In brief

The 2006 Dirac Medal is being awarded to Peter Zoller, professor of physics at the University of Innsbruck in Austria and scientific director of the Institute for Quantum Optics and Quantum Information at the Austrian Academy of Sciences. Zoller is being honored “for his innovative and prolific accomplishments in atomic physics, including his seminal work in proposing methods to use trapped ions for quantum computing and describing how to realize the Bose–Hubbard model and associated phase transitions in ultracold gases.” Zoller will receive the medal and a $5000 cash prize during a ceremony later this year in Trieste, Italy, where he will present a lecture. The Dirac Medal was established in 1985 by the Abdus Salam International Centre for Theoretical Physics in Trieste.

Carl A. Ventrice Jr left the University of New Orleans on 13 August for a position as associate professor in the physics department at Texas State University in San Marcos. Ventrice had started at UNO in August 1996 as an assistant professor of physics and was promoted to associate professor in 2000.

He was also an adjunct professor with UNO’s Advanced Materials Research Institute, and since 2005 had been an adjunct professor in the physics and astronomy department at Louisiana State University. At Texas State he is continuing to focus his research on surface and interface science.

Louisiana State University physics and astronomy professor Robert Svoboda, who had been at LSU since 1990, left his post in August to accept a joint position as professor of physics at the University of California, Davis, and as a member of the research staff in the physics and advanced technologies division at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory. Svoboda’s wife, Juilien Svoboda, a medical physicist at Memorial Hospital in New Orleans since 2005, has accepted a position as medical physicist at St. Teresa’s Hospital in Stockton, California.

Thomas J. Bowles, a fellow at Los Alamos National Laboratory and its former chief science officer, has been named scientific adviser to New Mexico Governor Bill Richardson. In his new, temporary post—he is on loan from LANL for an indeterminate period—Bowles will counsel Richardson and members of the state government on science and technology matters. In a prepared statement, Bowles said a priority is to help Richardson analyze better methods to integrate high technology across multiple policy areas. Bowles started at LANL in 1979.