welcome ...
h i g h l i g h t
to the Department of Physics and Astronomy. The department traces its roots to pre-revolutionary times when it was a Department of Natural Philosophy. The department is housed in David Rittenhouse Laboratory, named after David Rittenhouse, FRS, a faculty member and trustee who served as Franklin's successor to the presidency of the American Philosophical Society.
recent news:
Walter Selove
Walter Selove, an emeritus professor in our department, died on August 24, 2010 at the age of 88. Wally, as he was known to so many, started the high energy physics grant at Penn along with Sherman Frankel and Al Mann, sometime around 1957. He is well-known in experimental particle physics for discoveries in fixed target physics experiments (including the f0 resonance), particle detector technology (particularly with calorimetry), and B-physics. Wally was an important member of the high energy group and this department for over 50 years.
- Graduate Awards, 2010
Carl Goodrich, Chair's Teaching Award, 2010: The faculty of the Department of Physics and Astronomy have selected Carl Goodrich as the winner of the Chair's Teaching Award for 2010 in recognition of his distinguished performance in the Physics & Astronomy teaching program during the 2009-2010 academic year.
Jing Cai, Graduate Student Achievement Award: Jing Cai is the 2010 winner of the award given to the graduate student who, by his or her performance in the first year courses, shows the most promise for outstanding achievement in research.
Awards will be conferred on September 8, 2010 at 4pm just before the first departmental colloquium of the academic year.
- Please note
The postponed Spring 2010 exams will take place
WEDNESDAY, September 15, 2010
6:00PM- 8:00PM
ROOM DRL A2 - Magnetic Nanocrystal Superlatices
Jay Kikkawa has collaborated with Prof. Chris Murray (Chemistry and Materials Science) to study magnetic and electrical properties of superlattices of nanocrystals. These studies exploit a clever trick developed in the Murray lab for creating centimeter-scale membranes of binary nanocrystal superlattices by crystallizing a mixture of nanocrystals on a liquid surface.
[ press release ]
[ paper ]
- Carbon-based, Nanoscale Platform to Electrically Detect Single DNA Molecules
Researchers in the groups of Prof. Marija Drndic and Prof. A.T. Charlie Johnson, led by a postoctoral fellow Chris Merchant, developed a carbon-based, nanoscale platform to electrically detect single DNA molecules. [ read more ]
- Roy and Diana Vagelos Science Challenge Awardees for 2010/2011:
Steven R. Plimpton
Ashley M. Reichardt
[ more ] - Randy Kamien: Samsung Mid-Career Award
Prof. Randy Kamien will be awarded the Samsung Mid-Career Award at the forthcoming 23rd International Liquid Crystal Conference 2010 Award Ceremony in Krakow, Poland on July 14.
- 2010 European Physical Society Condensed Matter Division Europhysics Prize
Professors Charles Kane and Eugene Mele will share, with 3 other researchers, the 2010 European Physical Society Condensed Matter Division Europhysics Prize for the theoretical prediction of the quantum spin Hall effect and topological insulators.
[ read more ]
- Larry Gladney, one of the Nifty Fifty
Professor Larry Gladney has been chosen to be a participating scientist in the effort of the USA Science & Engineering Festival to send fifty top scientists into local schools this October 10-24, 2010.
[ read more ]
- Undergraduate Physics Majors Award Recipients 2009-2010:
- Kevin Axelrod - Goldwater Scholarship
- Mike Chien - College Alumni Society Board of Managers and Presidents Undergraduate Research Grant.
- Aaron Levy - Ruth Marcus Kanter Award
- Rachel Margolis - Penn Undergraduate Climate Action Grant
- Reed Plimpton - Benjamin Franklin Society Research Grant.
- Liang Fu Awarded the McMillan Award
Liang Fu has been awarded the McMillan Award by the University of Illinois at Urbana Champaign for his thesis work on
the theory of topological insulators done at Penn under the supervision of Professor Charles Kane. Dr. Fu, who is now a Junior Fellow at Harvard University, shares this prestigious award with Rahul Roy from Oxford University.
Arjun Yodh: How Thin Films Melt
A Physical Review Focus article on "How Thin Films Melt"
... read more
- PhD Recipients 2010
Congratulations to you all for making Penn proud!- Alexander Borisov
- Michelle A. Caler
- Lynn J. Daniels
- Joseph B. Hyde
- Justin Kien Keung
- Matthew Martino
- Jorge Moreno
The BLAST! movie will be airing on WHYY Tonight (Tuesday May 11, 2010) at 9 PM right after NOVA. It is the shorter 54 minute version of the movie.
- Elisabetta Matsumoto: Winner of the Eli Burstein Prize
The standing faculty of the condensed matter group has selected Elisabetta Matsumoto as this year's winner of the Eli Burstein Prize."For imaginative application of elasticity theory to nonlinear pattern formation at the nanoscale and for its connection to and corroboration by experiment."
- Erin Buckley, Best Poster Award at BIOMED
Erin Buckley, a graduate student working in Arjun Yodh's group, was awarded Best Student Poster at the Optical Society of America's BIOMED Conference (Miami Beach, FL April, 2010). Her research employed diffuse correlation spectroscopy to demonstrate the affect of cardiac bypass time on impaired cerebral autoregulation in neonates with congenital heart defects.
- Jessamyn Fairfield: NaNaX Best Poster Award
Graduate student Jessamyn Fairfield from Prof. Drndic's group was awarded the 'Best Poster Award' at the NaNaX 4: Nanoscience with Nanocrystals conference on April 14th, 2010 in Tutzing, Germany.
- Andrea J. Liu, Elected to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences
Andrea J. Liu, the Edmund J. and Louise W. Kahn Term Professor in the Natural Sciences, has been elected member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, one of the nation's oldest and most prestigious honorary societies.
- 2010 SAS Teaching Awards
Mark Devlin, 2010 Dean's Award for Mentorship of Undergraduate Research and Michael Ambroso, 2010 Dean's Award for Distinguished Teaching by Graduate Students
... read more - 2010 Lindback Foundation Award for Distinguished Teaching
Dr. Eugene Mele, Professor of Physics, has been named by the Provost as a recipient of a 2010 Lindback Foundation Award for Distinguished Teaching.
- Bryan Gin-ge Chen Awarded Dean's Research Fellowship
Graduate Student Bryan Gin-ge Chen has been awarded a Dean's Research Fellowship for 2010-2011. He will use these resources to study the mathematical underpinnings of topological defects in liquid crystals, working with Professor Randall Kamien.
- The 26th Primakoff Lecture
Sir Michael Berry, FRS
Colloquium
Wednesday, April 14th, 2010 4:00 PM
The David Rittenhouse Laboratory, A1
Lecture
Thursday, April 15th, 2010 3:00 PM
The David Rittenhouse Laboratory, A4
« download poster » 
QUANTUM COMPUTING Symposium
Honoring J. Ignacio Cirac, Peter Zoller, and David J. Wineland: 2010 Franklin Medal Laureates in Physics
Thursday, April 29, 2010
« download pdf »-
Two Penn Physics Scholars Named Alfred P. Sloan Research Fellows for 2010
Justin Khoury, assistant professor of physics, researches theoretical particle cosmology.
Elliot Lipeles, assistant professor of physics, researches experimental particle physics.
- Elisabetta Matsumoto, 2010 Graduate Student Speaker Award
Penn Graduate Student Elisabetta Matsumoto (and former Undergraduate, Class of 2007) is chosen for the 2010 Graduate Student Speaker Award of the APS Group on Statistical and Nonlinear Physics. Elisabetta is part of the soft condensed matter theory group and studies elasticity and liquid crystals with Penn faculty member Randall Kamien.
- Blast Postdoc Receives Prestigious Einstein Postdoctoral Fellowship
Tony Mroczkowski one of the postdocs on BLAST just received the prestigious Einstein Postdoctoral Fellowship. He is going to spend his three-year fellowship at Penn working on the MUSTANG receiver.
- The Big Bang and Beyond
Prof. Paul J. Steinhardt
Albert Einstein Professor in Science, Princeton University
December 12, 2009, 7:00pm
Claudia Cohen Hall
Auditorium G17
Free and Open to the Public
(seating limited to 275 people)
The Center for Particle Cosmology will be hosting a public lecture event on December 12, as part of its inaugural workshop.
» go to lecture page
- First Collisions at the LHC!
On Monday, November 23rd, the first proton-proton collisions were produced at the LHC, a very exciting milestone in the LHC physics program in which Penn personnel are intimately involved. ...read more
- Mark Trodden / Fay R. and Eugene L. Langberg Professor of Physics
Prof. Trodden works at the interface of cosmology and particle physics theory in constructing and investigating models that may shed light on the fundamental physics origins of dark matter, dark energy, the early cosmos and other physics beyond the Standard Model. ...read more
- Brig Williams / Mary Amanda Wood Professor in Physics
Prof. Williams is an experimental particle physicist who works on experiments at the highest energy colliders available. He has made fundamental contributions at fixed target accelerators exploring neutrino physics... read more
- Gary Gibbons from Cambridge University
Professor Gary Gibbons from Cambridge University is visiting our Department until Dec. 2, under the Distinguished International Scholar Program funded by the UPenn Provost Office. In addition to the Colloquium next week, he will also give two lectures, on Nov. 12th & 24th.
« for more details »
- No Night without a Telescope
The University of Pennsylvania is one of eight Philadelphia area institutions participating in the "No Night without a Telescope" program. This event celebrates the International Year of Astronomy, which marks the 400th anniversary of Galileo Galilei's seminal observations.
read more on the University of Pennsylvania Observatory website.
Tom Lubensky has been appointed as the Christopher H. Browne Distinguished Professor of Physics in the School of Arts and Sciences. Please join us in congratulating Tom for this acknowledgment of his outstanding scholarship, teaching and service to the department and the School.
George E. Smith (C'55, undergraduate degree in Physics) has been awarded the 2009 Nobel Prize in Physics, "for the invention of an imaging semiconductor circuit – the CCD sensor," along with Willard S. Boyle.
Photo: National Inventors Hall of Fame Foundation/SCANPIX
The American Physical Society has awarded Eugene Beier the 2010 W.K.H. Panofsky Prize in Experimental Particle Physics.
» read more
Bryan Chen, Gareth Alexander, and Randy Kamien develop a new method to study topological defects.
» read the PNAS article
The new Chair of the Department of Physics and Astronomy is Professor Larry Gladney, a member of the particle physics group. Gladney received his Ph.D. from
Stanford University in 1985 and has been at Penn since that time. He is currently the Edmund J. and Louise W. Kahn Professor for Faculty Excellence, a member of the Particle
Cosmology Center at Penn, and Director of the Penn Science Teacher Institute.
Mark Devlin appears on the Colbert Report™ discussing the BLAST project.
... watch the video
-
Undergraduate Physics major Matthew Berck has been awarded a $10,000 scholarship by the National Consortium for Measurement and Signature Intelligence Research (NCMR) Scholars Program.
... read more
Students Have A Ball Learning Physics At The Simeone Museum
Over 30 top high school students from around the world, attending the Penn Summer Science Academy (PSSA) at the University of Pennsylvania, had a memorable learning experience July 10 at the Simeone Foundation Automotive Museum.
... read more
A group of high school students from around the world, participating in a four week physics camp at the University of Pennsylvania, took a day trip to put what is learned in class into motion.
... read more @ KYW Newsradio
... PSSA Program
Penn graduate student Anna Grasselino wins 1st place for poster at the 2009 Particle Accelerator Conference
(PAC09) in Vancouver, BC, see Ferminews on 2 June 2009. Anna is conducting her research at TRIUMF Canada's National Laboratory for Particle and Nuclear Physics with Penn Adjunct Professor Nigel Lockyer.
Andrea Liu and Arjun Yodh explore jamming in thermal systems.
... read Nature article
(May 14, 2009)
... read Penn article
Arjun Yodh has been named director of the Laboratory for Research on the Structure of Matter (LRSM) at the University of Pennsylvania.
... read Penn's News Release
- Antimatter, Matter, and How We Came To Be: The Science Behind "Angels & Demons"
Boris Kayser
May 16
7:30pm
Auditorium G17
Claudia Cohen HallThe lecture is free and open to the public, but seating is limited to 275 persons.
- BLAST!
A Film by Paul Devlin
Wednesday, April 15, 2009
3:30 - 5:30 P.M.
and
6:00 - 8:00 P.M.
Cohen Auditorium,
Claudia Cohen Hall
249 South 36th Street
... read more - Special Colloquium:
Don't Panic: Adventures in High Tech Startups
Elon Musk
CEO of SpaceX and Tesla Motors
Tuesday, April 14, 2009
4:30 PM
Chemistry Auditorium, Room 102
231 South 34th Street
... view poster - Liang Fu, graduate student of professor Charles Kane, has been awarded the Herbert B. Callen Memorial Prize, "for pioneering work on the theory of topological insulators."
APS March Meeting
Professors Durian, Liu, Yodh, and postdoc Ning invited talks at APS March Meeting
...read more
- 25th Annual Henry Primakoff Lecture
March 4, 2009
4:00pm DRL room A8
Jim Peebles, Princeton
"Finding the Big Bang"
preceded by a department tea at 3:30
Jim will review how people hit on the idea that the universe may be expanding, how it was discovered that there is a fossil remnant --- thermal radiation --- from a denser hotter state of the universe, some of the other steps toward the tight web of evidence that now convincingly shows the relativistic expanding cosmology is a good approximation to what actually happened, and a few of the issues now under discussion that might lead us to a still better approximation to the large-scale nature of the universe. - Center for Particle Cosmology Launch
Join leading experts in physics and astronomy for a reception celebrating the launch of Penn's new Center for Particle Cosmology.
Tuesday, February 24, 2009
«read more» - Andrea Liu has been appointed the Edmund J. and Louise W. Kahn Term Professorship in the Natural Sciences, effective January 1, 2009.
- Tom C. Lubensky & Arjun G. Yodh in Nature
Tom C. Lubensky & Arjun G. Yodh publish "Geometric Frustration in Buckled Colloidal Monolayers" in Nature (v456n7224)
«read Nature article»
«read Penn article» - Joseph Kroll Awarded APS fellowship
For major contributions to the observation and measurement of Bs-Bsbar mixing, including early recognition of the importance of the measurement, proposal and construction of the CDF time-of-flight system to improve particle identification, studies of B- tagging, and leadership during the final phases of the measurement.
Nominated by: Particles and Fields (DPF)
«go to APS site» - Gino Segre receives the 2008 AIP Science Writing
Award
Gino Segre receives the 2008 American Institute of Physics Science Writing Award in the science category for his book "Faust in Copehagen." This prize is "awarded for excellence in Science Writing in Physics and Astronomy for the non-specialist in four categories: journalist, scientist, science writing for children, and broadcast media." It comes with $3000 and and inscribed Windsor Chair. Past winners of this prize include John Wheeler, Leonard Suskind, Abraham Pais, Heinz Pagels, and Stephen Weinberg. - Phil Nelson wins the 2009 Emily M. Gray Award
Prof. Phil Nelson has won the 2009 Emily M. Gray Award of the Biophysical Society for "far reaching and significant contributions to the teaching of biophysics, developing innovative educational materials, and fostering an environment exceptionally conducive to education in Biological Physics." The award will be presented at the 2009 Annual Meeting in Boston, February 28 - March 4, 2009. - Thinking of a physics career?
On Tuesday, September 30th, 4-5 pm in David Rittenhouse Laboratory Room 3W2, WISP will host a panel discussion on applying to graduate school in physics. - Former Penn graduate student Monica Dunford will be appearing on the CBS news program 60 Minutes this Sunday night (September 28, 2008), to discuss her work on the ATLAS experiment at CERN's Large Hadron Collider.
- Debut of the Large Hadron Collider at CERN
For the first time, a beam of protons moving at close to the speed of light completed an orbit in the 27 km-long accelerator. «read more»
Fay Ajzenberg-Selove receives the 2007 National Medal of Science
for her contributions to nuclear physics. She is one of eight recipients of the Medal, the nations highest honor for science.
« read more »
- Science Pioneer, Fay Ajzenberg-Selove: PennCurrent Article
- Tom Lubensky, Elected to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences
Mary Amanda Wood Professor of Physics. Made fundamental contributions to solid state and soft condensed matter physics, an area he helped found. Studies of fluctuations near phase transitions influenced the modern theory of critical phenomena. Insights into broken symmetry led to many novel phases of matter.
Jim Cronin, co-recipient of the 1980 Nobel Prize in Physics, gave the 10th Selove Lecture on Wednesday, April 16. Cronin presented the latest exciting results from the Pierre Auger Observatory on the origin of the highest energy cosmic rays. There was also a seminar on Thursday, April 17, again at 4pm in DRL A-8.
« download poster »
On Thursday, April 17, the department hosted a symposium in honor of the 2008 Franklin Medallist, Deborah Jin, who is being honored for her work on the quantum properties of ultra-cold gases of fermionic atoms. The symposium focused on the Bose condensation (BEC) of bosonic molecules of fermionic atoms, the BCS condensation of fermionic atoms and the crossover from BEC to BCS. There where four speakers, including Dr. Jin.
« download poster »
- Carl Modes, who works with Prof. Randall Kamien, was named as one of the finalists for the American Physical Society's Group on Statistical and Nonlinear Physics (GSNP) student prize for 2008.
- Prof. Burt Ovrut
and his collaborators' work on "Ekpyrotic Cosmology" was the focus of an article entitled "New Beginnings" in the October, 2007 issue of Scientific American. « read more »
- Prof. Mirjam Cvetic
recipient of 2007 Distinguished Alumni Award for the College of Computer, Mathematical and Physical Sciences at the University of Maryland.
- Dr. Paulo Arratia
who works with Prof. Doug Durian and Prof. Jerry Gollub (Haverford College) has won the first prize for his video in the APS March meeting competition.
- Prof. Andrea Liu
Balancing family and physics careers at the Americal Physical Society March Meeting in Denver.
