Professor Marija Gajdardziska-Josifovska
	mgj@uwm.edu Personal Home Page Telephone: (414) 229-4965 Room: 323

In 1995, Marija Gajdardziska-Josifovska was named a Presidential Faculty Fellow. The most prestigious governmental award to young scientists, it is given each year to fifteen faculty members chosen from all areas of science. Through this program the President, in conjunction with the National Science Foundation, seeks to recognize the scholarly achievement of the Nation's leading scientists early in their careers.

Gajdardziska studies interactions of high-energy electrons with condensed matter, focusing on systems with reduced dimensionality such as surfaces, interfaces and thin films. She has invented parabolic Brillouin zone boundaries for two dimensional and one dimensional periodic structures which define elastic scattering out of a plane or string of atoms. In her experiments with reconstructed polar oxide surfaces she has demonstrated the existence of such boundaries using reflection high energy electron diffraction. She also discovered that polar oxide surfaces can be stabilized by an oxygen rich surface reconstruction which can withstand exposure to air. Previously it was believed that polar surfaces cannot exist and must facet into neutral surfaces.

The current goal of Gajdardziska's research group is to determine the atomic positions in the polar surface reconstructions, which may help elucidate the reasons for their unusual stability. The needed imaging, diffraction and spectroscopy experiments are performed in the newly established laboratory for high resolution transmission electron microscopy (HRTEM) at the Physics Department at UWM.

In the technologically important area of growth of layers on surfaces, some properties of the growth can be predicted from thermodynamics, but others are ruled by kinetics. To study the latter it is important to make dynamical measurements while growth is happening. At Arizona State University, Gajdardziska has recorded the first reflection electron microscopy movies of cluster growth during non-congruent evaporation from III-V semiconductor surfaces. With her group at UWM, she developed a model for cluster image interpretation for 3D and 2D clusters. Marvin Schofield, a student in the group, was one of ten students in the U.S. last year to receive a Presidential Student Award for outstanding research, an award given by the Microscopy Society of America. A unique ultrahigh vacuum HRTEM has recently been donated to Gajdardziska. When installed, this instrument will allow her group to study dynamical events at surfaces. Gajdardziska co-organized a symposium on in-situ microscopy of dynamical processes at the MRS 1995 Fall meeting and co-edited the proceedings.

Electron holography continues to be one of Gajdardziska's interests: she was the member of the first research group in USA to record off-axis electron holograms. She has developed the most accurate method to date for measurement of the mean inner potential in crystals, and has been investigating the applicability of holography for studies of interfaces. She is now extending this work to surfaces using a field emission gun electron microscope at Oak Ridge National Laboratory.

Gajdardziska's studies and work in physics has spanned three continents. Her doctorate is from Arizona State University where she studied with John Cowley. Her masters is from the University of Sydney, Australia, and her bachelors from the University Sts. Cyril and Methodus, in her native Macedonia.

In addition to the Presidential Faculty Fellow Award, she has received the Herman E. DeMund Scholarship, the Australian-European Graduate Award, and the Award for Best Undergraduate Student in Physics graduating between 1976-86. Her biography will be featured in the 1997/98 "Who is who in Sciences and Engineering in America". She is an author of more than 65 refereed publications and has given more than 15 invited talks on the subjects of electron microscopy and holography.