Prof. Ed Ott (ECE/Physics/IREAP) has been selected to receive selective and prestigious awards from two different professional societies, in recognition of his decades-long career in nonlinear science and chaos theory.

​​The Fundamentals of Quantum Materials Winter School and Workshop, which begins Jan. 14, promises to be a unique event in North America, dedicated specifically to the synthesis, characterization and electronic modeling of quantum materials. It is organized by CNAM director Johnpierre Paglione; Assistant Professor Efrain Rodriguez of UMD's department of Chemistry; Dr. Nicholas Butch, NIST; and Professor Gabriel Kotliar of Rutgers University.

The FQM Winter School is aimed at providing fundamental training to our current and future generations of Quantum Materials scientists in synthesis and characterization techniques. It will bring together senior and junior scientists to address topics at the forefront of current research into quantum materials, while also providing pedagogical background and practical training for junior scientists. With an interdisciplinary and diverse crowd including physicists, chemists, and materials scientists, participants will gain a basic functional knowledge of how to plan and carry out synthesis relevant to the study of quantum materials, and will have a unique opportunity to interact with some of the top researchers in the field while networking with peers. The structure of the school will include mornings of pedagogical lectures by ten of the nation's top practicing quantum materials scientists, with afternoons devoted to practical demonstrations in laboratories in the University of Maryland's Center for Nanophysics and Advanced Materials. The school will also include a poster session that will be attended by senior scientists. The school received ~40 applications and seated 25 students.

The FQM Workshop, held the preceding weekend in collaboration with the BNL Center for Computational Design of Functional Strongly Correlated Materials and Theoretical Spectroscopy, covers both experimental and theoretical research on quantum materials, focusing on synthesis, characterization and computational approaches to research of quantum materials such as superconductors, strongly correlated electron systems and topological materials.

The event is sponsored by the Moore Foundation, ICAM, NIST, the University of Maryland's Office of Research and the College of Mathematics and Natural Sciences.

Invited Speakers include:

James Analytis, University of California, Berkeley
Ryan Baumbach, National High Magnetic Field Laboratory Brookhaven National Lab
Paul Canfield, Ames Laboratory
Julia Chan, University of Texas, Dallas
Sang-Wook Cheong, Rutgers University
David Mandrus, University of Tennessee
John Mitchell, Argonne National Laboratory
Efrain Rodriguez, University of Maryland
Brian Sales, Oak Ridge NationalLaboratory
Ichiro Takeuchi, University of Maryland

Professor Dan Lathrop has been elected Vice-Chair of the American Physical Society Group on Statistical and Nonlinear Physics (GSNP). The Vice-Chair serves in that capacity for one year, becomes Chair-Elect in year two, and then serves as Chair of GSNP in year three. 

Professor Steve Rolston is the current Chair of the APS Division of Atomic, Molecular and Optical Physics (DAMOP) and Associate Professor Peter Shawan is Chair-Elect of the Division of Gravitational Physics (DGRAV).

A University of Maryland team, named UMD Loop, won the Performance and Operations Award and placed in the top five for overall pod design at the SpaceX Hyperloop Pod Competition held in Hawthorne, California, on January 27-29, 2017. The competition, which has been ongoing for more than a year, aims to advance the Hyperloop concept for a new form of transportation in which passenger-carrying pods travel between cities through above-ground tubes at very high speeds.

Within the next five years, it may be possible to charge a cellphone without knowing where it is and destroy tumors no matter how deep they are within the body, using research conducted at this university.

Through an age-old technique called time reversal, a team of professors discovered how to communicate — by transmitting power, sound or images — in any direction rather than merely across a straight line using electronic magnetic pulses. The team found they could transmit power, such as by charging a cellphone, without knowing an object's location or disturbing its surroundings. The research — which will be published in the next two months — has been in the works for two years.

Jayanth Banavar, dean of the College of Computer, Mathematical, and Natural Sciences (CMNS) at the University of Maryland, has been named provost and senior vice president at the University of Oregon. Banavar will end his six-year tenure at UMD in July and a national search for his replacement will begin immediately.

Zachary Eldredge, a physics graduate student at JQI and QuICS, has been awarded an Endowment Fellowship by the Achievement Awards for College Scientists (ARCS) Foundation. The fellowship comes with $15,000 of financial support and is renewable. "I'm very thankful to the Foundation, as well as to the university for nominating me and helping me put together my application," Eldredge says. He will be honored at an awards reception at the National Academy of Science in October.

The ARCS Foundation is a national organization dedicated to supporting STEM education in the United States. ARCS partners with more than 50 colleges and universities in 16 regional chapters across the country—including the Metropolitan Washington Chapter, through which Eldredge received his fellowship. Rather than soliciting applications, the ARCS Foundation allows its partner institutions to select some of their top students in science, engineering and medical research as candidates for the award. Since its inception in 1958, the Foundation has provided more than $100 million of financial support to thousands of scholars.

Eldredge is a third year graduate student at JQI, having earned an undergraduate degree in physics from the University of Oklahoma in 2014. He currently works with JQI and QuICS Fellow Alexey Gorshkov on finding new ways to generate entanglement and use it as a quantum resource.

JQI Article

MEDIA CONTACT

Erin Marshall|erinmars@umd.edu

The W. J. Carr Lecture Series on Superconductivity and Advanced Materials was established by Dr. James L. Carr ' 89, and attracts some of the best researchers in this field each year. This year's distinguished Lecturer is Dr. Stuart Parkin, Director of the Max Planck Institute of Microstructure Physics and Professor at the Institute of Physics of the University of Halle-Wittenberg. Parkin is a pioneer in the science and application of spintronic materials, and has made discoveries into the behavior of thin-film magnetic structures that were critical in enabling recent increases in the data density and capacity of computer hard-disk drives. For these discoveries, he was awarded the 2014 Millennium Technology Prize.

Prof. Parkin will present both a department colloquium and technical seminar. His colloquium will be presented on Tuesday February 28th at 4pm in room 1410 of the John S. Toll Physics Building.

Title: Beyond charge currents: spin and ion currents for future computing technologies

Abstract: The era of computing technologies based on charge currents is coming to an end after more than 40 years of exponential increases in computing power that have been largely based on shrinking devices in two dimensions. A new era of "Beyond charge!" will evolve over the next decade that will likely be based on several new concepts. Firstly, devices whose innate properties are derived not from the electron's charge but from spin currents and from ion currents. In some cases new functionality will arise that can extend charge based devices but in other cases fundamentally new computing paradigms will evolve. Secondly, devices will inevitably become three-dimensional: novel means of constructing devices, both from bottom-up and top-down, will become increasingly important. Thirdly, bio-inspired devices that may mimic the extremely energy efficient computation systems in the biological world are compelling. In this talk I will discuss possible spintronic and ionitronic devices and how they may lead to novel computing technologies.

Bio:  Professor Stuart Parkin's research interests include oxide thin film heterostructures, high-temperature superconductors, and, magnetic thin film structures and spintronic materials and devices for advanced sensor, memory, and logic applications. Parkin's discoveries in magneto-resistive thin film structures enabled a more than 1000 fold increase in the storage capacity of magnetic disk drives for which he was awarded the Millennium Technology Award from the Technology Academy Finland in 2014. Most recently, Parkin has proposed and demonstrated a novel storage-class memory device, "Racetrack Memory", that is an innately 3D solid-state device with the storage capacity of a disk drive but with much higher performance and reliability. Parkin's other major research interest is cognitive - bio-inspired materials - that could enable ultra-low power computing technologies. Parkin is a Fellow/Member of several Academies, including: the Royal Society (London), National Academy of Sciences (USA), National Academy of Engineering (USA), German National Academy of Science - Leopoldina, Royal Society of Edinburgh, Indian Academy of Sciences, and TWAS, the academy of sciences for the developing world. Parkin is the recipient of numerous awards and honors including, the American Physical Society International Prize for New Materials, the Europhysics Prize for Outstanding Achievement in Solid State Physics, and the American Institute of Physics (AIP) Prize for Industrial Application of Physics. Parkin has received Honorary Doctorates from RWTH Aachen, Eindhoven University of Science and Technology, University of Regensburg, and University of Kaiserslautern. Parkin received the IEEE Daniel E. Noble Award for his work on MRAM, the IUPAP Magnetism Prize and Neel Medal for outstanding contributions to the science of magnetism, the APS David Adler Lectureship Award, the von Hippel Award from the Materials Research Society, the Swan Medal of the Institute of Physics (London), the Millennium Technology Prize and an Alexander von Humboldt Professorship − International Award for Research (2014).

On March 16, 2017, the Maryland Commission for Women and the Women Legislators of the Maryland General Assembly will induct eight women into the Maryland Women's Hall of Fame and will present "Women of Tomorrow" awards to five students during a 5:30 p.m. ceremony at the Miller Senate Office
Building in Annapolis.

Distinguished University Professor Ellen D. Williams recently returned to UMD Physics and the Institute for Physical Science and Technology (IPST) after spending several years working for energy company BP and later, the U.S. Department of Energy. Prof. Williams will give a colloquium on her experiences and outlook on Tuesday, March 14 at 4pm in the lobby of the PSC.

Prof. Williams first arrived at UMD in 1981, working as a postdoctoral researcher for Prof. Bob Park after completing her doctorate in chemistry at Caltech. She joined the physics faculty in 1983, studying materials and surface physics; her specific areas of research included experimental statistical mechanics, statistical properties of nanostructures and flexible electronics. In 1991, she founded what would become the University of Maryland Materials Research Science and Engineering Center (MRSEC). She was elected to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 2003 and the National Academy of Sciences in 2005.

In 2010, Prof. Williams was recruited to be Chief Scientist at BP, succeeding physicist Steve Koonin. In response to climate change, BP had been exploring alternative energy sources for a decade. She accepted the job in London, and plunged into the extraordinary array of issues involved in the production of energy with minimal environmental disruption. Examples include land use decisions in the production of biofuels, management of the quantities of water involved in fossil fuel production, availability of rare earth elements for electric motors and lithium for batteries for electric vehicles. Prof. Williams oversaw a consortium of university researchers studying these and other topics in BP's Energy Sustainability Challenge. The research led to publication of Materials Critical to the Energy Industry, Water in the Energy Industry and Biomass in the Energy Industry.

Another major responsibility was heading BP’s technical advisory committee, which studies innovations upstream (getting oil and gas out of the Earth) and downstream (refining to create fuels, petrochemicals and other products). The TAC met four times a year to review all the company’s technical R&D activities. Prof. Williams notes that innovations in science over the last few decades allow for greater efficiencies and new approaches to technical problems in energy production. Supercomputers have played a significant role, whether used with seismic imaging and geophysics to determine the likely locations of oil reserves, or to model efficient means of breaking cellulosic materials into usable biofuels.

As one of the world’s largest producers and consumers of energy, the United States is keenly interested in such questions. A 2007 report published by the National Academies, Rising Above the Gathering Storm: Energizing and Employing America for a Brighter Economic Future, recommended the establishment of the Advanced Research Projects Agency-Energy (ARPA-E) in the Department of Energy’s Office of Science to foster innovation toward energy efficiency and sustainability using grants on specific energy or environmental topics. ARPA-E was first funded as part of the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009. In 2013, newly-installed Energy Secretary Ernest Moniz contacted Prof. Williams, who recalled that she “could hardly contain my joy” at the prospect of leading ARPA-E.

The federal vetting process and assorted delays took several months; the congressional approval process took a year. During that time, Prof. Williams resigned from BP and worked as a senior advisor to Secretary Moniz until her appointment was confirmed; she took the helm at ARPA-E in December 2014.

Prof. Williams very much enjoyed the broad scope of sciences cultivated by ARPA-E. For example: soil depletion of agricultural land releases carbon into the atmosphere and spurs greater use of fertilizer, a major source of nitrous oxide emissions. ROOTS, or Rhizosphere Observations Optimizing Terrestrial Sequestration, supported research to keep carbon in the ground through creative scanning and phenotyping techniques for root systems. MONITOR, or Methane Observation Networks with Innovative Technology to Obtain Reductions, aimed to limit leaks of methane during the processing and transport of natural gas. Nimble combinations of lasers, computing, photonics and fluid dynamics yielded ultra-precise sensors of interest to the Environmental Protection Agency, the Department of the Interior and the energy industry.

Well before she joined the Department of Energy, Prof. Williams held a deep interest in government and public policy. She has served on the International Security Advisory Board of the U.S. Department of State and on JASON, an independent scientific advisory group that provides consulting services to the U.S. government on matters of defense science and technology. She chaired the National Academy of Science’s committee on Technical Issues Concerning the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty from 2009-11, and was a member of the NAS Policy and Global Affairs Committee. She is currently developing a class on the interplay of clean energy technology, policy and regulations to be offered in the Fall of 2017.

Physics professor and JQI Fellow Fred Wellstood has been appointed the newest UMD Co-Director of JQI. He assumed the role on March 1.

"Fred has played a major role in the JQI since its founding," says Gretchen Campbell, the current NIST Co-Director of JQI. "Most recently, his tireless efforts helped to design and ultimately build the new Physical Sciences Center at Maryland that many JQI labs now call home. I look forward to working with him to carefully steward JQI's future."

The Department of Defense announced that Professor and CNAM Director Johnpierre Paglione (University of Maryland Department of Physics) and Assistant Professor and JQI Fellow Mohammad Hafezi (Electrical and Computer Engineering) are among those awarded the Defense University Research Instrumentation Program (DURIP) grants. The Department of Defense awarded 160 researchers from institutions all over the country with the DURIP award. DURIP supports the purchase of high tech equipment and innovative research enabling exciting advances in science and technology.

Paglione received an award for Materials Genome Approach to the Search for Superconductivity. Dr. Hafezi's award will support research for a Cryogenic System for Quantum Optical Measurement. Both grants are from the Air Force Office of Scientific Research (AFOSR).

DoD Press Release 

2017 DURIP winners

JQI Fellow, Nobel laureate and Distinguished University Professor William Phillips has been inducted into the Mexican Academy of Sciences (la Academia Mexicana de Ciencias) as a corresponding member. The honor will be marked by an evening event held in Mexico City on March 23.

The event includes a talk by Phillips, titled "Time, Einstein and the coolest stuff in the universe," as well as a discussion between Phillips, Mexican Academy of Sciences president Jaime Urrutia Fucugauchi, and JQI Fellow and physics professor Luis Orozco, who nominated Phillips for membership. The entire program will be broadcast live beginning at 6 p.m. EDT.

Three University of Maryland students have been awarded scholarships by the Barry M. Goldwater Scholarship and Excellence in Education Foundation, which encourages students to pursue advanced study and careers in the sciences, engineering and mathematics. The Goldwater Foundation also recognized a fourth UMD student with an Honorable Mention.

UMD juniors Christopher Bambic, Eliot Fenton and Prayaag Venkat were among the 240 Barry Goldwater Scholars selected from 1,286 students nominated nationally this year. UMD junior Natalie Livingston was recognized with an Honorable Mention. The four students all plan to pursue doctoral degrees in their areas of study and to become university professors or researchers at government laboratories.

Join us for the 19th annual Maryland Day to explore our world of fearless ideas on Saturday, April 29, 2017 from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. Maryland Day is an exciting opportunity for prospective students and area residents to learn more about the University of Maryland.

Maryland Day will be held rain or shine. Admission and parking are free. A campus map can be found here.

More on Maryland Day from CMNS.

Watch live as Christopher Monroe, Distinguished University Professor & Bice Seci-Zorn Professor is elected to the U.S. National Academy of Sciences 2016.  The ceremony will air on Saturday April 29th at 8:00 p.m. EDT http://www.nasonline.org/NAS154presentation.

Membership of the National Academy of Sciences is one the greatest and highest honors that a scientist can receive.  "The NAS membership totals approximately 2,290 members and 490 foreign associates, of whom approximately 200 have received Nobel prizes."  - NAS

Read more about Monroe's accomplishments.

From publishing in physics journals to performing at an international piano festival in Italy, Gregory Ridgway’s talents are as diverse as his experiences at UMD.

Gregory Ridgway. Photo by John T. Consoli.
Gregory Ridgway. Photo by John T. Consoli.

Graduating with a 3.98 GPA and three degrees—in physics, mathematics and piano performance—Ridgway’s ability to think both logically and creatively will be the foundation of his ambition to become a theoretical physicist.

“There are so many different ways to look at the world,” he says. “I could never just settle into one.”

Distinguished University Professor Jordan Goodman has been named the winner of the 2017 Yodh Prize for “outstanding leadership in the development of water Cherenkov instruments in high-energy gamma-ray astronomy”. The prize will be awarded at the 35th International Cosmic Ray Conference 2017 (ICRC2017) this summer in Busan, South Korea.

Goodman is currently the U.S. scientific spokesperson and PI for the High Altitude Water Cherenkov experiment (HAWC) in the Sierra Negra mountains of Mexico. Previously, he was co-spokesperson/PI for the MILAGRO Gamma Ray Experiment in New Mexico, where he and his collaborators developed a detector designed to measure the energy and arrival direction of gamma and cosmic rays via Cherenkov radiation in massive vats of water.

In addition, Goodman has worked on the IceCube South Pole Neutrino Observatory and the Super-Kamiokande Neutrino Experiment in Japan. Physics World named IceCube the 2013 Breakthrough of the Year for making the first observations of cosmic neutrinos. The Super-K experiment proved that neutrinos have mass and was the basis of Takaaki Kajita’s 2015 Nobel Prize in Physics and the 2016 Breakthrough Prize, which was shared by the collaboration including Goodman and UMD Professor Greg Sullivan and UMD Research Scientist Erik Blaufuss.

The Yodh prize was endowed by Gaurang and Kanwal Yodh to the University of California Irvine Foundation in 1998 and is given out bi-annually at the International Cosmic Ray Conference. Professor Yodh, a noted astrophysicist, received his Ph.D. at the University of Chicago, working under Enrico Fermi, and before settling at UCI was a professor at UMD, where he oversaw Goodman’s graduate work. Yodh’s many research contributions include extracting rising proton-air cross sections from the analysis of cosmic ray data and developing early transition radiation detectors for particle detection. He is a Fellow of the American Physical Society, the American Association for the Advancement of Science, and the UK Institute of Physics. Yodh is also an accomplished sitar player, and while in College Park offered a course in Indian classical music performance that helped launch the UMD ethnomusicology program. 

The University of Maryland announced the appointment of UMD Biology Professor Gerald Wilkinson as interim dean of the College of Computer, Mathematical, and Natural Sciences, effective July 1, 2017.  

“A highly regarded scientist and administrator, I am confident Dr. Wilkinson will be an outstanding interim dean,” said Mary Ann Rankin, UMD’s senior vice president and provost. “I am grateful to Dr. Wilkinson for agreeing to serve in this capacity.”