Department News
Congratulations to Professor Cecilia Gerber who was named UIC 2011 Researcher of the Year in the Natural Sciences and Engineering for her leading role in the discovery of the single top quark production by the international D0 collaboration at Fermilab. This is an extremely important contribution to the science of elementary particle physics, as evidenced by Dr. Gerber's recent election as an American Physical Society (APS) fellow. For more information about the award, please visit http://tigger.uic.edu/depts/ovcr/research/events/RYA.
UIC physicists and the continuing search for the elusive Higgs boson. A seminar given at the CERN Large Hadron Collider stated that the latest data recorded by the CMS and ATLAS detectors was "..sufficient to make significant progress in the search for the Higgs boson...". For additional details see the article entitled "UIC Physicists on Higgs hunt" in the UIC News.
Congratulations to Professor Serdar Ogut who was elected an American Physical Society Fellow. Dr. Ogut's citation is "For his contributions to understanding and predicting properties of nanostructures and bulk defects, surfaces, and interfaces through the development and application of first principles computational techniques". Additional details will be published in the March 2012 issue of APS news. APS Fellowship is limited to no more than one half of one percent of the membership and is recognition of outstanding contributions to physics.
UIC Physicists use the Top Quark to Search for New Physics. The work of UIC Physics members Professor Cecilia Gerber, Dr. Victor Bazterra, Phillip Eller, and Christfried Focke is highlighted in the "Results of the Week" section of Fermilab Today. Their novel work utilized the behaviour of the single top quark to search for new physics beyond the standard model.
Congratulations to Nikos Varelas who was elected to the Executive Committee of the American Physical Society Division of Particles and Fields (DPF). Professor Varelas will serve a three-year term on the DPF Executive Committee through 2014. Additional details can be found here
Sivalingam Sivananthan co-chaired The 2011 U.S. Workshop on the Physics and Chemistry of II-VI Materials, which was held in Chicago in October 2011. The special issue editorial coordinator is UIC's own Yesim Anter, the Project Coordinator at the Microphysics Laboratory (MPL) at the Department of Physics. The workshop program committee includes three UIC Alumni; Tony Almeida (PhD 1996), Chad Fulk (PhD 2007), and Priyalal Wijewarnasuriya (PhD 1991) - all of whom had worked in the MPL. There were also presentations given by UIC Physics graduate students, Stephen Fahey and Eric Colegrove, who are also involved with research activities in the MPL.
Nikos Varelas has been selected as a 2012 CMS LPC Senior Fellow. Other winners are from Brown University, CERN, Imperial College London, Rutgers, and the University of Florida. Fellow's are selected for their ability to build and engage the global CMS collaboration by providing resources to develop, strengthen and expand CMS research programs.
Nikos Varelas has been elected to the Fermilab Users Executive Committee for the 2011-2013 term. The Fermilab Users Organization is an organization of scientists and engineers engaged in advancing our understanding of the nature of matter and energy.
A study by Ursula Perez-Salas, her postdoc Sumit Garg and their colleagues published in Journal of Biophysics (2011) has shown that cholesterol travels within membranes more slowly than expected. The reviews of that paper appeared in Nature News and Scientific American July 2011 issues.
Dirk Morr has been selected as the 2011/12 Leibniz Professor at the University of Leipzig, Germany. This prestigious professorship is awarded to internationally renowned scientists to promote interdisciplinary approaches to teaching and research in Leipzig. Prof. Morr will have the opportunity to offer the course "Response Functions in Strongly Correlated Electron Systems" as part of the Research Academy Leipzig, and to collaborate with the research groups of Prof. Haase and Prof. Rosenow on elucidating the effects of ultra-high magnetic fields on the properties of a particular interesting class of strongly correlated electron materials, the high-temperature superconductors.
Professor Nikos Varelas has received an invitation to deliver a plenary talk at upcoming International Europhysics Conference on High-Energy Physics in Grenoble (France) on July 21-27, 2011
Christoph Grein, was elected SPIE Fellow for achievements in novel mercury cadmium telluride materials and infrared detectors. SPIE, the international society for optics and photonics, was founded in 1955 to advance light-based technologies. Serving more than 180,000 constituents from 168 countries, the Society advances emerging technologies through interdisciplinary information exchange, continuing education, publications, patent precedent, and career and professional growth.
George Crabtree wins Institute for Policy and Civic Engagement's award. "University of Common Sense: Engaging your personal, institutional and civic carbon footprints" organized by George Crabtree was one of nine civic engagement events that received the Institute for Policy and Civic Engagement's award. IPCE Grant recipient and Distinguished Professor Dr. George Crabtree, in conjunction with the Office of Sustainability and the Summer Institute on Sustainability and Energy, presents "The University of Common Sense." As part of UIC Earth Month activities, this interactive half-day public workshop on April 5th is structured to promote awareness and policy engagement with personal, UIC, city and national carbon emission issues. Interested students, organizations, and community members can register for the event at http://go.uic.edu/commonsense .
Congratulations to Professors Sivalingam Sivananthan and Cecilia Gerber, who have each been elected an APS Fellow. Dr. Gerber's citation is "For her numerous contributions to the DO experiment, especially the implementation of the DO muon and silicon trackers and the elucidation of the characteristics of top quarks in the strong production of top-antitop pairs and the electroweak production of single top quark. " Dr. Sivananthan's citation is, " For seminal contributions to the growth technology of II-VI photovoltaic materials." APS Fellowship is limited to no more than one half of one percent of the membership and is recognition of outstanding contributions to physics.
Juan Carlos Campuzano, the University of Illinois at Chicago Distinguished Professor in the Department of Physics is the 2011 Oliver E. Buckley Condensed Matter Prize Recipient. Prof. Campuzano receives this prize for : "For innovations in angle-resolved photoemission spectroscopy, which advanced the understanding of the cuprate superconductors, and transformed the study of strongly-correlated electronic systems." The Buckley Prize in condensed matter physics is one of the oldest and most prestigious of the APS Prizes and given annually "to recognize and encourage outstanding theoretical or experimental contributions to condensed matter physics." For details, please click here
George Crabtree has been chosen as a recipient of the honorary title of UIC Distinguished Professor for AY 2010-2011 in recognition of his significant impact upon his field through scholarship, creativity and leadership.
Top quarks — subatomic particles that perish almost instantly after creation, previously found only in pairs — have been detected in single form, thanks in large part to work by Prof. Cecilia Gerber. The finding confirms another prediction of a major working hypothesis in physics called the Standard Model, which seeks to explain the fundamental nature of matter. For more information see here.
Sivalingam Sivanantham is one of three LAS Faculty members awarded a title of LAS Distinguished Professor in the 2010-2011 academic year. This honor recognizes invaluable contributions Sivananthan made to our community as a researcher, entrepreneur, mentor, philanthropist and advisor.
David Hofman has been selected as one of the eleven recipients of the 2010 Silver Circle Award for Excellence in Teaching. This is the second time Dr. Hofman has been selected as a recipient of this prestigious teaching award by the graduating seniors. Here is the article written in the Spring of 2007 when the Silver Circle Award has been presented to Dr. Hofman for the first time..
Over the last 7 years, Dr. Morr has been working with the Museum of Science and Industry in Chicago on developing a new state-of-the-art science exhibit, called Science Storms. This exhibit is to open on March 18th, and features many Wow-experiences such as an indoor tornado and lightning, a tsunami tank, and hot air balloons. If you have never been to the MSI, take this opportunity to visit it, and get blown away by science.
An article in the "Fermilab Today" http://www.fnal.gov/pub/today/archive_2010/today10-03-01.html covers Rick Cavanaugh's appointment as the next Co-coordinator of the Large Hadron Collider Physics Center (LPC) at Fermilab. LPC is providing support for CMS collaborators working in the United States to enable them to remotely contribute to the many technical tasks required to operate the CMS Experiment and to produce physics results from the immense volumes of collected data
Congratulations to J. C. Campuzano and his former student and postdoc Utpal Chatterjee with pulication of their Nature Physics paper, which addresses a key question in condensed-matter physics of how high-temperature superconductivity emerges on adding mobile charged carriers to an antiferromagnetic Mott insulator using angle-resolved photoemission spectroscopy.
The September edition of the UIC Spark Alumni Newsletter features Professor Tom Imbo and Adjunct Professor Mark Mueller, who is also chair of the LAS Board of Visitors, and highlights their exceptional mentorship of graduate students.
The Fermilab DZero single top quark group co-led by Cecilia Gerber has firmly established the single top production by passing strict statistical tests. The discovery was announced by Cecilia in a special Fermilab seminar entitled "Observation of Single Top at DZero" on Mar. 10. The background data analysis used by Cecilia's group is of importantance for the search for the Higgs boson.
The Physics Department extends congratulations to Professor Robert Klie for his receipt of the 2009 National Science Foundation Faculty Early Career (CAREER) Development Award, one of the most competitive awards to honor young faculty members in the early stages of their research and education careers. The prestigious award, along with a $400,000 grant, was in recognition of Robert's research in the area of Nanoscale Materials Physics, and more specifically, "Atomic-resolution study of electron-spin interaction in strongly-correlated mixed-valence cobalt oxide nano-structures".
Congratulations to Cecilia Gerber and Serdar Ogut, 2007-2008 Teaching Recognition Program Award winners! The award is given annually to UIC professors demonstrating outstanding performance in their teaching activities over a three year period. To date, the Council for Excellence in Teaching and Learning has honored 16 Physics faculty members with Teaching Recognition Program awards.
The physics department congratulates Utpal Chatterjee, winner of the Graduate College Outstanding Thesis Award in Engineering, Mathematics and Physical Sciences for 2008!
UIC Physicists together with their collaborators at the DZero experiment at Fermilab have participated in discovery of a new particle made of three quarks, the Omega-sub-b. The particle contains two strange quarks and a bottom quark (s-s-b). See the announcement in the Fermilab Today here
Physics Alumnus George W. Crabtree (PhD 1974), who was Elected to National Academy of Sciences this past spring is featured in the new E-AtLAS newsletter.
Congratulations to Weronica Walkosz, who has been awarded a Dean's Scholar Fellowship from the Graduate College for AY 08-09! The Physics Department also wishes University Fellowship winner Yutao Gong, and all the new graduate students a warm welcome!
Congratulations to Alejandro Rebola, who has been chosen to receive a SKIT-HST GRADUATE FELLOWSHIP for the 2008/2009 school year. SKIT is an exciting opportunity to participate in the Chicago Public School's system-wide efforts to improve instruction in science and mathematics in elementary and secondary schools. SKIT-HST Fellows engage in a variety of activities that allow them to contribute their knowledge and expertise to support educational reform, as well as personally to develop fresh understandings of the teaching and learning of science and mathematics in urban classrooms. More information on the SKIT program at UIC can be found here: http://education.uic.edu/skitgk12/Index.htm
Congratulations to Russell Betts, with his appointment as Dean of Illinois Institute of Technology College of Science and Letters.
George W. Crabtree, a senior scientist and administrator at the Argonne National Laboratory, was elected a member of the National Academy of Sciences for his excellence in original scientific research. George holds a Ph.D. degree in Condensed Matter Physics from our Department. Congratulations!
Undergraduate UIContest winner Michael Greco has received Honorable Mention at the 2008 UIC Student Research Forum for his poster entitled “Femtosecond, Thermal-lens-shaped Yb:KGW Laser.” Congratulations Mike!
In AY 08-09 the Physics Department will host a group of exchange students from Dongguk University. The exchange program initiated by the Physics Department and MPL is part of a cooperative agreement between UIC and the Dongguk University that lays out the framework for the academic and cultural interchange through mutual assistance in the areas of education and research.
Professor Olga Barannikova has been appointed a deputy spokesperson for the STAR detector collaboration at Relativistic Heavy Ion Collider at the Brookhaven National Laboratory.
The UIC Distinguished Professor JC Campuzano, a former undergraduate and graduate student of the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee (UWM) Physics Department, is one of this year's recipients of the UWM Alumni Association's Distinguished Alumnus Award.
Proposal "Development of Physics Demonstrations to Enhance Introductory Physics Education" submitted by H. Aratyn, E. Garcia and L. Nasser has been awarded a Council for Excellence in Teaching and Learning (CETL) Curriculum and Instructional Grant in the amount of 12K.
Professor Serdar Ogut has agreed to join editorial board of the Physical Review B for a three-year term (through December 2010
The December 2007 edition of Physics Today contains the article, "New Experiments Fuel Debate Over the Nature of High-Tc Superconductors." by Barbara Goss Levi ("Search and Discovery" Section, pp. 17-21), which discusses one- versus two-gap controversy in the high-temperature superconductivity quoting results of angle resolved photoemission data obtained by Dr. Campuzano's group (A. Kanigel et al., Phys. Rev. Lett. 99, 157001 (2007)).
The Physics department is pleased to announce WISEST mentoring. Physics majors and grad students may meet with Professor Olga Barannikova on an individual basis, or come to WISEST mentoring office hours on Fridays from 10 -11 AM in SES 2268.
A recent UIC News story describes scientific achievements of Juan Carlos Campuzano who is this year's sole recipient of the honorary title of the UIC Distinguished Professor for contributions to surface science, correlated electron materials, and angle-resolved photoemission spectroscopy and its applications to the still-unanswered question of how high-temperature superconductors work.The complete story can be found here
We are proud to announce that graduate student and Dean’s Fellow Jerald Kavich will participate in an International Student Exchange Program between Argonne National Laboratory and Research Center Jülich, Germany. Details of the program may be found here. Jerald will be working in the lab of 2007 Nobel Prize winner Peter Grünberg at the Institute of Solid State Research. Congratulations Jerald!
The recent UIC press release brings to the general attention of the community the Physics Department's unprecedented growth in its external funding. This funding boost will increase Department's capacity for performing highest quality scientific research and its ability to attract top physics students to its program.
To commemorate the 50th anniversary of the BCS-theory by J. Bardeen, L. Cooper, and R. Schrieffer which provided the first microscopic explanation for the phenomenon of low-temperature superconductivity, Dr. Morr is co-organizing a workshop entitled "Novel Aspects of Superconductivity" at the Aspen Center for Physics from July 30 to September 2. A blog of the talks presented during this workshop is available here.
It's been a year full of recognition for Juan-Carlos Campuzano.
Soon after being chosen as a recipient of the honorary title of UIC
Distinguished Professor for AY 2007-2008, Juan-Carlos was honored
by an Outstanding Technical Achievement award joining a group
of other 2007 HENAAC Award Winners in Engineering and Science.
HENAAC was established in 1989
as a means of identifying, honoring, and documenting the
contributions of outstanding Hispanic American science,
engineering, technology and math professionals.
Earlier this year Juan-Carlos was promoted to the position
of Argonne Distinguished Fellow.
Most recently, Juan-Carlos accepted position of Director of
the Under-represented Faculty Mentoring Program (UFMP)
run by the Provost's office.
Juan-Carlos now looks forward to drawing on a rich experience of
his outstanding career at UIC to enhance academic opportunities
of faculty in the UFMP program.
Congratulations to Jerald Kavich, who has been awarded a Dean’s Scholar Fellowship from the Graduate College. The Physics Department welcomes Lincoln Fellowship winner Maria Castro, who will join the PhD program in Fall 2007. Congratulations, Maria!
Congratulations to Gustavo Otero y Garzon and Hakim Iddir for their Outstanding Thesis Awards from the Graduate College and the Physics Department.
Congratulations to David Hofman for being one of the 12 UIC recipients of the 2007 Silver Circle Award for Excellence in Teaching.
Clive Halliwell was interviewed Feb 15 for Chicago Public Radio about ice falling from downtown high rises. Clive calculated the terminal velocity of the falling ice and shared useful safety tips with Chicago radio listeners. You can hear the interview here.
Mark Adams and David Hofman are the two Teaching Recognition Program Award recipients from the Physics Department for 2006. The award is given annually to UIC professors demonstrating outstanding performance in their teaching activities over a three year period. To date, the Council for Excellence in Teaching and Learning has honored 14 Physics faculty members with Teaching Recognition Program awards.
The Mathematical Physics Research Group of Tom Imbo has recently received a substantial monetary gift from Dr. Mark Mueller of Grantham, Mayo, Van Otterloo and Company (GMO) in Boston. Dr. Mueller obtained his Ph.D. in high energy theory from Stanford University in 1984 and worked several years as postdoctoral research associate in string theory before leaving physics for the world of quantitative finance in 1994. Dr. Mueller has been a regular visitor (and contributor) to the mathematical physics group at UIC since 2001. In Fall 2005 he became an adjunct professor in the Department of Physics at UIC, and in Fall 2006 became a member of the UIC Board of Visitors.
Juan Carlos Campuzano was promoted to the position of Argonne Distinguished Fellow for his outstanding accomplishments in condensed matter physics. This position is equivalent to an endowed chaired position at a University and there are only 22 Argonne employees who hold this prestigious rank. This award recognizes Juan Carlos Campuzano's contributions to surface science, correlated electron materials, and angle-resolved photoemission spectroscopy and its applications to the still-unanswered question of how high-temperature superconductors work.
Scientists of the DZero collaboration at the Department of Energy's Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory announced in a seminar at Fermilab on December 8, 2006 the first evidence of single top quarks produced in a rare subatomic process involving the weak nuclear force. The result is an important test of predictions made by particle theory, such as the number of quarks that exist in nature. From UIC, Dr. Cecilia Gerber together with Timour Ten, Gustavo Otero y Garzon, Ioana Anghel and Lisa Shabalina contributed to this discovery through their work on identification of the B-jets front. Please find more information here.
UIC News Release from December 4, 2006 discusses applications of the laser temperature-jump technique to study the dynamics of a protein-DNA complex first performed in Anjum Ansari's lab. The research findings by Anjum and her colleagues shed light on the role that the DNA "bendability" plays in guiding the correct bending protein to the appropriate site on the DNA.
November 27, 2006 edition of Compact Muon Solenoid (CMS) Times featured the UIC High Energy group. The article highlights our HE group's CMS efforts and contains an interview with our graduate student Agata Smoron. Read the article here, where you also can download a podcast with Agata's interview.
The Physics Department is in the process of cataloging M.S. Theses and Ph.D. Dissertations for all Physics Alumni. Please mail a copy to us on CD for our records to the attention of Ms. Rachel Morrow, Graduate Advisor, and we we will have them printed and bound. Also, if you have not already done so, complete the Alumni Survey on our web site so that we may keep your information current in our database. Thank you for your cooperation.
On 11-11-06, Prof. Morr will present a public lecture entitled "Mysteries of the Quantum World" at the Museum of Science and Industry. If you are interested in attending the lecture (see abstract), please contact Prof. Morr for details.
Wilson Barajas will join the Physics Department as a graduate student in January 2007 and he is a recipient of the NSF Bridge to the Doctorate Fellowship. Wilson is one of 13 recipients on campus.
Bridge to the Doctorate (BD) is an initiative supported by the National Science Foundation (NSF) as a supplemental activity of the Louis Stokes Alliance
for Minority Participation (LSAMP). The goal of the supplement is to fund the initial two years of doctoral study for underrepresented students in MD/PhD and PhD programs in the fields of science, technology, engineering and mathematics
(STEM) at the University of Illinois of Chicago, one of 18 Illinois LSAMP
Alliance institutions.
Zahid Ali, the electronics engineer in the Physics Department, has been selected as a recipient of the 2006-2007 UIC Award of Merit, a campus-wide honor which recognizes academic professional and support staff employees who have demonstrated excellence in service, commitment and dedication.
Prof. Cecilia Gerber was elected to the position of the American Physical Society Division of Particles and Fields Executive Committee member serving a three year term.
The High Energy Nuclear Physics group was recognized by
invitations for three plenary talks at the Quark Matter 2006
meeting in Shanghai in November.
The Quark Matter conference series deals with the search for and study
of a new state of matter consisting of a deconfined state of quarks
and gluons - the fundamental building blocks of matter.
The three invitees are : Olga Barannikova who will give an overview
of recent results from RHIC, David Hofman who will review results from
the PHOBOS experiment at RHIC and Russell Betts who will present plans
for new physics with the Compact Muon Solenoid (CMS) detector at the
LHC.
Olga Barannikova is a winner of the 06/07 AY Women in Science
and Engineering Research (WISER) Fund award.
This award will support Olga's research in High Energy Nuclear
Physics which focuses on the management, analysis and
visualization of petabytes of data in quest of discovering a new
form of matter through relativistic nuclear collisions.
The Physics Department has received the 2006 Departmental Teaching Excellence Award. This award is well-deserved recognition of our innovative approach to curriculum development and our commitment to provide our students with the very best educational experience.
UIC Physics post-doctoral researcher Dr. Aneta Iordanova has been awarded the UIC Outstanding Thesis Award in Engineering, Mathematics and the Physical Sciences for her 2005 UIC Physics PhD thesis. Also, congratulations to UIC Physics graduate student Utpal Chatterjee with the 2006-2007 Dean's Scholar Award.
The College of Liberal Arts and Sciences is pleased to announce the establishment of the Arnold R. and Doris E. Bodmer Science Travel Award Fund. Arnold Bodmer has been Professor in the physics department for many years and is now a Professor Emeritus. Dr. and Mrs. Bodmer have established this endowment which will provide travel funds to undergraduate and graduate students in the Division of Natural Sciences who have opportunities to study or do science research abroad.
Congratulations to Uday Sukhatme, former Professor and Head of our Department, with his appoinment as the next executive vice chancellor and dean of faculties at Indiana University-Purdue University Indianapolis (IUPUI). Uday Sukhatme will assume his duties as the chief academic officer of IUPUI in July, 2006. Uday has been dean of the College of Arts and Sciences and professor of Physics at SUNY at Buffalo since August 2002. Prior to that, Uday was at UIC for 22 years, where he served most recently as Interim Vice Provost for Academic Programs.
Dr. Keith Boyer has been selected as a recipient of the 2006 Los Alamos Medal Award. The Los Alamos Medal is the
highest honor and most prestigious award given by the Los Alamos National
Laboratory. It is bestowed once a year on individuals for exceptionally
distinguished achievements that have impacted the success of the
Laboratory. This year Dr. Boyer is one of two recipients.
As you know, Dr. Boyer has been a long time research associate
of Charles Rhodes and together with Charles Rhodes
contributed significantly to our knowledge of the interaction of
atomic systems with intense radiation fields.
In Nature 439, 921-923 (23 February 2006), Dr. Nick Evans reviews the recent advances on "duality" connection between string theory and the gauge theory of the strong force: quantum chromodynamics (QCD); especially focusing on the article by Misha Stephanov et al "QCD and a Holographic Model of Hadrons" Phys. Rev. Lett. 95, 261602 (2005).
Fermilab Today from January 19, 2006 mentions studies made by Dzero collaboration of the products of extremely hard collisions between protons and their antimatter counterparts, antiprotons, at the Tevatron Collider. A measurement of the production rate (or cross section) of a Z boson with jets over a range of jet multiplicities is shown. The article contains a picture of UIC analysis team participating in this study. Shown are Marc Buehler (now with University of Virginia), Alan Stone, Nikos Varelas, and James Heinmiller. The link to the group picture is available here.
The January 13, 2006 issue of the Science magazine contains an article by Professor Schlossman showing strong evidence that the interfacial liquid structure alters the ion distributions near a charged interface. You can read here more about Professor Schlossman's research group experiment.
The Sep 2005 issue of Physics Today contains an enthusiastic review of a much-anticipated book "The Phases of Quantum Chromodynamics: From Confinement to Extreme Environment" by John Kogut and Mikhail Stephanov. The reviewer describes Dr. Stephanov as a leader in the study of QCD under extreme conditions who has made important contributions to the interpretation of lattice-QCD results at nonzero baryon densities, the experimental observability of the critical point, and collective excitations in color-superconducting quark matter.
Three major UIC awards has been received in 2005 by our collegues J.C. Campuzano (University Scholars Award), A. Schroeder (UIC Award for Excellence in Teaching) and D. Morr (Teaching Recognition Program Award) In addition, C. Halliwell was awarded 2004-2005 Curriculum and Instructional Grant from Council for Excellence in Teaching and Learning for Modernization of Phys 141 Lab.
The Department thanks you for your work and congratulates you on your awards.
Prof.Campuzano is on the International Organizing Committee for Mottness and Quantum Criticality Workshop to be held June 8-19, 2005 in Tobago, West Indies.
Stephen Shing Fan Yip, a junior in physics, has been awarded national Goldwater Scholarship for the 2005/2006 year. The scholarships are awarded to outstanding college sophomores and juniors studying mathematics, natural sciences or engineering. Yip is UIC's 12-th winner and the second winner from our department.
"Fermilab results of the week" describes work of Prof. Gerber and her research group, which resulted in developing a clever way to identify top quarks based on the spatial distribution and energies of their decay products
that distinguishes events with a "top fingerprint" from overwhelming background.
The link to the group picture is available here
Recent Ph.D. graduates Richard Hollis and Aneta Iordanova celebrated their Wedding, in England, with Best-man and Thesis advisor Prof. David Hofman. The wedding came just days after their successful Thesis defenses. The day went very well, and a good time had by all. The service was a registry office ceremony, with a second (Church) wedding in Bulgaria in the summer. See Richard and Aneta after commencement, when the photo album should arrive.
Physics Today, March 2005 issue, contains an article entitled
"Extreme Nonlinear Optics: Coherent X Rays from Lasers" which on page 40 makes a reference to the first High-Harmonic Generation experiments performed by Prof. Charles Rhodes's group at UIC in the late 1980's, soon after the developments of large-scale, intense picosecond and femtosecond lasers. The unfortunate mistake with the group's University affiliation has been brought to the editors attention.
Shing Fan Yip was among 330 students nationwide to receive the 2005 Barry M. Goldwater Scholarship and Excellence in Education Foundation. This is a second year in a row, a physics undergraduate student has been awarded this highly competitive and prestigious scholarship.
Professor Wai-Yee Keung is on the Local Committee of the International Workshop KAON 2005 at Northwestern University, June 13-17, 2005
Prof. Cecilia Gerber was featured in the July/August 2004 issue of the UIC Alumni Magazine in the article entitled "When Atoms Collide". Here is an excerpt: "At the Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory in Batavia, Cecilia Gerber, UIC assistant professor of physics and recipient of a National Science Foundation Career Grant, seeks to unravel the mysteries of the top quark, the smallest and most elusive of atomic particles."
The International Workshop on Lasers and Nuclei held in Karslruhe, Germany on 13-15 September, 2004 was devoted to Prof. Charles Rhodes' 1988 discovery of laser light induced nuclear fission.
Through this development, nuclear reactions can now be induced and studied in the laboratory without recourse to nuclear reactors or particle accelerators. An introductory session on the laser matter interactions by Prof. Charles Rhodes, was followed by the "applications" sessions covering: nuclear and astrophysics, medical applications, transmutation and radiography.
Professor John Marko has agreed to join editorial board of the Physical Review E. He will handle submissions dealing with bio-materials, polymers and membranes.
Professor Nikos Varelas has agreed to take on the responsibility of overall coordination of Fermilab's DZero trigger effort. He will serve as an associate to the DZero collaboration spokespersons and will guide the triggering effort through the integration of the final Run IIa and upcomming Run IIb triggering additions.
Professor Dirk Morr has been awarded a Research Fellowship from the German Alexander von Humboldt Foundation. Professor Morr is working on theories for strongly interacting electron systems, such as high-temperature superconductors, and quantum (zero temperature) phase transitions.The Fellowship enables Professor Morr to conduct research for one year at the Freie Universität Berlin, Germany.
An interview with Professor Siva Sivananthan, director of the microphysics laboratory, about the night-vision sensor manufacturing process, was featured in the April 2004 issue of Armed Forces Journal.
Professors Mark Schlossman and David Hofman have been promoted to the ranks of Professor of Physics and Associate Professor of Physics.
Professor Juan Carlos Campuzano became Scientific Director for Condensed Matter at the Synchrotron Radiation Center. He will look after core programs in highly correlated systems, superconductors, magnetism, and atoms/ions/molecules.
Professor Serdar Ogut has received 2003/2004 Teaching Recognition Program award from the Office of the Provost and Vice Chancellor for Academic Affairs and the Council for Excellence in Teaching and Learning.
Vladimir Skavysh, who is pursuing a dual major in mathematics and physics, was among 310 students nationwide to receive the award from the Barry M. Goldwater Scholarship and Excellence in Education Foundation. The Goldwater scholarships are awarded to outstanding college sophomores and juniors studying mathematics, natural sciences or engineering.
The New Electronic Shop Web-page is up and will be used to submit the project request online.
Assistant Professor Mikhail Stephanov won the Sloan Fellowship award for the year 2002. Professor Stephanov is working on the theory of strong interactions (interactions between particles making up atomic nuclei) and its applications to the physics of heavy ion collisions. He conducts his research atUIC and RIKEN-BNL Research Center at Brookhaven National Laboratory- the site of the world's largest heavy ion collider.
Professor Juan Campuzano was selected as the APS Fellow in the year 2002.Professor Campuzano's research is in many areas of condensed matter physics, such as critical phenomena and two-dimensional phase transitions,the electronic structure of high temperature superconductors, and the development of techniques for studying empty electron energy levels in solids.
