IU physics professor receives Humboldt Award

IU physics professor Shyh-Yuan Lee was awarded a Humboldt Research Award from the Alexander von Humboldt Foundation in Bonn, Germany, for his substantial contributions to the physics of particle accelerators, IU President Adam Herbert announced last week. \nThe foundation grants up to 100 Humboldt Research Awards annually to scientists and scholars with internationally recognized qualifications, according to its Web site. The award honors the academic achievements of the recipient's lifetime, and recipients are invited to carry out research projects of their choice in Germany for six months to a year. \nLee left Sunday for Darmstadt, Germany, where he will spend a year working with ion and anti-proton beams at the laboratory Gesellschaft fur Schwerionenforschung mbH. Ion and anti-proton beam research has been used in understanding the evolution of the universe, developing a new tumor therapy for cancer treatment and testing the safety of equipment before it is sent into space.\nLee said he will miss IU during his year-long absence, but the "project is rather interesting and so I anticipate their work."\nLee is internationally known in the field of accelerator physics, said IU Cyclotron Facility Director Paul Sokol. \n"He's had an impact on just about every accelerator in the world, either directly through design or indirectly, by training one of the students who designed one," he said. \nLee helped with the design of the accelerator at the cyclotron, which is used in cancer-treatment research, understanding the early universe and testing NASA electronics before they are sent into space, among other things.\n"It's very nice to see someone recognized that is in a sense a behind-the-scenes guy," Sokol said. \nJohn Cameron, professor emeritus and cyclotron director from 1987 to 2004, helped recruit Lee to come in 1990 to start an accelerated physics program at IU. Since then, 14 of Lee's students have been awarded doctorates in the program. \n"He's one of the top guys in his field," said Cameron. "His work goes well beyond the Cyclotron. He's known all over the world. He has students working in national laboratories all over North America." \nOne of Lee's biggest contributions to the field of physics is his work on the design of the Relativistic Heavy Ion Collider at Brookhaven National Laboratory in New York. Hundreds of scientists, including many from IU, are using the machine to study the fundamental properties of the nucleus, such as where the proton gets its spin, Sokol said. Lee's work has enabled other researchers to understand how cells and DNA function and how protein works. \nLee discovered snake resonances, a new kind of depolarized resonances, according to his resume. Understanding these has led to the production of the highest-energy polarized proton beams in the world at Brookhaven. He served as the director of the United States Particle Accelerator School from 1998 to 2001, and as the spokesman for experiments on nonlinear beam dynamics at the Cyclotron's Cooler Ring, which have been applied to the understanding of space charge dominated beams. \nHe's authored two graduate textbooks and contributed to three other books on particle accelerator physics, as well as numerous scientific journals.\nLee said he's most proud of the students he's trained during his teaching career. \n"Students are always young and energetic," he said. "They come in not knowing much, but they come out as experts. They're better \nthan me"