Anastasia Volovich: Asking the big questions has brought her national honor. Credit: John Abromowski/Brown University

String theory scholar wins prestigious White House award

Anastasia Volovich, the Richard and Edna Salomon Assistant Professor of Physics, went to Washington to collect a Presidential Early Career Award for Scientists and Engineers.
By Richard C. Lewis  |  December 18, 2008  |  Email to a friend

A Brown University scientist is going to the White House.

No, Anastasia Volovich is not attending the inauguration. For a scholar, it’s even better than that: The Richard and Edna Salomon Assistant Professor of Physics has been named one of this year’s winners of the Presidential Early Career Awards for Scientists and Engineers (PECASE). She was honored at a White House ceremony on Dec. 19.

The PECASE award recognizes outstanding scientists and engineers who, early in their careers, show exceptional potential for leadership at the frontiers of knowledge. It is the highest honor bestowed by the U.S. government on scientists and engineers beginning their independent careers.

“I am very honored to have received this award,” Volovich said, “and I am especially excited that my research and my research group have been acknowledged in this way.”

Volovich joined the Brown faculty in 2006 after earning her Ph.D. in theoretical physics from Harvard University in 2002. Between 1993 and 1999, she studied mathematics at the Independent University of Moscow and physics at Moscow State University, where she received a bachelor’s as well as a master’s degree. She came to Brown after her post-doctoral research at the Kavli Institute for Theoretical Physics in Santa Barbara and the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton. She works in theoretical physics, string theory, and related areas in particle physics and general relativity.

String theory is the search for a single explanation that describes all the laws in the known universe. The theory’s main idea is that all matter and forces are made of tiny strands of energy that vibrate in different patterns. Physicists have never seen these strands in nature, but they hope they’ll see clues that string theory is correct when the Large Hadron Collider, the world’s biggest particle accelerator, is fired up this summer.

Volovich said her work with a calculational tool known as quantum chronodynamics will help scientists interpret the stream of experimental results expected from the super collider, which is located outside Geneva, Switzerland. The award committee recognized her role in analyzing the data from the LHC and for organizing a science Olympiad for high school students.

Chung-I Tan, chair of the physics department at Brown, praised Volovich’s selection.

“Anastasia has demonstrated not only impressive skills as a physicist,” he said, “but also enthusiasm and talent in teaching at the graduate and undergraduate levels.”

Volovich joins 19 young scientists nationwide nominated by the National Science Foundation and chosen as winners in the PECASE competition. Each winner receives agency support for five years. Last year, Brown professors Odest Chadwicke (Chad) Jenkins, computer science, and Pradeep Guduru, engineering, won the award.

“We take great pride in the PECASE winners,” said Kathie L. Olsen, NSF’s deputy director. “It is important to support the transformational research of these beginning scientists and to foster their work in educational outreach and mentoring.”