Strikman Receives Humboldt Research Award
Mark Strikman, professor of physics, has received a Humboldt Research Award for Senior U.S. Scientists from the Alexander von Humboldt Foundation in Bonn, Germany. The award includes a monetary grant and support for research at a German university of Strikman's choice for a period of three months. Strikman also received a Humboldt Research Award in 1999 in recognition of his research achievements in investigating the interactions of high-energy particles with hadrons and atomic nuclei. The new award was given to him for his academic achievements and his successful collaborations with German scientists during his previous visits to Germany. He is one of only a few researchers who have received a second Humboldt Research Award.
Strikman is a theoretical physicist whose research focuses on processes of high-energy collisions of electrons and protons with protons and atomic nuclei. Data obtained about the energy and momentum-transfer dependence of these collisions help to resolve the fine details of nucleon and nuclear structure. Predictions based on Strikman's mathematical models of novel collisions involving large transfers of energy and momentum have been confirmed at high-energy accelerators around the world.
Strikman received his master's degree in theoretical physics from Leningrad University in 1972. He received a doctoral degree in 1978 and a professor habilitatus degree in 1988 from the Leningrad Institute of Nuclear Physics. He was a member of the research staff at the Leningrad Institute of Nuclear Physics in Gatchina from 1972 to 1991 and a visiting professor at the University of Illinois in Champaign-Urbana from 1990 to 1991. He moved to Penn State as a visiting professor in 1991, joined the Penn State faculty as an associate professor of physics in 1992, and was promoted to professor in 1995. Strikman was elected to fellowship in the American Physical Society in 1997.
The Humboldt Foundation presents up to 150 Research Awards annually to "foreign scholars whose academic qualifications enjoy international recognition. The object is to pay tribute to academic accomplishments of award winners and to foster long-term cooperation between foreign and German researchers."