On Alumna Ana Maria Rey (Ph.D., 2004)

By: Karrie Sue Hawbaker, editor

Dr. Ana Maria Rey, one of our newest alums (Ph.D., '04), made waves in the physics community this year as the first woman to win the APS' Outstanding Doctoral Thesis Research in Atomic, Molecular, or Optical Physics award in its 13-year history. Recently, I had the opportunity to talk to her about her success and the professional journey that she has only just begun.

The German playwright Bertolt Brecht once said that “there are men who work one day and they are good, men who work one year and they are great, but the men who work their whole life, these are the indispensable.”

Even if Dr. Ana Maria Rey had not told me that this was the topic of the speech she gave at her college graduation ceremony only six years ago, I could have guessed it was an idea that she espouses. Her dedication to her work is clear – in the energy with which she talks about her research and the recognition she has earned for it.

Rey says it all began in high school in her hometown of Bogota, Colombia when she discovered that physics would allow her to connect mathematics, a subject that she had always loved, with the real world. Excited by the idea of mathematical formulas that predict how nature works, she excelled in her physics classes. So, after graduation, she decided to major in physics at the Universidad de Los Andes.

The undergraduate experience was a great one for Rey. With class sizes often no more than five students, she received much personal attention and mentorship from her teachers that helped her grow in her work.

“The more complex the phenomena, the more interesting I found it,” says Rey.

In addition, the Los Andes undergraduate program is five years, providing Rey with great preparation for graduate school. It was at the end of these five years that she was asked to deliver the student commencement speech, in which she used the Brecht quote to urge her fellow students to move forward with a strong work ethic.

Rey had several offers for graduate school. Her new husband, a mathematician, also had several offers from fine graduate programs. However, Maryland was the only university who accepted the both.

So, Maryland it was. Entering the program, Rey had already had research experience. In fact, she did an undergraduate thesis (which was mandatory at Los Andes) on general relativity propagation of light in a rotating black hole. So, she received a graduate assistantship her first year, without having to work as a teaching assistant like most graduate students.

Rey was interested in nonlinear optics. However, since the department was still in the process of building its atomic, molecular and optical (AMO) physics program, she began working with Professor Adil Hassam on plasma physics research, which used equations similar to those used in optics. Hassam had a connection with Dr. Steven Rolston, who is now a professor in our world-class AMO group, but was then at the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) in nearby Gaithersburg, MD. Rolston put her in touch with Dr. Charles Clark, adjunct professor in the Institute for Physical Sciences and Technology at Maryland and chief of the Electron & Optical Physics Division at NIST. He brought up the topic of optical lattices, which intrigued Rey, and, after she passed the department's qualifying examination the summer after her first year, they began working together.

Over the next four years, Rey developed her doctoral thesis on time evolution of a Bose-Einstein condensate loaded into an optical lattice. Essentially, she placed a Bose-Einstein condensate at the bottom of each oscillation of a wave of laser light. And, using a method Professor Bei-Lok Hu (of the Maryland gravitation theory research group) developed to study cosmology, she presented a formalism capable of dealing with situations where non-equilibrium approaches commonly used by AMO physicists, such as kinetic theories based on an idea called the Markovian approximation, fail.

This work garnered attention in the field because this was the first time that someone had gone beyond studying the average behavior of the system to study the effects if the deviations from the average. In particular, it gained the attention of the American Physical Society, which granted Rey the 2005 APS' Outstanding Doctoral Thesis Research in Atomic, Molecular, or Optical Physics award this Spring. In the 13-year history of the award, Dr. Rey is the first female recipient and the first Hispanic recipient. She is also only the second theoretical physicist to win the award.

Rey had many career options after such a well-received thesis, which she defended in the Fall of 2004. Her husband, however, was not quite finished with his work in the mathematics department. So, she stayed at NIST for a year as a post-doctoral associate. This Fall, however, with her husband finished his degree, she will be taking a prestigious fellowship at Harvard University.

But before she gets settled in to Harvard, she will be making another important stop – in Colombia . She has been asked to speak at the Fisica Y Sociedad – Ano Mundial de la Fisica 2005, the Columbian World Year of Physics celebration, on September 5, 2005. The invitation is quite an honor, especially since she is one of only four plenary speakers and the other three are a Nobel Laureate in physics, the president of the Colombian national automotive company, and an eminent German physicist.

After Harvard, the path is less clear, but filled with opportunity. She and her husband have both been offered positions at Los Andes, if they choose to return. But there are also many research opportunities here in the U.S.

Wherever she may go, she will go with fond memories from her time as a Terrapin. She comments on the “amazing people,” camaraderie and helpful research environment she experienced.

“Charles was really supportive,” she says, referring to her advisor.

“They were the best five years of my life,” Rey sums up her recollections. “I loved the opportunity to do my Ph.D. with my husband.”

And, even though she is still at an early stage in what promises to be a long and fruitful career, she already has valuable advice for our current students. In addition to choosing a field that you like, she also stresses the importance of receiving quality mentorship. “One of the most important things is to choose a good advisor,” she says.

The Department of Physics wishes Dr. Rey the best of luck in her endeavors. There is no doubt that she will, indeed, work her whole life and be indispensable.

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Should you have further questions, please feel free to contact the editor. She will be happy to pass along the message to Dr. Rey.