Rojansky, Bell, and Townsend Awards Conferred

The Rojansky Writing Award, the Graydon and Louise Bell Prize, and the Townsend Award were conferred on this year’s winners at the first colloquium of the fall semester. Shifrah Aron-Dine won the Rojansky Writing Award for her Physics 52 term paper on the solar neutrino problem. Shifrah spent the summer working on mean field theory in Australia before running into yours truly at the Ashland Shakespeare Festival in August. She’s also aiming to be our first student to study abroad at the Technion in Israel, which she hopes to do next semester. Shifrah is standing to the right of Louise Bell, who was on hand for the awarding of the Graydon and Louise Bell Prize to senior Natasha Arvanitis. The Bell prize honors outstanding scholarship, creativity, and service. Tasha is a stalwart tutor in the Academic Excellence program, and has assisted us on a number of other assignments, including tutoring during the winter mechanics workshops we have offered in recent years to first-year students with weak backgrounds in mechanics. Tasha took a break from summer internships at Fermilab to test the waters at Yelp! this past summer‚Äîand perhaps to see what earning real money feels like! The third annual Townsend Award for outstanding performance in Physics 116 was given to Brett Berger, a multi-talented senior who swims long distance for the Stags, plays both classical and jazz piano, and somehow also finds time to grade for us. Congratulations, one and all!