VT College of Science Quarterly August 2014 Vol. 2 No. 1 | Page 18

Leo Piilonen

Uwe Tauber

Bruce Vogelaar

Physics
department
sees three
elected as
American
Physical
Society
Fellows

Three Virginia Tech College of Science faculty
were recently elected as Fellows into the
American Physical Society.
Leo Piilonen, the William E. Hassinger Jr.,
Senior Faculty Fellow in Physics and chair
of the department; Bruce Vogelaar, professor of physics and director of the Kimballton
Underground Research Facility; and Uwe
Tauber, professor of physics, were so honored
in November.
Fellowship in the APS is limited to no more
than one-half of one percent of membership.
“To have three of our faculty elected as
Fellows is quite exceptional,” said Lay Nam
Chang, dean of the College of Science, and
himself a physicist. “To have three elected at
the same time is a testament to the people of
the department and the cutting edge nature of
the research they conduct. I’m very proud of
them and happy to see their work recognized
so highly among their peers.”
Piilonen was cited by the APS “for his important experimental contributions in the areas of
lepton physics, CP violation, the CKM matrix
and quarkonia; and for his leadership of the
Belle and Belle II Collaborations.”
A member of the Virginia Tech faculty since
1987, he received his bachelor’s degree from
the University of Toronto, and a master’s
degree and doctoral degree from Princeton
University.
Vogelaar was cited for significant contributions to neutrino physics and underground
science, especially through his leadership in

calibrating the Borexino detector, with the first
real-time detection of 7Be solar neutrinos, and
his creation of the Kimballton Underground
Research Facility which is opening up new
opportunities for fundamental physics experiments.
He began working at Virginia Tech in 1998.
He received his bachelor's degree from Hope
College and a master's degree and Ph.D. from
California Institute of Technology in 1989.
Tauber was cited for “seminal and sustained
contributions to the understanding of nonequilibrium, universal properties of reaction
diffusion processes and driven diffusive
systems, with applications in materials science
and biological systems.”
He earned his Ph.D. at TU Munchen (Germany), and arrived at Virginia Tech in 1999.

18

College of Science Quarterly

A complete list of all APS
Fellows from 1990-Present
can be found here.