News

Mueller Lectures at 34th International School of Nuclear Physics

Prof. Berndt Mueller gave a lecture at the 34th International School of Nuclear Physics at the Center "Ettore Majorana" in Erice/Sicily, which was founded by the well known Italian physicist Antonino Zichichi. The School brought together approximately 100 young researchers and many leading scientists in the field of  hot QCD matter. Mueller gave a lecture on event-by-event fluctuations in relativistic heavy ion collisions. Detailed information about the school can be found on the website… read more »

Fall 2012 Reception Photos

NOTE: THE "viewed online here" LINK IS BROKEN ON THE ORIGINAL SITE. NEEDS UPDATING OR REMOVAL. The Physics Department held the annual fall reception on October 4 at the Doris Duke Center. It was a fun and well-attended event with some great food. Postdoc Joshua Dijksman and graduate student Lynn Kaack took photos that can be viewed online here. read more »

Smith Awarded 2013 McGroddy Prize for New Materials
Smith Awarded 2013 McGroddy Prize for New Materials

Prof. David Smith has been awarded the 2013 James C. McGroddy Prize of APS for New Materials sponsored by IBM together with Drs. John B. Pendry, Imperial College and Costas M. Soukoulis, Ames Laboratory and Iowa State University. The Prize was established to recognize and encourage outstanding achievement in the science and application of new materials. It consists of $10,000 (divided equally) and a certificate with the appropriate citation. The citation that will appear on the certificate for Prof. Smith… read more »

Prof. Edward Bilpuch, Dead at 85
Prof. Edward Bilpuch, Dead at 85

Prof. Edward Bilpuch, Henry W. Newson Professor Emeritus, passed away in Duke Hospital of heart failure on Sunday, September 16. Prof. Bilpuch joined the Duke Physics faculty as Assistant Professor in 1962 and succeeded Prof. Henry Newson as the Director of TUNL in 1978 until his retirement from this position in 1992. DukeToday has published a story about Prof. Bilpuch. Read it here. Former staff Maxine Stern conducted a nice interview of Prof. Bilpuch some time ago that can be viewed here… read more »

Fall Picnic Photos

NOTE: PICTURES LINK BROKEN ON ORIGINAL SITE The Physics Department held its annual fall picnic on Saturday, August 25 at Duke Forest, organized by the graduate students. Thank you to Prof. Richard Palmer for taking photos at this fun event. Please see all the stills here. read more »

New Assistant Professor Maiken Mikkelsen: Using Physics to Build a Better Computer
New Assistant Professor Maiken Mikkelsen: Using Physics to Build a Better Computer

“It’s unusual and exciting to build bridges between physics and engineering,” says Prof. Maiken Mikkelsen, who will be doing just that in her new position as assistant professor in the departments of physics and electrical and computer engineering. “I’ll be able to supervise students from both departments and create a very interdisciplinary group. I’m excited about it,” she says. In addition to building bridges between disciplines, she’s also helping to “build” the computer of the future—a quantum computer… read more »

Job Opening: Assistant Professor in Experimental Nuclear Physics at Duke University

The Department of Physics at Duke University in Durham, North Carolina invites applications and nominations for a tenure-track position at the assistant professor level in the area of experimental nuclear physics, broadly defined.  Current research in the department in this area includes experiments in electroweak interactions, neutrino physics, hadron structure and nuclear astrophysics.  The appointment begins in fall 2013. The successful candidate should show a strong commitment to research and teaching.… read more »

Job Opening: Assistant Professor in Experimental Nuclear Physics at Duke University

The Department of Physics at Duke University in Durham, North Carolina invites applications and nominations for a tenure-track position at the assistant professor level in the area of experimental nuclear physics, broadly defined.  Current research in the department in this area includes experiments in electroweak interactions, neutrino physics, hadron structure and nuclear astrophysics.  The appointment begins in fall 2013. The successful candidate should show a strong commitment to research and teaching.… read more »

Prof. Kruse Gives Public Talk to Packed Auditorium
Prof. Kruse Gives Public Talk to Packed Auditorium

NOTE: SOME LINKS HAVE BECOME BROKEN On July 12, Prof. Mark Kruse gave a public lecture on "Why we care about the Large Hadron Collider" to an almost full 600+ capacity auditorium in Auckland, New Zealand. The poster for the talk, and a crowd shot are shown. The lecture generated a lot of excellent questions and kept Kruse busy for quite some time afterwards! Kruse's lecture was filmed and can be viewed online here. The lecture has also appeared on some blogs including Discover Magazine (includes photos)… read more »

Duke Undergraduate Student Wins Outstanding Research Award
Duke Undergraduate Student Wins Outstanding Research Award

The US ATLAS Collaboration held its annual workshop at the University of Michigan on August 13-15, 2012. This meeting is used to review the status of current measurements at the Large Hadron Collider being made using data collected by the ATLAS detector. Several Duke students presented results of ATLAS research topics they have been working on during the summer of 2012: Will DiClemente, Josh Loyal, Chris Pollard and Meg Shea. The photo at right shows the… read more »

First Group From Shandong University Arrives at Duke
First Group From Shandong University Arrives at Duke

Duke University and Shangdong University (SDU) signed a five-year agreement in May 2012 to have five students annually from Taishan College at Shandong University come to Duke Physics for their junior year. Shandong University (SDU) is located in the city of Jinan, capital of Shandong province, about halfway between Beijing and Shanghai on the high-speed railway connecting the two cities. Shandong University is one of the top universities in China. Taishan College is an honors college at SDU for students in natural sciences… read more »

Students Attend Gordon Research Conference
Students Attend Gordon Research Conference

Graduate students Hannah Guilbert, Meizhen Shi, and Bonnie Schmittberger in Prof. Dan Gauthier's group, graduate student Huaixiu Zheng in Prof. Harold Baranger's group, and former Duke undergraduate Physics major Crystal Senko attended a Gordon Research Conference at Stonehill College in Easton, Massachusetts from August 12-17. The topic of the conference, Quantum Science, brought together… read more »

Prof. Kotwal to Serve on ATLAS Upgrade Physics Committee
Prof. Kotwal to Serve on ATLAS Upgrade Physics Committee

Following the discovery of the Higgs-like Boson at the Large Hadron Collider (LHC), discussions have begun to plan a major upgrade of the accelerator and the LHC experiments to increase the collision rate by a factor of ten. Prof. Ashutosh Kotwal has been asked to join the Upgrade Physics Committee of the ATLAS experiment to study the physics potential of this high-luminosity scenario and develop the physics justification. The increased production rate of the new boson would allow more precise measurements… read more »

Graduate Student Kevin Finelli Presents at Major Conference Down Under, Interviewed on Young Scientist Panel
Graduate Student Kevin Finelli Presents at Major Conference Down Under, Interviewed on Young Scientist Panel

NOTE: LINK HAS BECOME BROKEN DUE TO WEBSITE REDESIGN Graduate student Kevin Finelli, working in the Duke High-Energy Particle Physics (HEP) group with his advisor Prof. Mark Kruse, spent much of the summer in Australia working on his thesis project, an analysis of ATLAS data at the Large Hadron Collider. The trip was supported by the Australian Research Council Centre of Excellence in Particle Physics (CoEPP), in which Kruse is a partner investigator. Finelli spent most of his time in… read more »

New Endowed Postdoctoral Fellowship (London Post-Doctoral Fellowship) in Experimental Condensed Matter Physics
New Endowed Postdoctoral Fellowship (London Post-Doctoral Fellowship) in Experimental Condensed Matter Physics

The Physics department is very happy to announce the creation of London Post-Doctoral Fellowship, which has been endowed by an anonymous donor. The Fellowship is intended to support an outstanding scientist in experimental condensed matter physics, broadly defined, and to honor the lifetime achievements of Professor Fritz London, who was active at Duke University between 1939 and 1954. The endowment will support one post-doctoral researcher, who will have the freedom to associate with any of the existing experimental… read more »

Duke Physics is a Family Tradition for Chip and Anne Watson
Duke Physics is a Family Tradition for Chip and Anne Watson

Like father, like daughter. Both Chip Watson and his daughter Anne Watson love physics and computer science and don’t like having to choose between the two. They both love traveling to China to teach English to high school students. And they both chose Duke for postgraduate work in physics. Chip earned his PhD in 1980 working with Prof. Emeritus Bilpuch and Anne is beginning her graduate studies at Duke this fall. Chip is the manager of the High-Performance Computing Group at Jefferson… read more »

Duke Physicists Published in Nature
Duke Physicists Published in Nature

The paper "Quantum phase transition in a resonant level coupled to interacting leads" by Prof. Gleb Finkelstein's Electronic Nanostructure Group with Prof. Harold Baranger's group has been just published in Nature. Read it online here and see the Duke Today feature "Electromagnetic 'Swamps" Don't Always Bog Electrons Down" here. Photo: This graphic shows an electron using a resonant level (center well) to pass through an energy barrier (orange wall).… read more »

Grad Student Huang Awarded JSA/JLab Fellowship
Grad Student Huang Awarded JSA/JLab Fellowship

Graduate student, Min Huang has been awarded the Jefferson Sciences Associates (JSA)/JLab Graduate Fellowship for the 2012-2013 academic year. This is the second time that Min has received this award. She previously received it in the 2011/2012 academic year. Recently, Min also attended and gave an invited talk at the Fourth Workshops on Hadron Physics in China and Opportunities in US in Beijing. Prof. Haiyan Gao and Prof. Roxanne Springer also gave invited talks at this… read more »

Mueller Co-Writes Review on Recreating the Conditions During the Start of the Universe
Mueller Co-Writes Review on Recreating the Conditions During the Start of the Universe

A review by Prof. Berndt Mueller and Barbara Jacak (Stony Brook University) was published in the the July 20th issue of Science. You can read an article about it in the "Primordial 'Soup' of Big Bang Theory Recreated" on LiveScience's website here. Prof. Jacak will be our first colloquium speaker this fall. read more »

LHC Detector Construction at Duke

NOTE: SOME LINKS HAVE BECOME BROKEN DUE TO WEBSITE REDESIGN   Part of the ATLAS experiment at CERN was built here in the physics building at Duke. You can read more about the inner detector construction here and below you can also see several pictures of Duke personnel installing the detector at CERN, along with a picture of a Higgs candidate event passing through the tracker.  You can also read more technical information about the Transition Radiation Tracker (TRT) and its performance here.… read more »

Duke Physicists and Students Contributed to the New Discovery at LHC
Duke Physicists and Students Contributed to the New Discovery at LHC

NOTE: SOME LINKS HAVE BECOME BROKE DUE TO WEBSITE REDESIGN Physicists are one step closer to discovering the Higgs boson. The Duke ATLAS group has made substantial contributions toward the discovery at the Large Hadron Collider at CERN in Switzerland. Read the following two articles on Duke today to find out more: "Elusive Higgs Particle May No Longer Be Hiding" and "Duke's deep bench scores on the Higgs boson search Physicists and their students''. The Duke ATLAS group has also been in the media: Prof. Al… read more »

Prof. Kotwal Chairs Duke Information Technology Committee
Prof. Kotwal Chairs Duke Information Technology Committee

Prof. Ashutosh Kotwal has been appointed the Chair of Duke University's Information Technology Advisory Committee for a two-year term starting June 2012. This committee reviews and advises the University on all matters related to information technology on campus, from email to research computing, from licenses to networking and data security. Prof. Kotwal has been serving as a member of this committee for the last two years. read more »