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Dr. Firouzeh Sabri

Sabri will use her stipend to further her study of the physical and chemical changes caused by ultraviolet radiation on materials, especially RTV 655 and silica aerogels.

This past May,  Sabri's earlier research was spotlighted because of its connection to NASA�s exploratory mission to Mars.  Her contribution to that mission was the development of extremely thin coverings that protected sensitive equipment on the Mars lander from the fine dust on the Red Planet.

Sabri holds a Ph.D. degree from the United Kingdom's University of Cambridge, Cavendish Laboratory.  Her career took her from Cambridge to the Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif., to the National Institutes of Health, and to the University of Florida, before she joined faculty of the Physics Department at the University of Memphis in August 2007.

The Blewett Scholarships were established by a bequest from their namesake, a physicist who died in 2004.  Blewett, a specialist in the area of particle acceleration, was passionate about physics and wanted to help women in that field, enabling them to return to physics research careers after they had interrupted their careers for family reasons.

More information about the American Physical Society and the Blewett Scholarship is available on the Web at: http://www.aps.org/programs/women