News

Nano-Noses: Cyborg Devices for Detecting Molecules

World Cafe Live will feature Charlie Johnson, Professor and Associate Chair for Undergraduate Affairs for Physics and Astronomy.  On Tuesday, July 23, 2013 from 6-7pm at World Cafe Live (3025 Walnut Street), Prof. Johnson will present his research on how biological structures attached to flat or rolled-up lattices of carbon atoms have enabled his team to build new kinds of sensors for detecting things like Lyme disease bacteria and sniffing out certain cancers.

Online, open-source Mechanics Textbook released

Emeritus Physics Prof. Michael Cohen has released an updated version of his free, open-source, online textbook on Mechanics. This is a supplemental text intended to give students in freshman first-semester physics course a different perspective from their existing course text.  The online text is available in the Resources section of this website.

Nigel Lockyer named Fermilab Director

Penn Adjunct Professor of Physics Nigel Lockyer has been named the next Director of the Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory.  A Fellow of the American Physical Society and 2006 winner of the APS Panofsky Prize, Nigel is the Director of Canada's TRIUMF laboratory for nuclear and particle physics and Professor of Physics and Astronomy at the University of British Columbia.  In early September he will assume the role of Fermilab Director where he will develop strategy for the nation's premier laboratory for particle physics and shepherd a new generation of experiments.

B-meson oscillations at CDF

An article in this month's Physics Today magazine describes the CDF collaboration's measurement of Boscillations. The plot shown in the article is derived from a published plot of Penn post-doc, Aart Heijboer, working in Prof. Joe Kroll's group at the time.  This is one of the major results in hadron collider physics of the last 30 years.

Math/Physics/Astronomy Library CLOSED for renovation

Math/Physics/Astronomy Library CLOSED for renovation effective June 11 - Aug. 5, 2013.  Please return books to Van Pelt Library, Engineering Library, or any other Penn Library.  Questions?  Call Van Pelt Circulation Desk:  (215) 898-7566

TechConnect National Innovation Award

Graphene Frontiers, a company co-founded by Prof. Charlie Johnson, received a 2013 TechConnect Innovation Award at the TechConnect National Innovation Showcase May 14-15 in Washington, DC.  These awards select the top early-stage innovations from around the world through an industry-review process based on the potential positive impact the technology will have on a specific sector of industry.  The company also won the Best Materials Company and People's Choice Award at the New Jersey Council Venture Conference in March 2013.

GAPSA-Provost Fellowship for Interdisciplinary Innovation Winners

Rajatesh GudibandeJohn QiRajatesh Gudibande and Zhenqing John Qi were awarded a fellowship from GAPSA-Provost Fellowship for Interdisciplinary Innovation.  Their winning proposal was entitled

Roy and Diana Vagelos Science Challenge Awards 2013-2014

We are pleased to announce the following have been named Roy and Diana Vagelos Science Challenge awardees for 2013-2014:

Dahlia R. Klein,* '15, Biophysics, Chemistry and Physics majors, submatriculation in Chemistry

Julia Steinberg, '14, Physics major, submatriculation in Physics

A Multidimensional Mind

Prof. Vijay Balasubramanian is featured in the May 24, 2013 issue of Penn Arts & Sciences magazine.  The article covers Vijay's multi-discipline interests in string theory, black holes, the limits of Occam's Razor, and how the brain works.  See the article here.

Physics, Engineering and Origami

A Penn team led by Prof. Randy Kamien just won a $2 million, four-year grant from the National Science Foundation’s Division of Emerging Frontiers in Research and Innovation.  The program draws from the Japanese art of paper cutting and folding to make new materials that self-organize into structures that could be used in applications as disparate as drug-delivery to emergency shelters.  The Penn Current has a story on the grant.