THEORETICAL

Chih-Chun Chien receives the J. Robert Oppenheimer Postdoctoral Fellowship
Postdoctoral researcher Chih-Chun Chien (Physics of Condensed Matter and Complex Systems, T-4)
has been awarded the 2011 J. Robert Oppenheimer Postdoctoral Fellowship. Chien joined the
Laboratory in December 2009 as a Director’s Postdoctoral Fellow. He worked on the unified description
Science Highlights (030211)
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of superconductors and ultracold atomic systems. Since coming to LANL, he has co-authored over ten
articles published in prestigious journals including Physical Review Letters and Reports on Progress in
Physics. His mentors are Bogdan Damski and Michael Zwolak (T-4). Chien’s research supports the
Laboratory’s Materials for the Future capability.
As a doctoral physics student at the University of Chicago, he worked
with Professor Kathryn Levin to investigate ultracold polarized Fermi
superfluids. This research significantly contributed to the development
and understanding of the first experiments on this subject. In particular,
Chien developed a phase diagram of these systems, which subsequent
experiments performed by the Massachusetts Institute of Technology
group of Professor Wolfgang Ketterle (a Nobel prize winner from 2001)
confirmed. Chien published his research in numerous Physical Review
publications, including two well-cited Physical Review Letters where he
is a primary author.
The J. Robert Oppenheimer Fellowship, named after the Lab’s first Director, is one of three Laboratory
Distinguished Postdoctoral Fellowships. The recipients of these Fellowships must display extraordinary
ability in scientific research and show clear and definite promise of becoming outstanding leaders in the
research they pursue.