Newswise — Outstanding referee finds a way to give back to the research community.

Wai-Kwong Kwok, a senior physicist and distinguished fellow at the U.S. Department of Energy’s (DOE) Argonne National Laboratory, has been selected as a 2019 Outstanding Referee by the American Physical Society (APS).

Kwok, who serves as the group leader for Argonne’s superconductivity and magnetism group, has extensively studied superconducting vortices and properties of magnetic charge ices.

The Outstanding Referee program was instituted by the APS in 2008 to recognize scientists who have been ​exceptionally helpful” in reviewing manuscripts for publication in the APS journals, including Physical Review Letters and Physical Review X.

For Kwok, being a referee is a way to give back to the research community. ​Journal refereeing provides an efficient and effective way to collectively support the scientific research community,” he said.

The highly selective Outstanding Referee program annually recognizes about 150 of the roughly 71,000 currently active referees.

Kwok began his career at Argonne in 1987 as a postdoctoral researcher after receiving his Ph.D. in condensed matter physics from Purdue University. In addition to being an Outstanding Referee, Kwok was named in 1999 a Fellow of the American Physical Society.

Argonne National Laboratory seeks solutions to pressing national problems in science and technology. The nation’s first national laboratory, Argonne conducts leading-edge basic and applied scientific research in virtually every scientific discipline. Argonne researchers work closely with researchers from hundreds of companies, universities, and federal, state and municipal agencies to help them solve their specific problems, advance America’s scientific leadership and prepare the nation for a better future. With employees from more than 60 nations, Argonne is managed by UChicago Argonne, LLC for the U.S. Department of Energy’s Office of Science.

The U.S. Department of Energy’s Office of Science is the single largest supporter of basic research in the physical sciences in the United States and is working to address some of the most pressing challenges of our time. For more information, visit the Office of Science website.