White House Honors Los Alamos Physicist’s Early Career Work

Physicist Ivan Vitev received a prestigious Presidential Early Career Award for Scientists and Engineers

Los Alamos, New Mexico, July 10, 2009—The White House today announced that Los Alamos National Laboratory physicist Ivan Vitev has received a prestigious Presidential Early Career Award for Scientists and Engineers (PECASE). The honor is the highest bestowed by the U.S. government to outstanding scientists early in their careers.

Vitev joined Los Alamos National Laboratory in 2004 as a J. Robert Oppenheimer Postdoctoral Fellow, the most distinguished postdoctoral appointment at the Laboratory. Vitev is widely recognized for his expertise in quantum chromodynamics, the theory of strong interactions, and in energy loss of high-energy particles in hot, dense matter. His scientific work has been used to determine properties of the quark-gluon plasma, a new state of matter discovered in 2000 that is similar to what many scientists believe conditions of the universe were like immediately after the Big Bang. Vitev’s work has assisted research at the U.S. Department of Energy’s Relativistic Heavy Ion Collider at Brookhaven National Laboratory, and he is leading a theoretical effort to measure energy loss in jets of high-energy particles at the Large Hadron Collider in Europe. Vitev has published 58 manuscripts, which have been cited more than 2,800 times, and he has given more than 100 invited talks.

Vitev’s research was funded by DOE’s Office of Science and the National Nuclear Security Administration. As a PECASE recipient, he will receive up to five years’ funding from the Office of Science to advance his research.

In addition to DOE Office of Science Funding, Vitev’s research efforts received funding from LANL’s Laboratory-Directed Research and Development program through his Oppenheimer Fellowship.

“Ivan is a recognized leader in the nuclear physics community at LANL,” said John Sarrao, director of LANL’s Office of Science Programs. “His work has attracted other gifted researchers to the Laboratory and continues to inspire physicists worldwide. We congratulate Ivan on this most prestigious recognition of his talent.”

Contact: James R. Rickman, (505) 665-9203, jamesr [a] lanl (p) gov

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