The Achievement Rewards for College Scientists (ARCS) Foundation awarded two students from the University of Maryland’s College of Computer, Mathematical, and Natural Sciences with $15,000 scholarships for the 2018-2019 school year. This year’s scholars are physics graduate student Zachary Eldredge and chemistry graduate student Matthew Thum.

Close-up photo of a trencher, which digs grooves in the ice for power and data cables. (Credit: Liz Friedman/UMD)

What's it like living and working in Antarctica? Upon returning from a five-week trip to the Amundsen-Scott South Pole Station, UMD graduate student Liz Friedman sat down with Chris and Emily to chat about her experience. In this episode, Friedman shares some of her memories of station life and explains how plans at the pole don't always pan out.

This episode of Relatively Certain was produced by Chris Cesare, Emily Edwards and Dina Genkina. It features music by Dave Depper. Relatively Certain is a production of the Joint Quantum Institute, a research partnership between the University of Maryland and the National Institute of Standards and Technology, and you can find it on iTunes, Google Play or Soundcloud.

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Congratulations to Assistant Research Professor Chandra Turpen for receiving the 2018 Women of Influence Award.  Established in 1977 by the President’s Commission on Women’s Issues, this award recognizes achievements of outstanding women on campus. 

Dr. Turpen received her Ph.D. in Physics at the University of Colorado, specializing in Physics Education Research.   As an Assistant Research Professor in the physics department at UMD, Turpen works with the Physics Education Research Group. Her work includes the design and research contexts for learning in higher education.  She uses perspectives of anthropology, psychology and the learning sciences. 

At UMD, she directs the Learning Assistant program which is focused on recruiting and preparing exceptional science majors for teaching careers.  This program allows students to collaborate, interact and problem solve.  She also leads an Introductory Physics course for Life Science (IPLS).  

Research Scientist Erik Blaufuss has received the 2018 Provost’s Excellence Award for Professional Track Faculty in research.  

Blaufuss has served as scientific analysis coordinator of IceCube, an NSF-sponsored scientific instrument in Antarctica in which 5,160 photoreceptors are embedded in a cubic kilometer of crystal-clear ice more than one kilometer below the surface. About 300 times a day, a neutrino speeding through this billion-ton chunk will hit an atom, and the collision will generate a flash of light, from which the neutrino’s direction and energy can be determined. That information reveals the neutrino’s origin and energy.  When IceCube scientists in 2013 determined that about one in every ten thousand of those neutrinos (about a dozen a year) came from distant space outside our galaxy, the new field of neutrino astronomy  was launched. Physics World named this its “Breakthrough of the Year”.

Blaufuss was instrumental in bringing a “multi-messenger” approach to these observations. When IceCube detects an energetic neutrino from distant space, an alert is issued to the world’s radio, optical and gamma-ray telescopes, pointing them in a particular direction toward the particle’s origin.   These alerts have been in operation since April 2016, with more than a dozen issued to date.  On Sept. 22, 2017, one was broadcast by IceCube. Blaufuss’ system rapidly signaled other observatories to aim toward the direction whence the neutrino came.  This event has triggered extensive follow-up by telescopes world-wide, including the identification of a known source from NASA’s Fermi-LAT telescope’s catalog consistent with the neutrino direction. The likely source of the cosmisc neutrinos is a blazar billions of light years away.

Blaufuss earned his PhD in Physics from Louisiana State University in 2000, and joined UMD that same year. Early in his career, he worked on the Super-Kamiokande Experiment in Japan, for which Takaaki Kajita shared the 2015 Nobel Prize in Physics. The Super-K collaboration’s experimental data, described in a 1998 paper “Evidence for Oscillation of Atmospheric Neutrinos”, demonstrated that neutrinos change identities. This metamorphosis requires that neutrinos have mass, and changed our understanding of the innermost workings of matter. Shortly after the Nobel, the 2016 Breakthrough Prize in Fundamental Physics was awarded to five collaborations studying neutrino oscillations, including Super-K.

Christopher Bambic, who will graduate this month with bachelor of science degrees in physics and astronomy, will also be awarded the University Medal, which recognizes the most outstanding graduate of the year. The University Medal is awarded to the undergraduate who best personifies academic distinction, extraordinary character, and extracurricular contributions to the university and the larger public. He will be honored for this achievement at the university's Spring Commencement Ceremony on May 20, 2018.