Announcing the winners of the Young
Scientists Awards at QUARK MATTER 2009

Two Young Scientists won Awards at the recent Quark Matter 2009, conference in Knoxville, Tennessee. Both awards were sponsored by the Elsevier journal Nuclear Physics A.

The two awards were granted to Sarah LaPointe for the best poster presentation and to Mateusz Ploskon for the best oral presentation at QM2009. For eligibility, presenters had to be younger than 35 years old at the close of December 31, 2008. Below you will find some more information regarding both winners.

Winner of best Poster Presentation: Sarah LaPointe
Sarah LaPointe  is currently a  Wayne State University, Ph.D. Candidate (anticipated graduation in December 2009). Her work in preparation for her Ph.D. thesis concerns the reconstruction of D-mesons in STAR using the Silicon Vertex Tracker (SVT), by means of their two-body decay, D⁰ -> K+π.  This study is performed in Cu+Cu and Au+Au collisions at √s = 200 GeV.  The reconstruction is done using the secondary vertexing method, along with the search for optimization of variables for the best signal to background selection.  A successful measurement of D-mesons using this method would be the first of its kind in relativistic heavy ion physics. After graduation her immediate goal is a post-doctoral position in heavy ion physics.

Winner of best Oral Presentation: Mateusz Ploskon
Mateusz Ploskon received his master of science degree at Jagiellonian University(2001). During his Ph.D. studies he worked at GSI Darmstadt on KaoS experiment analyzing elliptic flow of kaons and antikaons at SIS energies. I received his Ph.D. at J.-W. Goethe University in Frankfurt, Germany in 2005. His first postoc: Institute for Kernphysik at Frankfurt University (work within CERES and ALICE collaboration). Focus on a) high-pt correlations (CERES and ALICE) and b) High Level Trigger for ALICE. Mateusz is  currently working as a postdoc at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, Berkeley, CA. Working within ALICE (EMCAL project, jet physics, High Level Trigger) and STAR Collaboration (full jet reconstruction with STAR at RHIC – on which his presentation at Quark Matter was based).