Graduate research cited for excellence

The 10th Annual Sugarman Awards for Excellence in Graduate Student Research in the physical sciences have been presented to Jeffrey Berryhill, Physics; Asantha Cooray and Nils Halverson, Astronomy & Astrophysics; and Benjamin McCall, Astronomy & Astrophysics and Chemistry.

Berryhill was cited for his innovative and careful probes of high-energy subatomic particle collisions created by the Tevatron collider at Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory.

Cooray was cited for exceptional breadth in contributions to cosmology, especially the study of higher-order effects in the cosmic microwave backgroundóthe echo of the big bangóand large-scale structure in the universe. Halverson was cited for outstanding contributions to the design, construction and deployment of the Degree Angular Scale Interferometer at the South Pole, and for leading the analysis effort to extract a definitive measurement of the slight temperature fluctuations in the cosmic microwave background.

McCall was cited for his major role in the observational studies of the H₃⁺ ion, which plays the central role in interstellar chemistry. The observations led to the surprising discovery of abundant H₃⁺ in diffuse interstellar molecular clouds.

The awards are named for the late Nathan Sugarman, an influential and prominent faculty member who died in 1990. Sugarman was a Chicago alumnus, charter member of the Enrico Fermi Institute and longtime Professor in Chemistry.