New York State Leaders In Superconductivity... - SuperPower

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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