New York State Leaders In Superconductivity... - SuperPower

New York State Leaders In Superconductivity...
The 2nd New York State Superconductor Technology Summit is pleased to name the following
individuals as “New York State Leaders in Superconductivity” during the Centennial Celebration
of the technology. Each of these individuals was nominated from among the superconductivity
community in New York State as “leaders who have made important contributions to the research,
development and commercialization of superconductivity in New York State over the past century.”
1. Kathleen Amm (GE Global Research, Niskayuna) ~ Dr. Kathleen Amm is Technology Leader for MRI Technologies and
Systems at GE Global Research where she works with her team to deliver innovative MR and superconducting technologies to GE
businesses. Her primary research areas of interest include: MRI and medical applications of superconductivity, superconducting
electric machines, high temperature superconductivity, material properties at low temperatures, and permanent magnets. Dr.
Amm is active member of the superconductivity and cryogenics communities serving on Boards of Applied Superconductivity
and Cryogenic Engineering conferences, committee member at the Magnet Technology conference, member of Editorial Board for
Superconducting Science and Technology. Dr. Amm contributes significant effort to attract new talents to Superconductivity and
its applications.
2. Ivan Bozovic (Brookhaven National Laboratory, Upton) ~ BNL physicist Ivan Bozovic is a leader in the field of epitaxy
and nano-engineering of complex oxides, and is also renowned for his optical and Raman spectroscopy results. His research
accomplishments include the construction of an unparalleled next-generation molecular beam epitaxy oxide system, integrated
with a 16 channel atomic absorption spectroscopy system for accurate real-time monitoring of atomic fluxes, as well as a lowenergy
electron microscope and a time-of-flight ion scattering and recoil spectroscopy system for in-situ, real-time, atomic-level
monitoring of the film surface. Leveraging on this breakthrough in the apparatus, he has developed a technology to deposit
atomically smooth films and multilayers of complex oxides. For his accomplishments, Dr. Bozovic was elected a Fellow of both
SPIE and the American Physical Society, and has won a SPIE Technology Achievement Award, the highest Yugoslav national award
in physics, the M. Jaric Memorial Prize, Polaroid International Prize, and several other awards. Currently, Bozovic is the group
leader for the Oxide Molecular Beam Epitaxy Group in the Condensed Matter Physics and Materials Science Department. His
seminal research continues to address some key open questions in high temperature superconductor (HTS) physics.
3. J. C. Seamus Davis (Brookhaven National Laboratory, Upton) ~ BNL physicist and Head of the Spectroscopy Imaging
Group in the Condensed Matter Physics and Materials Science Department, J. C. Seamus Davis, built a scanning tunneling
microscope that can resolve details smaller than the diameter of an atom, which he uses to study the movement of electrons
in superconducting materials. His insights on how the behavior of electrons in HTS affects the transition temperature - the
temperature at which a material loses its electrical resistance - may lead to the discovery of new superconducting materials that are
suitable for applications such as zero-loss energy generation and transmission systems. Davis is also the Director of the BNL-led
Center for Emergent Superconductivity, one of the DOE Energy Frontier Research Centers, which is focusing on the underlying
nature of superconductivity in complex materials. Along with John Tranquada and Aharon Kapitulnik of Stanford University,
Davis was a recipient of the 2009 Heike Kamerlingh Onnes Prize for outstanding superconductivity experiments. He was elected to
the National Academy of Sciences in 2010 and is the recipient of several other major awards.
4. Ivar Giaever (GE, Schenectady and Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, Troy) ~ Giaever earned a degree in mechanical
engineering from the Norwegian Institute of Technology in 1952. In 1954 he emigrated from Norway to Canada, where he was
employed by the Canadian division of General Electric. In 1958 he joined GE’s Research and Development Center in Schenectady,
NY. He has lived in Niskayuna, NY since then, taking up US citizenship in 1964, the same year he earned a Ph.D. in Physics from
the Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute (RPI). Giaever shared the Nobel Prize in Physics in 1973 with Leo Esaki and Brian Josephson
for their discoveries regarding tunnelling phenomena in solids. Giaever’s share of the prize was specifically for his “experimental
discoveries regarding tunnelling phenomena in superconductors.” Giaever is an institute professor emeritus at RPI, a professor-at-
Iarge at the University of Oslo, and the president of Applied Biophysics.
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5. William E. and Peter E. Gifford (Cryomech, Syracuse) ~ Bill Gifford invented both the GM cycle and the Pulse
Tube cycle more than 50 years ago. These inventions led to the development of cryogenic refrigeration systems with cooling
capacities from 4K to 100K, ideal for use with the broad range of superconducting applications. In 1963, Bill founded Cryomech
Inc. in Syracuse, NY, while a professor at Syracuse University. In its early days, Cryomech consisted of Bill and a handful of part
time employees, mainly graduate students. Under Bill’s tutelage, a number of these students went on to distinguished careers in
the cryogenic field. Peter joined his father in 1973 and has led the company since Bill’s death in 1980. Over the past 30 plus years
Cryomech has continued to be a leading innovator in the field of cryogenics. Under Peter’s leadership, Cryomech, still based in
Syracuse, is a thriving, rapidly growing company with close to 100 employees. A number of Cryomech’s cryorefrigerators were
specifically developed to meet the demands of the LTC and HTC superconductivity community.
6. Ramesh Gupta (Brookhaven National Laboratory, Upton) ~ BNL has always been a leader in the world of superconducting
magnets, which are essential to great modern accelerators such as the Relativistic Heavy Ion Collider at BNL, and the Large
Hadron Collider at CERN, Switzerland. For the past decade, Lab researchers have been exploring the use of new materials that
become superconducting at higher temperatures. Ramesh Gupta, head of the High Temperature Superconductor (HTS) Research
and Development Group in the Superconducting Magnet Division, is among those exploring avenues for HTS magnets that are
energy efficient and have magnetic fields that are a million times stronger than the Earth’s. These new magnets could revolutionize
use in future accelerators, play a key role in energy efficiency and storage, and make possible new applications such as muon
colliders and MRI screening in remote areas. To date, Gupta and his group have built more than 100 HTS coils and 10 HTS
magnets using tens of kilometers of such conductors. Gupta is part of a team from the Condensed Matter Physics and Materials
Science Department that recently received a grant from the Department of Energy’s Advanced Research Projects Agency-Energy
(ARPA-E) to fund superconducting magnet energy storage research. The project, a collaboration with SuperPower, ABB Inc. of
Cary, NC, and the University of Houston, could have a significant impact on how electricity is stored and delivered in the future.
7. Drew Hazelton (Intermagnetics, Latham and SuperPower, Schenectady) ~ Mr. Hazelton joined Intermagnetics in 1980 and
has more than 30 years of experience in applied superconductivity. He has been with SuperPower, now a subsidiary of Philips,
since its formation in 2000. His activities have included composite superconductor materials processing, mechanical properties
and low temperature effects with emphasis on the development of processing for and application of superconducting materials.
Mr. Hazelton has led development and demonstration programs in HTS cables, superconducting fault current limiters, HTS
transformers, HTS generators, HTS magnets of all types and the superconducting magnetic energy storage system (SMES). Mr.
Hazelton was named “Co-Inventor of the Year” in 2005 by the Eastern New York Intellectual Property Law Association for the
US patent, 6,664,875 relating to the Matrix-type superconducting fault current limiter. Mr. Hazelton has a B.S. in Materials
Engineering from Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute and an M.S. in Mechanical Engineering from Union College.
8. Richard Hitt (Hypres, Elmsford) ~ Mr. Hitt drove the development and demonstration of superconducting electronics
prototypes which established the benefit and credibility of the technology with the DOD and triggered a press release from the
US Army touting one of the demonstrations as “the most significant advance in Satellite Communications in thirty years.” He
established the Hypres foundry as the premier and the only worldwide COMMERCIAL foundry for superconducting electronics,
serving researchers in universities and corporate R&D centers worldwide. Hitt grew the small business through increased
revenues leading to job creation of high skilled positions that grew the company by over 20% and added or saved more than 8 jobs
in a 40-employee company in Westchester County, NY. He drove the collaborative activities with NY universities, research centers
and private companies, leading to the creation of the new Centers for research and new joint research programs, with partners
including Stony Brook University, The College for Nanoscale Science and Engineering (CNSE) at the University at Albany, and
many of the companies represented at the current Summit.
9. Peter Johnson (Brookhaven National Laboratory, Upton) ~ Dr. Johnson is a physicist at Brookhaven National Laboratory,
Group Leader for Electron Spectroscopy, and Chair of the Condensed Matter Physics and Materials Science Department. He was
recently a co-recipient of the American Physical Society’s prestigious 2011 Oliver E. Buckley Prize in Condensed Matter Physics for
“innovation in angle-resolving photoemission spectroscopy, which advanced the understanding of the cuprate superconductors,
and transformed the study of strongly correlated electronic systems.” Johnson has worked with various forms of photoemission
spectroscopy, including inverse (time-reversed), spin-polarized, and high-resolution photoemission spectroscopy. It is this last
variant for which he was honored. The techniques that Johnson helped develop have provided more insight than any other into one
of the major challenges of modern physics, namely strongly correlated electronic materials, of which cuprate superconductors are
one example. Johnson is a Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, the American Physical Society, and
the Institute of Physics in the United Kingdom.
10. A. Kamal Kalafala (Intermagnetics and Philips, Latham) ~ Dr. Kalafala has worked in superconductivity for more than
30 years and is one of the world leaders in large scale applications of superconductivity. First at General Electric in Schenectady
and then with Intermagnetics (acquired by Philips in 2006), he successfully managed and made multiple technical contributions
to such applications as MRI, SMES, crystal growth, Maglev and others. Among his most successful projects are the world first
compact 3 Tesla magnet and 1.0 Tesla High-field open magnet for use in Magnetic Resonance Imaging.
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11. Mark Ketchen (IBM, Poughkeepsie) ~ Dr. Ketchen has been a pioneer in superconducting electronics from the early years
of IBM’s involvement in the 1970s and 1980s. He has invented and implemented a number of innovative SQUID circuits and
designs, many of which formed the basis of all SQUID applications today. Dr. Ketchen led many of the IBM efforts in advanced
microcircuit design and fabrication and is a tireless advocate of superconductivity at IBM, in the state of NY, in the US and
worldwide. He has won numerous awards and is recognized by his peers as one of the statesmen in the field. Dr. Ketchen is poised
to play a leading role in any expected revival of superconducting electronics for high performance and high efficiency computing.
12. Evangelos Trifon Laskaris (GE Global Research, Niskayuna) ~ Dr. Laskaris has had a long and impactful career in
superconductivity. He has been a key inventor in almost every MRI magnet that GE has developed. He holds the largest number
of patents of any researcher at GE Global Research and was named a member of the National Academy of Engineering in 2004
for his pioneering contributions to the design and construction of superconducting magnets for MRI systems. He has taught and
mentored many people in superconductivity over his long and continuing career at GE.
13. Qiang Li (Brookhaven National Laboratory, Upton) ~ For a superconductor, charges need to be paired and moving coherently
to carry a current with no resistance. The ‘stripe’ order suggests the charges are localized in relatively fixed positions. Brookhaven
studies suggest that the presence of alternating stripes of magnetism and charge exist in other superconducting materials, in a way
that is more fluid and therefore harder to detect. One of the key measurements, made by Brookhaven physicist Dr. Qiang Li, was
of electrical resistance parallel to the planes of the layered material and also perpendicular to them. At a particular temperature,
Li detected a big drop in resistance when the current was flowing parallel to the layers, but not when it was flowing perpendicular
to them. More broadly, Li currently leads the Advanced Energy Materials Group in the Condensed Matter Physics and Materials
Science Department that studies the microscopic and macroscopic properties of complex and nano-structured materials, including
new superconductors, with a view to understanding and developing their application in different and real-world energy related
technologies. Dr. Li is part of the BNL team that recently received a grant from the U.S. DOE’s Advanced Research Projects
Agency-Energy (ARPA-E) to fund superconducting magnet energy storage research.
14. Garry Morrow (Intermagnetics General Corporation, Latham) ~ During his nearly 30-year tenure with Intermagnetics,
Mr. Morrow was instrumental in the development and marketing of very-high field Nb3Sn magnets (1970s), work on the first
superconducting MRI magnets including actively-shielded and mobile MRI (1980s) and commercialization of MRI technology.
Garry actively pursued new applications of superconductivity and was Vice President the MagStream division of IGC which
involved utilizing superconductivity for magnetic separation of materials.
15. Carl H. Rosner (GE, Schenectady; Intermagnetics, Latham; CardioMag Imaging, Schenectady) ~ Mr. Rosner co-founded
Intermagnetics General Corporation (Guilderland and Latham, NY) in 1971, prior to which he was Manager of General Electric’s
Superconductivie Products Operation in Schenectady. During his tenure with IGC, he led the company’s growth to more than 250
employees and to the successful development of a number of applications of superconductivity, most notably superconducting
magnets for MRI. Until 1999 he held the roles of Chairman, President and CEO of Intermagnetics. That company was acquired by
Philips in 2006. He retired from IGC as Chairman-Emeritus in 2002 to devote his full time to building and developing CardioMag
Imaging. Mr. Rosner is a graduate of the Stockholm Institute of Technology, Newark College of Engineering and Rensselaer
Polytechnic Institute with undergraduate and graduate degrees in electrical engineering and business management. He is a
member of the National Academy of Engineering and is the author and co-author of many published papers on superconductive
and electronic devices. He holds seven patents.
16. William Sampson (Brookhaven National Laboratory, Upton) ~ A physicist in the Superconducting Magnet Division at BNL,
Dr. Sampson has helped to design and build superconducting magnets that keep particle beams circulating in accelerators, such as
Brookhaven’s Relativistic Heavy Ion Collider (RHIC). In the 1960s, he built some of the first superconducting magnets to exceed
10 Tesla, 200,000 times the earth’s magnetic field. Sampson also made early models of dipole and quadrupole magnets, used for
bending and focusing beams of particles in accelerators. Accelerators around the world, including RHIC and the Large Hadron
Collider (LHC) at CERN, have benefited from this pioneering work. In the 1970s, Sampson made magnets called “wigglers”
for the National Synchrotron Light Source, which began operating in 1982. Sampson has also worked on HTS magnets that can
operate in high radiation environments. Currently, Sampson is developing very high-field superconducting magnets that may be
used in building a high-energy muon collider. He has received the IEEE Council on Superconductivity Award for Significant and
Sustained Contributions in the Field of Applied Superconductivity, in particular, for his contributions to the field of large-scale
superconductivity
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17. Venkat Selvamanickam (Intermagnetics, Latham and SuperPower, Schenectady) ~ Dr. Selvamanickam (“Selva”) joined
Intermagnetics General Corporation in 1994 and was instrumental in establishing the SuperPower subsidiary in March 2000,
initially as Program Manager, Materials Technology where he led a team of more than 40 scientists, engineers and technicians
engaged in scaling up to manufacture SuperPower’s 2G HTS wire, and then as Vice President and CTO. Selva has authored more
than 100 U.S. and international patents and more than 100 publicaitons on HTS. Prior to joining IGC, he was a Research Associate
at Oak Ridge National Laboratory; and a Post-doctoral fellow and Research Assistant with the Texas Center for Superconductivity
at the University of Houston. In 1996, Dr. Selvamanickam received the Presidential Early Career Award from the White House.
This award is the highest honor bestowed by the U.S. Government on outstanding scientists and engineers beginning their
independent careers. The award resulted in a grant of $500,000 for five years to conduct research on HTS in collaboration with the
U.S. Air Force. In 2005, Dr. Selvamanickam was named the “Superconductivity Industry Person of the Year” by Superconductor
Week. He earned a Ph.D. in Materials Engineering and an M.S. in Mechanical Engineering from the University of Houston. Dr.
Selvamanickam continues to lead SuperPower’s R&D program as Chief Technology Advisor, while also holding the position of
W.D. Anderson Chair Professor in the Department of Mechanical Engineering at the University of Houston.
18. Vasili Semenov (IBM, Poughkeepsie and Stony Brook University, Stony Brook) ~ Dr. Semenov is a co-inventor of rapid single
flux quantum electronics which has been the key to getting beyond the limitation of latching logic that had formed the basis of the
early efforts in supercomputers. More recently, Dr. Semenov innovated yet another approach to achieving the fundamental limit
in low energy dissipation in high end computation, particular in reversible computing. Dr. Semenov has been the key academic
leader in New York State to advise graduate students and postdoctoral associates who then go on to become part of the workforce
in the state for the further development and commercialization of superconductor electronics. Innovator, educator, teacher to
colleagues as well as students, Dr. Semenov expemplifies the scientific thought leader that guides our field and its applications in
electronics.
19. SuperPower Team (Schenectady) ~ SuperPower is a world leader in the manufacturing scale-up of HTS wire, an important
technology addressing the quest for improved energy efficiency. SuperPower is a high performing business that is also developing
advanced devices for Clean, Green, and Smart Grid applications. The company is a true community partner and works closely
with Schenectady County Community College to develop and implement a quality nanotechnology career program to respond to
an emerging workforce need. This has included curriculum development and teaching of the advanced level courses. The team
also works with Union College and Union Graduate College to incorporate the technology into the engineering and management
programs at those institutions. Special recognition to team members Art Kazanjian, Trudy Lehner, Gene Carota, Karol Zdun,
Simon Miner and, in memoriam, Dr. Andrei Rar.
20. Elie Track (Hypres, Elmsford) ~ For 24 years, Dr. Track has been dedicated to the development and commercialization of
superconducting electronics, spanning all activities from hands-on laboratory work in device physics, to program management, to
leading the successful effort of commercializing the NIST design of primary voltage standards and making it available worldwide.
From Hypres’ home in Westchester County, NY, he led the electronics program of the Applied Superconductivity Conference,
the main conference in the field, for many years, and emerged as the current leader of the field within IEEE, and as President of
the IEEE Council on Superconductivity since the beginning of 2011. Perhaps most importantly, his ability to network together
universities, companies, research institutions, and government agencies for the common goal of advancing the technology and
markets of superconductivity has given the field much needed energy and boost over the last two decades.
21. John Tranquada (Brookhaven National Laboratory, Upton) ~ Based on his neutron-scattering experiments in the 1980s
at BNL’s High Flux Beam Reactor, Dr. Tranquada, a Brookhaven physicist, discovered that cuprates exhibit antiferromagnetism,
a condition in which adjacent magnetic atoms have their magnetic north poles pointing in opposite directions. In the 1990s,
Tranquada and his colleagues discovered that HTS have a tendency toward charge segregation, which enables the coexistence of
conducting and insulating properties. This work indicates that the electronic structure of HTS consists of fluctuating strings of
charge, known as stripes, a concept that is increasingly influencing the current models of HTS. Currently, he leads the Neutron
Scattering Group in the Condensed Matter Physics and Materials Science Department. He was co-recipient of the 2009 Heike
Kamerlingh Onnes Prize for outstanding superconductivity experiments. He is a Fellow of the American Physical Society and the
American Association for the Advancement of Science. Tranquada received a U.S. Department of Energy Award for Outstanding
Scientific Accomplishment in Solid State Physics in 1988 and the Sustained Research Prize from the Neutron Scattering Society of
America in 2006.
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22. Peter Wanderer (Brookhaven National Laboratory, Upton) ~ Dr. Wanderer is an expert in the development of
superconducting accelerator magnets. He began working on them for the Isabelle Project. His magnet work continued with the
Colliding Beam Accelerator, the Superconducting SuperCollider (SSC), the Relativistic Heavy Ion Collider (RHIC), the Large
Hadron Collider (LHC), the LHC Accelerator Research Program (LARP), the Accelerator Project Upgrade for the LHC (APUL),
and other projects. During the SSC and RHIC projects, he was head of the Magnet Test Group. For the RHIC Project, he cochaired
the Magnet Acceptance Committee. He is currently the Project Manager for the APUL Project and Interim Head of
the Superconducting Magnet Division. As an example of the projects with which he has been affiliated, BNL was a key player
in preparing a new material for use in a focusing magnet built by members of the multilaboratory LHC Accelerator Research
Program (LARP). The material, niobium tin retains its superconducting properties at higher temperatures than niobium titanium,
the material that’s used in RHIC and in today’s LHC magnets, making it more tolerant of the increased beam heating that will
accompany increases in the LHC luminosity. In 2009, a magnet built by the LARP team using superconducting niobium tin
achieved the goal of a magnetic field strong enough to focus intense proton beams in the upgraded LHC interaction regions.
Wanderer led the effort during its most critical phase.
23. Robert Wilcox (Intermagnetics and Philips, Latham) - Mr. Wilcox retired 2 years ago after almost 35 years with
Intermagnetics / Philips. For many years, he was Manager of Magnet Engineering and Director of Engineering. Bob Wilcox made
outstanding technical contributions to all Intermagnetics/Philips products for variety of industrial, research, medical and military
applications. More than 20 commercial superconducting magnets were designed under his leadership and supervision. Without
Bob’s involvement, it is difficult to imagine Intermagnetics’ commercial superconducting MRI magnets.
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