The Cryogenic Society of America has awarded Fermilab engineer Ram Dhuley the William E. Gifford Award. The biennial award recognizes Dhuley and his Illinois Accelerator Research Center team “for their work in the design and development of cryocooler-based cooling systems for superconducting particle accelerators and displaying excellence in the use of cryocoolers for ultralow-temperature contact resistance characterization.”
Dhuley, a former Bardeen fellow at Fermilab, is pioneering a method of operating superconducting radio-frequency acceleration cavities using cryocoolers. Rather than use liquid helium to achieve ultracold temperatures, Dhuley couples the cavities to a cryocooler through conduction. By eliminating the infrastructure needed to circulate helium, researchers could shrink the size of superconducting particle accelerators, making them compact for industrial and mobile applications.
Dhuley will receive a monetary stipend and a plaque at the Cryogenic Engineering Conference in Hartford, Connecticut, to be held from July 21-25.
Learn more about Dhuley’s cryocooler work.