Two popular press articles highlight a soon to be released Physical Reveiw Letter, co-authored by Ed Ott, regarding an electronic system that exhibits dragon kings. The articles, entitled Physicists Slay 'Dragon Kings and Using Chaos Theory to Predict and Prevent Catastrophic 'Dragon King' Events, appear in the latest issues of Physics World and Wired, respectively.

Professor Ed Ott has been awarded the 2014 Julius Edgar Lilienfeld Prize of the American Physical Society. Unlike most APS awards, the Lilienfeld Prize recognizes an "outstanding contribution to physics by a single individual" regardless of sub-field. Professor Ott was cited for "pioneering contributions in nonlinear dynamics and chaos theory that have been uniquely influential for physicists and scientists in many fields, and for communicating the beauty and unifying power of these concepts to remarkably diverse audiences."

Ed Ott

Professor Ott is a Distinguished University Professor of Electrical Engineering and Physics and a member of our Institute for Research in Electronics and Applied Physics (IREAP). He received his B.S. in Electrical Engineering at The Cooper Union and his M.S. and Ph.D. in Electrophysics from Polytechnic University, then enjoyed a postdoctoral fellowship at the Department of Applied Mathematics and Theoretical Physics of Cambridge University. Returning stateside, he joined the Electrical Engineering faculty at Cornell. He left Ithaca in 1979 to join the Department of Physics and Department of Electrical Engineering at the University of Maryland, and has also held appointments at the Naval Research Lab and what is now the Kavli Institute for Theoretical Physics at the University of California, Santa Barbara.

In 2011, he was named the Yuen Sang and Yu Yuen Kit So Endowed Professor of Non-linear Dynamics. He is a Fellow of the Society for Industrial and Applied Mathematics, the American Physical Society and the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers.

Early in his career, Professor Ott researched intense charged particle beams and the theory of plasmas. Here in College Park, he began to delve into chaos, including chaotic scattering; fast magnetic dynamos; fractals, transport, and Lagrangian chaos in fluids; control of chaos; fractal basin boundaries; communication with chaos; and transitions of the dynamics of chaotic systems.

He has published about 300 journal articles and written a well-regarded textbook, Chaos in Dynamical Systems. He is also an editor of Coping with Chaos, a collection of reprints that focuses on how scientists observe, quantify, and control chaos.

Congratulations to alumna Ana Maria Rey, who was named a 2013 MacArthur Foundation Fellow. Rey received a B.S. (1999) from the Universidad de los Andes in Bogotá and a Ph.D. (2004) from the University of Maryland, studying with Charles Clark. She is currently a JILA fellow and University of Colorado professor. Her research group focuses on ultracold atoms, optical lattices and the underlying physics of these systems, with applications in condensed matter and quantum information science. JILA is a research partnership between CU and NIST, Boulder.Ana Maria Rey. Courtesy of the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation

The American Physical Society (APS) has awarded Phillip Sprangle the 2013 James Clerk Maxwell Prize for Plasma Physics for " pioneering contributions to the physics of high intensity laser interactions with plasmas, and to the development of plasma accelerators, free-electron lasers, gyrotrons and high current electron accelerators."

The prize is the highest honor bestowed to plasma physicists by the APS. It will presented at the annual meeting of the Division of Plasma Physics, November 11-15, 2013 in Denver, Colorado.

Arpita Upadhyaya has received the 2013 Richard A. Ferrell Distinguished Faculty Fellowship, which recognizes outstanding personal effort and expertise in physics as well as dedicated service to the UMD Department of Physics. The Fellowship, established in 2001, honors Dr. Richard A. Ferrell, a deeply-respected physicist who joined the University in 1953, served 40 years, and remained active in the department even after his retirement. Dr. Ferrell died in 2005 at his nearby University Park home. Professor Upadhyaya is an Assistant Professor for the Maryland Biophysics research group. Her primary research interests are in membrane and cellular biophysics, soft condensed matter and statistical mechanics of polymer networks.