UMD physicists share 2016 Breakthrough Prize

Details

Published: Monday, November 16 2015 16:44

UMD Research Scientist Erik Blaufuss, Distinguished University Professor Jordan Goodman and Professor Greg Sullivan will be sharing the 2016 Breakthrough Prize in Fundamental Physics award for their studies in neutrino oscillations. The $3 million prize will be shared equally among five experiments comprised of more than 1,300 physicists;Daya Bay, KamLAND, K2k/T2K,Sudbury Neutrino Observatory and Super-Kamiokande.

The University of Maryland physicists were part of the team of scientists that built and participated on the Super-Kamiokande experiment (for which Takaaki Kajita shared the 2015 Nobel Prize in Physics).The team’s experimental data demonstrated that neutrinos change identities. This metamorphosis requires that neutrinos have mass. The discovery has changed our understanding of the innermost workings of matter and can prove crucial to our view of the universe.

The Breakthrough Prizes were established by Yuri Milner, Julia Milner, Sergey Brin, Anne Wojcicki, Mark Zuckerberg, Priscilla Chan, Jack Ma, and Cathy Zhang. Their goal is to bring important figures of the science and technology communities into the public eye.

Women in Physics Received the American Physical Society’s Women in Physics Grant

Details

Published: Monday, November 09 2015 14:37

The University of Maryland’s Women in Physics group recently received the Women in Physics Grant from the American Physical Society. This grant is given to support Women in Physics groups in their efforts to improve recruitment and/or retention of undergraduate women in physics. The funding will support their mentoring program for the 2016 calendar year.

The Women in Physics group provides a welcoming environment for female members of the Physics community at the University of Maryland by including undergraduates, graduate students, post-docs, faculty, and staff of all genders. They developed a mentoring program to foster supportive relationships between graduate and undergraduate students, host regular professional development lunches, and organize other professional development, social, and outreach events.

Information on the award: http://www.aps.org/programs/women/scholarships/wipgrantees.cfm

2015 Faculty & Staff Convocation

Details

Published: Monday, October 26 2015 16:14

The university recognized its members of the community who have made significant contributions to the university and their respective academic disciplines at the annual Faculty and Staff Convocation on October 13. Physics recipients included Jordan Goodman and Christopher Monroe who were named University of Maryland Distinguished University Professors -- the campus' highest academic honor.

Read More

Superfluid Helium Research

Details

Published: Friday, October 23 2015 16:08

Graduate student Peter Megson talks about his research on the quantum vortices that occur in superfluid helium.

Ji Selected as 2016 Recipient of Herman Feshbach Prize in Theoretical Nuclear Physics

Details

Published: Thursday, October 22 2015 15:45

The American Physical Society has selected Xiangdong Ji as the 2016 recipient of the Herman Feshbach Prize in Theoretical Nuclear Physics for pioneering work in developing tools to characterize the structure of the nucleon within QCD and for showing how its properties can be probed through experiments; this work not only illuminates the nucleon theoretically but also acts as a driver of experimental programs worldwide.

Professor Ji, who also serves as Director of the Institute of Nuclear and Particle Physics at Shanghai Jiao Tong University, leads the PandaX experiment. He held post doctoral positions at CalTech and MIT and was on the MIT faculty before joining UMD in 1996. He is a fellow of the American Physical Society. Ji's previous awards include: 2014 Alexander von Humboldt Foundation Research Award; 2010 National 1000-Talent Expert, China; and, 2003 recipient of the Outstanding Overseas Young Chinese Scientist award from the National Science Foundation of China.

The prize will be presented at an upcoming 2016 APS meeting.