Graduate student represents Rice at 51st Nobel Laureate meeting

Graduate
student represents Rice at 51st Nobel Laureate meeting
…………………………………………………………………

BY LIA UNRAU
Rice News Staff

Andrew Askew,
a graduate student in physics, is representing Rice at the
51st meeting of Nobel Laureates in Lindau, Germany, this
week. After a nationwide competition, the United States
Department of Energy (DOE) invited Askew to be one of the
38 U.S. graduate students participating in discussions at
the meeting June 25-29.

“I believe
this reflects very well on Andrew, the Bonner Lab, the physics
department and Rice,” said Paul Padley, assistant professor
of physics and astronomy and Askew’s adviser.

Since 1951,
Nobel Laureates in chemistry, physics and physiology/medicine
have convened annually in Lindau, Germany, for open and
informal meetings with students and young researchers from
around the world. The meetings rotate by discipline each
year; this year’s event will focus on physics.

“The thing
that is really striking about Andrew is that last summer
he was at Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory helping
build an experiment, and in his spare hours he completed
his master’s thesis,” Padley said.

Askew’s
two projects were very different in nature — one required
mechanical engineering skill to construct hardware for the
experiment, and for the other he had to think creatively
to develop pattern-recognition software that will lead to
new ways to look at physics data.

“He did
both of those things very well,” Padley said. “If
he had done one of those things well I would have been happy.
I can only conclude that Andrew is working at the level
of two outstanding graduate students combined into one.”

The U.S. Department
of Energy/Oak Ridge Associated Universities Graduate Student
Awards allow U.S. doctoral students whose current research
at their universities is funded by DOE to travel to Lindau
to attend the meetings.

The laureates
will lecture on the topic of their choice related to physics
in the morning and participate in discussions with the students
in the afternoons and some evenings.

In addition
to this honor, Askew, upon receiving his master’s degree,
also received Rice’s Chuoke Award, given to a second-
or third-year graduate student in physics for outstanding
academic and research performance.