Department of PhysicsThe Department of Physics at Duke University in Durham, North Carolina invites applications and nominations for an endowed position in theoretical or experimental condensed matter physics, broadly defined. The Charles H. Townes assistant/associate professorship is a tenure-track or tenured associate professor position, and the holder of this endowed position shall be a young or mid-career scientist with enormous promise and/or highly qualified accomplishments. The appointment will begin on or after July 2015. The successful… read more about Charles H. Townes Asst./Assoc. Professor in Physics »
On November 25, graduate student Mengyang Sun passed his thesis defense. Congratulations! read more about Sun Passed Defense »
Prof. Ashutosh Kotwal has been elected as the Foreign Fellow of the Maharashtra Academy of Sciences in India for his significant contributions to Physical Sciences. read more about Kotwal Elected Foreign Fellow »
Continuing on with the developing tradition of visiting National Laboratories over Fall Break, last month 8 physics graduate students traveled to Newport News, Virginia, to explore the Thomas Jefferson National Acceleration Facility (Jefferson Lab). Jefferson Lab is a Department of Energy facility primarily focused on conducting fundamental research in nuclear physics, with additional programs in accelerator science, cryogenics, and free-electron lasers, to name a few. The Duke Physics Department already holds important… read more about Grad Students Visit JLab »
Like many physicists, Michael Wittmann (’93) was drawn to the subject because it’s a way of understanding how the world works. But Wittmann is also interested in understanding how teaching and learning work. “I come from a line of teachers and physicists and engineers,” he says. “So I grew up with dinner table conversation about both of those topics.” To satisfy both of his interests, Wittmann specializes in physics education research (PER) at the University of Maine, where he was recently promoted to full… read more about Duke Alum Michael Wittmann Specializes in Physics Education Research »
On October 12-13, an international conference was held at Duke on the occasion of Prof. Bob Behringer's 65th birthday. Talks by world leaders in the fields of granular materials and fluid dynamics made for a fascinating scientific program, and many of Bob's former students and postdocs participated. The picture below shows the participants gathered outside the Physics Building (in front of the FFSC). More information about BobFest can be found here. read more about BobFest Conference Held »
Prof. Daniel Gauthier's group's paper on controlling extreme events is now online: H. L. D. de S. Cavalcante, M. Oriá, D. Sornette, E. Ott, and D. J. Gauthier, 'Predictability and suppression of extreme events in a chaotic system,' Phys. Rev. Lett. 111198701 (2013). DukeToday made a news release "Market Bubbles May Be Predictable, Controllable" which can read here. Physical Review Letters did a Viewpoint article on the paper called "How to Control Your Dragons." by Adilson E. Motter… read more about Gauthier Group Paper Published, Receiving Press »
Nature Physics just published an article by Profs. Harold Baranger and Gleb Finkelstein's groups and other collaborators. You can read the article online here as well as the News And Views about their paper here. read more about Baranger & Finkelstein Groups Published »
Graduate student Bonnie Schmittberger is organizing a Duke Physics team of volunteers for Habitat for Humanity. For those who aren’t familiar with the organization, Habitat for Humanity builds houses and conducts home repairs for low-income families in communities around the world. Durham has its own Habitat for Humanity chapter that helps families all over the city. While you may always sign up for individual volunteer shifts, a team of volunteers is extremely helpful to them for new… read more about Grad Student to Organize Physics-Habitat for Humanity Team »
Last year the staff of the Physics Department started a tradition of decorating the office, dressing in costume and having lunch together for Halloween. This year it continued with members showing spirit. In the picture from left to right are payroll clerk Donna Elliott as a Jack-o-lantern, assistant to the chair Cristin Paul as Han Solo, staff assistant to TUNL Brenda West as a vampiress, fiscal specialist Angela Garner wearing orange and black and DUS… read more about Physics Staff Share Halloween Spirit »
Graduate student Xuefei Yan of Prof. Haiyan Gao's lab successfully defended his preliminary exam on Monday, Oct 21, 2013. Congratulations! read more about Yan Successfully Defends »
HistoryMakers is a national non-profit educational institution with a mission of preserving African American history through creating, maintaining and providing easy access to an extensive archive of video and oral interviews and presentations. The institute was founded in 1999 by Julieanna Richardson who now serves as the Director and on the Board of Directors of The HistoryMakers. Dr. Richardson received a B.A. degree from Brandeis University and a J.D. from the Harvard School of Law. She worked as a corporate lawyer… read more about Howell Speaks to Hillside High Teens »
Dr. Mehdi Meziane, a postdoc in Prof. Haiyan Gao's Medium Energy Physics Group has been selected as a Jefferson Science Associates (JSA) Promising Young Scientist. The JSA Promising Young Scientist program has the goals of supporting junior nuclear physicists and promoting the effective dissemination of exciting new developments in nuclear physics. Dr. Meziane joined Prof. Gao's research group in June 2011. He has been working on a new experiment on a precise measurement of… read more about Meziane is JSA Promising Young Scientist »
Prof. Steffen Bass's class Computational Physics Class, PHY566, has received the Duke Green Classroom Certification. The Duke Green Classroom Certification was created to provide faculty with the opportunity to reduce the environmental impact of their courses and classrooms at Duke University while demonstrating eco-friendly behaviors to students. You can read more about it the program here. read more about Bass Goes Green »
Researchers in the Duke Physics and ECE departments have demonstrated that nanometer-sized antennas can greatly enhance local electromagnetic fields in the ultraviolet. The field of plasmonics explores how to engineer metallic structures to control and concentrate electromagnetic fields, especially in dimensions very small compared to the wavelength of the radiation. It has been known for some time that gold and silver nanostructures act as antennas for infrared and visible wavelength radiation, and the local field… read more about New Nanometer-Sized Antennas Developed »
Alaric Bryant, a freshman, has been awarded the 2013-2014 American Physical Society Scholarship for Minority Undergraduate Physics Majors. The APS Minority Scholarship helps increase the number of underrepresented minorities obtaining degrees in physics. Forty scholarships were awarded to high school seniors, and college freshmen and sophomores. For a complete list of the 2013-2014 APS Minority Scholars, please visit this page. You can learn more about Alaric Bryan here. read more about Freshman Alaric Bryant Wins 2013-2014 APS Minority Scholarship »
Graduate student Abe Clark and his wife Kim welcomed a daughter, Charlotte Renee Clark, on August 22. Graduate student Mengyang Sun and his wife Shu Zhang welcome their baby boy. Drayke Zhang Sun was born on the evening of Wednesday, September 25th. Congratulations Abe and Kim and Mengyang and Shu! read more about Grad Students Welcome Children »
Prof. Ashutosh Kotwal was invited as a plenary speaker at the Large Hadron Collider Physics Conference in Barcelona, Spain, this past summer. He spoke about precision electroweak physics, including his own research leading to the world's most precise measurement of the W boson mass, and the information provided by these measurements to guide theories beyond the Standard Model of particle physics. Some of the big questions addressed by these precision measurements are, whether the presence of… read more about Kotwal Speaks at the Large Hadron Collider Physics Conference »
The Physics Department is pleased to honor three graduate students with Fellowship Awards which are among the most prestigious awards granted to outstanding graduate students in the Physics Department. These awards, announced at the beginning of the Physics Department first colloquium each academic year, were presented on Wednesday, September 18, 2013. Graduate Student Georgios Laskaris, who began his career in the Duke Graduate Physics department in the Fall of 2008, is… read more about 2013-2014 Student Fellowship Awards »
Dr. Rajarshi Raut, former Research Associate in Prof. Werner Tornow’s research group, is the first author of a Physical Review Letter article [PRL 111, 112501 (2013)] about “Cross-Section Measurements of the 86Kr(g,n) Reaction to Probe the s-Process Branching at 85Kr”. This work was carried out at TUNL’s High-Intensity Gamma-ray Source (HIgS ). You can read the PRL article here. read more about Former Researcher First Author of PRL Article »
Prof. Werner Tornow gave the opening talk "Recent experiments involving few-nucleon systems" at the 22nd European Conference on Few-Body Problems in Physics which was held in Krakow, Poland on September 9-13, 2013. Prof. Tornow's abstract can be read here and his PowerPoint presentation can be viewed here. Visit the conference website here. read more about Tornow Opens Conference »
The Fall 2013 Grid Computing Campus Infrastructure Workshop took place September 27-28 at the R. David Thomas Center at Duke University. It was organized by Prof. Steffen A. Bass, Jeff Chase (Duke Computer Science), Rob Gardner (U. of Chicago), John McGee (UNC-RENCI) and John Pormann (Duke OIT). The sold-out workshop, which was designed to connect grid computing experts with local researchers interested in learning how to utilize grid computing for their ongoing reserach, had 65 participants, among them… read more about Bass Co-Organizes Workshop on Grid Computing, Brings Duke onto Open Science Grid »
The 80th Annual Meeting of the Southeastern Section of the American Physics Society (SESAPS) will be held November 20-23, 2013 in Bowling Green, Kentucky at the Sloan Convention Center. Abstract deadline is September 20. Our own Prof. Ronen Plesser will be there on a MOOC panel. The SESAPS website is here. Their Facebook page is here. read more about Save the Date: SESAPS 2013 »
Prof. Robert P. Behringer has won the SESAPS Jesse W. Beams award for pioneering the field of granular media and the development of elegant experimental methods for understanding the fluctuations, dynamics, force transmission and jamming transition in granular materials. The award will be presented to Prof. Behringer at the 80th Annual SESAPS Meeting this November. A description of the award and a list of past winners may be found here. Previous SESAPS Beams award winners from Duke Physics are: … read more about Behringer is 2013 Beams Award Recipient »
Congratulations to Dr. Joshua Powell on the successful defense of his dissertation, “Exotic States in Quarkonium Physics: Effective Theories of Heavy Mesonic Molecules and an AdS/QCD Model of Hybrid Quarkonium.” Dr. Powell defended on Friday, September 6, 2013 and his adviser is Prof. Thomas Mehen. read more about Powell Successfully Defends Dissertation »
On August 25th, at the annual Physics Department Picnic, Prof. Ying K. Wu was awarded the first ever Award for Excellence in Graduate Teaching. The Award for Excellence in Graduate Teaching was created to recognize outstanding instruction of a core graduate physics course. The recipient of this award is selected by graduate students, and it honors an instructor who demonstrates exceptional teaching skills in the classroom as well as an eagerness to help students gain a deeper understanding of the course… read more about Prof. Wu: Winner of Inaugural Award for Excellence in Graduate Teaching in Physics »
In the week of August 26, the Physics department hosted a visit by 12 students and their faculty leaders from Kuang Yaming Honors School, an honors college in natural sciences from Nanjing University. Among the 12 students, 5 are physics majors, 6 chemistry majors, and 1 math major. During this visit, the students attended presentations by chairs of Chemistry (Prof. Steve Craig), Math (Prof. Harold Layton) and Physics (Prof. Haiyan Gao) introducing the three departments. The students also attended research… read more about Physics Hosts Visiting Students from Kuang Yaming Honors School, Nanjing University »
A few photographs from the annual department picnic can now be viewed on Flickr. If you have more to share please write to the News Team. read more about Physics Department Picnic Photos Now Online »
On August 21, 2013, Dr. Kevin Finelli successfully defended his Ph.D. thesis, Duke's first Ph.D. thesis analyzing the data collected by the ATLAS experiment at the Large Hadron Collider (LHC). Dr. Finelli’s thesis developed and employed a novel technique, originally developed for CDF by Prof. Mark Kruse, his former grad student Dr. Sebastian Carron, postdoc Dr. Mircea Coca, and senior scientist Doug Benjamin to simultaneously extract the production cross-sections of… read more about Dr. Kevin Finelli, First Duke Grad Student to Defend Thesis on ATLAS »
The Physics Department is happy to welcome Nancy Morgans as our new Assistant to the Director of Graduate Studies. Nancy has worked at Duke in a variety of student services roles administering undergraduate and graduate studies programs in nursing, environmental science and policy, ecology, and neuroscience since 1994, earning her Masters degree in library science at NCCU along the way. Nancy is the point person for graduate student payroll, general questions about graduate study requirements, graduate… read more about Meet the Staff: Nancy Morgans »