Uriel Nauenberg, a professor of physics at the University of Colorado at Boulder, has been selected to receive the university's highest recognition for teaching and research, the Hazel Barnes Prize, for his work in high-energy physics.
The prize includes an engraved University Medal and a cash award of $20,000, the largest single faculty award funded by the university. He will be recognized during spring commencement exercises on May 7.
Nauenberg's research focuses on the fundamental interactions of particles to understand, at a basic level, how the world we live in was formed at the time of the Big Bang.
"Presently I am most interested in trying to uncover the particles that form the dark matter in our universe as determined from astrophysical measurements," Nauenberg said.
According to his colleagues Nauenberg has often involved his students, undergraduate and graduate, in his research projects. His doctoral students hold significant positions at the Stanford Linear Accelerator Center, Lawrence Livermore Laboratories and York University in Toronto. Undergraduates who have worked with him have gone on to graduate school at Princeton, the University of California, Santa Barbara, University of California, Santa Cruz, Stanford and the California Institute of Technology.
"Uriel's career at CU strikes the perfect balance between research at the national level of excellence, and accomplishment as a teacher-mentor that may be unparalleled on campus," said Todd Gleeson, dean of the College of Arts and Sciences. "His dedicated service to the campus over a long period of time, and which continues today, is even more remarkable given his efforts as both a scientist and an educator in the Hazel Barnes tradition."
Nauenberg said the highlight of his career is his participation in the observation of new phenomena that confirmed the validity of the Standard Model, a theory in physics developed in the 1960s that explains what the world is made of and what holds it together.
"The Standard Model is the present cornerstone of our understanding of elementary particle interactions," Nauenberg said. "Validating this theory was very important, and I always enjoyed working at the very frontier of our understanding."
Nauenberg also has served in numerous faculty governance positions since he began his career in the CU-Boulder physics department in 1969. Most recently he served as the chair of the Boulder Faculty Assembly in 2002-03.
"Uriel Nauenberg is the model of the university teacher-scholar educator," said John Cumalat, chair and professor of physics. "He has involved countless undergraduates in his research over his career and mentored and supervised eight students through their doctorates. He also is the author of more than 250 publications. In professional service and faculty governance, Uriel has been a tireless worker for the University of Colorado."
Nauenberg received both his bachelor's degree and doctorate from Columbia University. Before joining the physics department at CU-Boulder, he taught at Princeton University. He has been named "Outstanding Physics Professor" three times during his career at CU-Boulder.
The Hazel Barnes Prize was established in 1991 by former Chancellor James Corbridge in honor of philosophy Professor Emerita Hazel Barnes to recognize "the enriching interrelationship between teaching and research."