Physicist
Deborah Jin in her laboratory at JILA, a joint institute
of the National Institute of Standards and Technology
and the University of Colorado, Boulder. © Geoffrey
Wheeler
For a high resolution copy of this photo contact, Gail
Porter.
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Deborah
Jin, 34, a physicist at the Commerce Department’s National
Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) in Boulder, Colo.,
and adjoint assistant professor of physics at the University
of Colorado at Boulder (CU-Boulder), has been named a 2003
winner of a $500,000 MacArthur Fellowship, commonly known
as the “genius grant.” The fellowship is awarded
by the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation of Chicago.
Jin is a fellow of JILA, a laboratory run by NIST and CU-Boulder.
The MacArthur Fellows Program awards unrestricted fellowships
to talented individuals who have shown extraordinary originality
and dedication in their creative pursuits and a marked capacity
for self-direction. There are three criteria for selection
of fellows: exceptional creativity, promise for important
future advances based on a track record of significant accomplishment
and potential for the fellowship to facilitate subsequent
creative work.
The program
is intended to encourage people of outstanding talent to
pursue
their own creative, intellectual and professional
inclinations. The fellowship is a “no strings attached” award
in support of people, not projects. Each fellowship comes
with a stipend of $500,000 to the recipient, paid out
in equal quarterly installments over five years.
Past MacArthur Fellowship winners include World Wide Web
inventor Tim Berners-Lee, poet Joseph Brodsky, population
expert Paul Ehrlich, elephant researcher/conservationist
Cynthia Moss and magician James Randi.
In 1999,
Jin and graduate student Brian DeMarco created a new quantum
gas that was named one of the top 10 scientific advances of
the year by the journal Science. They cooled a vapor
of fermions—one of the two basic types of quantum particles,
along with bosons—to a temperature less than a millionth
of a degree above absolute zero using lasers and magnetic
traps. The result was a quantum state in which atoms behave
like waves.
Fermions
are important throughout physics because the basic building
blocks of matter—electrons, protons and neutrons—all
are fermions. Jin and DeMarco’s research is a step toward
a better understanding of these building blocks and may lead
toward a new generation of atomic clocks and atom lasers.
Jin is the fourth CU-Boulder faculty member to receive a
MacArthur Fellowship in the past four years and the seventh
since the program began in 1981.
Jin graduated from Princeton University in 1990 and received
her Ph.D. in physics from the University of Chicago in 1995.
From 1995 to 1997, she was a National Research Council research
associate with NIST, working at JILA. After her postdoc assignment,
Jin was hired as a NIST physicist and assistant professor
adjoint in 1997.
Jin is the recipient of several awards, including the 2002
Maria Goeppert-Meyer Prize from the American Physical Society,
the 2002 National Academy of Sciences award for initiatives
in research and the 2000 Presidential Early Career Awards
for Scientists and Engineers (PECASE), the highest honor
bestowed by the U.S. government on young professionals at
the outset of their independent research careers.
As a non-regulatory
agency of the U.S. Department of Commerce’s
Technology Administration, NIST develops and promotes measurement,
standards and technology to enhance productivity, facilitate
trade and improve the quality of life. For more information
on NIST, visit www.nist.gov.
The University of Colorado at Boulder is a comprehensive
research institution located in the foothills of the Rocky
Mountains and has an enrollment of 29,151 students. CU-Boulder
was founded in 1876 and is known for its strong programs
in the space sciences, environmental sciences, natural sciences,
education, music and law. It received a record $250 million
in sponsored research funding last fiscal year.
Comments About Deborah Jin
SECRETARY OF COMMERCE DON EVANS
“All of us at the Department of Commerce are extremely
proud of Deborah Jin of Commerce’s National Institute
of Standards and Technology who has been honored with the
MacArthur Fellowship. She is an exemplary scientist, whose
enthusiasm for discovery represents the best of the Commerce
Department and the U.S. government.”
NIST DIRECTOR ARDEN BEMENT JR.
“ NIST congratulates Deborah Jin for receiving this tremendous
honor. The MacArthur Fellowship goes to persons of unlimited
creativity and originality, unwavering dedication to the
pursuit of excellence, and unending commitment to the betterment
of others. Deborah exemplifies all of these characteristics
and more.”
UNIVERSITY OF COLORADO PRESIDENT ELIZABETH HOFFMAN
“Our faculty
exemplify excellence and continue to comprise our greatest
strength. CU is proud to boast a new
MacArthur award winner in each of the last four years, making
us one of only two universities in the country to claim this
honor. It provides true evidence of the quality education
our students are receiving.”
CU-BOULDER CHANCELLOR RICHARD L. BYYNY
“For a remarkable
fourth time in four years it is my honor to congratulate
a Boulder faculty member on being
named to the prestigious group of MacArthur Fellows. Deborah
Jin is an outstanding physicist and a valued teacher of undergraduate
and graduate students, and this recognition is another example
of the benefits of partnering with Boulder laboratories.”
NIST PHYSICS LABORATORY DIRECTOR KATHARINE GEBBIE
“The Physics
Laboratory is thrilled that Debbie Jin has won this prestigious
MacArthur Award. She has both the
intellect and the drive to be one of the truly creative and
innovative scientists of this century. Within two years of
her appointment at NIST, she had seen the first evidence
for degeneracy in a fermionic atomic gas, and she has run
with it from there. This is a great honor for Debbie, for
JILA, for the Physics Laboratory and for NIST.”
JAMES FALLER, CHIEF OF THE NIST QUANTUM PHYSICS DIVISION
(IN WHICH JIN WORKS)
“I’m delighted. Debbie has an inquiring and
creative mind. She is a super scientist and an incredible
human being. During the five-year term of the fellowship,
I’m certain that the MacArthur Foundation will be extraordinarily
pleased with her.”
NIST BOULDER LABORATORIES DIRECTOR ZELDA CHAPMAN BAILEY
“My heartfelt congratulations to Debbie. We are proud
to have her on the NIST staff and pleased about this latest
achievement by a NIST scientist at JILA. It is wonderful
to see that her outstanding talents in physics are being
recognized. She continues a long JILA tradition of working
at the foundations of physics, while remaining mindful of
NIST’s mission.”
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