Qi Li Wins Young Researcher
Award at ICDIM 2012

The International Conference on Defects in Insulating Materials was held the week of June 25-29 in Santa Fe, NM, hosted by Los Alamos National Laboratory. (Note: ICDIM 1996 was hosted at Wake Forest University, traveling subsequently at 4-year intervals to South Africa, Latvia, and Brazil before returning to the US at Santa Fe.) Wiley, the publisher of the ICDIM proceedings, sponsors the Young Researcher award for best paper presented by a researcher under age 35. In addition to the certificate and awards of books and cash, the award-winning paper is to be published as the Editor's Choice article in the Wiley scientific journal Physica Status Solidi B with option of the cover illustration.

At ICDIM 2012, the Young Researcher prize was awarded to Wake Forest graduate student Qi Li for his presentation on "First Principles Calculations of Iodine Vacancy Centers in Strontium Iodide". Co-authors with Qi on the research are professor Richard Williams of Wake Forest, and Daniel Aberg and Babak Sadigh of Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory. The research is important for improving the energy resolution and sensitivity of radiation detectors used in homeland security, medical molecular imaging, and high-energy physics.