Stony Brook University Student Awarded 2007 Gertrude Scharff-Goldhaber Prize

June 6, 2007

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BWIS Board member Vinita Ghosh (left) and Gertrude Scharff-Goldhaber Award recipient Manuela Kulaxizi (Click on image to download a high-resolution version.)

UPTON, NY - Manuela Kulaxizi, who graduated this spring from Stony Brook University (SBU) with a Ph.D. in physics, has been awarded the 2007 Gertrude Scharff-Goldhaber Prize, consisting of a framed certificate and $1,000. The prize was established to recognize substantial promise and accomplishment by women graduate students in physics who are enrolled at SBU 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), a nonprofit organization that supports and encourages the advancement of women in science, the prize honors the outstanding contributions of the late nuclear physicist Gertrude Scharff-Goldhaber. In 1950, she became the first woman Ph.D. physicist appointed to the Brookhaven Lab staff. She also became a founding member of BWIS.

A native of Greece, Kulaxizi earned her B.S. in physics from the University of Athens in 1997. Also interested in acting, she later attended drama school. She returned to physics in 2001, when she began her graduate studies at the Yang Institute for Theoretical Physics at SBU. She plans to continue her career in physics as a postgraduate research fellow at the University of Amsterdam this fall. At the award ceremony, Kulaxizi gave a brief talk on her research, titled, "Gauge Theories, Gravity and Noncommutative Geometry."

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