Presidential Early Career Award A Pleasant Surprise For Physics Researcher

Gianluigi Ciovati, a research scientist at the Thomas Jefferson National Accelerator Facility who received a Ph.D. in accelerator physics from Old Dominion in 2005, said he was thoroughly surprised when President Obama named him a recipient of a Presidential Early Career Award for Scientists and Engineers in July.

Ciovati is among 100 young researchers to win a 2009 award. Recipients receive five years of financial support to further research they are conducting in areas deemed critical by the government. Ciovati’s grant will provide up to $250,000 for studies at Jefferson Lab, a Department of Energy atom-smashing facility in Newport News.

An expert in superconducting radiofrequency science, Ciovati is working on a $300 million project to increase the maximum electron energy of Jefferson Lab’s mile-long accelerator.

“I take this as a good omen for our new Center for Accelerator Science,” Gail Dodge, chair of ODU’s physics department and a nuclear physicist who conducts research at the lab, said of Ciovati’s award. With support from Jefferson Lab, ODU offers an academic program in accelerator physics.

The upgrade of the lab’s main accelerator is designed to allow advances in key areas of nuclear physics, such as a better understanding of how quarks and gluons make up the nucleus of the atom.