Eugene Rabinovich Named a Faculty Scholar and a Goldwater Scholar

Eugene Rabinovich Named a Faculty Scholar and a Goldwater Scholar

Duke Physics and Math major Eugene Rabinovich, has been named a faculty scholar, the highest honor Duke's faculty bestows upon undergraduate students. The last physics major to win this award was Vivek Bhattacharya (Economics and Physics) in 2012. In addition, Eugene has been named a Goldwater Scholar. This is the second year in a row that a Duke Physics major has won this prestigious award (Kushal Seetharam, a double major in Physics and ECE, was a Goldwater last year). Eugene is the only Duke Goldwater Scholar this year which makes his success even more impressive. See the full list of 2014 Goldwater Scholars here.

Eugene has been working with Prof. Ronen Plesser. Below is a contribution from Prof. Plesser about Eugene:

"By the time he arrived on campus, Eugene had completed most of the coursework required for his physics and math major by taking classes at Case Western University -- while still in high school. He has maintained this torrid pace as a student here. By the time he graduates he will have completed much of the coursework required of graduate students in both math and physics either by taking the courses or by learning the material independently.

He has also maintained his interest in music, taking performance and composition classes, maintaining a 4.0 GPA. For the past few months, Eugene has been involved in a research project, applying novel localization methods to compute the exact partition functions of a class of supersymmetric two-dimensional gauge theories constructed with "twisted" fields. He has conducted this research essentially independently and hopes to have publishable results before he leaves Duke."