Department of Physics awards first Bruce Winstein Prize to Scott Waitukaitis

The physics department has awarded its inaugural Bruce Winstein Prize for Instrumentation to graduate student Scott Waitukaitis.

Named for the late Bruce Winstein, the Samuel K. Allison Distinguished Service Professor in Physics, the Winstein Prize will be awarded annually to a graduate student doing outstanding work in the development or application of instrumentation.

Waitukaitis received the prize primarily for his developmental work in the laboratory of Heinrich Jaeger, the William J. Friedman and Alicia Townsend Professor in Physics, on a novel experimental setup that can track nanoscale inter-particle forces during cluster formation in freely falling particle streams. Jaeger describes the apparatus that Waitukaitis developed as “unique in its capabilities and does not exist anywhere else.”

Waitukaitis holds a Robert Millikan Fellowship, which provides support for U.S. graduate students who have a demonstrated interest in and aptitude for teaching physics.

Waitukaitis had previously received Robert McCormick and Robert Sachs fellowships. McCormick Fellowships go to the highest-rated applicants to the physics department’s doctoral program. Sachs Fellowships provide summer support for top first-year graduate students in physics.

Winstein, who died in 2011, forged a reputation for tackling research projects in high-energy physics and in cosmology that required extremely precise measurements.st