texas a&m university physicists dmitry s pestov and dr alexei v sokolov have been selected as the inaugural recipients of the robert s hyer research award of the texas section of the american physical society (tsaps) the award presented friday (oct 19) during a lunch ceremony as part of the two-day texas physics 2007 conference held on the texas a&m campus annually recognizes a student and his or her advisor for physics research that demonstrates both excellence and potential impact in the relevant scientific community each receives a plaque while the student recipient also merits a $500 prize sokolov an associate professor of physics at texas a&m since 2002 and pestov a research assistant under sokolovs mentorship in the texas a&m institute of quantum studies (iqs) headed by distinguished professor of physics dr marlan o scully were cited for their groundbreaking work as members of a joint texas a&m iqs-princeton university team that developed a new approach to detect biochemical molecules in real time using lasers their technique relies on an adapted form of coherent raman spectroscopy and has broad implications for a wide range of industries ranging from homeland security to health care your work among a very competitive group of nominations has set a wonderful standard of excellence for this award said dr dwight p russell tsaps chair and associate professor of physics at baylor university in an e-mail informing the pair of their honor the groups award-winning research was featured as a technical talk in fridays joint fall meeting of the tsaps as well as the texas sections of the american association of physics teachers and the society of physics students-zone 13 held in conjunction with texas physics 2007 the talk was but one of several hundred presentations by researchers and educators across texas and the world including two nobel laureates and scientists from top international institutions and research laboratories in the weekend showcase of global excellence in physics while working on the problem of real-time detection of warfare bioagents such as bacillus anthracies [anthrax] we came up with an effective scheme or rather a combination of laser pulses that manages to suppress meaningless optical background and pull out the so-called coherent anti-stokes raman scattering (cars) signal from spores which can be used as their finger-print pestov explained suppression of the background is the major challenge for practical applications of cars our approach turned out to work well even for such ‘unfriendly samples as powders and spores the teams research has appeared in a variety of prestigious publications since first being reported in science last april earning rave reviews from editorial boards as well as fellow scientists their experimental demonstration of spore detection is a huge accomplishment said dr szymon suckewer professor of mechanical and aerospace engineering at princeton university and the winner of this years aps schawlow prize here at princeton we are very well familiar with this problem and for a number of years people kept repeating that spore detection by cars simply ‘cant be done well now it has been done! pestov pointed out that the technique which the team refers to as hybrid cars can be readily used for many other applications chemically-selective imaging (microscopy) non-invasive monitoring of glucose in blood and natural gas spectroscopy are just a few the group currently is investigating this is an important contribution to our fast cars project where the ideas of maximal molecular coherence have found an unexpected payoff in biological warfare detection as well as medical diagnostics and industrial application scully noted fridays award presentation was followed by a brief biographical lecture on the awards namesake robert s hyer delivered by his grandson beyond being the leading founder of southern methodist university hyer was described as fully dedicated to physics teaching and research to the extent that he beat guglielmo marconi long considered the grandfather of wireless communication to his nobel prize-winning discovery by a year according to evidence detailed in a contemporary newspaper account hyer also interacted with scott & white hospital in the early days of x-ray technology receiving an award named after such a distinguished person and scientist has been a truly humbling experience sokolov said an award given at this level is a huge honor for us i like to think of it as recognition for dr scullys institute for quantum studies as a whole texas physics 2007 was sponsored by the texas a&m department of physics and the george p and cynthia woods mitchell institute for fundamental physics and astronomy in conjunction with the national society for black physicists the national society for hispanic physicists and the forum on industrial & applied physics for more information on pestov and sokolovs research visit http://peoplephysicstamuedu/dpestov/ or http://facultyphysicstamuedu/sokol/sokolovhtm -atm- contact: shana k hutchins (979) 862-1237 or shutchins@sciencetamuedu or dmitry s pestov (979) 862-1328 or dspestov@gmailcom or dr alexei v sokolov (979) 845-7733 or sokol@physicstamuedu