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lubensky

Emeritus Professor Tom Lubensky awarded Pierre-Gilles de Gennes Prize of The International Liquid Crystal Society (ILCS)

Emeritus Professor Tom Lubensky, was recently awarded the Pierre-Gilles de Gennes Prize of The International Liquid Crystal Society (ILCS). This award is the highest-ranking prize of ILCS and is awarded biannually.

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Congratulations - Professor Dylan Rankin

Great news! Professor Dylan Rankin has won the US Department of Energy Early Career Award. The award is for his research proposal to Search for New Physics with Real-time Anomaly Detection! The DOE announcement can be found using the link below:

Read more here

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Congratulations - Professor Joe Kroll

Great news - Please join us in congratulating Professor Joe Kroll, who has been named Robert I. Williams Endowed Term Professor of Physics and Astronomy. The term chair was awarded by the university in recognition of Professor Kroll's exceptional scholarship and leadership in experimental particle physics, as well as his outstanding teaching

dual nanopore

Novel coupled nanopore platform offers greater precision for detecting molecules

Marija Drndić of the School of Arts & Sciences and Dimitri Monos of the Perelman School of Medicine and Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia led a team of researchers who have developed a novel kind of nanotechnology that allows for more precise detection and control of molecules like DNA. The platform signals a new era in the field of synthetic biology and could pave the way for enhanced DNA sequencing and protein identification. Read full article here.

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Congratulations to the Department of Physics and Astronomy’s Student Award Winners!

Award certificates will be presented before the Department Colloquium on September 11th at 3:30pm in DRL A8.

Chairman’s Teaching Award   - Margot Young

johnsonlab

Boosting the frequency of sound waves to make the next generation of wireless devices

Vincent Kerler, a second-year physics major in the College of Arts and Sciences, says he spent his summer running “a whole bunch of simulations to explore how mechanical waves move through a class of materials that convert mechanical stress into electricity and vice versa, or piezoelectric nanomaterials.”

Robyn Sanderson and Adrien Thob of the School of Arts & Sciences are part of a team of astronomers using NASA’s upcoming Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope to uncover the “fossil record” of the universe as they look to clues to unearth key insights into its formation. (Image: Courtesy of NASA, Ralf Crawford (STScI))

NASA’s Roman Space Telescope will investigate the history of galaxies

Robyn Sanderson and collaborators are unearthing the history of the universe's formation by looking for clues that reveal its 'galatic fossil record.'

The universe is a dynamic, ever-changing place where galaxies are dancing, merging, and changing appearance. Looking ever deeper into the universe, astronomers see galaxies at earlier stages in their lives. Unfortunately, because these changes take millions or billions of years, telescopes only provide snapshots, squeezed into a human lifetime.

SAIL

How a Flipped Classroom Stokes the Collaborative Spirit of Physics

Bill Ashmanskas is using the Structured Active In-Class Learning format to help his students grasp high-level physics concepts.
Read full article here

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Four academic journeys explored

PennToday explores Vijay Balasubramanian's academic career.

Sam Dillavou, a postdoc in the Durian Research Group in the School of Arts & Sciences, built the components of this contrastive local learning network, an analog system that is fast, low-power, scalable, and able to learn nonlinear tasks.

A first, physical system learns nonlinear tasks without a traditional computer processor

Sam Dillavou, a postdoc in the Durian Research Group in the School of Arts & Sciences, built the components of this contrastive local learning network, an analog system that is fast, low-power, scalable, and able to learn nonlinear tasks. (Image: Erica Moser)

Penn physics and engineering researchers have created a local learning network that is fast, low-power, and scalable.

Read full article here