Rajeev Erramilli is the recipient of this year’s Yale Physics D. Allan Bromley Graduate Fellowship in Physics.
Erramilli is in his fourth year of graduate studies, working with David Poland. He has also been awarded the 2021 Alexander A. McCormick, Jr. Memorial Scholarship.
He has been involved with several of the department’s and the university’s outreach activities, such as the Girls’ Science Investigations (GSI) program and the Three Minute Thesis competition. In the realm of music and applied science, he (together with Jeff Snyder and Michael Mulshine) developed and constructed an electro‐acoustic trombone known as the feedback trombone, article published in the Proceedings of the International Conference on New Interfaces for Musical Expression, which he then performed along with the electronic trombone duo RAGE Thrombones and the Princeton Laptop
Orchestra (PLOrk).
In the space of education, Rajeev has been active and enthusiastic in teaching in his time at Yale, having taught every semester with stellar evaluations and taking part in Poorvu center programs such as its course on scientific teaching. Finally, in the realm of politics and policy, Rajeev has been a leading activist in the city of New Haven. With the community advocacy group New Haven Rising, he has worked together with city officials and community leaders to organize efforts, such as phonebanking to get out the vote for the 2020 presidential election. This year, he helped lead the Yale: Respect New Haven campaign which recently resulted in the university unprecedentedly doubling its annual financial contribution to the city of New Haven.
The D. Allan Bromley Fellowship Fund for Graduate Research in Physics was established in 2005 to honor Professor D. Allan Bromley, Sterling Professor of the Sciences at Yale University and former Presidential Science Advisor to President George H. W. Bush. The fellowship was created by Bromley’s former students Joel Birnbaum (Yale Physics PhD ‘65), Joe Allen (Yale Physics PhD ‘65), and John Manoyan (Yale Physics PhD ‘87), because of their “deep affection and respect for” Bromley, in order to “memorialize his exceptional teaching and research career at Yale.”
The fellowship is awarded annually to graduate students in physics who have advanced to candidacy in the Ph.D. program, particularly those “who exhibit a broader interest than just physics, including, but not limited to, science and public policy, engineering, and applied science.” Candidates are nominated by the Physics faculty and selected by the D. Allan Bromley Professor of Physics (currently Keith Baker), the Director of Graduate Studies (currently Bonnie Fleming) and Chair (Karsten Heeger). The description continues, “In this way, the recipients will reflect and celebrate Dr. Bromley’s distinguished and honorable persona in the exceptional scope, standing, talent, and character of his distinguished personal, public, and academic life.”