Lance Cooley Named Fellow of the Institute of Physics
October 1, 2004
UPTON, NY - Lance Cooley, an associate scientist at the U.S. Department of Energy's Brookhaven National Laboratory, has been named a Fellow of the Institute of Physics. Based in London, the Institute is a leading international professional society with over 37,000 members, which promotes the advancement and dissemination of a knowledge of and education in the science of physics, pure and applied.
Cooley's citation recognizes him for his high level of achievement in physics and his contribution to the Institute as a member of an editorial board. Cooley is on the editorial board of the journal Superconductor Science and Technology.
"This is a completely unexpected honor," Cooley said. "I am touched that I would be thought of so highly at this early stage of my career."
Following a long tradition of Brookhaven scientists who have made important contributions to the field, Cooley studies superconductivity, or frictionless electricity. Currently, he is investigating magnesium diboride, a new superconductor with a unique arrangement of electrons. This feature makes it possible to manipulate the compound in ways that are not possible for other superconductors, which, in turn, might transform it into a practical conductor of electricity or a new material for making powerful magnets. Cooley hopes that the rapid progress made over the last three years of his work with magnesium diboride will continue, perhaps leading to motors to propel ships or magnets to levitate trains.
Cooley also experiments with flux pinning — a technique in which defects are managed in superconductors to increase electrical flow to levels thousands of times greater than for copper wires. Since this technique makes superconducting eletromagnets more powerful than copper-iron electromagnets, Cooley works with Brookhaven's Superconducting Magnet Division to create, design and test superconducting wires and magnets for particle accelerators and experimental facilities at Brookhaven and around the world.
Lance Cooley earned a B.A. in physics in 1986 at the University of Chicago, and an M.S. and Ph.D. in 1988 and 1993, respectively, both at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. From 1993 to 1995, he worked under a National Research Council Fellowship at the National Institute of Standards and Technology in Boulder, Colorado, as a materials research engineer. Then, in 1996, he returned to the University of Wisconsin-Madison, as an assistant scientist at the Applied Superconductivity Center, with additional duties as a science instructor at the Madison Area Technical College and a lecturer in the University of Wisconsin's Chemistry Department. Cooley joined Brookhaven in 2002, where he is an associate scientist in the Materials Science Department.
Cooley received the Materials Research Society's "Graduate Student Award" in 1992 for his Ph.D. thesis work. In 2003, he received an "Outstanding Mentor" award from the U.S. Department of Energy, Office of Science, for his work with high school and college students at Brookhaven Lab.
2004-10226 | INT/EXT | Newsroom
