New York State Leaders In Superconductivity... - SuperPower

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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