Achievement

Two IGERT trainees received their PhDs in this reporting period. Nicholas Karpowicz completed thesis entitled "Physics and Utilization of Terahertz Gas Photonics". He received the Hillard B. Huntington Award for an outstanding physics graduate student in spring 2009. Nick was also co-recipient of the 2009 Karen and Lester Gerhardt Prize selected from all graduating doctoral candidates. Nick and his collaborators applied for a patent, "Coherent THz Spectrometer Using Optical Beam Recycling and Heterodyne Detection".

Brian Schulkin received his PhD in the fall of 2008 with thesis title "Miniature Terahertz Time-Domain Spectrometry". He received the Lemelson-Rensselaer Student Prize (Oscar for young inventors) in 2007 with a cash prize of $30K, see http://www.rpi.edu/news/announce/schulkin.html He was listed among "Scientific American 50" in 2008. See http://www.rpi.edu/about/inside/issue/v2n1/scientific.html Brian currently works at Zomega Terahertz Corp.