Three physicists acknowledged as outstanding referees by the American Physical Society

Joo-Von Kim, Renaud Parentani and Robert Botet are among the award winners of the 2019 programme set up by the prestigious American Physical Society to reward work as an outstanding “referee”.

Peer review is a fundamental principle of scientific research. When applied to the publication of articles in peer-reviewed journals, it results in the careful and critical re-reading of the aforesaid article by several researchers, usually two, in the same field as the authors. The review role or “referee” is a significant part of a researcher's work. Its quality and relevance can help authors to improve some phrasing, to correct some inaccuracies, and ultimately to increase the quality and readability of publications.

With this in mind, the American Physical Society (APS), publisher of Physical Review among others, a series of prestigious journals covering all fields of physics, decided to launch an annual programme in 2008 to acknowledge the outstanding work and exceptional involvement of around 150 referees out of the more than 70,000 active in this area.

Three Paris-Sud University researchers are among the 143 award winners of the 2019 programme.

Joo-Von Kim is a CNRS (National Centre for Scientific Research) researcher at the Nanoscience and Nanotechnology Centre (C2N- CNRS/UPSud). His work mainly focuses on nanomagnetism and spintronics. He particularly concentrates on the non-linear and stochastic processes of magnetization for new information technologies.

Renaud Parentani is a full professor at Paris-Sud University. He conducts his research at the Laboratory for Theoretical Physics (LPT – CNRS/UPSud) and focuses on black holes and primordial cosmology, and more specifically on quantum effects that are found in intense gravitational fields.

Robert Botet is a CNRS researcher and a numerical analyst at the Laboratory for Solid State Physics (LPS – CNRS/UPSud), in the “Soft Matter Theory Group”. He models the dynamics of systems that are finely divided into nanoparticles to then reveal by computer digital simulations how these small particles self-assemble to form structured materials.

They were awarded for the quality, number and promptness of their reports. In its statement, the American Physical Society expressed its gratitude for the outstanding services they had rendered to the physics community. 

All the recipients come from more than 50 different countries.