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Bernd Berg
earns prestigious
Humboldt Research Award
A Florida State University
researcher who has spent three
decades investigating the
mysteries of particle
physics through computer simulations
has achieved one of academia's top
distinctions. Bernd Berg, the Dirac
Professor of Physics at FSU, has
been chosen to receive Germany's
Humboldt Research Award, given to
outstanding academics who are at the
peak of their careers.
"I am very happy to be honored in
this way by my home country," said
Berg, who has dual citizenship in
the United States and Germany. "My
research that led to this award
would not have been possible without
the continuous support of FSU, in
particular the physics department,
which allowed me sufficient time for
research away from administrative
and teaching duties."
The Humboldt Research Award is
presented to outstanding scientists
and scholars from all disciplines
whose fundamental discoveries, new
theories or insights have had a
significant impact on their own
discipline and who are expected to
continue producing cutting-edge
achievements in the future. Award
winners are invited to spend a
period of six to 12 months on
academic collaboration with
colleagues in their field in
Germany. The award is valued at
60,000 euros, or approximately
88,000 U.S. dollars.
"This is a well-deserved honor
for Dr. Berg that also brings
increased stature and international
recognition to our department and
university," said Mark Riley,
chairman of the FSU Department of
Physics.
"This award reflects the
outstanding contributions Dr. Berg
has made to physics and to
computational science," added Max
Gunzburger, director of FSU's School
of Computational Science, where Berg
also serves on the faculty.
Berg's research is within an area
of physics known as quantum field
theory, which arose in the 20th
century as a way of answering some
of the most fundamental questions of
matter.
For example, "We learn in school
that the nucleus of an atom is made
up of positively charged particles
called protons, and we also learn
that positive particles repel each
other," Berg said. "So the question
is: Why does the nucleus not fall
apart?"
Studying the behavior of the
smallest particles of matter
requires the use of some of the
world's most powerful computers. It
was one such computer, housed in
what was then known as the
Supercomputer Computations Research
Institute at FSU, that first
attracted Berg to the university in
the mid-1980s. In the two decades
since, he has pioneered the use of
computers to perform complex
simulations, developing methods that
often cross the boundaries between
fields of science. For instance, his
"multicanonical'' approach is
popular in structural biology.
Berg's computer-based research also
led him to take on a second faculty
position within the School of
Computational Science.
Berg earned his Ph.D. in 1977 at
the Free University of Berlin. He
became assistant professor at
Hamburg University in 1978, a
position he held until 1984. During
that time he was awarded a CERN
fellowship and spent two years at
CERN, the European particle physics
lab on the French/Swiss border at
Geneva. He became an associate
professor at FSU in 1985 and was
promoted to full professor in 1988.
While he has kept his position at
FSU since then, he also has kept
close contact with many overseas
research institutions through
extended stays in Germany, France,
Austria and Japan.
Berg has written 150 scientific
papers, of which the 46 most well
known have more than 3,000
citations. He also recently
published a computational physics
textbook, "Markov Chain Monte Carlo
Simulations and Their Statistical
Analysis." Among other honors, Berg
was elected a Fellow of the American
Physical Society in 2004, was
awarded the Leibniz Professorship of
Leipzig University in 2005, and
became the Dirac Professor of
Physics at FSU in 2006.
For more information about the
Alexander von Humboldt Foundation,
which distributes the Humboldt
Research Award, visit <www.humboldt-foundation.de/en/stiftung/stiftung.htm>. |
