In the News: 2012

  • December 21, 2012: Sandra Faber (Visiting Miller Professor Spring 2005), a UC Santa Cruz astronomy and astrophysics professor renowned for her work charting the properties of galaxies, has been awarded a National Medal of Science by President Barack Obama. The National Medal of Science is the U. S. government’s highest award for scientists.

  • November 9, 2012: Richard Saykally (Miller Professor 1985-86; 1997-98; Fall 2006) was awarded the Faraday Lectureship Medal at an award ceremony of the Royal Society of Chemistry in Birmingham, UK, on November 9, 2012.  This medal, the UK’s top honor for physical chemistry, was awarded for “the development of powerful new spectroscopic technology and its application in pioneering studies of molecular ions, water clusters, liquid water and aqueous solutions and their surfaces.”

  • October 2012: Bernard Sadoulet (Miller Professor, Spring 2011) was awarded the 2013 W.K.H. Panofsky Prize in Experimental Particle Physics for his pioneering work and leading role in the development and use of phonon detection techniques enabling direct searches for weakly interacting massive particles.”

  • October 2012: Hermona Soreq (Visiting Miller Professor Spring 2009) has been awarded one of the European Research Council’s Advanced Awards for 2012. This highly competitive award, granted to 100 researchers within Europe, comes with a prize of 2.375 M Euros for five years.

  • October 26, 2012: Mark Laidre (Miller Fellow 2010-2013) was featured in a Berkeley article entitled “Hermit crabs socialize to evict their neighbors.”

  • September 16, 2012: Study leader Svante Pääbo (Visiting Miller Professor Spring 2013), a pioneer in decoding ancient genomes, said it would take biologists decades to understand all the meaning of all these tiny different. Dr. Pääbo and his coauthors have highlighted several intriguing genetic differences between modern humans and our primitive relatives that could be significant, including genes involved in wiring the brain and ones that are known to be linked to autism. Analysis of the genome and comparisons with ours and the Neanderthals' will odder insights into the history of Homo sapiens. More Information

  • July 25, 2012:  Eliot Quataert (Miller Executive Committee 2012, Miller Professor 2009-2010) & Alice Guionnet (Visiting Miller Professor 2006); were awarded a $500,000 open-ended grant from the Simons Foundation to further their research. Dr. Quataert is a theoretical astrophysicist with interests in black holes, stellar physics, plasma astrophysics and galaxy formation, among other topics, and is the director of the UC Berkeley Theoretical Astrophysics Center. More Information

  • July 24, 2012:  Josef Dufek (Miller Fellow 2006-2008) & David Shelly (Miller Fellow 2007-2008) were announced as the distinguished honorees of the James B. Macelwane Medal. “These individuals are recognized for their outstanding contributions to the advancement of Earth and space science and for their service to the scientific community. They have distinguished themselves through their extraordinary achievements and are role models for future generations of scientists.” More Information

  • July 19, 2012:  Tanja Cuk (Miller Fellow 2007-2010), assistant professor of chemistry, “has received a Baker Fellowship to advance her research on ‘supercapacitors’. Cuk’s goal is a new generation of supercapacitors optimized for both power delivery and energy storage.” More information

  • June 12, 2012:  Ray Jayawardhana (Miller Fellow 2000-2002), a professor and Canada Research Chair in observational astrophysics at the University of Toronto. He will deliver this year’s Whidden Lectureat McMaster: “Rocks, Ice and Penguins: Searching for Clues to Planetary Origins in Antarctica.” More information

  • May 13, 2012: Gil Navon (Miller Professor Fall 1996, Fall 1997), Tel Aviv University, was awarded the Mif’al HaPayis Landau Prize for pioneering developments in magnetic resonance imaging.

  • May 1, 2012: The American Academy of Arts and Sciences announced the election of new members, which include the following former Miller Institute Members: AAAS
    • Miller Professors:
      • Bjorn M. Poonen (Fall 2005)
      • Bernard Sadoulet (Spring 2011)
      • Peidong Yang (Spring 2009)


    • Visiting Miller Professors:
      • Philip H. Bucksbaum (Fall 1996)
      • John B. Pendry (Fall 1991)
      • Richard L. Taylor (Spring 1999)
  • May 1, 2012: The National Academy of Sciences announced the election of members, which include the following former Miller Institute Members: NAS
    • Miller Fellows:
      • William Bialek (1986-1987)
      • Guinevere Kauffmann (1993-1994)


    • Miller Professors:
      • John Clarke (1975-1976, Fall 1994 & 2007)
      • Mary Power (Spring 2002)
      • Bernard Sadoulet (Spring 2011)
    • Visiting Miller Professors:
      • Matthew Fisher (Spring 1991)
      • John F. Hartwig (Fall 2009)

  • April 17, 2012: Professor Barbara Romanowicz (Miller Professor Spring 2010) received The Reid Medal at the April 17, 2012 annual meeting of the SSA in San Diego, California. The Harry F. Reid Medal is the highest honor of the Seismological Society of America (SSA). The Reid Medal is awarded for "outstanding contributions to seismology and earthquake engineering." Dr. Romanowicz was honored as an exceptional scientist who has made fundamental contributions to theoretical seismology, seismology infrastructure and global geodynamics. More information

  • March 8, 2012: Rich Saykally (Miller Professor 1985-86, 1997-98, Fall 2006, Executive Committee) was awarded the 2012 Royal Society of Chemistry Faraday Lectureship Prize. The RSC is the largest organization in Europe for advancing the chemical sciences. More information

  • March 5, 2012: Nicholas P. Jewell (Miller Professor Fall 1994, Fall 2004), professor of biostatistics and statistics at the UC Berkeley School of Public Health, was awarded the Harvard School of Public Health’s 2012 Marvin Zelen Leadership Award in Statistical Science.

  • March 5, 2012: Marvin L. Cohen (Miller Professor 1969-70, 1976-77 &1988) Carnegie Mellon University will award its 2011 Dickson Prize in Science to Marvin L. Cohen, one of the most influential condensed matter physicists in the world.

  • February 21, 2012: James Sethian (Miller Professor Spring 2011) and Robert Saye, mathematicians who both hold joint appointments with the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (Berkeley Lab) and the University of California (UC) Berkeley, have won the 2011Cozzarelli Prize for the best scientific paper in the category of Engineering and Applied Sciences. Their winning paper, “The Voronoi Implicit Interface Method for computing multiphase physics,” introduces a robust, accurate and efficient numerical method for tracking large numbers of interacting and evolving regions (phases) whose motions are determined by complex interactions of geometry, physics, constraints and internal boundary conditions. More information

  • February 3, 2012: Chancellor Robert J. Birgeneau (Advisory Board Member) is the recipient of the 2012 Clifford G. Shull Prize of the Neutron Scattering Society of America (NSSA) with the citation: “For his seminal scientific, tireless leadership, and devoted mentoring in the field of neutron scattering.”

  • February 2012: Sébastien Merkel (Miller Fellow 2004 - 2006) was awarded the 2011 European Mineralogical Society Research Excellence Medal.