2019 M. Hildred Blewett Fellowship Recipients

Tamar Mentzel, Ph.D., is a post-doctoral researcher in the physics department at Harvard University. She is working on doping topological insulators in the search for topological superconductivity. Working at the intersection of chemistry and physics, she intercalates atoms into a well-known topological insulator, bismuth selenide, by chemical and electrochemical methods. Tamar’s prior work has focused on charge transport in semiconductor nanocrystal solids. She holds patents for optoelectronic devices made of semiconductor nanocrystals and for a technique for measuring electrical conductance in extremely resistive materials. She made the first electrically conductive, nanopatterned films of semiconductor nanocrystals. Tamar earned her BS in physics and mechanical engineering from Yale University where she graduated magna cum laude and was awarded the Deforest Pioneers Prize for distinguished creative achievement in physics. Tamar earned her Ph.D. in applied physics from Harvard University. As a graduate student, she was awarded the National Science Foundation Graduate Fellowship and the National Defense Science and Engineering Graduate Fellowship. As a graduate student, she delivered the MIT Microsystems Technology Laboratory Prized Annual Doctoral Dissertation Seminar. She was then awarded a UC Berkeley Chancellor’s Postdoctoral Fellowship. She serves on the organizing committee of Yale Women’s alumnae group in Boston and focuses on programming for women and science.

Dr. Asma Al-Qasimi is a graduate of the University of Toronto, where she obtained her undergraduate degree, in Physics and Mathematics, in 2005 and her PhD degree, in Physics, in 2011. Dr. Al-Qasimi is very curious about the fundamental properties of quantum systems and the real signatures that define the quantum versus the classical. To help achieve this goal, she is currently studying entanglement in classical light and its relationship with various optical properties. She is also interested in the application of correlations present in optical systems to improve technologies, such as in ways to improve target detection using quantum properties of light. Dr. Al-Qasimi is a member of both the American Physical Society and the Optical Society of America.

During her graduate years and early postdoctoral career, Dr. Al-Qasimi was the recipient of the Alexander Graham Bell Canada Graduate Scholarship, as well as the NSERC Post-Doctoral Fellowship, both awarded by the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada. As a PhD student, she won the Van Kranendonk Teaching Assistant Award for her teaching in the third year Quantum Mechanics physics course at the University of Toronto.

Dr. Al-Qasimi is honoured to be an M. Hildred Blewett Fellow for a second year and is looking forward to continuing in the path of exploring her research questions.

Beth Klein, Ph.D., is an observational astrophysicist. Her research has focused on studying rocky exoplanets with the aim of better understanding the potential for life in the Universe. She specializes in measuring chemical compositions of rocky exoplanets through an indirect, but uniquely powerful technique: spectroscopy of white dwarf stars that have accreted bodies from their own planetary systems.

Following career interruptions for family and health reasons, as well as the tragic, untimely passing of her mentor, Beth recently returned to research part time. The Blewett fellowship now enables her to become a full time Postdoctoral Fellow in the Department of Physics and Astronomy at the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA) where she will carry on the work she began with her mentor, along with broadening her research scope to include studies of young stars and the early stages of planet formation. Beth is also passionate about teaching and training the next generation of scientists. She has received the Outstanding Teaching Assistant award from the UCLA Physics and Astronomy Department, and she devotes a significant portion of her time to mentoring graduate and undergraduate students.

Beth earned both her Ph.D. (2011) and B.S. (1992) in Physics at UCLA where she graduated with “Highest Departmental Honors”. Memberships include the American Astronomical Society, Sigma Pi Sigma, and Phi Beta Kappa.

Yunjin Choi is a postdoctoral researcher in the Department of Physics and Astronomy at the University of California, Riverside. She is working on quantum measurement theory applied to quantum many-body systems. Yunjin obtained her PhD degree in theoretical physics in 2016 from the University of Rochester and got her B.Sc. degree in 2005 from the Sogang University in South Korea. Her PhD thesis is entitled “Topics in quantum transport of charge and heat in solid state systems” which is about the fundamental quantum problems of a generalized “which-path” measurement and a tunneling time measurement, both on electronic systems, and a thermoelectric heat engine. After completing her PhD, Yunjin put her career on hold for three years due to family and health issues. She is grateful to the APS for the M. Hildred Blewett Fellowship award which will enable her to continue her research advancing quantum information in quantum many body physics, with applications to condensed matter and cold atom systems.

Dr. Satomi Okada received her physics undergraduate degree in 1995 from Yamagata University in Japan, and was then enrolled in a physics graduate program. Because of her health and financial problems, she had to interrupt her research career when she was a Ph.D. student. After 15 years, she came back to physics Ph.D. program in 2015, and received her Ph.D. degree in Spring 2018 from Yamagata University. She was awarded Travel Grants FUSUMA Alumni Association at Yamagata University in 2016 , and M. Hildred Blewett Fellowship, American Physical Society in 2018. Since fall 2018, Dr. Okada has been an Adjunct Assistant Professor at the Department of Physics and Astronomy, The University of Alabama. She is very grateful to M. Hildred Blewett Fellowship program which enables her to continue physics research. Dr. Okada is a particle physics theorist, whose research focuses on New Physics beyond the Standard Model of elementary particles. Although the Standard Model is known as the best theory to describe elementary particle physics phenomena, it suffers from various problems. Towards solving the problems, Dr. Okada has been actively investigating various aspects of New Physics, such as neutrino physics, high energy collider physics, grand unified theories, extra-dimensional models, inflationary universe, and dark matter physics. Since 2016, she has 12 scientific papers published in leading peer-reviewed journals.