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Governor Mark R. Warner and Science Museum of Virginia Director, Dr. Walter R.T. Witschey, announced the state's Outstanding Scientists and Industrialists of 2003 in a special announcement on Feb. 11. Walecka, one of the world's leaders in nuclear theory, was formerly a professor of physics at Stanford University; and from 1986-92 he was the scientific director of CEBAF. The physicist has authored several books and more than 130 publications in scientific journals.

In a question-and-answer game format, the contestants were grilled on their knowledge in various fields of math and science. Morning sessions were in a round-robin format, followed by a double-elimination round in the afternoon. Winning first place earned Thomas Jefferson High School a trip to the Science Bowl Nationals to be held in Washington, D.C. in May. This was the team's third straight regional science bowl win; and it was last year's winner at Nationals.

One member of Jefferson Lab's Physics Division and two JLab users were elected Fellows of the American Physical Society in 2002. JLab users joining Interim Theory Group Leader Rocco Schiavilla in earning the distinction of being elected APS Fellows, through the APS Nuclear Physics Division, include Charles Perdrisat from the College of William & Mary; and Douglas H. Beck from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.

In an experiment slated to commence the third week of March, the Jefferson Lab accelerator will go from "ordinary CEBAF accelerator" to "novel test bed" for recirculating linacs with energy recovery. If the results are what scientists hope for, any advances could be applied to future ERLs. Existing machines, like JLab's Free-Electron Laser, could benefit, as well as planned next-generation devices at national laboratories and universities, such as ion colliders and advanced light sources.

Jacek Sekutowicz is participating in the design of new cavities and devices known as high order mode couplers, which he and his colleagues believe are needed to reduce or eliminate "parasitic" modes. These oscillations can reflect back on the beam and degrade its quality. The designers' ultimate goal is to harness these resultant electromagnetic fields in order to insure highly efficient beam passage through the cavities.

Jefferson Lab is part of a team of federal laboratories -- including Argonne, Brookhaven, Lawrence Berkeley, Los Alamos and Oak Ridge -- assisting in the design, engineering and construction of the $1 billion-plus SNS, which will provide the most intense pulsed-neutron beams in the world for scientific research and industrial development. "We're definitely world leaders in this kind of technology. We've been trailblazers," says Isidoro Campisi, senior scientist with JLab's Institute for Superconducting Radio Frequency Science & Technology.

Jefferson Lab's RCS experiment made two types of measurements. In the first measurement, the scattering probability was surveyed over a wide range of scattering angles at four different photon beam energies. The second measurement concerned the direction of the spin -- or polarization -- of the recoiled proton. Full analysis of the experiment, which will be the subject of four Ph.D. theses, is expected to be complete in about two years.

An experiment conducted with Jefferson Lab's Free-Electron Laser has shown how to make a highly useful form of light 20,000 times brighter. Terahertz radiation is non-ionizing and shares with microwaves the capability to penetrate a wide variety of non-conducting materials. Gwyn Williams, JLab's Free-Electron Laser Basic Research Program manager, conceived and led the multi-laboratory team conducting the experiment. The results were published in the November 14, 2002 issue of the international science journal Nature.

A research team led by Brian Holloway, an assistant professor at the College of William & Mary's Department of Applied Science, used Jefferson Lab's Free-Electron Laser to explore the fundamental science of how and why nanotubes form, paying close attention to the atomic and molecular details. Already, in experiments, the William & Mary/NASA Langley collaboration has produced tubes better than those at other laboratories or in industry.

Jefferson Lab physicists hope to shine a metaphorical light into the darkest of subatomic corners - in particular, experimentalists will be looking for particles known as exotic hybrid mesons.