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Press Release

Lab Celebrates Top Inventions, Discoveries and Technical Accomplishments at APL Achievement Awards Ceremony

On April 25, the Johns Hopkins Applied Physics Laboratory (APL) in Laurel, Maryland, honored nearly 200 staff members for their exceptional contributions in 2022 during the Laboratory’s annual Achievement Awards ceremony.

For awards honoring outstanding publications and notable projects, individuals and teams throughout the Lab, 753 staff members were named in 144 nominated entries in 25 categories. Ultimately, 168 staff members were recognized for 31 winning entries.

During the virtual ceremony, staff members received awards for outstanding work in areas such as publications, Independent Research and Development (IRAD) projects, internally funded innovation initiatives, inventions and mission accomplishments.

Publication Awards

Author’s First Paper in a Peer-Reviewed Journal or Proceedings

Vivian Maloney for “Qubit Control Noise Spectroscopy with Optimal Suppression of Dephasing,” published in Physical Review A.

 

Walter G. Berl Award – Outstanding Paper in the

Krithika Balakrishnan, Eyal Bar-Kochba and Alexander S. Iwaskiw for “Identifying Patterns and Relationships Within Noisy Acoustic Data Sets.”

 

Outstanding Research Paper in an Externally Refereed Publication (two awards)

Plamen Demirev, James Johnson, Jesse Ko, Nam Le, Collin McDermott, Danielle Nachman and Zhiyong Xia for “Destruction of Per/Poly-fluorinated Alkyl Substances by Magnetite Nanoparticle-Catalyzed UV-Fenton Reaction,” published in Environmental Science: Water Research & Technology.

Stefan Allen, Ra’id Awadallah, Brian Gibbons and Andrew Goers for “Natural-Modes Expansion of Microwave Fields Emitted by Ultra-Short Pulse Laser Illumination of a Conducting Wire,” published in IEEE Transactions on Electromagnetic Compatibility.

 

Outstanding Development Paper in an Externally Refereed Publication (two awards)

James Johnson, Jesse Ko, Nam Le, Danielle Nachman, K. Michael Salerno and Zhiyong Xia for “Removing Forever Chemicals via Amphiphilic Functionalized Membranes,” published in npj Clean Water.

Andrew Badger, Matthew Fifer, David Handelman, Luke Osborn, Francesco Tenore, Brock Wester and Jared Wormley for “Shared Control of Bimanual Robotic Limbs with a Brain-Machine Interface for Self-Feeding,” published in Frontiers in Neurorobotics.

 

Outstanding Professional Book

Rick Chapman for “Remote Sensing Physics: An Introduction to Observing Earth From Space,” co-published by the American Geophysical Union and John Wiley & Sons.

 

Outstanding Special Publication

Nour Raouafi for “A Journey to Touch the Sun,” published in Physics Today.

 

Outstanding Conference Publication

Kimberly Ord for “Parker Solar Probe Pre-Launch Mission Operations Orbit-in-the-Life Mission Simulation,” published in the SpaceOps 2021 Post Conference Book “Space Operations: Beyond Boundaries to Human Endeavours.”

 

Publication Lifetime Achievement Award

Andy Cheng for historic publications advancing space science from the Voyager missions to, more recently, the DART mission.

R. W. Hart Prizes for Excellence in Independent Research and Development

Best IRAD Research Project

Principal participants Plamen Demirev, Claresta Joe-Wong, James Johnson, Phillip Johnson, Jesse Ko, Nam Le, Danielle Nachman, K. Michael Salerno, Luke Skala and Zhiyong Xia for “Water and Beyond.”

 

Best IRAD Development Project

Jessie Barrick, Robert Bruce, Joseph Centurelli, Nora Lane, Joseph Miragliotta, Lance Oh, David Shrekenhamer, Juliana Vievering, Angelos Vourlidas and Chad Weiler for Multifunctional Metasurface Optics.

 

Invention Awards

Government Purpose Invention Award

Jonathan Cohen for Method for Tracking Provenance of Information.

 

Invention of the Year Award

Will Coon for System to Augment Restorative Sleep.

 

Master Inventor Award, for having received 10 U.S. patents from intellectual property while at APL

Joseph Miragliotta.

Mission Accomplishment Awards

Mission Accomplishment Award for a Current Challenge (two awards)

Core team members Elena Adams, Nancy Chabot, Michelle Chen, Andy Cheng, Zachary Fletcher, Jeremy John, Daniel O’Shaughnessy, Edward Reynolds, Andy Rivkin and Evan Smith for Double Asteroid Redirection Test, the first-ever mission to demonstrate asteroid deflection by kinetic impactor.

Core team members Charles Goldblum, Christopher Griffin, Christopher James, N. Jordan Jameson, Patrick Lee, Maureen O’Connor, Bradley Potteiger, David Sames and Jacklyn Truong for creating an unprecedented new capability for the Department of Defense.

 

Mission Accomplishment Award for an Emerging Challenge

Principal contributors Rui Chen, David James, Marina Johnson, Adaleena Mookerjee, Brandon Patterson, Eric Ross, Cory Sheffer, Michael Thompson, Craig Williams and Robert Zaborowski for completing a comprehensive program of at-sea testing and analysis for an advanced Navy sensor.

 

Enterprise Accomplishment Award (two awards)

Led by Mike Buckley, Brooke Hammack, Lee Lachman, Tricia Latham, John O’Brien, Duane Pickett, Steven Smith, Justyna Surowiec, Shannon Thornton and Jessica Tozer for coordinating the DART media outreach campaign and guest event that allowed a global audience to witness the world’s first planetary defense test mission.

Led by Joseph Ames, Eliza Bell-Andrews, Jenny Danick, Bryant Garcia, Carrie Gingras, Denise Hockensmith and Camille Stauffer for Hiring Talent for APL in a Challenging and Unprecedented Recruiting Environment.

The Alvin R. Eaton Award

Eric Adles, a recognized time and frequency transfer authority, for leading precision navigation and timing, or PNT, radio frequency photonics and optical communications projects.

Project Catalyst Awards

Ignition Grant Prize

Meera Kesavan, Joel Sarapas and Scott Shuler for ICICLE: Ice Crystallization Inhibitor Coatings for Low-temperature Environments.

 

Combustion Grant Prize

Ryan Carter, Gehn Ferguson, Mark Graybeal, Alexander Lark and Steven Szczesniak for Thermal Management for Additive Hypersonic Leading Edges.

 

Propulsion Grant Year 3 Prize (three awards):

Greyson Brothers, Noah Ford, Naveed Haghani, Thomas Urban and John Winder for Beyond Human Reasoning — Bridging the Information Gap.

Ra’id Awadallah, Sean Ellison, Chester Hewitt, Francesca McFadden and Jordan Wiker for Early Warning Network.

Janna Domenico, Megan Hannegan, Nam Le, Carlos Martino, Ryan McQuillen and K. Michael Salerno for Novel Optimal Biomagnetic Sensor (NOBS).

Director’s Award for Special Achievements (two awards)

Team members Charles Anderson, John Atchison, Sarah Bergman, Carolyn Eady, Tri Freed, Thomas Johnson, Brennan Movius, J. Greg Near, Jerry Richard and Ed Russell for providing systems engineering expertise in direct support of government acquisitions of space capabilities.

Principal participants Timothy Allensworth, Michael Dennis, John Mack, Lee Rogers, James Sari, Elad Siman-Tov, Clara Smart, Benjamin Turek and Chad Weiler for developing a novel sensing approach to protect critical infrastructure.

The “Boldies”

Bumblebee Award, for a bold, funded project

Chace Ashcraft, Jay Brett, David Chung, Marisa Hughes, Anshu Saksena, Jennifer Sleeman, Caroline Tang and Larry White for developing the Physics-informed AI Climate Model Agent Neuro-symbolic Simulator (PACMANS) for Tipping Point Discovery, a hybrid AI climate modeling approach that enables the discovery of tipping points that would have catastrophic effects on our planet.

 

Noble Prize, for lessons learned

Sarah Brewer, Megan Hannegan, Raymond Lennon, Anna Munro and William Stone for MAINER: Manipulating Atmospheric Ice Nucleation Events, Redux, which targets the development of novel bio-derived cloud seeding applications.

Light the FUSE Award

Jennifer Benzing, Stephanie Berry, Gill Brown, Megan Leahy-Hoppa, Molly Nichols and Felipe Westhelle for establishing the Laboratory’s first Diversity and Inclusion Ambassador program.

APL Analytical Achievement Award

Core team members Timothy Allensworth, Toni Matheny, Robert Miceli, Jeffrey Miers, Fazle Siddique and Christopher Watkins for developing an analysis-based game executed for senior leadership from multiple U.S. government organizations.