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Diane Greenberg, 631 344-2347, or
Mona S. Rowe, 631 344-5056

Three Graduate Students Awarded Scharff-Goldhaber Prize in Physics

Upton, NY - Three Ph.D. candidates in physics have each won the annual $1,000 Scharff-Goldhaber Prize this year: Jane Burward-Hoy and Irina Mocioiu, both from Stony Brook University (SBU), and Rebecca Christianson from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

The award was established to recognize substantial promise and accomplishment by women graduate students in physics who are enrolled at Stony Brook University or who are performing their thesis research at the U.S. Department of Energy's Brookhaven National Laboratory. Administered by Brookhaven Women in Science (BWIS), the prize honors the late nuclear physicist Gertrude Scharff-Goldhaber. In 1950, Scharff-Goldhaber became the first woman Ph.D. physicist appointed to the Brookhaven staff, and, later, she became a founding member of BWIS.

Pictured are (from left) Pam Mansfield, BWIS; Jane Burward-Hoy; Irina Mocioiu; Maurice Goldhaber, Scientist Emeritus at Brookhaven and widower of Gertrude-Scharff-Goldhaber; Rebecca Christianson; Alfred Goldhaber, Professor of Physics at SBU and son of Gertrude and Maurice Goldhaber; and Robert Shrock, Professor of Physics at SBU and Mocioiu's advisor.

The U.S. Department of Energy's Brookhaven National Laboratory conducts research in the physical, biomedical, and environmental sciences, as well as in energy technologies. Brookhaven also builds and operates major facilities available to university, industrial, and government scientists. The Laboratory is managed by Brookhaven Science Associates, a corporation founded by Stony Brook University and Battelle, a nonprofit applied science and technology organization.

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