By Jeff Austin

In contrast to the popular notion that teaching and research are unrelated activities at many universities, IU Bloomington physicist Richard Van Kooten has received national recognition as both a teacher and a researcher. Van Kooten recently was honored with the prestigious Cottrell Scholars Award, which carries a $50,000 grant to further endeavors in both the classroom and the laboratory.

Van Kooten is one of only four scientists in the entire Midwest/Rocky Mountain region to receive the award, presented annually to the most promising young teacher-scientists at universities in the United States. The award supports the growing realization that teaching and research should be complementary rather than competitive.

"We are delighted at Rick Van Kooten's award and its reflection on the quality of our faculty and research programs," said Tim Londergan, chairman of the IUB Physics Department. "His achievement tops off a banner year for our department, one in which our nuclear physics program was ranked third in the nation by 'U.S. News and World Report'."

Van Kooten plans to use the stipend from the award to explore the world of undiscovered subatomic particles, searching for evidence of "supersymmetry" at the large electron-positron ring located in Geneva, Switzerland, at CERN, the European center for high energy physics. Supersymmetry is the theory that every known particle has a corresponding, yet unseen, "supersymmetric" partner. Confirming the existence of such "partner" particles might help account for such mysteries as missing mass. Physicists know there is more mass in the universe than they can see; some of it could be attributed to supersymmetric particles.

Van Kooten is originally from Hamilton, Ontario, and received his doctoral degree from Stanford University in 1990. Prior to joining the faculty, he was a scientific associate at CERN and a research associate at DESY, a high energy physics research facility in Hamburg, Germany.

The Cottrell Scholars Award is named after Frederick Gardner Cottrell, the scientist, inventor and philanthropist who established Research Corporation, a science advancement foundation, in 1912. The goals of the foundation, located in Tucson, Ariz., are to make inventions "more available and effective in the useful arts" and "to provide means for scientific research and experimentation."

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