2018 Fall Prize & Award Recipients

Each year, APS receives hundreds of nominations from scholars around the world hoping to recognize a colleague or pupil through the Society’s prizes and awards. The Fall 2018 awards recognized individuals from the United States and abroad in the fields of fluid dynamics and plasma physics. Each award will be presented at an upcoming APS meeting this fall.

The Fluid Dynamics Prize recognizes outstanding achievement in fluid dynamics research.

“For profound, elegant, and lasting contributions to fluid mechanics, including turbulence, Stokes flows, topological fluid mechanics, interfacial flows, and self-similarity."

Keith Moffatt, University of Cambridge

The John Dawson Award for Excellence in Plasma Physics Research focuses specifically on achievements in plasma physics research.

“For the first experimental demonstration of the stabilization of edge localized modes in high-confinement diverted discharges by application of very small edge-resonant magnetic perturbations, leading to the adoption of suppression coils in the ITER design.”

Todd E. Evans, General Atomics

Max E. Fenstermacher, Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory

Richard Alan Moyer, University of California, San Diego

The Landau-Spitzer Award emphasizes advancing collaboration between U.S. and European plasma physics research, theory, or technical contributions.

“For experimental verification, through collaborative experiments, of a novel and highly efficient ion cyclotron resonance heating scenario for plasma heating and generation of energetic ions in magnetic fusion devices.”

Yevgen Kazakov, Laboratory for Plasma Physics of the Royal Military Academy (LPP-ERM/KMS), Brussels, Belgium

Jozef Ongena, Laboratory for Plasma Physics of the Royal Military Academy (LPP/ERM-KMS) Brussels, Belgium

John C. Wright, MIT Plasma Science and Fusion Center

Stephen J. Wukitch, MIT Plasma Science and Fusion Center

The James Clerk Maxwell Prize for Plasma Physics recognizes outstanding contributions to plasma physics broadly.

“For pioneering research, including key experimental advances and diagnostic development, that established the links between sheared plasma flow and turbulent transport, leading to improved confinement regimes for magnetized plasmas through turbulent transport reduction by sheared flow.”

Keith H. Burrell, General Atomics

The Marshall N. Rosenbluth Outstanding Doctoral Thesis Award goes to a young plasma physicist who has performed original thesis work of outstanding scientific quality and achievement.

“For major contributions to understanding, simulating, and diagnosing turbulence in compressing plasmas; for the identification of the sudden dissipation effect and suggestions for exploiting it; and for the derivation of a practical lower bound on turbulent dissipation in compressing plasma.”

Seth Davidovits, Princeton Plasma Physics Laboratory

The Thomas H. Stix Award for Outstanding Early Career Contributions to Plasma Physics Research recognizes contributions to plasma physics research by early career physicists.

“For seminal contributions that advanced the field of laboratory astrophysics through numerical simulations and leadership of experiments on particle acceleration, collisionless shocks, and magnetic reconnection.”

Frederico Fiuza, SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory

Additional information about the prizes and awards, including their establishment and support, rules and eligibility, and their nomination and selection procedures are available at the APS Prizes & Awards page.