News
Cosmic Filaments and Voids
Penn cosmologists, Prof. Bhuvnesh Jain and graduate student Joseph Clampitt, have, for the first time, determined the mass of dark matter along the filaments and voids of visible galaxies. The unexpected power of new, clever analysis techniques made the measurement possible much sooner than expected and shows surprising results. For an overview, see the Penn news release.
Charlie Kane wins Lindback Award
Charlie Kane, Class of 1965 Professor of Physics, is a winner of this year's Lindback Award. The Lindback Awards for Distinguished Teaching were established in 1961 and are the highest teaching award given by the University of Pennsylvania. Charlie won for being a "fantastic lecturer" who made the most challenging course "an absolute blast".
Administrative Leadership
Prof. Arjun Yodh has been reappointed as Director of the Laboratory for Research on the Structure of Matter (LRSM). In his first term as Director, Arjun led the highly successful renewal of the National Science Foundation Materials Research Science and Engineering Center grant under extremely competitive conditions.
Penn Physics outreach
Come see Penn Physics demonstrations at the Philadelphia Science Festival Carnival on May 3, 2014. The groups of Profs. Marija Drndic and Charlie Johnson invite the general public to see demonstrations on nanoscience from Penn research. The Carnival runs from 10am to 4pm and the Drndic and Johnson groups will be at a booth between 21st and 22nd on Benjamin Franklin Parkway.
Winner of NSF EAPSI Fellowship, Steve Gilhool
Steve Gilhool, a doctoral candidate working with Asst. Prof. Cullen Blake, was awarded an NSF East Asia and Pacific Summer Institute Fellowship for 2014. Steve's research focuses on exoplanets, low-mass stars, and the development of new algorithms for measuring stellar velocities from high-resolution infrared spectra. Steve will spend the summer at the University of Tokyo, working with data from a new spectrograph on the 8.2-meter Subaru Telescope.
SAS Working Group grant for Math and Physics
Prof. Antonella Grassi of Math and Prof. Mirjam Cvetic of Physics & Astronomy have received a School of Arts and Sciences Working Group grant to support interdisciplinary research. The Math and Physics departments have an extensive history of collaboration that spans the boundaries of mathematics and theoretical physics.
Evolution Cluster in the news
Answering President Amy Gutmann’s call “to address the most challenging problems through an interdisciplinary approach,”Penn’s new Evolution Cluster—officially titled the Evolution of Dynamical Processes Far from Equilibrium Cluster and led by Physics Prof. Randy Kamien—presents an innovative model for organizing research, teaching, and learning in ways that will have broad implications across the University.
Masters of Medical Physics Program
The Penn Masters of Medical Physics Program (MMP) is profiled in an article in this month's SAS Frontiers magazine. Adjunct Associate Professor Stephen Avery describes the program as "These approaches are all from basic physics; it's just that we're applying it to medicine. We want someone who is going to be innovative, really be a leader. We want our students to push the field forward."
Penn student wins NSF Graduate Fellowship
Jason Rocks has just received a National Science Foundation Graduate Research Fellowship (GRFP). The oldest graduate fellowship of its kind, the GRFP has a long history of selecting recipients who achieve high levels of success in their future academic and professional careers.
Astronomy Night at Penn
On April 7, members of the Penn Department of Physics and Astronomy will host the general public in exploring the night sky through telescopes on Penn's Shoemaker Green. Special physics demonstrations and a lecture about supernovae and dark energy by Asst. Prof. James Aguirre are also on the agenda.