President Obama recently named 2 Department of Energy lab scientists as winners of Presidential Awards. Kennedy Reed, a physicist at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, was presented a prestigious Presidential Award for Excellence in Science and Engineering Mentoring. Reed is a theoretical physicist researching atomic collisions in high-temperature plasmas.
Los Alamos National Laboratory physicist Ivan Vitev received a prestigious Presidential Early Career Award for Scientists and Engineers. Vitev is an expert in quantum chromodynamics, and in energy loss of high-energy particles in hot, dense matter.
The Presidential Award for Excellence in Science, Mathematics and Engineering Mentoring, awarded each year to individuals or organizations, recognizes the crucial role that mentoring plays in the academic and personal development of students studying science or engineering and who belong to minorities that are underrepresented in those fields. By offering their time, encouragement and expertise to these students, mentors help ensure that the next generation of scientists and engineers will better reflect the diversity of the United States.
The Presidential Early Career Awards for Scientists and Engineers present the highest honor bestowed by the United States government on young professionals in the early stages of their independent research careers. The awards, established by President Clinton in February 1996, are awarded on the basis of two criteria: pursuit of innovative research at the frontiers of science and technology and a commitment to community service as demonstrated through scientific leadership, public education, or community outreach.
Kennedy Reed earned a B.S. at Monmouth College in Illinois, and a PhD in physics at University of Nebraska. He is a theoretical physicist at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, working in research on atomic collisions in high temperature plasmas. He has over 100 publications, and has contributed to the understanding of indirect processes in electron-impact excitation and ionization of highly charged ions. He is also director of the LLNL Research Collaborations Program for HBCUs & MIs, which is within the Laboratory's University Relations Program.
Dr. Reed is a Fellow of the American Physical Society; Charter Fellow, National Society of Black Physicists (NSBP); member, Optical Society of America; and member, American Association for the Advancement of Science.
He has been a visiting scientist at the Hahn Meitner Institute in Germany; at University College London in England; at University of Dakar in Senegal; and at University of Cape Coast in Ghana. He has been active in programs of the International Center for Theoretical Physics in Trieste, Italy; has served as Vice Chair of the APS Committee on International Scientific Affairs; and was elected to the International Union of Pure and Applied Physics : Commission on Physics for Development.
A leader in national efforts to increase minority participation in physics, Dr. Reed has been President of NSBP; Chair, APS Bouchet Prize Committee; member, APS Committee on Minorities in Physics; a co-founder of the National Physical Science Consortium Graduate Fellowship Program; and a Physics Professor at Morehouse College.
