From: Leslie Harper
Subject: Congratulations to Alex Arefiev
I'm delighted to announce that Alexey V. Arefiev has been selected by the American Physical Society to receive the Marshall N. Rosenbluth Outstanding Doctoral Thesis Award. This is a truly outstanding national honor, and we extend our hearty congratulations to him.
The title of Alex's thesis was "Theoretical Studies of the VASIMR Plasma Propulsion Concept." His thesis work was supervised by Dr. Boris Breizman (Institute for Fusion Studies), and his faculty advisor was Prof. Roger Bengtson (Fusion Research Center and Department of Physics). Alex also worked with scientists at the Johnson Space Center (Houston) in the Advanced Space Propulsion Laboratory, directed by NASA astronaut Dr. Franklin R. Chang-Diaz.
Alex will receive the Rosenbluth Award (which carries with it an honorarium of $2,000) at the 45th Annual Meeting of the APS Division of Plasma Physics, to be held October 27-31, 2003, in Albuquerque, New Mexico.
The citation for Alex's award is: "For first principles theoretical analysis of a plasma thruster that models the helicon plasma source, single-pass radio frequency heating, and particle and momentum balance."
The Marshall N. Rosenbluth Outstanding Doctoral Thesis Award (formerly known as the "Outstanding Doctoral Thesis in Plasma Physics Award") is to provide recognition to exceptional young scientists who have performed original thesis work of outstanding scientific quality and achievement in the area of plasma physics (http://www.aps.org/praw/ramo/index.html). This award was established in 1985 (originally as the Simon Ramo Award) and endowed in 1997 by General Atomics Inc. Professor Rosenbluth, one of the world's most eminent theoretical plasma physicists and currently professor emeritus, University of California, San Diego, was the founding director of the Institute for Fusion Studies and a professor of physics at the University of Texas at Austin from 1980 to 1987.
Very recently Alex was also selected for two other awards related to his thesis work. The Department of Physics honored him for The Outstanding Dissertation in Physics 2002-2003. Also, the University of Texas Graduate School accorded him University Co-Operative Society Outstanding Dissertation Award Honorable Mention for Distinguished Scholarship.
Since graduating last year, Alex has been employed as a postdoctoral Research Fellow on a joint appointment between the Institute for Fusion Studies and the High Intensity Laser Science Group (Department of Physics).
Incidentally, Alex's wife, Kate, graduated this month from the University of Texas at Austin with a degree in chemistry. She will enter medical school in the fall.
Alex, congratulations from all of us!
______________________________________________________
James W. Van Dam
Institute for Fusion Studies , The University of Texas at Austin
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