Congratulations to Brett Berger and Aaron Rosenthal

Congratulations to Brett Berger for winning the Thomas B. Brown award and to Aaron Rosenthal for winning the Alfred B. Focke award.

Brett’s thesis describes a new inverted Raman micrometer that he has built over the past year in Prof. Lyzenga’s Astrobiology lab. His work represents a signficant step on the way to developing a mobile robotic Raman spectrometer to search for molecular fingerprints of life in lava tubes on Mars.

Aaron’s thesis described his work on a micron-scale particle delivery system for laser fusion experiments in Prof. Donnelly’s laboratory. Aaron teased out the secrets to getting reliable particle ejection from silicon substrates and has paved the way for the group to head back down to Austin and Todd Ditmire’s laboratory to hit the particles with ( 10^{19}mathrm{ J/cm^2} ) pulses of the THOR laser system.