ARGONNE, Ill. — Three young scientists with promising careers ahead of them have been appointed as postdoctoral fellows at the U.S. Department of Energy’s Argonne National Laboratory.

• Jana Zaumseil has been appointed the 2007 Ugo Fano Postdoctoral Fellow. She will conduct research at Argonne’s Center for Nanoscale Materials. She comes from the Cavendish Laboratory at the University of Cambridge, United Kingdom. Her research there has focused on ambipolar transport in polymer semiconductors and light-emitting polymer field-effect transistors.
• Ross Young has been appointed the 2007 Eugene P. Wigner Postdoctoral Fellow. He will pursue his research in Argonne’s Physics Division. He comes to Argonne from the Thomas Jefferson National Accelerator Facility. A major focus of his research has been lattice-QCD-related hadron-physics.
• Gregory Halder has been appointed the 2007 Arthur Holly Compton Postdoctoral Fellow. He will conduct research in Argonne’s Materials Science Division. He comes to Argonne from the University of Sydney, Australia, where his work has focused on polynuclear spin-crossover molecular switches.

“The 2007 fellows display superb ability in their fields,” said Argonne Director Robert Rosner. ​“I’m confident that combining their talent with Argonne’s world class facilities and staff will generate exciting new directions for research and will launch them on to distinguished careers.”

The fellowships are named after scientific and technical luminaries who have been associated with Argonne, its predecessors and the University of Chicago since the 1940s. Fellowships are competitively selected and are awarded for a two-year term, with possible renewal for a third year.

“Attracting and retaining the best and brightest young scientific talent is the goal of the Postdoctoral Fellow Program at Argonne, and to help us better achieve that goal, we have recently reorganized and expanded our postdoctoral programs,” said Harold Myron, director of Argonne’s Division of Educational Programs.

The overall program comprises three separate postdoctoral opportunities: The Argonne Named Postdoctoral Fellowship, the Director’s Postdoctoral Fellowship and Division Postdoctoral Appointments. They will be overseen by the newly created Argonne Postdoctoral Committee.

Al Sattelberger, Associate Laboratory Director for Physical Sciences, which oversees Argonne’s Educational Programs, said he believes reorganizing the programs under one oversight group will help insure the quality of the programs and will help Argonne be competitive in attracting talented young scientists and engineers.

Strengthening the postdoctoral programs is part of the laboratory’s talent initiative, which strives to further develop the quality of Argonne’s science and operations staff to meet research and development challenges of the future. ​“The ultimate goal of the initiative is to develop a systematic approach for attracting, developing and retaining personnel, as well as a thoughtful approach to educating the next generation of scientists and engineers,” said Sattelberger.

“It may be something of a cliché to say that an organization’s most important asset is its people, but in the case of Argonne, it’s true,” said Rosner. ​“We want to be the best in the world at what we do — innovative research and development in the national interest, focusing on some of the hardest scientific and technical problems facing our nation. To succeed we must attract, develop and retain world-class and diverse personnel.” — Donna Jones Pelkie