For the second time in two years, a student receiving the prestigious APS Apker award for research by an undergraduate worked with a member of the Anacapa Society. One of this year’s winners, Bilin Zhuang of Wellesley College, recieved the award for her thesis on “The Thermodynamics of Ising Systems on the Triangular Kagome Lattice and Small-Model Approximations to Geometrically Frustrated Systems”. Her advisor, Courtney Lannert is a PUI theorist and founding member of the Anacapa Society. One of last year’s winners, Byron Drury of Haverford College, received his award for his work on “Factoring Quantum Logic Gates with Cartan Involutions” and was advised by Peter Love, also a founding member of the Anacapa Society.
The LeRoy Apker award is given annually by the American Physical Society “(t)o recognize outstanding achievements in physics by undergraduate students, and thereby provide encouragement to young physicists who have demonstrated great potential for future scientific accomplishment.” Usually, one award is given to a student from a PhD-granting institution and one to a student from a non-PhD-granting institution. This year, both awards went to students from non-PhD-granting institutions, the other going to Kathryn Greenberg of Mount Holyoke College.
You can read more about the APS Apker award, including a list of previous recipients here. To learn more about how the Anacapa Society promotes the careers of theoretical physicists at primarily undergraduate institutions, click here.