Events & Activities

What's New

January 2012

Classical Mechanics: a Critical Introduction

Emeritus Prof. Michael Cohen has posted his recently completed text on Classical Mechanics (introductory level- suitable for students in Ph1 or 150). The file may be helpful to many students as a supplement to the official text and lectures.
[ download the PDF ]

December 2011

Walter Wales

Dr. Walter Wales, Emeritus Professor of Physics and Astronomy, passed away December 28, 2011. He was 78 years old. The memorial service will be April 20 at 3:00pm in DRL A1.
[ show full text ]

Atlas group search for the Higgs particle

The Penn Atlas group is featured on page 4 of the Tuesday, December 13, 2011 Philadelphia Inquirer. The article was published to coincide with the announcements from CERN's two large experiments, Atlas and CMS, of their most recent results in the search for the Higgs particle.
[ read article ]
[ more info ]

Kamien & Yang Advanced Materials

Randall D. Kamien, Kate Stebe, Shu Yang, and co-workers demonstrate an epitaxial approach to tailor the size and symmetry of toric focal conic domain (TFCD) arrays over large areas by exploiting 3D confinement and directed growth of Smectic-A liquid crystals using SU-8 pillar arrays with variable dimensions (size, height, and spacing) and sym-metries. As reported [ on page 5519 ], a new variety of TFCD arrays (e.g., square lattices) are obtained beyond the close-packed hexagonal arrangement formed spontaneously on a flat surface.

November 2011

American Physical Society Fellows 2011

Three members of the P&A Department have been selected as Fellows of the American Physical Society in 2011. Fellowship is a distinct honor signifying recognition by one's professional peers - the total number of APS Fellows who may be elected in a given year is limited to one-half of one percent of the total APS membership. Penn Fellows for 2011 are: 
Mark Devlin - For the advancement of observations and instrumentation in millimeter-wave astronomy
Charlie Johnson - For creative and influential discoveries furthering our understanding of the electronic and vibrational properties of single-walled carbon nanotubes
Josh Klein - For contributions to neutrino physics, especially through leadership of the data analysis for the Sudbury Neutrino Observatory showing that solar neutrinos change flavor between the Sun and the Earth

Frontiers Magazine features Yodh & Liu

The most recent issue of the School of Arts and Sciences SAS Frontiers online magazine features research by Arjun Yodh and Andrea Liu. The [ article ] is based on two recent publications by Yodh and Liu in Physical Review Letters and describes the connection between vibrations and mechanical response for glasses versus crystals.

Common Visions Workshop: Broken Translational Invariance, From Fundamental Fields to Soft Matter

Exploring some questions of common interest to both the particle physics, cosmology and condensed matter groups, this workshop will feature five talks, four by Penn students and postdocs and culminating with a talk by Gary Gibbons who is on sabbatical here from Cambridge University. November 29, 2011.

September 2011

Grad Student prize winners

Daniel A. Beller - winner of the - Werner Teutsch Memorial Prize - Awarded annually to the graduate student who, by his or her performance in the first year courses, shows the most promise for outstanding achievement in research.

Peter Yunker - winner of the - Elias Burstein Prize - 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. "For his novel usage of colloidal particles to elucidate phenomena ranging from the structure, dynamics & stability of glasses to the stains of coffee rings."

Samuel Stern Schoenholz - winner of the - Chair's Teaching Award - Given yearly to the teaching assistant who has, pre-eminently distinguished himself or herself in the carrying out of their instructional responsibilities.

Jeffrey Teo - co-winner of Callen Prize - Awarded to a graduate student or postdoctoral fellow judged by the Physics and Astronomy Department to have made a significant contribution to statistical physics. "For the application of topology to the classification of defects in insulators and superconductors"

Bryan Chen - co-winner of Callen Prize - Awarded to a graduate student or postdoctoral fellow judged by the Physics and Astronomy Department to have made a significant contribution to statistical physics. "For his groundbreaking application of topological methods to characterize and identify order in liquid crystalline materials."

Charlie Kane, 2012 Oliver E. Buckley Prize

Prof. Charlie Kane will be awarded the 2012 Oliver E. Buckley Prize in Condensed Matter Physics by the American Physical Society. Professor Kane and two other researchers are being recognized "For the prediction and subsequent discovery of the new phase of matter known as topological insulators in two dimensions, also known as quantum spin Hall insulators, which lead to its generalization and prediction in three dimensional system." The Buckley Prize will be presented at the APS March 2012 meeting in Boston, MA Feb. 27-March 2, 2012 at a special Ceremonial session.
[ press release ]

Jim Halverson Receives DOE Fellowship

Jim Halverson, a graduate student in the School of Arts and Sciences, is one of four of Ph. D students to receive a U.S. Department of Energy Graduate Fellowship in High Energy Theory in 2011. Mr. Halverson is studying connections between string theory and particle physics, and will receive up to two years of support for tuition, living expenses, and travel to conferences and meetings. He begins this fellowship following the conclusion of a two year graduate fellowship from the National Science Foundation through the String Vacuum Project, a multi-institutional project to study particle physics from fundamental theory.

LRSM awarded $21.7 million MRSEC

Laboratory for Research on the Structure of Matter (LRSM) was awarded $21.7 million MRSEC center grant from the National Science Foundation for cutting-edge materials research. Department faculty will play a large role in center, including Arjun Yodh (LRSM Director), and interdisciplinary group leaders Andrea Liu, Jay Kikkawa, and Randall Kamien.
[ press release ]

Drndić Lab Awarded $1.5 Million to Advance "Third Generation" Gene Sequencing

Drndić's group is applying nanotechnology and materials science to the problem of gene sequencing. They plan to use to graphene, a lattice of carbon atoms one layer thick, to differentiate between DNA bases by poking a tiny hole in the graphene sheet and threading DNA through it.
[ press release ]

August 2011

Ask Not for Whom the Coffee Rings,
It Rings for Spheres but Not Ellipsoids

Penn physicists, led by first author, Peter Yunker, from the Yodh Group have shown how to disrupt the “coffee ring effect” — the ring-shaped stain of particles left over after coffee drops evaporate —  by changing the particles' shape.   The work was featured as the cover story in Nature and in an interview on the National Public Radio show “All Things Considered”.
[ Cover article in Nature ]
[ Nature | News & Views ]
[ Penn press release ]

[ NPR Radio interview ]

James Aguirre helps Discover Universe's Largest Mass of Water

Assistant professor James Aguirre and postdoctoral fellows Roxana Lupu and Kim Scott, working with a team of astronomers from Caltech, the Jet Propulsion Laboratory, the University of Colorado, Japan's Institute for Space and Astronautical Science, and the Carnegie Institution, has discovered a huge mass of warm water vapor in the central regions of a distant quasar, marking the farthest place in the universe that water has been detected.
[ press release ]

July 2011

Charlie Johnson Helps Graft Olfactory Receptors onto Nanotubes

Charlie Johnson led a team of Penn researchers who have helped develop a nanotech device that combines carbon nanotubes with olfactory receptor proteins, the cell components in the nose that detect odors.  Because olfactory receptors belong to a larger class of proteins that are involved in passing signals through the cell membrane, these devices could have applications beyond odor sensing, such as pharmaceutical research.  The achievement has been published in the journal ACS Nano.
[ press release ]

Vijay Balasubramanian has won a fellowship from the Fondation Pierre Gilles de Gennes in France.

Prof. Balasubramanian will use the fellowship to support his research in biophysics at the Ecole Normale Superieure in Paris in 2012-2013.

 

June 2011

Phil Nelson gives Heinz Pagels Memorial public lecture at Aspen Center for Physics

Physics of Human and Superhuman Vision
part 1/2

by phil nelson

part 2/2

by phil nelson

The Public Lecture on Strings and Geometry

The Public Lecture on Strings and Geometry will be given by Cumrun Vafa on Monday June 6, at 5:30 PM in DRL A. The lecture is part of the String-Math 2011 Conference, which is held at UPenn, June 6-11, 2011. This is the first conference in the series of large meetings bringing together mathematicians and physicists who work on ideas related to string theory.

May 2011

Mark Devlin, Cover of the June Issue of Sky & Telescope

The Balloon-borne Large Aperture Telescope (BLAST) is on the cover of the June issue of Sky & Telescope. The article, co-written by Mark Devlin, describes the science of BLAST as well as the trials a tribulations of scientific ballooning from above the Arctic Circle and in Antarctica.

April 2011

Dean's Award for Innovation in Teaching: Paul A. Heiney

This award, which recognizes exceptional creativity and innovation in instruction, goes to Paul Heiney, professor of physics, for his effective integration of peer-instruction technology into his undergraduate physics courses. One colleague explains that Dr. Heiney's "use of 'clickers' and in-class demonstrations [have built] a truly interactive classroom experience, something that all of us aspire to in our teaching, but few manage to achieve."

Dean's Award for Mentorship of Undergraduate Research: A.T.Charlie Johnson

This award recognizes faculty members who have excelled in nurturing undergraduate students' desires and abilities to conduct meaningful research. This year SAS honors Alan T. Johnson, professor of physics, whose mentees routinely publish their work, win national awards, and go on to top graduate programs. A faculty member comments that Dr. Johnson "lights the flame and also provides the fuel that launches his students to truly important scientific results."

Three Penn graduate students receive the 2011 NSF Fellowship!

Graduate Student Daniel Beller has been awarded a three-year, National Science Foundation Graduate Fellowship. He works on the connections between geometric optics, smectic liquid crystals, and relativity with Professor Randall Kamien.

Graduate student Ben Schmitt received a 2011 NSF Graduate Student Fellowship. He is a graduate student in the Experimental Cosmology Group in the Department of Physics and Astronomy. He is designing the cryogenic camera for the Atacama Cosmology Telescope - ACT. He will be studying the formation of the large scale structure of the Universe through the gravitational lensing of the Cosmic Microwave Background.

Graduate student Kim Venta, who works with Prof. Marija Drndic, also received a 2011 NSF Graduate Student Fellowship. Kim works at an intersection of condensed matter physics, biophysics and chemistry on understanding and developing approaches for biomolecule manipulation and analysis, including DNA sequencing, using graphene.

March 2011

SAS Dissertation Completion Fellowship

Graduate Student Bryan Gin-ge Chen has been awarded an SAS Dissertation Completion Fellowship for 2011-2012. He works on the physics and mathematics of foams and liquid crystals with Professor Randall Kamien.
 

Towards the 15-minute Genome

The work of postdoc Chris Merchant from Marija Drndic's Lab has been featured in the Economist (March 10, 2011) Pulling strands of DNA through tiny holes, called nanopores, could dramatically speed up the sequencing of human genomes.
(image credit: Robert Johnson)
[ Link to article ]

February 2011

Bhuvnesh Jain
 
Professor Bhuvnesh Jain has been appointed to the Edmund J. and Louise W. Kahn Term Chair in the Natural Sciences, effective January 1, 2011.

ALMA Community Day Event, March 7th, 2011

The University of Pennsylvania is hosting an ALMA Community Day event on March 7th, 2011 (in DRL A4). This is a one day event organized and led by members of the local community with a focus on the Early Science capabilities of ALMA, mm/submm interferometry observing techniques, and the tools required to design ALMA observing programs and submit proposals. The NAASC is supporting these events by providing staff to describe ALMA ES capabilities and NAASC community support programs, and lead brief demonstrations and/or tutorials on the ALMA ES user tools, including the ALMA Observing Tool for proposal generation and SIMdata in CASA for simulating observations (note: Date reduction in CASA will be covered once observations begin, not here).

We will have a hands-on tutorial component focused on the ALMA Proposal tools. Space for the hands-on workshops may be limited, and local participants may be given a preference. Registration for hands-on tutorials will close three weeks prior to the date of the event (i.e. Feb 14th!).

Register now (REQUIRED) here:
http://science.nrao.edu/alma/community1.shtml

For those of you for whom March 7th is not opportune in terms of scheduling, I would encourage you to consider attending the May 27th event being hosted by Rutgers at Columbia University.

http://www.physics.rutgers.edu/~ajbaker/alma-tristate-2011.html

December 2010

Penn astronomer opens new window on the universe's past

A new instrument designed, built and operated by a collaboration including University of Pennsylvania astronomer James Aguirre and scientists at the California Institute of Technology, Jet Propulsion Laboratory, the University of Colorado and Japan's Institute of Space and Astronautical Science, is helping to open new views on a vital epoch of star formation in the early universe, using a convenient natural phenomenon called gravitational lensing. The instrument is Z- Spec.
[ news release ]

Amitai Ben-Nun Light Bending Black Hole

Penn researcher Amitai Ben-Nun, working with Assistant Prof. Justin Khoury and Prof. Ravi Sheth, reports that a new test for measuring the ability of gravity to bend light seen from distant stars around large objects like black holes may offer proof of the existence of large extra dimensions in the universe.
[ news release ]

Alfred K. Mann Day December 2, 2010

In recognition of his outstanding contributions to particle physics and particularly his championing of the limited depth option for a deep underground science and engineering laboratory at the Homestake Gold Mine near the Black Hills, South Dakota Governor Mike Rounds has declared December 2, 2010 "Alfred K. Mann Day".

November 2010

Drndić Group Cover Article: Nature Nanotechnology

"Penn physics researchers led by the first author, Dr. Meni Wanunu, in the group of Prof. Marija Drndić, in collaboration with New England Biolabs, have published a paper "Rapid electronic detection of probe-specific microRNAs using thin nanopore sensors," in Nature Nanotechnology featured on the journal cover page.

This work develops a platform for electronic detection of probe-hybridized microRNAs, small molecules relevant for many biological processes. Reducing the nanopore size leads to increased electrical signals from biomolecules and allows the discrimination of small nucleic acids (down to 10 base pairs) based on differences in their physical dimensions."

October 2010

Flow of Soft Colloids Near the Jamming Transition

Researchers in the groups led by Professors Douglas Durian and Arjun Yodh, collaborating with Adjunct Professor Jerry Gollub and MEAM Professor Paulo Arratia, have published an experimental study in Physical Review Letters on the flow of soft colloids near the jamming transition. Their results indicate that jamming is similar to a critical phase transition, and is the first study to explore rheology on both sides of the transition. The measurements were done using a novel microfluidic technique. Students and postdocs Kerstin Nordstrom (lead author, pictured), Emilie Verneuil, Oni Basu, and Zexin Zhang were central to this work.

[ APS.ORG abstract ]

Robert H. Koch, emeritus professor of astronomy and astrophysics at Penn, died at his home in Ardmore on October 11. He was 80 years old.

Penn Scientists & Engineers Play a Major Role in LSST

A prestigious committee convened by the National Research Council for the National Academy of Sciences ranked the Large Synoptic Survey Telescope (LSST) as its top priority for the next large ground-based astronomical facility. The so-called "Astro2010" report states "The top rank accorded to LSST is a result of (1) its compelling science case and capacity to address so many of the science goals of this survey and (2) its readiness for submission … as informed by its technical maturity, the survey's assessment of risk, and appraised construction and operations costs.”  Penn scientists and engineers played a major role in defining the weak gravitational lensing program for the project and in designing the front-end electronics for the readout of the massive CCD camera at the focal plane.

 

Excess Darkness Reflected in Human Retina
Vijay Balasubramanian

The natural images that humans encounter every day contain more regions of darkness than light, according to a study. In humans, cells that respond to a dark spot on a light background, or "OFF" cells, are smaller but clustered more densely on the retina than their counterpart "ON" cells. This clustering allocates more neural synapses or connections to processing regions of darkness. Charles Ratliff and colleagues hypothesized that this structural asymmetry evolved to match the ratio of light and dark contrasts in natural images. The researchers tested the hypothesis by measuring the spatial contrasts of natural images, and quantifying the statistical distribution of lightness and darkness. At all spatial scales, the authors report, natural images contain relatively more dark contrasts than light. Using the statistical characteristics of natural images, the researchers then constructed statistically matched artificial images, and computed the optimal configuration of OFF and ON cell mosaics for visual processing. According to the authors, information throughput peaked for mosaics with smaller, more densely clustered OFF cells, as in the human retina, suggesting that human vision has evolved to most efficiently represent visual information in the natural world.

image caption: Image of dandelions rectified into separate channels for bright (ON) and dark (OFF) contrasts. More intense pixels correspond to stronger contrasts. Following rectification, highlights appear bright in the ON image and dark in the OFF image.

[ press release ] [ paper in PNAS ] [ short in Science]

September 2010

Graduate Fellowship: Christopher Lester

Christopher Lester, a graduate student in the School of Arts and Sciences, is among 150 recipients of a new U.S. Energy Department Graduate Fellowship to encourage students to pursue careers in science, mathematics and engineering. Mr. Lester, who is from Marietta, GA and is studying fundamental particles and their interactions, will receive $50,500 per year for up to three years to support tuition, living expenses, research materials and related travel opportunities.

August 2010

Walter Selove

Walter Selove, an emeritus professor in our department, died on August 24, 2010 at the age of 88. Wally, as he was known to so many, started the high energy physics grant at Penn along with Sherman Frankel and Al Mann, sometime around 1957. He is well-known in experimental particle physics for discoveries in fixed target physics experiments (including the f⁰ resonance), particle detector technology (particularly with calorimetry), and B-physics. Wally was an important member of the high energy group and this department for over 50 years.

Carl Goodrich, Chair's Teaching Award, 2010

The faculty of the Department of Physics and Astronomy have selected Carl Goodrich as the winner of the Chair's Teaching Award for 2010 in recognition of his distinguished performance in the Physics & Astronomy teaching program during the 2009-2010 academic year. His award will be conferred on September 8, 2010 at 4pm just before the first departmental colloquium of the academic year.

Jing Cai, Graduate Student Achievement Award

Jing Cai is the 2010 winner of the award given to the graduate student who, by his or her performance in the first year courses, shows the most promise for outstanding achievement in research. Her award will be conferred on September 8, 2010 at 4pm just before the first departmental colloquium of the academic year.

July 2010

Magnetic Nanocrystal Superlatices

Jay Kikkawa has collaborated with Prof. Chris Murray (Chemistry and Materials Science) to study magnetic and electrical properties of superlattices of nanocrystals. These studies exploit a clever trick developed in the Murray lab for creating centimeter-scale membranes of binary nanocrystal superlattices by crystallizing a mixture of nanocrystals on a liquid surface.

[ press release ]
[ paper ]

Carbon-based, Nanoscale Platform to Electrically Detect Single DNA Molecules

Researchers in the groups of Prof. Marija Drndic and Prof. A.T. Charlie Johnson, led by a postoctoral fellow Chris Merchant, developed a carbon-based, nanoscale platform to electrically detect single DNA molecules. Electric fields push tiny DNA strands through atomically-thin graphene nanopores that ultimately may sequence DNA bases by their unique electrical signature. This work was published in Nano Letters. Read more in this press release. (Image credit: Robert Johnson)

« Published paper »
« Press release »

June 2010

2010/2011 Roy and Diana Vagelos Science Challenge Awardees

We are pleased to announce that the following students have been named Roy and Diana Vagelos Science Challenge awardees for 2010/2011:

• Steven R. Plimpton, Class of 2011, Physicss
• Ashley M. Reichardt, Class of 2012, Physics

Continuing awardees are:

• Kevin C. Axelrod, Class of 2011, Biochemistry & Physics
• Aaron Levy, Class of 2011, Physics

The award covers all tuition and fees for the academic year which is $40,514 in 2010/2011.

Randy Kamien: Samsung Mid-Career Award

Prof. Randy Kamien will be awarded the Samsung Mid-Career Award at the forthcoming 23rd International Liquid Crystal Conference 2010 Award Ceremony in Krakow, Poland on July 14.

2010 European Physical Society Condensed Matter Division Europhysics Prize

Professors Charles Kane and Eugene Mele will share, with 3 other researchers, the 2010 European Physical Society Condensed Matter Division Europhysics Prize for the theoretical prediction of the quantum spin Hall effect and topological insulators. This work, published in 2005, showed the existence of a set of band insulators (which were subsequently observed experimentally by other researchers sharing the prize) in which the topology of the band structure implies the existence of edge or surface states that are insensitive to disorder in the lattice. The discovery has implications for spintronics, quantum computing and possibly for fundamental and exotic physics. The prize will be awarded 1st September 2010 in Warsaw at the 23rd General Conference of the EPS Condensed Matter Division.

[ EPS.ORG Highlight ]

Larry Gladney, one of the Nifty Fifty

Professor Larry Gladney has been chosen to be a participating scientist in the effort of the USA Science & Engineering Festival to send fifty top scientists into local schools this October 10-24, 2010. The so-called Nifty Fifty were chosen from over 500 submissions by 4450 partner organizations of scientists, engineers, and technologists for their ability to convey the importance of science to our nation's future. The hope is that meeting scientists and engineers who love what they do will help students embrace science and engineering disciplines and consider careers in them.

Undergraduate Physics Majors Award Recipients 2009-2010:

• Kevin Axelrod - Goldwater Scholarship
• Mike Chien - College Alumni Society Board of Managers and Presidents Undergraduate Research Grant.
• Aaron Levy - Ruth Marcus Kanter Award
• Rachel Margolis - Penn Undergraduate Climate Action Grant
• Reed Plimpton - Benjamin Franklin Society Research Grant.

May 2010

Liang Fu Awarded the McMillan Award

Liang Fu has been awarded the McMillan Award by the University of Illinois at Urbana Champaign for his thesis work on the theory of topological insulators done at Penn under the supervision of Professor Charles Kane. Dr. Fu, who is now a Junior Fellow at Harvard University, shares this prestigious award with Rahul Roy from Oxford University.

Arjun Yodh: How Thin Films Melt

Read Physical Review Focus article on "How Thin Films Melt", a commentary about a recently published Physical Review Letter led by Arjun Yodh and Yilong Han (Hong Kong University of Science & Technology and former departmental post-doc).

» Physical Review Focus article
» UPenn Press Release
» NSF News From the Field

PhD Recipients 2010
Congratulations to you all for making Penn proud!

• Alexander Borisov
• Michelle A. Caler
• Lynn J. Daniels
• Joseph B. Hyde
• Justin Kien Keung
• Matthew Martino
• Jorge Moreno

BLAST!

The BLAST! movie will be airing on WHYY Tonight (Tuesday May 11, 2010) at 9 PM right after NOVA. It is the shorter 54 minute version of the movie.

"Documentarian Paul Devlin provides a rare glimpse into the minds and lives of scientists searching for an answer to the ultimate question: how did humankind come to be? A team of astrophysicists investigates the origins of the universe."

The standing faculty of the condensed matter group has selected Elisabetta Matsumoto as this year's winner of the Eli Burstein Prize.

"For imaginative application of elasticity theory to nonlinear pattern formation at the nanoscale and for its connection to and corroboration by experiment."

April 2010

Erin Buckley, Best Poster Award at BIOMED

Erin Buckley, a graduate student working in Arjun Yodh's group, was awarded Best Student Poster at the Optical Society of America's BIOMED Conference (Miami Beach, FL April, 2010). Her research employed diffuse correlation spectroscopy to demonstrate the affect of cardiac bypass time on impaired cerebral autoregulation in neonates with congenital heart defects.

Jessamyn Fairfield, Best Poster Award' at the NaNaX 4

Graduate student Jessamyn Fairfield from Prof. Drndic's group was awarded the 'Best Poster Award' at the NaNaX 4: Nanoscience with Nanocrystals conference on April 14th, 2010 in Tutzing, Germany.

Andrea J. Liu, Elected to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences

Andrea J. Liu, the Edmund J. and Louise W. Kahn Term Professor in the Natural Sciences, has been elected member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, one of the nation's oldest and most prestigious honorary societies.

2010 SAS Teaching Awards

Mark Devlin will be the recipient of the 2010 Dean's Award for Mentorship of Undergraduate Research.

Michael Ambroso will be a recipient of one of the 2010 Dean's Award for Distinguished Teaching by Graduate Students

We applaud the extraordinary commitment of these individuals to the education of our students. The winners will be honored at a School-wide reception on Wednesday, April 28 from 4:00-6:00pm in the Upper Egyptian Gallery of the University of Pennsylvania Museum. The entire department is invited to join in that event as we celebrate teaching excellence in the School of Arts and Sciences.

2010 Lindback Foundation Award for Distinguished Teaching

Dr. Eugene Mele, Professor of Physics, has been named by the Provost as a recipient of a 2010 Lindback Foundation Award for Distinguished Teaching.

Bryan Gin-ge Chen Awarded Dean's Research Fellowship

Graduate Student Bryan Gin-ge Chen has been awarded a Dean's Research Fellowship for 2010-2011. He will use these resources to study the mathematical underpinnings of topological defects in liquid crystals, working with Professor Randall Kamien.

March 2010

Two Penn Physics Scholars Named Alfred P. Sloan Research Fellows for 2010

Justin Khoury, assistant professor of physics, researches theoretical particle cosmology.

Elliot Lipeles, assistant professor of physics, researches experimental particle physics.

"These awards are a great recognition of the range and vitality of our faculty's research," Penn Provost Vincent Price said. "They are also a strong affirmation of Penn's junior faculty, who are our next generation of intellectual and research leaders."

The awards support research in physics, chemistry, computational and evolutionary molecular biology, computer science, economics, mathematics and neuroscience. Each year 118 fellows are selected from across the nation.

The Sloan Research Fellowships' $50,000 grants will allow the recipients to continue their research for the next two years.

Additional information about the Sloan Fellowships is available at http://www.sloan.org.

Elisabetta Matsumoto, 2010 Graduate Student Speaker Award
 
Penn Graduate Student Elisabetta Matsumoto (and former Undergraduate, Class of 2007) is chosen for the 2010 Graduate Student Speaker Award of the APS Group on Statistical and Nonlinear Physics. Elisabetta is part of the soft condensed matter theory group and studies elasticity and liquid crystals with Penn faculty member Randall Kamien.

 

January 2010

Blast Postdoc Receives Prestigious Einstein Postdoctoral Fellowship
 
Tony Mroczkowski one of the postdocs on BLAST just received the prestigious Einstein Postdoctoral Fellowship. He is going to spend his three-year fellowship at Penn working on the MUSTANG receiver.

 

November 2009

First Collisions at the LHC!

On Monday, November 23rd, the first proton-proton collisions were produced at the LHC, a very exciting milestone in the LHC physics program in which Penn personnel are intimately involved.

Mark Trodden / Fay R. and Eugene L. Langberg Professor of Physics
 
Prof. Trodden works at the interface of cosmology and particle physics theory in constructing and investigating models that may shed light on the fundamental physics origins of dark matter, dark energy, the early cosmos and other physics beyond the Standard Model. The Langberg Chair was established in 2002 through the bequest of Eugene L. Langberg, an electrical physicist who held positions at the U.S. Naval Research Lab and at the Franklin Institute. Mr. Langberg graduated from the College of Collateral Studies (now LPS) in 1942. Mr. Langberg's wife, the late Fay Ruth Moses Langberg, was a member of the College for Women, Class of 1947.
 

Brig Williams / Mary Amanda Wood Professor in Physics
 
Prof. Williams is an experimental particle physicist who works on experiments at the highest energy colliders available. He has made fundamental contributions at fixed target accelerators exploring neutrino physics, to the discovery of the top quark at the Fermilab Tevatron, and most recently to the electronics systems for the ATLAS experiment at the Large Hadron Collider at CERN. The Wood chair in physics was established in 1947 through a bequest from James L. Wood, a 1887 alumnus who became a well-known landscape artist and who named the chair in memory of his mother.

Gary Gibbons from Cambridge University

Professor Gary Gibbons from Cambridge University is visiting our Department until Dec. 2, under the Distinguished International Scholar Program funded by the UPenn Provost Office. In addition to the Colloquium next week, he will also give two lectures (Th Nov 12, 5-6PM and Tues Nov 24, 5-6PM, in A8) to undergraduate students in physics and engineering on Special Topics in Electromagnetism.

Professor Gibbons is a renowned scholar in theoretical physics who has made fundamental contributions to gravitational physics and string theory. He has a long standing association with Cambridge University: he was an undergraduate student there, and obtained his Ph.D. as the first graduate student of Professor Stephen Hawking, and now Dr. Gibbons is a Professor in the Department of Applied Mathematics and Theoretical Physics and a Trinity College fellow. He is in addition an elected fellow of the Royal Society.

October 2009

No Night without a Telescope

The University of Pennsylvania is one of eight Philadelphia area institutions participating in the "No Night without a Telescope" program. This event celebrates the International Year of Astronomy, which marks the 400th anniversary of Galileo Galilei's seminal observations.

read more at: University of Pennsylvania Observatory

 

The Big Bang and Beyond
Prof. Paul J. Steinhardt
Albert Einstein Professor in Science, Princeton University
December 12, 2009, 7:00pm
Claudia Cohen Hall
Auditorium G17
Free and Open to the Public
(seating limited to 275 people)

The Center for Particle Cosmology will be hosting a public lecture event on December 12, as part of its inaugural workshop.
» go to lecture page

Tom Lubensky has been appointed as the Christopher H. Browne Distinguished Professor of Physics in the School of Arts and Sciences. Please join us in congratulating Tom for this acknowledgment of his outstanding scholarship, teaching and service to the department and the School.

George E. Smith (C'55, undergraduate degree in Physics) has been awarded the 2009 Nobel Prize in Physics, "for the invention of an imaging semiconductor circuit – the CCD sensor," along with Willard S. Boyle.

Photo: National Inventors Hall of Fame Foundation/SCANPIX

 

September 2009

The American Physical Society has awarded Eugene Beier the 2010 W.K.H. Panofsky Prize in Experimental Particle Physics

"For major contributions to studies of neutrino interactions, especially studies of solar neutrinos demonstrating unequivocally the existence of neutrino flavor oscillations."

The W.K.H. Panofsky Prize will be presented at the APS April 2010 meeting in Washington, DC
» visit the APS site

August 2009

Bryan Chen, Gareth Alexander, and Randy Kamien develop a new method to study topological defects.
» read the PNAS article

August 2009

The new Chair of the Department of Physics and Astronomy is Professor Larry Gladney, a member of the particle physics group. Gladney received his Ph.D. from Stanford University in 1985 and has been at Penn since that time. He is currently the Edmund J. and Louise W. Kahn Professor for Faculty Excellence, a member of the Particle Cosmology Center at Penn, and Director of the Penn Science Teacher Institute.  

August 13, 2009, Mark Devlin (a.k.a. Lex Luthor) appears on the Colbert Report™ discussing the BLAST project.

The Colbert Report	Mon - Thurs 11:30pm / 10:30c
Mark Devlin
www.colbertnation.com
Colbert Report Full Episodes

July 2009

Undergraduate Physics major Matthew Berck

... has been awarded a $10,000 scholarship by the National Consortium for Measurement and Signature Intelligence Research (NCMR) Scholars Program. This scholarship is in recognition of Matthew's excellent academic record and his research accomplishments working in the group of Prof. A.T. Charlie Johnson. Berck's current research project concerns the application of protein-functionalized graphene transistors for the detection of cancer biomarkers.

Students Have A Ball Learning Physics At The Simeone Museum

Over 30 top high school students from around the world, attending the Penn Summer Science Academy (PSSA) at the University of Pennsylvania, had a memorable learning experience July 10 at the Simeone Foundation Automotive Museum. With the Museum’s famed collection of classic racing cars as a backdrop, the students - who came from ten foreign countries as well as the U.S. - gained firsthand knowledge of the principles of mechanics using two very low tech objects: a bowling ball and a broom.

A group of high school students from around the world, participating in a four week physics camp at the University of Pennsylvania, took a day trip to put what is learned in class into motion.
... read more @ KYW Newsradio
... PSSA Program

June 2009

Penn graduate student Anna Grasselino wins 1st place for poster at the 2009 Particle Accelerator Conference (PAC09) in Vancouver, BC, see Ferminews on 2 June 2009. Anna is conducting her research at TRIUMF Canada's National Laboratory for Particle and Nuclear Physics with Penn Adjunct Professor Nigel Lockyer.

May 2009

Andrea Liu and Arjun Yodh explore jamming in thermal systems.
... read Nature article
    (May 14, 2009)
... read Penn article
 

Arjun Yodh Named Director of Penn's MRSEC

Arjun Yodh has been named director of the Laboratory for Research on the Structure of Matter (LRSM) at the University of Pennsylvania. The core of the LRSM materials program is the Materials Science & Engineering Center (MRSEC) which provides provides support for complex interdisciplinary materials projects that can only be addressed in collaborative mode.
» read Penn's News Release
» Penn Current article

Antimatter, Matter, and How We Came To Be:
The Science Behind "Angels & Demons"

Boris Kayser
May 16
7:30pm
Auditorium G17
Claudia Cohen Hall

The lecture is free and open to the public, but seating is limited to 275 persons.

.. read abstract & bio
... advertisement
... poster

April 2009

Special Colloquium:
Don't Panic: Adventures in High Tech Startups

Elon Musk
CEO of SpaceX and Tesla Motors
Tuesday, April 14, 2009
4:30 PM
Chemistry Auditorium, Room 102
231 South 34th Street
... view poster

This will be an informal presentation of Elon Musk's experiences establishing high tech startup companies like SpaceX and Tesla Motors. He encourages questions from the audience.

BLAST!

A Film by Paul Devlin

Wednesday, April 15, 2009
3:30 - 5:30 P.M.
  and
6:00 - 8:00 P.M.

Cohen Auditorium, Claudia Cohen Hall
249 South 36th Street

The 2008 documentary film BLAST! follows a team of scientists hoping to figure out how galaxies form by launching a revolutionary new telescope on a NASA high-altitude balloon. This screening will be followed by an audience Q&A with the film's subject, Reese W. Flower Professor of Astronomy and Astrophysics Mark Devlin.

"In a rare combination of content and storytelling, BLAST! treats the viewer not only to the fruits of cosmic discovery but to the fits and starts of dedicated scientists who navigate paths of research that enable it."

- Neil deGrasse Tyson, Astrophysicist and Host of NOVA science NOW

"We experience the scientists' hopes, tensions and frustrations as their goal of charting distant galaxies is threatened by arctic conditions, damaged mirrors, lost hard drives and polar bears."

- Ian Johns, The Observer (U.K.)

Read more about Mark Devlin's work on the BLAST project in Penn Arts and Sciences Magazine.

Sponsored by the School of Arts and Sciences and the Penn Science Cafe.

No RSVP required. For additional information visit our events listing or email us at events@sas.upenn.edu.

• BLAST web page
• BLAST Movie
• Published Results, Interspace News
• NATURE Links:
  • Journal
  • Editor's Summary
    
  • News & Views
  • Actual Paper
     

Liang Fu, graduate student of professor Charles Kane, has been awarded the Herbert B. Callen Memorial Prize, "for pioneering work on the theory of topological insulators."

March 2009

American Physical Society (APS) March Meeting
Invited Talks:

Durian, Douglas
Measurement of growing dynamical length scale on approach to jamming in granular systems L8.00004

Liu, Andrea
New Proposed Mechanism for Actin-Polymerization-Driven Motility Z8.00004

Yodh, Arjun
Melting and Frustration in Temperature-Sensitive Colloids V4.00001

Xu, Ning
Simple scaling of the glass transition temperature with pressure L8.00001

Fu, Liang
Theory of Topological Insulators X3.00004

Brooks Harris
Order Parameters and Phase Diagram of Multiferroic RMn2O5 J30.00001

February 2009

Center for Particle Cosmology Launch
Join leading experts in physics and astronomy for a reception celebrating the launch of Penn's new Center for Particle Cosmology.
Tuesday, February 24, 2009
«read more»

January 2009

Andrea Liu has been appointed the Edmund J. and
Louise W. Kahn Term Professorship in the Natural Sciences, effective January 1, 2009.

December 2008

Tom C. Lubensky & Arjun G. Yodh in Nature

Tom C. Lubensky & Arjun G. Yodh publish "Geometric Frustration in Buckled Colloidal Monolayers" in Nature (v456n7224)
«read article»
«read Penn article»

 

Joseph Kroll Awarded APS fellowship

For major contributions to the observation and measurement of Bs-Bsbar mixing, including early recognition of the importance of the measurement, proposal and construction of the CDF time-of-flight system to improve particle identification, studies of B- tagging, and leadership during the final phases of the measurement.
Nominated by: Particles and Fields (DPF)
«go to APS site»

November 2008

Gino Segre receives the 2008 AIP Science Writing Award

Gino Segre receives the 2008 American Institute of Physics Science Writing Award in the science category for his book "Faust in Copehagen." This prize is "awarded for excellence in Science Writing in Physics and Astronomy for the non-specialist in four categories: journalist, scientist, science writing for children, and broadcast media." It comes with $3000 and and inscribed Windsor Chair. Past winners of this prize include John Wheeler, Leonard Suskind, Abraham Pais, Heinz Pagels, and Stephen Weinberg.

October 2008

Master of Medical Physics, OPEN HOUSE

Program Director, Kate Spillane, current students, faculty, and alumni held a panel discussion about the Master of Medical Physics Program.

 

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.

«read the CERN press release»

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.

«visit event site»

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.

«visit event site»

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

« read the DP article »

« 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.

read more ...
download PDF ...

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.

read more ...

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.)

read more ...

"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.

read (listen) more ...

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.

read more ...
 
Research @ Penn article

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.

read more ...

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:

http://chile1.physics.upenn.edu/ec

http://www.blastthemovie.com/

Science.Netscape

SpaceRef.com

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."

read more ...

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
read: article in Science

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

 

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