2024 Fulbright Postdoctoral Award to Physics PhD Candidate Chris Grayson
It is a pleasure to announce that Physics graduate student Chris M. Grayson has been awarded the prestigious Fulbright postdoctoral fellowship. The Fulbright Fellowship (https://exchanges.state.gov/us/program/fulbright-us-scholar-program) is a widely recognized international academic exchange program promoting communications and scholar exchanges between the United States and other countries. It has been supported for more than half a century through an annual appropriation from the U.S. Congress and by partner nations. It provides grants for research, study, and teaching opportunities to scholars, enabling them to pursue academic endeavors abroad.
Chris Grayson will start his postdoc at the Wigner Research Center for Physics in Hungary, which was founded in 2012 by the merging of the two former research institutes of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences. Today the Wigner Research Center for Physics is one of the most highly staffed research centers of the Hungarian research network. Chris plans to apply methods of particles and plasma theory developed in his Ph.D. to the nano-plasmonic laser fusion program. This effort will be a part of the ongoing experiments at the European ELI-Alps high-intensity laser laboratory nearby. The Extreme Light Infrastructure (ELI) enables the study of interactions between light and matter with the highest intensity, in the relativistic regime. It will open a doorway into new physics as well as establishing new technical developments such as relativistic microelectronics (Chris's objective) and small laser particle accelerators.
This is not the first time Chris will travel to the beautiful Budapest: the picture shows him trekking on the hill location of the Wigner Institute; in side view is the downtown market hall.
Chris came to the University of Arizona from the snowy Northeast and is on track to complete his Ph.D. this May.
We all wish him success in his forthcoming European adventure.
Shown below are photos of Chris together with Dean Carmala Garzione at the CoS Galileo Circle Awards Dinner.
