Stony Brook University Student Receives 2006 Gertrude Scharff-Goldhaber Prize

STONY BROOK, N.Y. — Enju Lima, a graduate student at Stony Brook University , has been awarded the 2006 Gertrude Scharff-Goldhaber Prize, consisting of $1,000 for her outstanding thesis research at the U.S. Department of Energy's facilities, Brookhaven's National Synchroton Light Source and Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory's Advanced Light Source.

At the award ceremony, Lima gave a talk on her research, titled, “X-ray Diffraction Microscopy of Biological Samples.” The goal of her collaborative research project was to improve a technique using an x-ray microscope that would make it capable of viewing biological cells in 3-D. She used powerful x-rays to view the structure of the yeast cells and the high resolution provided an unprecedented level of detail about a biological cell's structure.

Lima earned a Bachelors of Science in Nursing from Korea , and she worked in Korea and at Mt. Sinai Hospital in New York as a nurse before she returned to school, eventually earning a Bachelors of Science in Physics from Hunter College in 1999. She then pursued her studies at the Stony Brook University , where she earned her Ph.D. in Physics this summer. She plans to continue her research at the postdoctoral level at the European Synchrotron Radiation Facility in Grenoble , France .

Established in 1992, the Gertrude Scharff-Goldhaber Prize honors the outstanding contributions of the late nuclear physicist Gertrude Scharff-Goldhaber who, in 1950, became the first woman Ph.D. physicist appointed to the Brookhaven staff. She became a founding member of the Brookhaven Women in Science (BWIS), which was established to recognize substantial promise and accomplishment in Physics by women graduate students from SBU or who performed their thesis research at the DOE's Brookhaven National Laboratory.