Celebrating Achievement
October 24, 2011
In an awards ceremony on November 4, 2011, the Photon Sciences Directorate acknowledged the achievements of its staff during fiscal year 2011.
Engineering Award
Thomas Joos, Photon Sciences Wing Louie, Photon Sciences Nikolaos Simos, Photon Sciences and Nuclear Science and Technology Department Department
Brookhaven Award
Cathleen Lavelle, Photon Sciences Paul Ribaudo, Photon Sciences and Superconducting Magnet Division
Spotlight Awards
In addition, 32 Photon Sciences staff members were honored with Spotlight Awards, given to those who have shown exceptional dedication to their jobs during the year. The Spotlight Award recipients were:
Brent Buetow, who took over the design of the cable tray system for the NSLS injector complex. This involved the design for transport lines and also the booster, all done within schedule and with limited resources.
Bob Chmiel, who, in addition to his responsibilities as the NSLS safety officer, was assigned to manage the ESH aspects of installation of the accelerator components in Bldg. 740. He successfully applied his vast experience to the installation process as the primary reviewer and approval authority for work planning and through routine presence at the job site to guide staff in the safe performance of their work.
Gretchen Cisco, for serving two successive interview committees for two high-level positions at the Lab: Chief Human Resources Officer and Laboratory Protection Division Manager. She was commended by senior management for her thorough and thoughtful participation, all the while completing her normal work and taking on added responsibilities.
Todd Corwin, for establishing a completely new insertion device magnetic measurement facility, including the setup of a temperature-stabilized clean room, a preparation laboratory, a VTF, a helium refrigerator, and a tech shop. He accomplished this with maximum attention to details and with minimum cost.
Joseph Cosentino, who was responsible for installation and testing of mechanical systems in the NSLS-II ring building to ensure that they were in compliance with contract documents. His efforts were critical to the beneficial occupancy of the phases of the project, especially the early phases.
Ken Decker, who quickly became a key person in the NSLS-II chamber assembly and processing area, taking ownership of these tasks and streamlining the setup. This enabled the group to ramp up and reach current production level.
Bill Gash, for assistance in supervising the mechanical design group in the Accelerator Division as acting deputy supervisor, taking on the job of managing and publishing the drawing releases, as well as leading the coordination of the use of Navisworks.
James Grandy, who took over responsibility of bending magnet extrusions, coming up with several innovative methods to improve the accuracy of the measurement and the efficiency of the inspection.
Peter Gross, George Chanady, John Van Houten, and Michael Poat, for the group’s outstanding effort and performance, especially during all conferences and DOE reviews, during which they worked extra hours both preparing for the events and then supporting the participants. The team has set a very high standard and continually exceeds this self-imposed goal, as evidenced by the many accolades received.
Christine Herbst, for exceptional performance in handling Foreign Travel Authorizations for staff and contractors overseeing magnet vendors in New Zealand, Russia, China, and the United Kingdom. During the fiscal year, she completed over 55 foreign travel trips.
Yong Hu, for his leadership in selecting and integrating the non-bending-pole-magnet diagnostics, first working with physicists to understand the requirements and then with instrument engineers to understand the impact on selection of data acquisition instrumentation.
William Kieffner, for commendable performance in ensuring that the site utilities, especially the steam system, were complete in time to support the phase turnover of the NSLS-II ring building.
Dennis Kuhne, who demonstrated exceptional performance in setting up the nanopositioning R&D lab, equipping the R&D machine shop to enable prototyping work needed to develop the HXN end station, precise machining of parts and components, and interaction with vendors and procurement.
Marshall Maggipinto, whose work has been a key element in the NSLS-II radio-frequency beam-position-monitor development success over the past year, allowing the project to maintain schedule and cost objectives. He takes the initiative to anticipate next steps to ensure timely completion of program tasks.
Ed Marczak, for carrying out the task of analyzing the current NSLS-II bake-out design and modifying the existing RHIC design for NSLS-II vacuum chamber/girder testing. He did an outstanding job of managing the task from start to finish.
Brian Mullany, who played a key role in implementing a new engineering-change-order process for releasing and revising drawings. Working with Peter Gross, he spent months testing the new process on a development server, creating routing lists and customizing the user interface to include information needed for the NSLS-II project.
Vishy Ravindranath, for outstanding work in supporting the RF group on several complex and difficult tasks, including the design and analysis of the NSLS-II third harmonic cavity to meet ASME code and analyses of the oval bellows in the CESR-B superconducting cavity and CESR-B coupler tongue modification.
Leo Reffi, who made essential contributions in the 0.1 meV crystal optics R&D program that led to the successful results obtained at SPring-8, reaching a very important milestone. He was responsible for developing the detailed design of the mobile system, based on the conceptual design from Scott Coburn.
Bruno Semon, who, as the lead structural and civil inspector on the NSLS-II ring building project, was very diligent and thorough in his approach to the inspection process, working hard to ensure that the project met all requirements of the contract documents.
Jayesh Shah, for developing a new software interface to the timing and event system that is being used at NSLS-II. The insight and implementation he demonstrated greatly improved the system and enables its use for commissioning.
Xianbo Shi, for his outstanding contribution to the analytical and numerical studies of the energy resolution, reflectivity and beam focusing of bent Laue crystal optics as a function of crystal thickness, bending, asymmetry and reflection plane. In addition, he was active in the set-up and in measurements at the X7A and X15A NSLS beamlines.
Kunal Shroff, who created a robust and globally useful channel finder service with 1) the ability to load the directory in the service through an interface, 2) a user tool to view and modify these data interactively, and 3) an interface for tools to access the result of manipulating a vector or instruments or the X orbit of the beam.
James (Will) Smart, for developing a programmatic solution that handled greater than 95 percent of the drive mappings, resulting in a large savings in work hours for IT staff and minimizing work disruptions to Photon Sciences staff.
Jean Smiles, for her commendable effort as well as her exuberant, efficient and helpful team-spirit attitude in supervising a half-time admin person, processing travel, and organizing and scheduling meetings. She also took on extra duties in place of two administrative personnel.
Jean Smiles and Michelle Scaduto, for their tenacious effort to assemble and verify a list of about 40 unions and 90 companies doing conventional construction of NSLS-II. The list was used in the official program for a ceremony on October 13, 2010, and then later to support government relations work by the American Physical Society.
Tammy Stein, who organized the Competitiveness Improvement Project’s Hiring and On-Boarding SharePoint site, prepared materials for meetings, took minutes, tracked action items, and gathered documentation. Although asked to cover admin duties, which she did admirably, she also became a valuable contributing member of the team.
Brian Walsh, for being the principle individual supplying technical support of the NSLS X-13A end station project, serving essential roles during component and system assembly, plus installation and testing of critical systems. Of note: When a design flaw in the liquid nitrogen lead vessel assembly was found, he carried out a challenging repair that boosted performance of the system.
Nancye Wright, who is recognized for her outstanding performance in organizing and participating in the Proposal Oversight Panel meetings, routing proposals through the web-based system known as PASS, and scheduling/participating in Allocation Panel meetings.
Patrick Zoccoli, for his key role in the completion and acceptance of the life-safety systems, critical to achieving beneficial occupancy of the NSLS-II ring building. During inspections, using his extensive electrical experience, he investigated issues to make sure any questions were addressed.
And in the Travel Office of Staff Services. . . Pat Johnson, Jody Maddock, Jane O’Brien-Fox and Helen Savage, who are recognized for their valuable and priceless service in arranging foreign travel for the Accelerator Division.
Service Awards
Recognized for long-term service at Brookhaven Lab:
50 Years
John Dabrowski
30 Years
Michael Caruso
Richard Freudenberg
Richard Heese
Pooran Singh
25 Years
Scott Buda
Peter Cameron
Martin Fallier
Shuchen (Kate) Feng
Michael Fulkerson
Charles Gardner
Douglas Zigrosser
20 Years
Eric Blum
Albert Boerner Jr.
Charles De La Parra
Joseph Gormley
Kenneth Krasner
Michael Lehecka
Cynthia Longo
Jennifer O'Connor
Dennis Poshka
James Rank
James Rose
John Rubino
10 Years
Marc Allaire
Edwin Haas
Christie Nelson
Ronald Pindak
Kathleen Ratto
James Stolfi
Lin Yang
Awards From Outside Organizations
Recognized for prestigious awards from outside organizations were the following:
R&D 100 Award
presented by R&D 100 Magazine to celebrate top high-tech products of the year
Anthony Kuczewski; Marc Pfeffer; Dennis Poshka; D. Peter Siddons, principal developer
American Association for the Advancement of Science Fellow
honor bestowed by the American Association for the Advancement of Science
Steven Dierker
2011-2710 | INT/EXT | Newsroom
