January 26, 2005

NSLS Engineer John Skaritka Wins BNL's Engineering Award

At the BNL Employee Recognition Award Ceremony held on January 26, 2005 NSLS engineer John Skaritka was presented a FY2005 Engineering Award by BNL's Deputy Director for Operations, Michael Bebon. The award, consisting of a plaque and $5,000, was also presented to BNL employees Ove Dyling, Joseph Harder, and Alan Raphael.

John Skarikta

The award recognizes distinguished contributions to BNL's engineering and computing objectives over one or more years. Contributions may be in any engineering or computing discipline. Nominees are evaluated on the exceptional nature and level of difficulty of the contributions as well as their benefit to the Lab.

John Skaritka was cited for a body of work that contains seminal as well as sustained contributions. His many achievements speak collectively to outstanding breadth, creativity, drive, and dedication in support of BNL missions.

Skaritka was the sole mechanical engineer for BNL's Accelerator Test Facility (ATF) for many years, making key contributions to the design of elements of the accelerator and experiments that were essential to the success of those projects. He contributed to the design of ATF Gun III and Gun IV, regarded now as standard in the world and running at many other facilities.

He was also the mechanical engineer in charge of coordinating all mechanical design, fabrication, and installation activities at the Source Development Laboratory, resulting in a state-of-the art facility that produced both a self-amplified spontaneous-emission free-electron laser and a high-gain harmonic generation free-electron laser.

Skaritka is also known for his considerable talent in supporting the NSLS User Science programs, recently, for example, in the construction of a unique instrument pivotal in research on three-dimensional strain mapping to study crack propagation and fatigue failure in alloys.

ARTICLE BY: Liz Seubert

PHOTO BY: Roger Stoutenburgh