Natalie Robichaud ’14Hamidreza (Hamid) Ramezani Ph.D. ’13, recently won the Biruni Graduate Student Research Award. The award aims to promote and recognize outstanding research by a physics graduate student of Iranian heritage who is currently studying in one of the institutions of higher education in the United States, seeking originality, thoroughness, a teamwork spirit and ownership among the candidates. The honor comes with a cash award. Before graduating with his Ph.D. from Wesleyan in November, Ramezani studied cosmology and gravitational physics while earning his master’s degree at the University of Tehran. He completed his bachelor study in solid state physics at Sahed University.…
Kate CarlisleGuy Geyer Marcus '13 has won the Leroy Apker award for the American Physical Society, the highest prize offered in the United States for an undergraduate thesis in physics. Marcus is the second Wesleyan student to win the prize in three years; Wade Hsu ’10 also claimed the prestigious award. In 2008, Gim Seng Ng ’08 was a finalist for the Apker. “This achievement naturally highlights the quality and seriousness of our undergraduates and our undergraduate program,” said Physics Department Chair Brian Stewart. Marcus' Wesleyan advisor was Greg Voth, associate professor of physics. Marcus is working toward a Ph.D in…
Olivia DrakeWhile technology at Wesleyan is growing by leaps and bounds, the computational capacity is growing by gigaFLOPS and now, teraFLOPS. Not to be confused with the prehistoric pterodactyl's beach footwear, a teraFLOP is a term used in high-performance computing to quantify the rate at which computer systems can perform arithmetic operations. TeraFLOPs can perform one trillion operations per second (S), and for scientists at Wesleyan, this means calculations can be done up to 50 times faster with the new computing cluster, installed during the summer 2013. "The new cluster has been revolutionary in my own work," said Francis Starr, professor…
Q: Coady, what are you majoring in and why did you choose Wesleyan? A: I'm double majoring in astronomy and physics. I had actually never been to Wesleyan before applying, but I had heard very good things from friends, and its reputation for being unconventional was very appealing to me. The clincher though was the very generous financial aid that the university offered me, without which I definitely would not be here. Q: Tell us about your efforts with the Long Lane Organic Farm. Why did you decide to become a student-farmer? A: After coming to Wesleyan, I fell in with…
Cynthia RockwellJack DiSciacca '07 is first author on a paper that appeared in the April issue of Physical Review Letters, a premier journal for physics. Now a Ph.D candidate at Harvard, DiSciacca earned his undergraduate degree with high honors; Foss Professor of Physics Tom Morgan was his advisor. The published paper, “One Particle Measurement of the Anti-Proton Magnetic Moment,” details DiSciacca’s research on the antiproton, which is an antimatter particle. Morgan explains, “DiSciacca spent the last six months at CERN [the European Organization for Nuclear Research], at the same accelerator facility where physicists recently discovered the Higgs boson to measure the…
Francis Starr, associate professor of physics, received a $100,000 grant from the American Chemical Petroleum Fund for his work examining the properties of extremely thin polymer films. These systems have important applications ranging from nano-electronics to artificial tissues. The work will be supported through August 2014.
Greg Voth, associate professor of physics, received a grant worth $300,000 from the National Science Foundation's Material Research division to support his study on "Rod Dynamics in Turbulence: Simultaneous 3D measurements of Anisotropic Particles and Velocity Fields" through May 31, 2015. In a wide range of natural and industrial situations, turbulent flows carry particulate material. For example, clouds are turbulent flows containing water droplets and ice crystals. Papermaking uses turbulent suspensions of fibers. If the particles are spheres, there are a variety of tools available for measuring their motion. But usually the particles are not spheres, and the movement and…
Research on PT-symmetric optics by Tsampikos Kottos, associate professor of physics, was mentioned at the 2012 Spring Review of the Air Force Office of Scientific Research. In this meeting, program directors from AFOSR Scientific Directorates presented briefings that highlighted basic research programs beneficial to the U.S. Air Force. The review took place March 5-9. Kottos's work appears on page 26 of this presentation.
David LowPeder Zane ’84 has co-written a new book Design in Nature (Doubleday) with Professor Adrian Bejan of Duke University, which describes Bejan’s groundbreaking discovery, the constructal law, a principle of physics that governs all design and evolution in nature. The constructal law holds that all shape and structure emerges to facilitate flow. Rain drops, for example, coalesce and move together, generating rivulets, streams, and the mighty river basins of the world because this design allows them to move more easily. The question to ask is: Why does design arise at all? Why can't the water just seep through the ground?…
A paper written by two faculty members and three undergraduates was published in the American Physical Society's Physical Review A, Volume 84, on Oct. 13. Their paper was one of six highlighted in the publication's Physics Focus and This Week in Physics. The paper is titled "Experimental study of active LRC circuits with PT symmetries." The authors include Tsampikos Kottos, associate professor of physics; Fred Ellis, professor of physics, Joseph Schindler '12, Ang Li '13 and Mei Zheng '10. The abstract of the paper is online here.
Tsampikos Kottos, associate professor of physics, received a grant worth $140,121 from the National Science Foundation on Sept. 1. The grant will support a project titled "IDR:Novel Photonic Materials and Devices based on Non-Hermitian Optics" through August 2014. Kottos is collaborating with faculty from Southern Methodist University, University of Central Florida, University of Arkansas and Yale University.