William Phillips is a Distinguished University and College Park Professor of physics. In 1997 he was a co-recipient of the Nobel Prize of Physics "for development of methods to cool and trap atoms with laser light."
Professor Phillips received his B.S. in 1970 from Juniata College and his Ph.D. from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. He is a Fellow of the American Physical Society, a Fellow and Honorary Member of the Optical Society of America and a Member of the National Academy of Sciences.
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Centers & Institutes: Institute for Physical Science & Technology; Joint Quantum Institute; Physics Frontier Center
Johnpierre Paglione has seeded a world-class effort on quantum materials research at UMD, leading the collaborations of several faculty that have brought Maryland to the forefront of research on superconductivity, topological materials and strongly correlated systems. Having contributed to several fields of experimental condensed matter research through both single-crystal synthesis and ultra-low temperature transport, thermodynamic and spectroscopic exploration of novel phenomena, Paglione’s research is a blend of materials exploration and elucidation of quantum phenomena. As Director of the Maryland Quantum Materials Center, with a membership of over 100 personnel, a state-of-the-art materials synthesis facility and an extensive measurement suite, Paglione commits QMC resources to hosting the annual Fundamentals of Quantum Materials Winter School, a successful hands-on training program and basis for this work. Paglione is the recipient of a National Science Foundation CAREER Award and an Early Career Award from the Department of Energy, is a Materials Synthesis Fellow in the EPiQS program of the Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation and a Fellow of the Quantum Materials Program of the Canadian Institute for Advanced Research. Dr. Paglione earned his PhD from the University of Toronto in Canada.
Min Ouyang has a broad interest in areas that intersect emerging nanoscale condensed matter physics, materials chemistry, instrumentation development and technology applications at the nanoscale, which has led to significant scientific impacts as recognized by numerous high profile publications. He has received a number of professional awards, including the Alfred P. Sloan Fellowship (2006), NSF CAREER award (2006), Ralph E. Powe award (2006), ONR Young Investigator award (2007), Beckman Young Investigator award (2007), University of Maryland Discovery award (2010), and Scialog Fellow of the Research Corporation (2013)
Howard Milchberg is jointly appointed to the departments of Physics and Electrical and Computer Engineering, and is affiliated with the Institute for Research in Electronics and Applied Physics. He received his B. Eng. in engineering physics from McMaster University and a Ph.D. in astrophysical sciences from Princeton University. Professor Milchberg is the recipient of an NSERC Postgraduate Fellowship, National Research Council of Canada; NSF Presidential Young Investigator Award; and both the APS John Dawson Award for Excellence in Plasma Physics Research and its Arthur L. Schawlow Prize in Laser Science. He is a fellow of the American Physical Society and the Optical Society of America. He is a UMD Distinguished Scholar-Teacher and Distinguished University Professor, and was awarded the Senior Faculty Outstanding Research Award in UMD’s Clark School of Engineering. Three of his graduate students have been recipients of APS-DPP’s Marshall N. Rosenbluth Outstanding Doctoral Thesis Award.
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Centers & Institutes: Institute for Physical Science & Technology; Institute for Research in Electronics & Applied Physics; Maryland NanoCenter
Wolfgang Losert obtained his PhD from City College of the City University of New York. His research is centered on dynamical properties of Complex Systems at the convergence of physics and biology. A special focus is on applications to cancer biology. Examples of dynamical processes that are often found in complex systems are pattern formation and dynamical phase transitions. The main thrust of his work on living systems is to assess how cell motion and collective behavior are affected by physical cues, in particular the topography of the surface, surface adhesivity, and cell-cell adhesion. We discovered that cell migration can be guided by nanotopography via control of the dynamics of actin waves and that cell-surface adhesion can significantly alter the intracellular and collective cell dynamics. We also developed new tools to integrate measurements of the physical properties of living systems with biomedical phenotypes, via advanced statistical and machine learning analysis of multiple types of information, most at the single cell level.
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Centers & Institutes: Institute for Physical Science & Technology; Maryland Biophysics Program; Institute for Research in Electronics & Applied Physics; Maryland NanoCenter
Daniel Lathrop received a B.A. in physics from the University of California at Berkeley in 1987, and a Ph.D. in physics from the University of Texas at Austin in 1991. He then served at Yale University as a postdoctoral fellow, research affiliate, and lecturer, and as Assistant Professor at Emory University. He joined the University of Maryland in 1997, the year he received a Presidential Early Career Award from the National Science Foundation. Daniel Lathrop is now Professor of Physics and Professor of Geology and a Fellow of the American Physical Society. His research in the Nonlinear Dynamics group at Maryland focuses on turbulent fluid flows, geomagnetism, and experiments on superfluid helium. Dr. Lathrop served as the Director of the Institute for Research in Electronics and Applied Physics from 2006 to 2012. He received the Stanley Corrsin Award in 2012 from the American Physical Society for this work in quantum fluids. He is a UMD Distinguished Scholar-Teacher.
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Centers & Institutes: Quantum Materials Center; Institute for Research in Electronics & Applied Physics; Maryland NanoCenter