Prof. Ashot Chilingarian Elected American Physical Society Fellow

Prof. Ashot Chilingarian, the director of Yerevan Physics Institute and the head of its Cosmic Ray Division has been elected American Physical Society (APS) Fellow, a prestigious honor given to only a few of the world’s greatest scientists, the Armenian Reporter informs.
The APS elected Chilingarian for bringing one of the world’s largest facilities for monitoring different species of secondary cosmic rays located in Armenia to the International Space Weather initiative as a global warning system from violent space events. He was nominated by: Forum on International Physics.
Prof. Chilingirian earned his Ph.D. in Physics and Mathematics in 1991 from Yerevan Physics Institute (YerPhI). From 1971 to 1993 he was a scientist, then senior scientist at YerPhI. In 1993 he became the deputy director of the Institute as well as head of the Cosmic Ray Division. Since 1975 he has been a lecturer of Physics and Software Engineering at Yerevan State University.
His expertise is in the sphere of high energy astroparticle physics, particle detector instrumentation and advanced statistical computation. His current interests include the Galactic and Solar cosmic ray origin and acceleration, detection of secondary cosmic ray fluxes on earth surface, Space Weather and supernovae explosions.
In the last 10 years Prof. Chilingarian has won more than 20 research grants totaling more than $2.5 million from foundations such as the International Science and Technology Center (ISTC), International Technology and Science foundation (INTAS) and others.
He is the author of the ANI (Analysis and Nonparametric Inference) computer code library, which has been extensively used during the last few decades for multidimensional analysis of data from modern cosmic ray detectors. He also introduced the “multidimensional nonlinear cuts” method for analyzing data from the Atmospheric Cherenkov Telescopes (ACT) and event-by-event analysis for Extensive Air Shower experiments.
Currently he is Armenia’s representative to COSPAR (the COmmission for SPace Research) and International Heliophysical Year 2007, spokesperson for ANI and ASEC collaborations. In addition, he is on the board of the Armenian National Foundation of Science and Advanced Technologies (NFSAT).
The American Physical Society (APS) was founded in 1899 by 36 prominent physicists of the time, who gathered at Columbia University for that purpose. Browsing through the names of the APS presidents from founding days to today, is like reading the Who’s Who in the field of physics. Some of these scientists are so famous that they have famous experiments or units of measure named after them. The mission of APS is to be the leading voice for physics and an authoritative source of physics information for the advancement of physics and the benefit of humanity. Annually the APS names physicists from around the world whose work has contributed to the mission of advancing physics knowledge and benefiting humanity, as APS fellows.