NOTE: LINKS HAVE BECOME BROKEN DUE TO SITE REDESIGN This week the Duke Physics department welcomes 16 new graduate students to the program for fall of 2010. These 16 students were accepted out of a pool of almost 200 applicants and they will be the first to experience the department's new graduate curriculum. Students in the incoming class have come from five countries and their research interests represent a variety of physics sub-disciplines. This week they are attending both University-wide and Departmental Orientations… read more about Welcome, New Graduate Students! »
NOTE: SOME LINKS HAVE BECOME BROKEN DUE TO SITE REDESIGN In our new photo album at Flickr, newly-minted Duke graduates are seen celebrating their achievements at the Duke Physics commencement ceremony. The ceremonies awarded diplomas to students who earned their Doctorates in Physics in May of 2010. Good luck and congratulations to our recent graduates! They are Huidong Xu, Wei Chen, James Joseph, Mary Kidd, Phillip Wu, and Xing Zong! Follow this link to see more information about graduate student… read more about Duke Physics Commencement Ceremony 2010 »
Physics graduate student Jonathan Mueller, who works with the Capture group under Prof. Henry Weller and Prof. Mohammad Ahmed, received a graduate fellowship award with the new Department of Energy Graduate Fellowship program. He was one of 150 students awarded and each will be provided tuition, living expenses, and research support for three years to work with U.S. academic institutions. The Department of Energy Graduate Fellowship program aids young students in an effort… read more about Physics Grad Student Jonathan Mueller Receives Fellowship »
This summer, Prof. Chris Walter has traveled to Japan, South Dakota, Greece, Japan, Chicago, and is now back in Japan. He is pulling a shift right now at the Super-Kamiokande experiment, which is a Cherenkov neutrino detector that consists of 50,000 tons of water in an underground tank. The experiment has to be observed 24 hours a day, so all the collaborating scientists take turns doing so. In a couple of weeks, Walter will head to Tokai, Japan for a meeting about the Tokai-to-Kamioka (T2K) experiment, in… read more about Chris Walter Racks Up More Frequent Flier Miles »
Prof. Berndt Mueller will travel to Geneva, Switzerland from August 16 to September 10th. He'll be working at the LHC co-directing a four-week CERN Theory Institute called "The First Heavy Ion Collisions at the LHC." Mueller will be co-directing with three other international collaborators - Urs Wiedemann from CERN, Krzystof Redlich from Wroclaw, and Edward Shuryak from Stony Brook. Their team will be looking at some of the first results from LHC. Duke Prof. Steffen Bass and Hannah… read more about Prof. Berndt Mueller co-directing CERN Theory Institute »
Duke Physics graduate student Joel Greenberg attended the the 19th annual International Laser Physics Workshop in Foz do Iguaçu, Brazil, this month. The conference included an excursion to a nearby National Park. (Read Part 1 of this story here.) Here’s what Joel said about it: On July 7 (midway through the conference), a group excursion was facilitated by the conference organizers. All of the participants boarded buses and made the several-mile journey to the Parque Nacional do Iguaçu,… read more about Joel Greenberg's Trip to Brazil - Part 2 »
Duke Physics graduate student Joel Greenberg attended the 19th annual International Laser Physics Workshop in Foz do Iguaçu, Brazil, this month. Here’s what he had to say about it: The conference ran from July 5 – 9, 2010, and had nine different sessions dealing with optics-related material. I presented an invited talk entitled “Super-charging nonlinear optical processes through collective effects”on July 6 as part of the session on “Modern Trends in Laser Physics.” Also in attendance were… read more about Joel Greenberg Attends Laser Conference in Brazil »
Prof. Berndt Mueller is heading to the Yukawa Institute for Theoretical Physics (YITP) in Kyoto next week to attend the first two weeks of a program on hot and dense matter, called “High Energy Strong Interactions: Parton Distributions and Dense QCD Matter.” He will be giving a presentation on the study of thermalization in AdS/CFT. For more information on the conference, click here. read more about Berndt Mueller going to YITP in Kyoto »
Prof. Patrick Charbonneau will be in Lausanne, Switzerland, this week at the CECAM workshop “Crystallization: from colloids to pharmaceuticals.” Charbonneau will give a talk titled “How rare is hard sphere crystallization?” CECAM is the Centre Européen de Calcul Atomique et Moléculaire. Earlier in the summer, Charbonneau traveled to the Kavli Institute in Santa Barbara; click here for more on that trip. read more about Prof. Charbonneau at CECAM Workshop, Switzerland »
Duke undergraduates Siyuan Sun and Zongjin Qian flew to Geneva June 2 to work at the Large Hadron Collider at CERN until July 28. Their work is funded by a 2010 Dean’s Summer Research Fellowship. “It is a very exciting time here for particle physics with the LHC up and running,” Sun says, “but that also means a ton of work. I have been involved with the Z prime and W prime searches. Even as an undergrad, you can do quite a bit of work that directly contributes.” His advisor Prof.… read more about Siyuan Sun's Summer Travel to CERN »
In the last week of April, Prof. Harold Baranger attended the workshop “Spin Related Phenomena in Mesoscopic Transport” at the International Institute of Physics in Natal, Brazil. Natal is on the easternmost tip of South America. Baranger gave a talk titled “Interaction-Induced Localization in Quantum Dots and Wires: Quantum Monte Carlo Studies.” View of Natal, Brazil After the conference, Baranger visited two former Duke post-docs. First, he… read more about Baranger Attends Conference, Visits Former Post-Docs in Brazil »
Duke’s nuclear physics specialty was ranked #8 in the U.S. News and World Report’s 2011 graduate school rankings, which came out April 15. The department as a whole placed 30. The last time the rankings were compiled, in 2006, the department ranked 29. “I am very pleased to see our efforts in nuclear physics recognized,” says Prof. Dan Gauthier, department chair. “On the experimental side, we continue to have internationally known facilities on campus, including the High Intensity Gamma Ray Source… read more about Nuclear Physics Number 8 in U.S. News Rankings »
Prof. Ashutosh Kotwal will soon be traveling to Blois, France, to give an invited plenary lecture at Rencontres de Blois—an annual multidisciplinary conference. This year’s conference, which runs July 15-20, is titled “Particle Physics and Cosmology: First Results from the Large Hadron Collider (LHC).” Kotwal will speak on “Precision Tests of the Standard Model” on July 17. “The start of the LHC is a tremendously exciting time,” he says, “and this is a good time to take stock of what we have learned so far… read more about Prof. Kotwal to speak in France »
View from UW, towards Mt. RainierProf. Berndt Mueller is currently co-directing an eight-week program at the Institute for Nuclear Theory at the University of Washington called "Quantifying the Properties of Hot QCD Matter." The program, which lasts from May 24th to July 16th, is, according to Prof. Mueller, "incredibly intense, with almost uninterrupted lectures and discussions between 9 am and 6 pm each day. The group attending the program is analyzing how matter… read more about Prof. Mueller at the Institute for Nuclear Theory at UW »
Prof. Patrick Charbonneau, who has appointments in both Chemistry and Physics at Duke, spent three weeks in May at the Kavli Institute for Theoretical Physics in Santa Barbara. While at the Kavli Institute, Charbonneau attended the program on "The Physics of Glasses: Relating Metallic Glasses to Molecular, Polymeric and Oxide Glasses." Prof. Charbonneau gave a seminar on "How Hard Is It To Form A Glass? Insights From Beyond 3D." The slides and video for his seminar can be seen at the Kavli… read more about Patrick Charbonneau at the Kavli Institute »
Zongjin Qian, a freshman physics major at Duke, was awarded a 2010 Dean’s Summer Research Fellowship for travel to CERN this summer, where he is doing research with Prof. Al Goshaw and the Duke High Energy Physics group. Zongjin left for CERN in June, and is now involved with the ATLAS experiment at the Large Hadron Collider. He'll be at CERN, in Geneva, Switzerland, from June 2 to July 28. After that, Zongjin will continue to work at Duke in August. Zongjin'… read more about Zongjin Qian's Summer Travel to CERN »
l-r: Prof. Daniel Gauthier, Prof. Stephanos Venakides, Prof. Glenn Edwards Prof. Dan Gauthier delivered a contributed oral presentation at the 11th Experimental Chaos and Complexity Conference in Lille France on June 1, 2010. The conference included over 180 participants from 31 countries and focused on a wide range of nonlinear dynamics problems, where experimental results were discussed as well as new theoretical insights and how they apply to experiments. His talk was on "Observation of chaos… read more about Summer 2010 Research Travel Update: France »
Alexander Tuna (Trinity 2010) was awarded the 2010 Daphne Chang Memorial Award for undergraduate research in the Duke Physics Department. The award is in honor of Daphne Y. Chang (Trinity 2005), a Duke Physics Major, who passed away in 2009 at the age of 26 and who is remembered for her remarkable success in undergraduate research. Alexander, under the supervision of Prof. Christopher Walter, designed an analysis to search for fractionally charged particles in the… read more about 2010 Daphne Chang Memorial Award awarded to Alexander Tuna »
Congratulations to the Dorff family! Peter James (Pete) was born on Monday, May 17 at 8:46pm to Jimmy Dorff, Physics IT Senior Manager at Duke Physics, and his wife Jenn. read more about Welcome Baby Dorff! »
Physics Department alumna Colleen Fitzpatrick was featured in the magazine More: For Women of Style andSubstance in an article called "The DNA Detective," written by Lynne Rosselini. Read the story online here. Fitzpatrick graduated with a PhD in Physics in 1983. Please see our April Alumni Profile on Fitzpatrick here and our Flickr album that focuses on her work and travels. read more about Alum Colleen Fitzpatrick, The DNA Detective »
Prof. John Thomas had an article, "The nearly perfect Fermi gas," published in the May 2010 issue of Physics Today. There are also two inter-related articles by other authors, forming a "special focus" issue on perfect fluids. To read the full articles, you must log in with a Physics Today account. Read Thomas' article online here. See the first paper here and the third here. read more about Prof. John Thomas featured in Physics Today »
“I shine a light on things for a living,” says Colleen Fitzpatrick, PhD ’83. This simple statement covers Fitzpatrick’s wildly varying experiences since graduating, including building an optical laboratory in her garage, starting her own laser and optics company, and most recently, using “forensic genealogy” and DNA analysis to locate missing people, identify remains, and solve historical mysteries. How can one person find success both as a physicist and as an expert in identifying remains and tracking… read more about Alumni Profile - From Physics to Forensic Genealogy »
Logo credit to CERNThis Spring, Duke Physics students have been recognized for their excellence in research and ambition. Read the following profiles to see what they will be up to this summer and fall. The student research projects will involve travel to Fermilab in Illionois, LAL in France, and the LHC in Geneva. Several students will be working with data from the ATLAS experiment at the LHC. View Photos of the students and their research areas on… read more about Student Research Awards »
Duke awarded 6 doctorate degrees to physics students in the Spring of 2010. Congratulations to all recently minted PhDs, and good luck on all of your endeavors! The recent PhDs' research varies across the field of physics sub-disciplines. View their photos here. read more about May 2010 Graduation »
Duke physicists played a major role in the recent direct exclusion of Higgs bosons at Fermilab’s Tevatron, which was featured on the cover of the February 12, 2010, issue of Physical Review Letters (PRL). Duke professor Mark Kruse says the study excluded the 162-166 GeV/c2 range of masses for the Standard Model Higgs boson using direct searches for the Higgs in a W+W- decay process. Kruse says his graduate student Dean Hidas, PhD 2009, did a large part of the work that led to the exclusion… read more about Department Research Update - Higgs Exclusion at Tevatron Gets Noticed »
Duke’s Arts and Sciences Council recently approved a request from the physics department to create a new major in biophysics. The major will be administered by the physics department in close collaboration with the departments of biology, chemistry, and biomedical engineering. As Director of Undergraduate Studies, physics professor Seog Oh led the effort to create the new major. He says he had been hearing from undergrads for some time that they were interested in exploring the interface between physics and… read more about Department Update - A New Major at Duke: Biophysics »
The Duke Physics department had a strong presence at both the March and April 2010 meetings of the American Physical Society. Among the many contributed talks by Duke scholars at the March meeting were two invited talks. Prof. Harold Baranger and Yang Yang, a Duke PhD student, were invited to speak. At the April meeting four faculty speakers from Duke were invited to give a talk on their research - Prof. Roxanne Springer, Prof. Ayana Arce, Prof. Chris Walter,… read more about Department Update - Duke Physicists Give Invited Talks at the 2010 APS Meeting »
NOTE: LINKS HAVE BECOME BROKEN DUE TO SITE REDESIGN As the 2009-2010 school year comes to a close, it's time to look back at a year of achievements and progress among faculty, staff, graduate students, and undergraduates. Faculty and students have participated in research collaborations all over the world and have continued to win research grants, fellowships, and awards. We've presented our work in physics journals and international meetings, and we've been covered by the media. We've also developed a new graduate… read more about Welcome to the April Duke Physics Newsletter »
Professor Moo-Young Han is back from a sabbatical semester at Seoul National University in Korea. He taught undergraduate and graduate-level physics classes, and spent a great deal of time theorizing about particle physics with his colleague and old friend Jihn E. Kim. “He and I work in the same area,” Han says. “He is the foremost theorist in Korea.” Kim and Han were doing what every theoretical particle physicist in the world is doing right now: “Basically making bets about what might happen at the Large… read more about Faculty Research Update: Moo-Young Han’s Sabbatical in Korea »
Duke Physics Alumni have gone on to succeed in incredibly diverse career paths. We've collected the destinations for Duke Physics alumni from the past 18 years and included them in a word cloud. Check out the full-page image of the Duke Alumni Career Cloud at Wordle.net: read more about Duke Physics Alumni - Career Word Map »