February 22, 1995 Contact: Robert Irion (408/459-2495)

UCSC'S "OUTSTANDING FACULTY AWARD" IN THE SCIENCES GOES TO PHYSICIST

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

SANTA CRUZ, CA--Physicist Abraham Seiden has received the "outstanding faculty award" for 1994-95 from his peers in the Natural Sciences Division at UC Santa Cruz. The annual award honors excellence in three areas: research, teaching, and service to the campus, scientific organizations, and the public.

Seiden, a professor of physics, directs the Santa Cruz Institute for Particle Physics (SCIPP), a leading international group in high- energy physics. SCIPP scientists work at many of the world's most powerful particle colliders, searching for clues about the ultimate nature of matter. Most notably, Seiden and his colleagues have pioneered new ways to detect particles that spray outward from the rapid-fire collisions. A unique SCIPP technology, using thousands of small strips of silicon, was to form the core of the main detector at the ill-fated Superconducting Super Collider. SCIPP now is helping to adapt the technology for a future accelerator in Europe, which will try to achieve the physics goals of the Super Collider. Seiden also has cultivated a strong team of theorists at SCIPP, especially in elementary particle physics and cosmology.

Seiden has served on many committees that advise on the future of high-energy physics. For instance, he chaired the Scientific Policy Committee at the Stanford Linear Accelerator Center and is one of two Americans on the Scientific Policy Committee at CERN, the largest particle-physics research center in Europe. At UCSC, he has contributed to numerous committees within the Natural Sciences Division.

Students praise Seiden for his love of teaching and for his dedication to helping them in the laboratory. "Students . . . really learn things that are unavailable in the literature and they get a chance to see how one attacks problems from a fresh perspective," wrote David Dorfan, chairman of the Physics Department, in a letter nominating Seiden for the award. "In the last two years he has not received any evaluations below the top category."

Seiden earned his B.S. from Columbia University, his M.S. from the California Institute of Technology, and his Ph.D. in physics from UC Santa Cruz in 1974. He joined the UCSC faculty in 1976 and is a fellow of Crown College.

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