Stephen Eckel (Fed)

An expert in cold atom sensing and precision measurement with over sixty published papers and six patents, Stephen Eckel’s current research focuses on using the immutable properties of atoms and molecules to make calibration-free sensors for both temperature and pressure. In 2016, he started as a permanent research physicist at the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) in the Fundamental Thermodynamics Group developing the cold atom vacuum standard, the only primary standard of vacuum pressure in the ultra-high and extreme-high vacuum regimes. Prior to 2016, he was National Research Council Postdoctoral Fellow at the Joint Quantum Institute, a collaborative institute between NIST and the University of Maryland, where he was a working on inertial sensing using ring-shaped Bose-Einstein condensates. He graduated from Yale University with a Ph.D. in Physics in 2012 where his research focused on two different precision measurement searches for the electron’s electric dipole moment.

In 2024, he was awarded the prestigious Presidential Early Career Award for Scientists and Engineers "for his pioneering work in applying cold-atom physics to solve real-world measurement problems, investigating the enabling physics, and leading the development of the first deployable, practical cold-atom-based device with applications outside the laboratories of academia".

Highlights

• NIST Demonstrates a New ‘Primary Standard’ for Measuring Ultralow Pressures
• A Primary Standard for Measuring Vacuum
• A New Way to Measure Nearly Nothing

• Presidential Early Career Award for Scientists and Engineers (PECASE), 2024
• Postdoctoral and Early-career Association of Researchers (PEAR) Accolade Program, Advisor Accolade Finalist, 2023
• Department of Commerce Bronze Medal, 2023
• Physical Measurement Laboratory, Scientific Leadership Award, 2022