Isaac Newton Medal Awarded to Laser Cooling Researcher

Dr. Deborah Jin has been recognized with the Institute of Physics’ Isaac Newton medal for her work on laser-cooled atoms.

A researcher at the Joint Institute for Laboratory Astrophysics in Boulder, Colo., Jin works with ultra-cold Fermi gases. In 1999, she and then-doctoral candidate Brian DeMarco cooled fermionic atoms to the point where the effects of quantum degeneracy were observed. The study of ultra-cold Fermi gases has since provided insights into superconductivity and other electronic effects in materials.

According to Imperial College London professor Ed Hines, Jin “advanced the understanding of the behavior electrons in materials. ... She has shown that half-integer-spin fermions can be coupled to behave like full-integer-spin bosons.”

Jin studied physics at Princeton University and conducted doctoral research on superconductors at the University of Chicago. She joined JILA in 1995, and has been a fellow there since 2005.

For more information, visit www.iop.org.