Dawn Williams named APS Woman Physicist of the Month

Dawn Williams, Associate Professor in the Department of Physics and Astronomy at the University of Alabama in Tuscaloosa, has been named the February Woman Physicist of the Month by APS’s Committee on the Status of Women in Physics.

Dawn
Dawn Williams near McMurdo Station in Antarctica.

“I was touched that Naoko and Donglian nominated me and very happy to receive the award,” Williams said. “Mentoring is a very important part of my professional life, as I have benefited so much from my own mentors, and I want to pass on what I have learned.” Naoko Kurahashi Neilson is an assistant professor of physics at Drexel University and Donglian Xu is one of Williams’ graduate students. They are both members of the IceCube Collaboration.

Williams leads the IceCube group at the University of Alabama where she is an active member of the UA Women in Physics community, which she also helped establish. Her contribution to IceCube research goes hand in hand with her outstanding dedication as a supervisor and mentor for students and postdocs both at Tuscaloosa and from other institutions of the IceCube Collaboration.

She and her team are developing techniques to identify tau neutrinos in IceCube, and she is also responsible for the calibration and verification operations of the Antarctic observatory. During the last few months, she has been heavily involved in the preliminary studies for the IceCube low-energy extension, known as PINGU.

Read the story on the University of Alabama website (link). See the APS website (link) for information on current and past Woman Physicist of the Month.