Boulder professor awarded fellowship for physics work

Hermele

Michael Hermele, a University of Colorado at Boulder assistant professor of physics, recently was awarded a prestigious fellowship for Science and Engineering from the David and Lucille Packard Foundation.

According to the foundation, the Packard Fellowship was established "to allow the nation's most promising professors to pursue science and engineering research early in their careers with few funding restrictions and limited paperwork requirements."
"I am very excited to receive this remarkably generous award from the David and Lucile Packard Foundation," Hermele said. "This will give me great flexibility to pursue interesting physics ideas wherever they lead."

Hermele's work focuses on theoretical condensed matter physics. "I am interested in systems of many quantum particles, in solid state materials and in ultracold atomic gases. These systems can form phases of matter where the effects of quantum mechanics are manifest on macroscopic scales," Hermele said.

The $875,000 fellowship will fund his research over the next five years. Each year, 100 applicants across 50 schools are nominated for the fellowship. This year only 17 fellows were selected. As a Packard Fellow, Hermele joins CU physics professors John Price, Leo Radzihovsky, Anton Andreev and Shijie Zhong, who have earned the fellowship in previous years.

For more information about the Packard Foundation and the 2010 fellowship awards, see the foundation's web site at www.packard.org.