ITHACA, N.Y. -- Three graduate students in the Department of Physics at Cornell University are among six U.S. students who have been selected to spend the summer doing research at leading European Union (EU) laboratories.

The students, Joseph Choi, Luke Donev and Daniel Graham, are being sent in an inaugural test research-training program connecting U.S. research centers with labs in the EU. The program has been developed by Cornell's Laboratory of Atomic and Solid State Physics at the suggestion of the National Science Foundation's (NSF) Division of Materials Research. The program was spearheaded by Albert Sievers, Cornell professor of experimental condensed matter physics.

The European labs are all part of LOCNET (which stands for Localisation by Nonlinearity and Spatial Discreteness, and Energy Transfer, in Crystals, Biomolecules and Josephson Arrays), one of more than 100 physics-based European Commission Research Training Networks. LOCNET labs study, both theoretically and experimentally, localization produced by nonlinearity and spatial discreteness in condensed matter systems.

Choi, who will be working at the Dresden Max-Planck Institute in Germany, is a first-year Ph.D. student. At the institute he will be doing theoretical research on the localization of energy in regions within nonlinear media, known as discrete breathers. He is from Provo, Utah, and received his B.S. degree in physics and mathematics from Brigham Young University, where he graduated magna cum laude. He is the recipient of a scholarship from the International Society for Optical Engineering.

Donev, who will be working with Professor Alexey Ustinov at the University of Erlangen-Nürnberg in Germany, is a Þrst-year graduate student. His research at the university will involve low-temperature circuits called Josephson junctions, which is part of his research in experimental condensed matter physics. He was born in Toronto but grew up in California, where he obtained his B.S. degree from the University of California-Davis, where he won a Goldwater Scholarship and graduated summa cum laude.Graham, who will be working with Professor Michel Peyrard at the École Normale Supérieure in Lyon, France, is a Þrst-year physics graduate student from Newton, Mass. He will be studying the dynamics of nonlinear lattices and the physics of biological molecules, which will involve computer modeling. He graduated cum laude from Middlebury College in Vermont with a B.A. in physics and a minor in art history.

Related World Wide Web sites: The following sites provide additional information on this news release. Some might not be part of the Cornell University community, and Cornell has no control over their content or availability.

o Research Training Networks: http://improving.cordis.lu/rtn/home.cfm?path=network

o LOCNET: http://www.maths.warwick.ac.uk/~mackay/locnet.html

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