The annual Wigner Fellowship reception was held on March 12, 2015 to recognize the new and current Wigner fellows along with Wigner fellows who recently completed their fellowship appointment. The fellowships are named for Nobel laureate Eugene Wigner, who was ORNL's first research director and a major figure in the Manhattan Project and early nuclear reactor engineering. New Wigner fellows are Michael Naguib, sponsored by Nancy Dudney; Michael Chance, sponsored by Lynn Boatner; and Xunxiang Hu, sponsored by Yutai Katoh, all of the Materials Science & Technology Division and Numan Laanait in the Center for Nanophase Materials Sciences, sponsored by Art Baddorf. Current fellows are Matthew Green, Physics Division, sponsored by David Radford; Travis Williams, Quantum Condensed Matter Division, sponsored by Mark Lumsden; Tom Berlijn, Computer Science & Mathematics Division, sponsored by Bobby Sumpter; Yue Fan, Materials Science & Technology Division, sponsored by Malcolm Stocks; and Benjamin Doughty, Chemical Sciences Division, sponsored by Gary Van Berkel.
Fellows who recently completed their appointments are Dan Close, Biosciences Division, sponsored by David Graham; Vera Bocharova, Chemical Sciences Division, sponsored by Alexei Sokolov; Jaswinder Sharma, Energy & Transportation Sciences Division, sponsored by Panos Datskos; and Wu Zhou, Materials Sciences & Technology Division, sponsored by Matthew Chisholm.
Pictured at the Wigner fellow reception (left to right) are Matthew Green, Travis Williams, Xunxiang Hu, Michael Naguib, Lab Director Thom Mason; Wigner Committee chair Ken Tobin, Dan Close, Tom Berlijn, and Numan Laanait.