Dr. Eric Appelt, a May 2014 graduate from the Vanderbilt physics Ph.D. program, 
received the Young Scientist award from the Elsevier Journal of Nuclear Physics A 
for the best experimental talk at the Quark Matter 2014 conference held in May 2014  
in Darmstadt, Germany. Every other year, the  Quark Matter conference brings together 
experimental and theoretical experts in the area high energy nuclear physics to discuss 
recent advances in the field. This year, the conference gathered over 900 participants 
from around the world. Dr. Appelt  presented results from the CMS collaboration that 
prominently featured the discovery of nuclear effects on the production of charged particles 
measured in proton-lead collisions, which was the main result of his Ph.D. dissertation.