Physicist Schmidt wins WITec paper award

Dr. Diedrich Schmidt, N.C. A&T Department of Physics

Dr Diedrich Schmidt and two-co-authors have been named winners of an annual competition for the best scientific paper including results and images acquired with a WITec microscope system. From WITec:

“This year the award goes to Diedrich A. Schmidt, North Carolina A&T State University, USA, Taisuke Ohta and Thomas E. Beechem both from the Sandia National Laboratories, Albuquerque, New Mexico, USA for their paper: ‘Strain and charge carrier coupling in epitaxial graphene,’ Phys. Rev. B 84, 235422 (2011). The paper was submitted by Prof. Diedrich Schmidt who will additionally receive a 500 Euro Amazon Gift card. Diedrich A. Schmidt most recently took a position as an Assistant Professor of Nanophysics at the North Carolina A&T State University and was formerly a member of the Physical Chemistry Department at Ruhr-University Bochum, Germany (Prof. Havenith-Newen) where he did parts of the work presented in the paper.”

The paper can be found here (subscription required). Details on the award are here.

Weekend read: “Neil Tyson: King of the Cosmos”

A good longread for the weekend: a profile of astrophysicist Neil deGrasse Tyson:

“Tyson graduated from Bronx High School of Science in 1976 and went to Harvard. He wrestled, tutored prisoners in math, and studied astrophysics. In his sophomore year, he was talking with a fellow black student, a senior who was about to start a Rhode scholarship. The senior was appalled to hear Tyson talk about astrophysics. “Blacks in America do not have the luxury of your intellectual talents being wasted on astrophysics,” he declared.

“It was as if Tyson had been stung by a hornet. The stinger buried itself so deep inside him that it took nine years to work its way out. By then, Tyson was finishing his Ph.D. in astrophysics at Columbia. During graduate school, he became the department’s go-to person when reporters called to ask about something weird in the sky. He began answering questions readers sent to StarDate magazine. One day, a satellite recorded explosions on the surface of the sun, and a local television station asked Tyson if he would talk about it on camera. After the filming, he went home and watched himself on television. It was the first time he could recall ever seeing a black scientist speaking as an expert on American television. His college shame fell away.”

How are you celebrating Pi Day today?

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It’s also Albert Einstein’s birthday.

Aggie undergrad a finalist for innovation award

N.C. A&T student Lillian Barfield and two partners from UNC Wilmington are among the finalists for the Emerging Issues Prize for Innovation. The object of the competition is to come up with an idea to increase North Carolina’s high school graduation rate. There are separate categories for college students and high school students.

Barfield and her colleagues’ idea, as reported by the Star-News of Wilmington:

“The students created the Wilmington Community Digital Storytelling Collaboration, which gives iPads and digital cameras to middle schoolers who are at risk of dropping out to get them to tell a story. The middle schoolers are also paired with community members and UNCW students.“

The prize is sponsored by the Emerging Issues Forum at N.C. State University.  Online voting is under way through Monday February 6.  The winners will receive $5,000 and will be announced Tuesday at the annual Emerging Issues Forum.