Byron Freelon, assistant professor of physics, has been named a Fulbright Scholar for 2024-25, expanding his efforts to promote the representation of Black physicists while building the scientific workforce needed to interpret data produced by X-ray synchrotrons.

Named in honor Professor Margaret C. Etter (pictured),each Scientific Interest Group (SIG) and the Canadian Division have the opportunity to invite one student to receive an award and to present a lecture in one of the sessions organized by that SIG. Selections are based upon submitted abstracts and are independent of whether the student presenter originally requested an oral or poster presentation. Award winners are determined by the elected officers of the SIGs. Students who accept the invitation will receive a monetary award of $250, which is independent of any requests for support via the ACA Travel Awards.

When most people think of magnets, decorative pieces that you stick on a refrigerator door come to mind. However, the world of magnets goes far beyond your refrigerator. Uchenna Ubeh, a physics Ph.D. student at the University of Houston, received a graduate research fellowship funded through the U.S. Department of Energy. The fellowship enables him to conduct research using cutting-edge lab equipment at Tennessee’s Oak Ridge National Laboratory.

Uchenna Ubeh attended the 24th JCNS Laboratory Course – Neutron Scattering 2022 organized by Jülich Centre for Neutron Science at Forschungszentrum Jülich, Germany, in cooperation with RWTH Aachen University. The course consisted of two parts: a series of lectures, combined with the opportunity to take part in neutron scattering experiments. The lectures encompassed an introduction to neutron sources, along with scattering theory and instrumentation.

Chamini Pathiraja has been awarded an Advanced Light Source Doctoral Fellowship by the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory for her excellent research performances. This entails a year-long research opportunity at the Advanced Light Source user facility where she will receive scientific training and professional experience. She started working there on April 1, 2022.

Recently, Jayajeewana and Chamini both attended the UXSS 2022 (Ultrafast X-ray Summer School 2022) organized by Stanford Pulse Institute. Both attendees grateful for the opportunity, with Jayajeewana commenting that “The summer school was so exciting and informative, especially the lectures on ultrafast science using X-Ray Free Electron Lasers (XFEL)”.