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World News Wire |
30 under 30 who make a difference for us
May 9, 1999
The following excerpt, highlighting three University of Chicago students, appeared in the final part of the Sun Times series “30 under 30.” The article featured thirty people under the age of thirty who are making notable impacts in their respective fields.
When you think of public service, you may not think of physics. But what could be more important to our future than understanding the forces that control our world?
Back when Fred Niell was a high school student in Memphis, he built particle accelerators from scratch in his parents' garage, using electronics scavenged from Defense Department auctions. Now that he's a senior studying physics at the University of Chicago, Niell is still working on particle accelerators, only now the accelerators are not in a garage, but at Fermilab.
Niell, 22, is no ivory tower physicist. He is also interested in publicizing his field: He appeared on the PBS series ``Stephen Hawking's Universe'' and maintains a Web page, ``Ask Fred'' (student-www.uchicago.edu/users/fmniell/science.html), where he answers five questions a week on a wide range of scientific topics.
``The kind of stuff I've been doing, science fairs, public speaking, has been trying to explain the odd areas of physics in a way that is approachable,'' he said.
William Ashmanskas, 29, the University of Chicago Enrico Fermi Fellow, is also involved with Fermilab. He and others are working on a critical new component of the collider detector so that Fermilab can find new phenomena in high-energy collisions of protons and antiprotons.
His advice: ``Take school seriously. Take advantage of all educational opportunities. Find good mentors--people with experience who can help you to excel at the things you like to do.''
When the first image of the sky taken by the $6 million Sloan Digital Sky Survey camera is presented at the American Astronomical Association meeting in San Diego next month, the presenter will be Connie Rockosi, 26, a graduate student at the University of Chicago who already is recognized as a world expert in electronic imaging.
``Connie was chosen to present the `first light' paper at the meeting because everything she's done on the project has been spectacular,'' says Don York, professor of astronomy and astrophysics at the University of Chicago. ``Connie is a first-class scientist, and we couldn't ask for a better person.''
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