People

Daniel Brennan (photo: Brian Wilson)

Name: Daniel Brennan.

Position: Assistant project archivist in the Seeley G. Mudd Manuscript Library. Processing and cataloging materials in the University Archives. Writing finding aids, which provide detailed information about a collection. Helping patrons locate material or details about the library’s offerings.

Quote: “In the spring I was part of a project to digitize the University’s charter and the early minutes of the Board of Trustees, which date from 1748. These one-of-a-kind items predate even the Declaration of Independence, so being able to work with them and eventually see them made available online was pretty cool.”

Other interests: Watching the Mets. Playing guitar.

To suggest a colleague as a future “Spotlight,” e-mail pwb@princeton.edu.

Staff obituaries

Current employees

October: Alan Goldberg, 58 (1975-2008, public safety); Margaret Jones, 57 (1979-2008, dining services).

Retired employees

September: Gerald Hart, 68 (1974-2005, plasma physics lab); George Hustak, 91 (1963-1979, plasma physics lab); Richard Huston, 67 (1970-2005, loans and receivables).

Briefs

Princeton faculty members Rubén Gallo and Keith Sanborn have received Fulbright Scholar grants to conduct research abroad this year.

Gallo, an associate professor of Spanish and Portuguese languages and cultures and director of the Program in Latin American Studies, is lecturing and conducting research at the Sigmund Freud Museum in Vienna, Austria, for a project titled “Freud in Mexico: The Neuroses of Modernity.” Gallo specializes in Latin American literature and culture.

Sanborn, a lecturer in visual arts and the Lewis Center for the Arts, is lecturing and pursuing research at Smolny College in St. Petersburg, Russia. The title of his project is “From Montage to Game Hacks and Beyond.” Sanborn is a video artist who is interested in media critique.

Gallo and Sanborn are among the nearly 800 U.S. faculty and professionals lecturing or conducting research around the world through the Fulbright program this year. The grants are awarded on the basis of academic or professional achievement and demonstrated leadership potential.

Michael Zarnstorff of the Princeton Plasma Physics Laboratory (PPPL) and Stewart Prager, who has been named the next director of the lab, have received the American Physical Society’s 2008 Dawson Award for Excellence in Plasma Physics.

Zarnstorff, a principal research physicist at PPPL, and Prager, a professor of physics and director of the Madison Symmetric Torus experiment at the University of Wisconsin, are being recognized for their discovery of the “bootstrap current” in fusion plasmas. While working on the Toroidal Octupole experiment at the University of Wisconsin, Prager and his then-graduate student Zarnstorff first detected this phenomenon, in which the electrical current is generated by the plasma itself. At PPPL, Zarnstorff conducted experiments on the Tokamak Fusion Test Reactor that firmly established the existence of the bootstrap current in high-temperature, fusion-relevant plasmas.

“The work of Prager and Zarnstorff, experimentally confirming the theoretically predicted self-sustaining bootstrap current, has revolutionized the design of fusion systems, providing a route to plasmas that can themselves sustain some of the magnetic fields that confine them,” said the current PPPL director, Robert Goldston.

The annual award consists of $5,000 to be divided equally in the case of multiple recipients.

Prager has played a key role for decades in efforts to harness the energy potential of nuclear fusion by working with charged gases known as plasmas. He was named in July as the new director of PPPL. His appointment is expected to be effective this year.