News Article - Oct 27, 2017

CEEM graduate Matthew E. Caplan receives APS Doctoral Dissertation award

October 27, 2017

BLOOMINGTON, Ind. -- IU Physics and CEEM graduate Matthew Elias Caplan (Ph. D. 2017) received the American Physical Society Doctoral Dissertation Award in Nuclear Physics at the 2017 Fall Meeting of the APS Division of Nuclear Physics, held in Pittsburgh, PA, October 23-27, 2017. The awards are given annually "to recognize a recent Ph. D. in Nuclear Physics. The award consists of $2,500 and an allowance for travel to the annual Spring Meeting of the Division of Nuclear Physics of the American Physical Society, at which the award will be presented."

Matthew Caplan (advisor Chuck Horowitz) defended his doctoral thesis on Astromaterial Science at CEEM on May 1, 2017. The APS award selection committee cited him "for a pioneering study of dense nuclear matter in compact stars that makes surprising connections across disciplines including nuclear physics and biophysics." The committee states "his research in astromaterial science is interdisciplinary, and seeks to understand the material properties of dense matter in white dwarfs and neutron stars. For his thesis research, he used molecular dynamics simulations to study the crystallization of accreted matter in the outer crusts of neutron stars and the nuclear pasta layer in the inner crust." Matthew presented his doctoral research in a talk on Astromaterials in Neutron Stars at the Award Session on Friday, October 27, 2017.

Matthew is currently a Canadian Institute for Theoretical Astrophysics Postdoctoral Fellow at McGill University, where he works with Prof. Andrew Cumming to model neutron star interiors.