Julian Baumert PhD Thesis Award

Julian Baumert

Nominations are being sought for the 2008 Julian Baumert Ph.D. Thesis Award. This award has been established in memory of Julian David Baumert, a young Brookhaven physicist who was working on x-ray studies of soft-matter interfaces at the NSLS before he died in June 2006. The second annual award will be presented at the 2008 Joint NSLS and CFN Users’ Meeting to a researcher who has recently conducted a thesis project that included measurements at the NSLS. Applications are due by April 11, 2008.

Award Details
The Julian David Baumert Award consists of the winner's name engraved on a plaque located in the NSLS Chairman's wing, a $600 honorarium for sharing research, and all travel expenses (including airfare, housing, and registration) to the 2008 Joint NSLS and CFN Users' Meeting on May 19-21. The award will be presented at the meeting by the NSLS Chair, after which the recipient will make a 15-minute presentation on his/her thesis work.

Award Eligibility and Nominations
Candidates must have completed all of the requirements of their Ph.D. within the past two calendar years.*

Applications should include:

• A letter of nomination summarizing the scientific and/or technological impact of the individual’s Ph.D. thesis project contributions. It should include the candidate’s name and contact information, as well as the nominator’s contact information (one page maximum).
• An extended abstract that describes the work performed for the thesis and the importance of measurements done at the NSLS to achieve the overall goals of the thesis project (three pages maximum).
• The candidate's CV.

All materials should be sent by April 11, 2008 via email, regular mail, or fax to:

Kathy Nasta
NSLS User Administration Office
Brookhaven National Laboratory
P.O. Box 5000, Bldg. 725B
Upton, NY 11973-5000
Phone: (631) 344-7114
Fax: (631) 344-7206
Email: nasta@bnl.gov

The nominations will be reviewed by a selection committee made up of the following members:

Ben Ocko (Chair) – BNL Condensed Matter Physics and Materials Science Department
Jeff Fitts, BNL Environmental Sciences Department
Jonathan Hanson, BNL Chemistry Department
Peter Johnson, BNL Condensed Matter Physics and Materials Sciences Department
Vivian Stojanoff, NSLS

About Julian
Julian David Baumert was a relatively new Research Associate in the Soft-Matter and X-ray groups in Brookhaven’s Condensed Matter Physics and Materials Science Department when he died of melanoma on June 24, 2006. He was 31.

Born in Berlin, Germany, Baumert was educated at the Institute of Experimental and Applied Physics (IEAP) at the University of Kiel and the Institute Laue-Langevin (ILL) in Grenoble, France, where he studied a compound known as methane hydrate, which is found naturally on the sea floor and is a promising energy resource. His thesis focused on the structure and dynamics of this compound using neutron and x-ray scattering techniques and numerical simulations. Baumert obtained his Ph.D. from the University of Kiel in February 2004, receiving the prestigious "Familie-Schindler Foerderungs-Preis" of the Faculty of Science in Kiel.

Baumert came to BNL in July 2004 and conducted his research at NSLS beamline X22, where he was part of a team of scientists learning to make smaller and more powerful molecular-scale circuit components that could someday make electronic devices more efficient. He was the principal investigator on a paper published in February 2006 in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences that described the first measurements of the structure of a molecular junction at buried interfaces, and just before his death, he was working to elucidate how the structural and electrical properties of these molecular junctions depend on the molecular coverage.

For more information on Julian, go to http://www.nsls.bnl.gov/newsroom/news/2006/08-Baumert.htm.

*If the actual doctorate has not yet been granted, the committee will accept a letter from the Graduate School of the degree-granting institution, stating that the thesis has been defended and accepted by the institution.