  His work on solid 4He and discovery of non-Debye behaviour has energized the field of quantum solids, spurred the interest of the condensed matter physics community and captured the fascination of the general public.

Previous winners of the prize are Dr. Christian Lupien, Dr. Jason Petta and Dr. Suchitra Sebastian.

The Nicholas Kurti European Science Prize is named after Professor Nicholas Kurti who is known for his distinguished work in ultra-low temperature physics at the Clarendon Laboratory, Oxford University. The prize winner receives €8000, a unique trophy, a certificate and travel assistance.  Nominations are assessed by a committee of senior scientists from across Europe; the committeechairman is Dr Jacques Flouquet, CEA Grenoble.

Professor Lieven Vandersypen is the 2008 recipient of the Nicholas Kurti European Science Prize.  He is recognised for his research into the coherent control of spins for possible application in quantum information processing, first using nuclear spins in molecules in liquid solutions (NMR) and later using electrons spins in semiconductor quantum dots.

In his PhD research, Professor Vandersypen used room temperature NMR techniques to coherently control up to seven coupled spins in a molecule and provided experimental proof-of-principle of quantum computation.  This work culminated in the implementation of Shor's quantum algorithm for prime factorization widely regarded as a landmark experiment in quantum information processing. His interest in the coherent control of spins continued after his PhD, but he turned to a completely different experiment; individual electron spins in quantum dots at milliKelvin temperatures.  As a postdoc he made essential contributions to the early successes of the Delft qubit project, such as the implementation of single-shot read-out of a single electron spin in a quantum dot (2004).  As a faculty member, he led the team that was responsible for the realization of coherent rotations or Rabi oscillations of a single electron spin via magnetic resonance, still a unique capability.  Recently, his group was able to observe Rabi oscillations of the spin using electrical excitation instead of magnetic excitation, which greatly improves the future prospects of spin qubits in quantum dots.

Previous winners of the prize are Dr. Silvano De Franceschi,  Dr. Andreas Wallraff and Dr. Kostya Novoselov.

The Sir Martin Wood Science Prize, is awarded annually by the Millennium Science Forum, established in 1998 to promote scientific exchange between Britain and Japan.  The prize is awarded to a young researcher from a Japanese University or research institute who has performed outstanding research in the area of condensed matter science. The prize is named after Sir Martin Wood, Founder and Honorary President of Oxford Instruments plc.  The Sir Martin Wood Prize winner receives ¥500,000 in cash and the opportunity to give a series of lectures in British Universities, including Oxford University. The Millennium Science Forum steering committee is chaired by Professor Noboru Miura, from Tokyo University.  The prize winner is selected by a committee composed of eight senior scientists from Japanese Universities chaired by Professor Hidetoski Fukuyama, from Tokyo University of Science.

The winner of the 2007 Sir Martin Wood Prize is Dr Akira Ohtomo from the Institute of Materials Research at Tohoku University in recognition of study of quantitized magnetotransport in oxide heterointerfaces.

Dr Ohtomo received his Ph.D in Materials Science and Engineering in March 2000 at the Tokyo Institute of Technology.  He was a Postdoctoral member of Technical stuff at Bell Laboratories, Lucent Technologies (2000 – 2002) and is now a visiting researcher at the National Institute for Materials Science (NIMS), Researcher at the Japan Science and Technology Agency (JST) and a research Associate at the Institute for Materials Research (IMR).

Dr Ohtomo has been recognized through multiple awards from Young Scientist in 1994 through to this year’s achievement.  He was awarded the prize on 14th November 2007 and presented his work at the Millennium Science Forum held at the British Embassy in Tokyo.

Previous winners of the Sir Martin Wood Prize include Dr Tsuyoshi Kimura and Dr Kazutomo Suenaga.

Each prize is awarded annually. Nominations will be invited for the 2009/2010 Science Prizes later in 2008. Information required for nomination of candidates includes the theme of the candidate’s research work, summary of achievements, details of up to three peer- reviewed publications and of two supporting referees. Visit Oxford Instruments’ Science Prize website at www.oxford-instruments.com/scienceprize to find out more about the prizes, deadlines for nominations and to download a nomination
form.

Winners are selected based on criteria covering the quality and originality of their research, the significance of results, impact of the work in setting a new direction for the research field and the degree of leadership demonstrated by the nominee.

Oxford Instruments is also a sponsor of the Fritz London Memorial Prize.  The most recent joint winners were awarded the prize are Yuriy M. Bunkov, The Institute of Ultra Low Temperature Research in Grenoble, Vladimir V. Dmitriev, Kapitza Institute, Moscow and Igor A. Fomin, Kapitza Institute, Moscow.  The award is in recognition of the discovery and understanding of unique phenomena in superfluid 3He-B: macroscopic phase-coherent spin precession and the flow of spin supercurrent.  The latter is a magnetic counterpart of mass-current superfluidity in helium liquids and Bose-Einstein condensates, and charge-current superfluidity in superconductors.