Dr. Rafael Nepomechie has just received a Fulbright Specialist grant to support his lecturing at the African Institute for Mathematical Sciences (AIMS) this Spring. (1/25/13)
Jean Pierre Obied was given the Outstanding Graduating Senior Physics student award for this year. The presentation was made during a short ceremony on December 3 in our library. (12/3/12)
The DXL (Diffuse X-rays from the Local Galaxy) sounding rocket mission launched on December 13, 2012 at 12:20 AM EST from White Sands Missile Range, NM. The mission, lead by Massimiliano Galeazzi from the University of Miami, is a new payload carrying the DXL and DXL/STORM experiments for the study of Solar Wind Charge Exchange and Local Hot Bubble. The mission was successful and data are currently analyzed.
http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/sounding-rockets/news/dxl.html
http://sites.wff.nasa.gov/code810/news/story139.html
Professor Josef Ashkenazi passed away unexpectedly yesterday afternoon. Dr. Ashkenazi was an active condensed matter theorist in the Physics Department of the University since 1988. He was very active in teaching, departmental activities and the local Jewish community and politics. His research was recently featured on the University's "New Knowledge" website. 10/3/12
The Department is pleased to announce a new undergraduate fellowship for women in physics to pursue summer research. The Diane Hanawalt-Jacobs Summer Research Fellowship for Women in Physics was made possible by a generous donation by Dr. Diane Hanawalt-Jacobs, an alumnus of the UM Physics department and president of the Physics Honor Society, Sigma Pi Sigma. The first fellowship has been awarded to Gabriela Degwitz. Ms Degwitz is entering her sophomore year at the University of Miami, and will be working over the summer with Dr. Kevin Huffenberger. (5/2/12)
The department faculty held a party for Dr. James Nearing in honor of his recent retirement. After 47 years in the department, 38 of which as Associate Department Chair, and years of dedicated teaching excellence, Jim has decided to step down. See pictures of the event here (5/1/12)
A team of scientists lead by Prof. Massimiliano Galeazzi has been awarded a key project for the Suzaku observatory (http://heasarc.gsfc.nasa.gov/docs/astroe/astroegof.html). Suzaku is a Japanese American X-ray satellite and key projects are comprehensive observing programs to address important astrophysical problems. The project is for the study of X-rays emitted when the ions in the solar wind interact with the hydrogen and helium flowing into the solar system due to the Sun's motion in our galaxy. This will help understand the properties of both the solar wind and interstellar environment. The team includes scientist from the University of Miami, NASA, John Hopkins University, ISAS/JAXA, LATMOS, and the University of Kansas.
Prof. Howard Gordon had 3 papers in the list of top 50 cited papers during the 50th Anniversary of the journal Applied Optics.
A paper by Prof. Joshua Cohn was recently accepted by Physical Review Letters and a synopsis of the work will be highlighted on the American Physical Society's web-based publication called 'Physics' (physics.aps.org) [J. L. Cohn, B. D. White, C. A. M. dos Santos, and J. J. Neumeier, "Giant Nernst effect and bipolarity in the quasi-one-dimensional metal Li(0.9)Mo(6)O(17)," PRL, Feb.3issue.]
Three undergraduates were honored in a brief ceremony today, December 14, 2011. Mr. Jacob Reimers won the Hirschber prize for the outstanding graduating senior Physics major for the 2011-2012 academic year. Mr. Kasey Schultz and Ms. Tess Armstrong were the runners-up for this award.
Dr. George Alexandrakis recently published a book "Some of the first steps of the University of Crete". Professor George C. Alexandrakis was the organizer (1978-1984) and first Chair (Fall 1978) of the Department of Physics of the University of Crete, which is currently rated as the top physics department in Greece. In this book he recounts and documents some of the early steps of the Department and the University. The narrative is sprinkled with descriptions of events from everyday life which give the book its human dimension. (8/31/11)
Dr. George Alexandrakis was honored at a ceremony dedicating the Physics Department Chairs office and the establishment of the George Alexandrakis Undergraduate Travel Fund, to help Physics Department undergraduates attend national meetings. (1/21/2011). Link for pictures of the event coming soon.
Dr. Carolyn Van Vliet was just named to be a Fellow of the American Physical Society. This honor is limited to one half of one percent of the membership. She was recognized "For seminal contributions to the foundations of Linear Response Theory and to Quantum Transport involving extended or localized states, with applications to Condensed Matter problems." (12/20/2010)
Puru Bhandari won the outstanding student paper award at the bi-annual Ocean Optics meeting, September 2010, in Anchorage, Ak. This paper was selected based out of over 70 student papers to this international conference.
Manuel Huerta won the 2010 Faculty Senate Outstanding Teaching Award. This is the highest award given by the university for teaching, and reflects his long record of outstanding teaching in our department. (4/19/2010)
A paper by Neil Johnson made the cover of Nature in the December issue (Juan Camilo Bohorquez, Sean Gourley, Alex Dixon, Mike Spagat and Neil Johnson, "Common ecology quantifies human insurgency", Nature, December 17 (2009)).
Zhenyuan Zhao was recently lead author on a Physical Review Letter publication looking at the duration of conflicts between asymmetric populations (Phys. Rev. Lett. Vol. 103, p. 148701 (2009)). The work is in the area of biological physics, and has potential application in a variety of domains: from animal systems, to medical problems involving immune system-virus interactions and cancer therapy. This paper was subsequently selected for the APS virtual journal of biological physics research.(10/15/09)
Work by graduate student Zhenyuan Zhao and co-authors on comparisons between group dynamics in online guilds and gangs, made the headlines recently in Europe and U.S. See for example: http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/2009/jul/29/world-of-warcraft-crime
The work was published in Physical Review E (Vol. 79, p. 066117, 2009) and was featured on the American Physical Society website 'spotlighting exceptional research':
http://physics.aps.org/synopsis-for/10.1103/PhysRevE.79.066117. It was a collaboration with sociologist George Tita at University of California, as well as researchers at PARC and Stanford University, California.(9/10/09)
Dr. Thomas Curtright was named a Cooper Fellow in the College of Arts and Science. This 3 year fellowship recognizes his continuing high level of scholarship. (5/1/09)
