23rd Rosen Prize goes to Shoemaker

May 27, 2011—Daniel P. Shoemaker, a postdoctoral fellow at Argonne National Laboratory, is the winner of the 23^rd Rosen Prize. The prize, established in honor of Louis Rosen, the father of LANSCE, is awarded for the most outstanding doctoral or master's thesis based on experimental or theoretical research performed at LANSCE. Criteria include the originality and scientific impact of the research and the student's contribution to the research.

Shoemaker was honored during last week's Rosenfest Lectures celebration, and the prize recipient was among the speakers participating in the event.

Shoemaker’s doctoral winning thesis is titled, "Understanding atomic disorder in polar and magnetic oxides." His thesis focused on creating and characterizing large-box models of materials that cannot be described using traditional crystallographic tools due to disorder on the nanoscale.

Shoemaker first came to the Lujan Center in 2007 as a user, then returned each year as a fellow of the University of California, Santa Barbara (UCSB)/Institute for Multiscale Materials Studies (IMMS). Anna Llobet and Thomas Proffen of the Lujan Center's Total Scattering team mentored him. His research, directed by Ram Seshadri (UCSB), uses neutron total scattering to describe structure-property relations in disordered magnetic and functional oxides.

Shoemaker received his doctorate from the Materials Department at UCSB. He defended his thesis in September 2010 and was awarded a Graduate Student Gold Award by the Materials Research Society in 2010.