The American Physical Society (APS) has chosen Daniel Haskel, senior physicist and group leader at the U.S. Department of Energy’s (DOE) Argonne National Laboratory, as a 2021 Outstanding Referee.
Haskel leads the Magnetic Materials group at the Advanced Photon Source, a DOE Office of Science User Facility at Argonne. His expertise is in using and developing X-ray techniques aimed at understanding the interplay between chemical structure and electronic properties of a wide range of materials with potential applications in information and energy technologies.
The APS names about 150 of the 78,000 or so scientists who review papers for their journals each year as Outstanding Referees. Haskel is the only Argonne employee to receive this honor for 2021. APS journals include Physical Review Letters and the online-only Physical Review X, among others.
For Haskel, reviewing papers (at a rate of about one a month) is not just a way to help the science community, but an opportunity to keep up with the latest discoveries in his field months before they become available to the broader community.
“I take it very seriously,” Haskel said. “Sound papers can accelerate the field and pace of discovery, while unsound papers can send researchers the wrong way, and cause a delay in progress that could take years to fix. Reviewing papers allows me a preview of the latest developments, and to help the community a little bit.”
Haskel began his Argonne career as a post-doctoral researcher in 1999, after receiving his Ph.D. in physics from the University of Washington. He has led the Magnetic Materials group since 2013. He is also an adjunct professor at Washington University in St. Louis.
About the Advanced Photon Source
The U. S. Department of Energy Office of Science’s Advanced Photon Source (APS) at Argonne National Laboratory is one of the world’s most productive X-ray light source facilities. The APS provides high-brightness X-ray beams to a diverse community of researchers in materials science, chemistry, condensed matter physics, the life and environmental sciences, and applied research. These X-rays are ideally suited for explorations of materials and biological structures; elemental distribution; chemical, magnetic, electronic states; and a wide range of technologically important engineering systems from batteries to fuel injector sprays, all of which are the foundations of our nation’s economic, technological, and physical well-being. Each year, more than 5,000 researchers use the APS to produce over 2,000 publications detailing impactful discoveries, and solve more vital biological protein structures than users of any other X-ray light source research facility. APS scientists and engineers innovate technology that is at the heart of advancing accelerator and light-source operations. This includes the insertion devices that produce extreme-brightness X-rays prized by researchers, lenses that focus the X-rays down to a few nanometers, instrumentation that maximizes the way the X-rays interact with samples being studied, and software that gathers and manages the massive quantity of data resulting from discovery research at the APS.
This research used resources of the Advanced Photon Source, a U.S. DOE Office of Science User Facility operated for the DOE Office of Science by Argonne National Laboratory under Contract No. DE-AC02-06CH11357.
Argonne National Laboratory seeks solutions to pressing national problems in science and technology. The nation’s first national laboratory, Argonne conducts leading-edge basic and applied scientific research in virtually every scientific discipline. Argonne researchers work closely with researchers from hundreds of companies, universities, and federal, state and municipal agencies to help them solve their specific problems, advance America’s scientific leadership and prepare the nation for a better future. With employees from more than 60 nations, Argonne is managed by UChicago Argonne, LLC for the U.S. Department of Energy’s Office of Science.
The U.S. Department of Energy’s Office of Science is the single largest supporter of basic research in the physical sciences in the United States and is working to address some of the most pressing challenges of our time. For more information, visit https://energy.gov/science.