Ilan Ben-Zvi, a physicist at the U.S.
Department of Energy's Brookhaven National Laboratory, has
won the 2008 IEEE Nuclear & Plasma Sciences Society (NPSS)
Merit Award. IEEE originally represented electrical and electronics
engineers, but it has expanded its scope and today is the world's
leading professional association for the advancement of technology.
Ben-Zvi will receive his award, which consists of $2,000, a plaque, and
a certificate, at an IEEE/NPSS meeting of his choice.
Ilan Ben-Zvi
Ben-Zvi's award citation states: "For outstanding
contributions to the fields of high energy physics accelerators and
free electron lasers (FELs)." FELs are used to study a wide variety of
materials and chemical reactions.
As Director of Brookhaven Lab's Accelerator Test Facility
(ATF) for 15 years, Ben-Zvi saw to its development as the premiere
advanced accelerator physics facility in the world. Commissioned in
1992, Brookhaven's ATF is a small linear accelerator, which operates in
conjunction with a high-powered, short-pulse laser to produce an
electron beam.
Physicists from around the world use the facility to study new
concepts in accelerator physics. Working at the ATF, Ben-Zvi invented
devices for improving the operation of accelerators for physics
research and for FELs.
After earning a Ph.D. in physics from the Weizmann Institute
of Science, Israel, in 1970, Ben-Zvi went to Stanford University, where
he helped develop the earliest stages of superconducting linear
accelerators. In 1975, he returned to Weizmann, where he founded a
cryogenic technology laboratory. From 1980- 1982, Ben-Zvi was a
visiting associate professor of physics at Stony Brook University,
where he helped to establish an accelerator at the school, and he
invented and developed accelerator systems now used throughout the
world.
Ben-Zvi joined Brookhaven Lab as a visiting physicist in 1988
and rose through the ranks to become a senior physicist in 1997. He
served as head of Brookhaven's Accelerator Test Facility from 1992 to
2007, and he is currently the associate chair for superconducting
accelerator R&D at Brookhaven as well as an adjunct professor
of physics at Stony Brook University.
A Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of
Science and the American Physical Society, Ben-Zvi is also a senior
member of IEEE and the recipient of the 1999 IEEE Accelerator Science
and Technology Award. He received Brookhaven Lab's Science and
Technology Award in 2001 and the Free Electron Laser Prize in 2007,
sponsored by the International Free Electron Laser Conference. He has
served in leading roles in many scientific meetings and panels,
including the FEL '95 and FEL'01 international meetings. He is the
author or coauthor of over 375 publications.