Events & Activities
What's New
Advances in Understanding Evolution
« website »
Mid-Atlantic Soft Matter Workshop, June 9, 2008
« website »
String Phenomenology 2008, May 28 - June 1, 2008
« website »
Franklin Medal Symposium April 17, 2008
10th Walter Selove Lectureship April 16 & 17, 2008
ICHEP '08
download poster
NanoDay@Penn :: 10.24.07
Burstein Fest :: 10.4.07
Imaging Symposium :: 10.16.07
Workshop, Max-Planck-Institut :: 11.14.07
October 2008
Phil Nelson wins the 2009 Emily M. Gray Award
Prof. Phil Nelson has won the 2009 Emily M. Gray Award of the Biophysical Society for "far reaching and significant contributions to the teaching of biophysics, developing innovative educational materials, and fostering an environment exceptionally conducive to education in Biological Physics." The award will be presented at the 2009 Annual Meeting in Boston, February 28 - March 4, 2009
September 2008:
What's the matter
By Faye Flam, Inquirer Staff Writer
Evelyn Thomson and Brig Williams were interviewed in an article about the Large Hadron Collider experiments in Switzerland.
read the article: Philly.Com
Sujit Datta Wins APS LeRoy Apker Award for Undergraduate Achievement in Physics
Penn graduate Sujit Datta has been selected this year's recipient of The Leroy Apker Award of the American Physical Society. Two Apker Awards are given annually to recognize outstanding achievements in physics by undergraduate students. The award consists of $5,000 to the recipient, and an allowance for travel to the APS meeting at which the award is presented. In addition, the Penn Physics Department will receive a $5,000 award to support undergraduate research.
As an undergraduate at Penn, Datta studied the physics of electrons at the nanoscale in Prof. A. T. Charlie Johnson's group. He used experimental and computational tools to study the structural, electronic, and sensing properties of one- and two-dimensional nanostructures including few-layer graphene, carbon nanotubes, and devices for single-molecule electronics. Datta is co-author of 5 publications, including three Nano Letters (2 as first author), and a Physical Review Letter. Datta's research accomplishments included the use of Electrostatic Force Microscopy to better understand Thomas-Fermi screening of relativistic charge carriers in few-layer graphene, and the demonstration of a straightforward method by which graphene can be "carved" into nanoscale structures with crystallographic edges. Financial support for his research came from Penn's Nano/Bio Interface Center, among other sources.
While at Penn, Datta was recognized for his achievements through a number of awards. These include the Roy and Diana Vagelos Science Challenge Scholarship, Class of 1971 Robert J. Holtz Endowed Fund for Undergraduate Research Award, University of Pennsylvania Dean's Scholar, Vagelos Undergraduate Research Award, Communicating Within the Curriculum Emerging Scholar, and William E. Stephens Prize in Physics and Astronomy. He is a member of the Phi Beta Kappa and Sigma Xi honor societies.
Datta graduated in May 2008 with B.A. (with honors) and M.S. degrees in Physics, and a B.A. in Mathematics. He is now pursuing a Ph.D. in Physics at Harvard University. His current research interests include experimental soft condensed matter physics and physical biology, and he can be reached at ssdatta@fas.harvard.edu
Science Pioneer, Fay Ajzenberg-Selove
Renowned physicist, longtime Penn professor and World War II refugee Fay Ajzenberg-Selove says before her father sent her off to engineering school at the University of Michigan, he taught her one important life skill: How to hold her liquor, so she could hang tough with her male classmates.
read the full article: PennCurrent Article
Debut of the Large Hadron Collider at CERN
For the first time, a beam of protons moving at close to the speed of light completed an orbit in the 27 km-long accelerator. Penn's contribution, the transition radiation tracker for the ATLAS experiment, is working well as can be seen by the smiling faces of the Penn people celebrating in the control room at CERN! The display shows the ionization trail left by the passage of a particle from the proton beam halo through the transition radiation tracker.
Back row: Ben LeGeyt, Rick Van Berg, Brig Williams, Franck Martin Front row: Jamie Saxon, James Degenhardt, Dominick Olivito
August 2008:
Fay Ajzenberg-Selove receives the 2007 National Medal of Science for her contributions to nuclear physics. She is one of eight recipients of the Medal, the nations highest honor for science.
« read more »
July 2008:
The Works
a show on History Channel on July 24th, 2008, features the work in Prof. Drndic Lab
THE WORKS: POWER TOOLS (Thursday, July 24th at 10pm ET/PT) Since the Egyptians invented them three thousand years ago, power tools have transformed the face of the earth. As we trace their evolution, we find out their hidden commonalities: from power tools that slice mountains in half to new breakthroughs in nanotechnology that enable them to literally split hairs. Follow the life of a power tool as it goes from an idea to our garage shelf as we discover how they're being used in surprising ways in sports, medicine and art.
May 2008:
Recent Awards
Sujit S. Datta (graduated Penn Arts and Sciences) awarded the William E. Stephens Memorial Prize
Awarded annually to the graduating physics major who has demonstrated, during the course of his or her undergraduate course work, the most promise for a successful career as a scientist based on overall performance in all aspects of the undergraduate program as judged by members of the Physics and Astronomy faculty. - awarded April 2008
Michael E. Abboud (Junior, Penn Arts and Sciences) awarded the Thomas H. Wood Prize
Awarded annually to the undergraduate student in introductory physics who has demonstrated the greatest proficiency in assimilating the concepts of physics. - awarded April 2008
Joseph Hyde (PHAS Graduate Student of Mariangela Bernardi) is awarded the Zaccheus Daniel Foundation for Astronomical Science Award
The Zaccheus Daniel Foundation for Astronomical Science was established under the Last Will and Testament of Zaccheus Daniel for the promotion of the study of the science of astronomy.
Tom Lubensky, Elected to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences
Tom Lubensky, Mary Amanda Wood Professor of Physics. Made fundamental contributions to solid state and soft condensed matter physics, an area he helped found. Studies of fluctuations near phase transitions influenced the modern theory of critical phenomena. Insights into broken symmetry led to many novel phases of matter.
April 2008:
Jim Cronin, co-recipient of the 1980 Nobel Prize in Physics, gave the 10th Selove Lecture on Wednesday, April 16 at 4pm in DRL, A-8. Cronin presented the latest exciting results from the Pierre Auger Observatory on the origin of the highest energy cosmic rays. There was also a seminar on Thursday, April 17, again at 4pm in DRL A-8.
On Thursday, April 17, the department hosted a symposium in honor of the 2008 Franklin Medallist, Deborah Jin, who is being honored for her work on the quantum properties of ultra-cold gases of fermionic atoms. The symposium focused on the Bose condensation (BEC) of bosonic molecules of fermionic atoms, the BCS condensation of fermionic atoms and the crossover from BEC to BCS. There where four speakers, including Dr. Jin.
Marija Drndic has received the 2008 DARPA Young Faculty Award and the School of Arts and Sciences Edmund J. and Louise W. Kahn Award for Distinguished Teaching by an Assistant Professor.
Undergraduate student Sujit Datta, who works in Prof. Charlie Johnson's group, has been selected as an Emerging Scholar by CWiC (Communication Within the Curriculum) program at Penn.
March 2008:
Tim Miyashiro, who recently received his PhD working with Mark Goulian, has been awarded a Ruth L. Kirschstein National Rsearch Service Award for a postdoctoral fellowship.
Read BioOptics Pioneer article about Arjun Yodh in BioOptics World magazine.
February 2008:
The Atacama Cosmology Telescope (ACT) had its first light operations in the fall of 2007. It has made observations of multiple clusters of galaxies and produced precision power spectra of the Cosmic Microwave Background.
December 2007:
Carl Modes, who works with Prof. Randall Kamien, was named as one of the finalists for the American Physical Society's Group on Statistical and Nonlinear Physics (GSNP) student prize for 2008.
November 2007:
Some images from the department party at Tom Lubensky's on November 17, 2007:
Prof. Mirjam Cvetic co-organizes a Workshop on “Recent Developments in String Effective Actions and D-instantons” from Nov. 14-16 at the Max Planck Instut fur Physik in Munich. This workshop brings together the world experts who have recently worked on this subject with a program of specialized talks and discussions on future prospects. Invited speakers include Prof. Burt Ovrut and the Postdoctoral Fellow Timo Weigand.
October 2007:
NanoDay@Penn, October 24th
Nano/Bio Interface Center sponsors a full day of exhibits, demonstrations, and laboratory tours to highlight nanotechnology research across the campus.
Graduate student Michael Fischbein who works with Prof. Marija Drndic received the Nano/Bio Interface Center (NBIC) Graduate Research Award and will give a talk "Nanosculpting with Electrons" at the NanoDay@Penn on October 24th.
The work of Prof. Burt Ovrut and his collaborators on "Ekpyrotic Cosmology" was the focus of an article entitled "New Beginnings" in the October, 2007 issue of Scientific American.
Ekpyrotic Cosmology was originally envisioned as a theory for the Big Bang involving the collision of soliton-like branes in heterotic M-theory. Although successful in many aspects, this "old" Ekpyrotic model had two shortcomings; first, a potential curvature singularity at the Big Bang and, second, some ambiguity in how scalar/tensor perturbations evolved through the collision. In recent work of Ovrut and collaborators, entitled "New Ekpyrotic Cosmology", both of these problems were successfully resolved. Furthermore, this new theory is presented within the context of simple, four-dimensional field theory and is conceptually independent of any fundamental theory. New Ekpyrotic Cosmology would appear to be a consistent alternative to the earlier "inflation scenario" of the Big-Bang. Observational data involving tensor fluctuations and non-Gaussianity of correlation functions can, in principle, distinguish between these two alternatives. The Scientific American article discusses these possible "New Beginnings" and puts them in context.
September 2007:
Gino Segre is interviewed by the Daily Pennsylvanian on the subject of his new book, Faust in Copenhagen – A struggle for the Soul of Physics
« view the condensed version »
Graduate and Postdoctoral Awards and Prizes for 2006-2007
- Graduate Student Peter Yunker, a student in Arjun Yodh’s group, received the 2007-08 Arnold M. Denenstein Prize.
- The Denenstein Prize is awarded annually to a graduate student, judged by the Physics and Astronomy Department, who shows the most promise of becoming an outstanding experimental physicist
- Graduate student Chi Yan Jeffrey Teo receives the Werner B. Teutsch Prize.
- Werner B. Teutsch Prize is awarded annually to the graduate student who, by her or his performance in the first year courses, shows the most promise for outstanding achievement in research.
- Graduate student Jennifer Mosher receives the Chairman’s Teaching Award.
- Chairman's Teaching Award is given yearly to the teaching assistant who has, pre-eminently distinguished herself or himself in the carrying out of their instructional responsibilities.
- Graduate student Michael Fischbein receives the Elias Burstein Prize "for his creative and prolific work on nanolithography and its technological applications."
- Elias Burstein Prize is awarded annually to a graduate student in Condensed Matter Physics judged by the Physics and Astronomy Department to have made a significant contribution to our understanding of the subject.
- Postdoctoral Fellow Vincenzo Vitelli receives the 2007 Herbert B. Callen Prize "for his insightful work on the interplay between geometry and superfluid order."
Graduate Student Ahmed Alsayed, a student in Arjun Yodh’s group, received the 2006 Callen Prize “for the experimental discovery of premelting inside bulk crystals.”
- Herbert B. Callen Prize is provided from an endowment established by the family, friends, colleagues, and students of Herbert B. Callen to honor his memory. It is awarded to a graduate student or postdoctoral fellow judged by the Physics and Astronomy Department to have made a significant contribution to statistical physics.
August 2007:
Physics and Astronomy Department Ice Cream Social
On a warm day in August, the Physics & Astronomy gang "chill" with some ice cream.
July 2007:
Faust in Copenhagen – A struggle for the Soul of Physics - by Gino Segre
A fascinating new book by Prof. Gino Segre about the landmark 1932 gathering in Copenhagen of the biggest names in physics.
Known by physicists as the “miracle year,” 1932 saw the discovery of the neutron and the first artificially induced nuclear transmutation. However, while physicists celebrated these momentous discoveries, Europe was moving inexorably toward totalitarianism and war. In April of that year, about forty of the world’s leading physicists—including Werner Heisenberg, Lise Meitner, and Paul Dirac—came to Niels Bohr’s Copenhagen Institute for their annual informal meeting about the frontiers of physics. Physicist Gino Segrè brings to life this historic gathering, the scientists and their ideas. Segrè evokes the moment when physics—and the world—was about to lose its innocence.
Book reviews:
New York Times, June 24, 2007
“Meta Physicists”The Economist, July 12, 2007
“History of Science: Revolutionaries at work and play”, July 12, 2007
June 2007:
Penn Physicists Use Fluorescence to Provide High-Contrast 3D Imaging of Breast Cancer
Physicists (from the Yodh Group) at the University of Pennsylvania have created the first three-dimensional optical images of human breast cancer in patients based on tissue fluorescence. This new method for imaging breast cancer uses light, not radiation, to provide improved color contrast between healthy and malignant tissue.
May 2007:
A new technique for building nanodevices in the lab: Body-sculpting
Physicists at the University of Pennsylvania are using a new technique to craft some of the tiniest metal nanostructures ever created.
The technique employs transmission electron beam ablation lithography, or TEBAL, to "carve" nanostructures from thin sheets of gold, silver, aluminum and other metals. Superconducting circuits, magnets and molecule-sized transistors are among the real-world applications that may result from this research.
IEEE Spectrum article: “Power Tool for Making Nanoscale Objects”
"A Sandy Discovery Has Impact" Philadelphia Inquirer (14 May 007)
To the beachgoer, sand is simply one of the pleasures of summer. To the scientist, it's a bit of a mystery - sometimes acting like a liquid (when poured) and other times like a solid, or even a gas.
Or, in one case, like none of the above. When a projectile hits a pile of sand - say, a golf ball landing in a bunker - the faster it is traveling, the sooner it comes to a stop. (Ordinarily, faster things take longer to stop, such as with a block sliding down a ramp.)
"The Nitty-Gritty on the Physics of Sand", interview on National Public Radio - Weekend All Things Considered (19 May 2007)
This just in: The faster an object slams into a pile of sand, the quicker it will come to a halt. Physicist Douglas Durian of the University of Pennsylvania talks about new research into the properties of sand.
April 2007:
"Jamming: A new kind of phase transition?", Nature Physics 3, 222 (2007)
Motion in assemblies of grains jams at high density and low drive. On approaching the jamming transition, the dynamics becomes increasingly spatially heterogeneous, and strongly reminiscent of the behaviour of glass-forming liquids.
Cell Structures Exhibit Novel Behaviors, Mimic Red Blood Cells and Liquid Crystals, Penn Researchers Report
Researchers at the University of Pennsylvania and Yale University have manipulated the internal, structural components of cells, creating a set of simulated cellular structures with novel mechanical properties, including one that acts like a red blood cell and another that mimics the soft, elastic behavior commonly found in novel synthetic materials called liquid crystal elastomers.
The findings point to nature's innate ability to create a variety of cell structures and behaviors using standard cell proteins and to science's potential to construct new classes of material by manipulating cell cytoplasm.
Prof. Mirjam Cvetic is a recipient of 2007 Distinguished Alumni Award for the College of Computer, Mathematical and Physical Sciences at the University of Maryland.
March 2007
Dr. Paulo Arratia
who works with Prof. Doug Durian and Prof. Jerry Gollub has won
the first prize for his video in the APS March meeting competition.
Dr. Arratia's investigated filament thinning and breakup for equal-viscosity
immiscible fluids in microchannel cross flow, showing vastly different
behavior with and without 100 ppm polymer in the droplet phase.
To see the movie go to: http://www.physics.upenn.edu/duriangroup/multimedia/paulo/paulo_movie.mov
Balancing
family and physics careers at the Americal Physical Society March
Meeting in Denver:
Prof. Andrea
Liu, program chair for the Committee on the Status of Women
in Physics (CSWP), organized a panel discussion on practical strategies
for balancing careers and family.Invited speakers also included
Prof. Marija
Drndic from Penn's Physics Department. The panel also discussed
practices that departments, academic institutions and funding agencies
could adopt that would make a difference to faculty, postdocs and
graduate students who are balancing career and family. The suggestions
from the panelists have been compiled into a list of recommendations. (link)
February 2007:
Professor Randall
Kamien writes a perspective in the Feb. 23rd edition of
Science entitled "Better
Geometry Through Chemistry"
December 2006:
BLAST, a balloon-borne telescope, flies over Antarctica
A fascinating experiment is being conducted this week over Antarctica by Canada and its partners, the U.S., the U.K. and Mexico. Attached to a huge helium balloon, 2,000-kilogram BLAST (balloon-borne large aperture sub-millimetre telescope) is peering deep into space to study distant stars and galaxies.
Read more:
Physicists show how DNA gets kinky easily at the nanoscale "DNA is not a passive molecule. It constantly needs to bend, forming loops and kinks, as other molecules interact with it," said Philip Nelson, a professor in Penn's Department of Physics and Astronomy in the School of Arts and Sciences. "But when people looked at long chunks of DNA, it always seemed to behave like a stiff elastic rod."
Professor of Chemistry Andrew Rappe, member of the Graduate Group, was elected Fellow of the American Physical Society "for contributions to electronic structure methodology, understanding mechanisms of chemisorption bonding and energy exchange with surfaces, and for relating chemical identity to material response in ferroelectric oxides."
Graduate student Tao Liu has been named a McCormick Fellow at the University of Chicago.
Graduate student Monica Dunford has been named a Fermi Fellow at the University of Chicago.
November 2006:
Professor Charles Kane was elected Fellow of the American Physical Society "for significant contributions to the theory of electronic transport in low-dimensional systems, including Luttinger liquids, the quantum Hall effect, carbon nanotubes and graphene."
PENN hosted the joint PENN -NYU Soft Matter Workshop, on November 2. Click here to view poster.
October 2006:
Prof. A. Brooks Harris is the recipient of the Lars Onsager Prize for his many contributions to the statistical physics of random systems, including the formulation of the Harris criterion, which has led to numerous insights into a variety of disordered systems.
Prof. Nigel Lockyer's article in Physics World.
University of Pennsylvania Physicists Track the Random Walks of Ellipsoids
Brownian motion, the tiny random movements of small objects suspended in a fluid, has served as a paradigm for concepts of randomness ranging from noise in light detectors to fluctuations in the stock market. Using digital video microscopy, the researchers (from Yodh & Lubensky groups) directly observed the twisty random walks arising from the combined effects of random rotations and displacements of ellipsoids in water.
read: Research @ Penn article
September 2006:
Arjun Yodh presented the Langmuir Lecture at the 232nd Annual Meeting of the American Chemical Society (ACS), Division of Colloid and Surface Chemistry in San Francisco, CA.
Click to view pdf file of lecture “Melting in Temperature Sensitive Colloidal Suspensions”
Recent Events:
LangackerFest
A symposium to honor Dr. Paul Langacker on the occasion of his 60th birthday was held on May 8, 2006. Some photos of the event can be seen here:
http://carrot.hep.upenn.edu/~vbraun/LangackerFestPhotos/
Walter Selove and Fay Ajzenberg-Selove Symposium
The Department of Physics & Astronomy hosted a symposium to honor the many contributions made by Walter Selove and Fay Ajzenberg-Selove to research, teaching, and science in general on March 31, 2006. Some photos of the event can be seen here:
http://dept.physics.upenn.edu/~wk/SeloveSymposium2006.html