Two Rutgers professors named fellows of top national science association
Two Rutgers professors are among 401 members of the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) who have been elevated to the rank of fellow. The pre-eminent national organization selects its fellows based on their scientifically or socially distinguished efforts to advance science or its applications.
The new inductees will receive an official certificate and a gold and blue rosette pin Saturday, Feb. 14, at the AAAS fellows forum during the 2014 AAAS Annual Meeting in San Jose.
The new Rutgers AAAS fellows join six other professors in the Department of Physics and Astronomy in the School of Arts and Sciences who have previously received this distinction.
Andrew Baker is an astrophysicist who uses radio telescopes to probe how galaxies evolve in the nearby and distant universe. Working with colleagues at the University of Maryland and the National Radio Astronomy Observatory, he has developed and employed a novel instrument that can determine the distances of star-forming galaxies so dusty they are nearly invisible to optical telescopes. The instrument is used with the observatory's Robert C. Byrd 100-meter telescopein Green Bank, West Virginia. Baker and an international team are now embarking on a study of neutral hydrogen gas in galaxies over the last 9 billion years, using a new array of radio telescopes in South Africa.
The association cited Baker "for extraordinary contributions to scholarship in radio astronomy through innovative design of instrumentation, leadership of international collaborations and dedicated mentoring of students."
Robert Bartynski is an experimental condensed matter physicist who studies the electronic properties of materials that can be used for computer chips, energy storage and capturing solar energy. He focuses on the electronic properties of material surfaces, very thin films of materials and the atomic structure of materials, which range from simple metals to complex metal oxides. Bartynski uses a range of sophisticated microscopes, spectrometers and other instruments to do these studies, several of which he developed or advanced in his lab.
The association cited Bartynski "for seminal studies of electronic states at surfaces and interfaces, made possible by developing novel tools such as Auger Photoelectron Coincidence Spectroscopy and Inverse Photoemission."
Provided by Rutgers University
