Stephanie Moyerman wins the Apker Award!

Stephanie Moyerman is the third Harvey Mudd physics student to win the American Physical Society’s Apker Award. The award honors the outstanding physics students in the country. Two awards are made each year, one to a PhD-granting institution and one to a non-PhD-granting institution. Stephanie joins Gwen (Bell) Porter (’98) and Nathaniel Stern (’03) among the Harvey Mudd winners of this most prestigious award.

Because Stephanie is currently on a Watson Foundation Fellowship to study judo throughout the world, and because the Watson Foundation refused to permit her to return to the States to appear before the Apker panel at the Stanford Linear Accelerator Center and describe her research, competing for the award was a special challenge for Stephanie. To overcome this difficulty, Prof. James Eckert set up a video teleconference from London to SLAC so she could give her talk and answer the panel’s questions over a video link. The picture shows Steph explaining her polarized neutron scattering data and fielding the panel’s questions.