Daniel Tennant (MS Physics) was awarded the university's Outstanding Thesis Award at the 2008 Graduate Degree Hooding Ceremony. One thesis was nominated from each school and college. The theses were reviewed by a committee of emeritus faculty, who chose the winner. Daniel's thesis, Scattering of Light in Born-Infeld Electrodynamics, was praised by the committee as sophisticated, profound, and groundbreaking in its attempt to satisfy our basic human need to understand how everything in the universe works. Specifically, Daniel's thesis offers an experimental test of String Theory, which is the best theory physicists have for realizing Albert Einstein's dream of a so-called "unified field theory"–a theory capable of describing nature's forces within a single, all-encompassing, coherent framework. Daniel proposed a simple way to test String Theory via Born-Infeld Electrodynamics and in so doing, provides a legitimate experimental prediction for String Theory that no one has yet attempted. Congratulations, Daniel on your original and noteworthy contributions to the discipline. Daniel also received $1,000. His faculty committee were Gerardo Munoz, Douglas Singleton, and Johan Van der Noordaa of the Physics Department.
An honorable mention and check for $500 was awarded to Olga Karapanou (MS Viticulture and Enology) for her thesis Wine Yeast Grape Interactions, which the committee praised as "flawlessly written with tremendous practical applications for wine grape growers in the Central Valley and beyond." Olga's thesis committee was Roy Thornton, Susan Rodriguez, and Kenneth Fugelsang