The University of Maryland College Park Foundation, Inc. has established the Jayanth R. Banavar Endowed Graduate Award for Excellence in Physics Research to support a merit-based award for outstanding graduate students in the Department of Physics. Preference will go to students doing interdisciplinary research on natural phenomena—Banavar’s own research area.

Three graduate students in the University of Maryland College of Computer, Mathematical, and Natural Sciences have been awarded 2017 NASA Earth and Space Science Fellowships. The purpose of the fellowships is to ensure continued training of a highly qualified workforce in disciplines needed to achieve NASA’s scientific goals.

James Juno, Thomas Rimlinger and Joseph Schools will each receive the award, which provides up to $45,000 a year toward a stipend and other expenses.

Kaustubh Agashe, who was promoted to the rank of Professor, is a particle theorist who was recently named a Fermilab Distinguished Scholar. Dr. Agashe researches mathematical extensions to the Standard Model, making theoretical predictions that can be tested experimentally in settings including the Large Hadron Collider and future accelerator facilities.

Carter Hall, who was promoted to the rank of Professor, researches neutrinos and dark matter. He has worked on the Enriched Xenon Observatory (EXO-200), and the Large Underground Xenon (LUX) detector, and is the new spokesperson for the LZ Dark Matter Experiment, based in the Sanford Underground Research Facility in the former Homestead gold mine in South Dakota.

Peter Shawhan, who was promoted to the rank of Professor, works on the LIGO experiment based in Louisiana and in Washington state. In recent years, LIGO made major news by confirming the existence of gravitational waves and thereby validating Einstein’s theory of relativity. Prof. Shawhan is also the Chair of the American Physical Society’s Division of Gravitational Physics.

Sylvester James “Jim” Gates Jr. has been appointed a College Park Professor. Gates joined the UMD faculty in 1984, and in the ensuing decades became an internationally-known advocate of science education. He is a member of the National Academy of Sciences and a recipient of the National Medal of Science. He is now the Co-Director of the Presidential Scholars Program at Brown University.

Sergio Picozzi, who was promoted to the rank of Senior Lecturer, received his Ph.D. in Physics from Southern Illinois University. Dr. Picozzi had appointments at American, George Washington and Catholic universities before joining UMD in 2012.

David Clarke was promoted to the rank of Assistant Research Scientist. He received his Ph.D. at Johns Hopkins University, and his research focuses on the design, analysis, and manipulation of topological phases of matter for applications in quantum information processing.

Cornelius Griggs was promoted to the rank of Assistant Research Scientist. He received his Ph.D. at the University of Notre Dame, and works on advancing the techniques of superconducting gravity gradiometry and its applications, such as earlier detection of earthquakes.

Greg Jenkins was promoted to the rank of Associate Research Scientist. He received his Ph.D. at the University of Maryland, and studies the magneto-optical studies of Dirac and Weyl semimetals.

Hyunsoo Kim was promoted to the rank of Assistant Research Scientist. Kim received his Ph.D. at Iowa State University, and works in the development and application of very low-temperature instrumentation for the study of the electronic properties of novel materials.

Norbert Linke was promoted to the rank of Assistant Research Scientist. Dr. Linke received his Ph.D. at the University of Oxford, and at UMD was part of the team that realized the first programmable quantum computer based on five Ytterbium ions.

Professor Tom Antonsen has been named a University of Maryland Distinguished University Professor. This designation is the campus’ highest academic honor, reserved for those whose scholarly achievements “have brought distinction to the University of Maryland.”  He was cited for fundamental contributions to the related fields of plasma physics, charged particle beam research, and nonlinear dynamics.

Prof. Antonsen, who received his PhD at Cornell University, joined the University of Maryland in 1984 and currently holds appointments in the Department of Physics, the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering and the Institute for Research in Electronics and Applied Physics (IREAP).  In 2016, he received the John R. Pierce Award for Excellence in Vacuum Electronics “for contributions to the theory of charged particle beam generation and the development of computational design tools for fast and slow wave devices.” He is a fellow of the American Physical Society. 

 Distinguished University Professors in the Department of Physics

Four assistant professors have recently joined UMD Physics.

Maissam Barkeshli received his Ph.D. from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Afterward, he was a Simons Postdoctoral Fellow at Stanford University and a postdoctoral researcher at Microsoft's Station Q at UC Santa Barbara. He works on several topics in complex quantum many-body phenomena and is a member of the Condensed Matter Theory Center and Joint Quantum Institute.  

Brian Swingle received his Ph.D. from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and held postdoctoral positions at Harvard University, the It from Qubit Simons Collaboration and Stanford University. He researches quantum information and is a member of the Condensed Matter Theory Center, the Joint Center for Quantum Information and Computer Science and the Maryland Center for Fundamental Physics.

Zohreh Davoudi received her Ph.D. at the University of Washington and recently completed a postdoctoral appointment at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. She studies strongly-interacting systems of hadrons and nuclei, using analytical and computational methods such as effective field theories and lattice quantum chromodynamics. She will be a member of the Maryland Center for Fundamental Physics and hold a joint appointment at Brookhaven National Lab through the Riken Fellowship program.

Anson Hook will begin in the spring semester of 2018, after completing a postdoctoral appointment at Stanford University, where he received his Ph.D. in 2012. He has also held a postdoctoral appointment at the Institute for Advanced Studies. Hook researches the extent to which exotic field theory phenomena can be used to solve existing problems in particle physics. He will be a member of the Maryland Center for Fundamental Physics.

In addition, two members of the Department of Engineering and the Institute for Research in Electronics and Applied Physics (IREAP) now hold appointments in Physics.

Associate Professor Mohammad Hafezi received his Ph.D. at Harvard University. His interests include the theoretical and experimental investigation of strongly-correlated systems and topological physics, nanophotonics and optomechanics, and hybrid quantum systems. He is a Fellow of the Joint Quantum Institute.

Professor Edo Waks received his Ph.D. in Electrical Engineering from Stanford University. He researches nanoscale photonic and semiconductor devices for applications in quantum computation, communication, and sensing. He is a Fellow of the Joint Quantum Institute.

Please join us as the University of Maryland and Bowie State University jointly observe a moment of reflection on August 30 at 12:05 pm. Together we will pause in silence for one minute to honor and remember the life of Second Lt. Richard Collins III.

Vladimir Manucharyan has received a 2017 Young Faculty Award from the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA). Prof. Manucharyan's proposal, "Multi-terminal hybrid semiconductor/superconductor junctions", is aimed at developing devices to serve as robust building blocks of a topological quantum computer and act as test beds for topological effects predicted in exotic materials.

Dr. Manucharyan, the Alford Ward Assistant Professor of Physics, received his Ph.D. in 2010 from Yale Univerity and was a Junior Fellow at Harvard University before his 2014 arrival at UMD, where he is a Fellow of the Joint Quantum Institute and a member of the Center for Nanophysics and Advanced Materials. In 2015, he received a Sloan Research Fellowship and NSF CAREER Award. 

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 was awarded at the 35th International Cosmic Ray Conference 2017 (ICRC2017) 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.”

The University of Maryland College Park Foundation, Inc. has established the Jayanth R. Banavar Endowed Graduate Award for Excellence in Physics Research to support a merit-based award for outstanding graduate students in the Department of Physics. Preference will go to students doing interdisciplinary research on natural phenomena—Banavar’s own research area.

Three graduate students in the University of Maryland College of Computer, Mathematical, and Natural Sciences have been awarded 2017 NASA Earth and Space Science Fellowships. The purpose of the fellowships is to ensure continued training of a highly qualified workforce in disciplines needed to achieve NASA’s scientific goals.

James Juno, Thomas Rimlinger and Joseph Schools will each receive the award, which provides up to $45,000 a year toward a stipend and other expenses.

Four assistant professors have recently joined UMD Physics.

Maissam Barkeshli received his Ph.D. from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Afterward, he was a Simons Postdoctoral Fellow at Stanford University and a postdoctoral researcher at Microsoft's Station Q at UC Santa Barbara. He works on several topics in complex quantum many-body phenomena and is a member of the Condensed Matter Theory Center and Joint Quantum Institute.  

Brian Swingle received his Ph.D. from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and held postdoctoral positions at Harvard University, the It from Qubit Simons Collaboration and Stanford University. He researches quantum information and is a member of the Condensed Matter Theory Center, the Joint Center for Quantum Information and Computer Science and the Maryland Center for Fundamental Physics.

Zohreh Davoudi received her Ph.D. at the University of Washington and recently completed a postdoctoral appointment at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. She studies strongly-interacting systems of hadrons and nuclei, using analytical and computational methods such as effective field theories and lattice quantum chromodynamics. She will be a member of the Maryland Center for Fundamental Physics and hold a joint appointment at Brookhaven National Lab through the Riken Fellowship program.

Anson Hook will begin in the spring semester of 2018, after completing a postdoctoral appointment at Stanford University, where he received his Ph.D. in 2012. He has also held a postdoctoral appointment at the Institute for Advanced Studies. Hook researches the extent to which exotic field theory phenomena can be used to solve existing problems in particle physics. He will be a member of the Maryland Center for Fundamental Physics.

In addition, two members of the Department of Engineering and the Institute for Research in Electronics and Applied Physics (IREAP) now hold appointments in Physics.

Associate Professor Mohammad Hafezi received his Ph.D. at Harvard University. His interests include the theoretical and experimental investigation of strongly-correlated systems and topological physics, nanophotonics and optomechanics, and hybrid quantum systems. He is a Fellow of the Joint Quantum Institute.

Professor Edo Waks received his Ph.D. in Electrical Engineering from Stanford University. He researches nanoscale photonic and semiconductor devices for applications in quantum computation, communication, and sensing. He is a Fellow of the Joint Quantum Institute.

Kaustubh Agashe, who was promoted to the rank of Professor, is a particle theorist who was recently named a Fermilab Distinguished Scholar. Dr. Agashe researches mathematical extensions to the Standard Model, making theoretical predictions that can be tested experimentally in settings including the Large Hadron Collider and future accelerator facilities.

Carter Hall, who was promoted to the rank of Professor, researches neutrinos and dark matter. He has worked on the Enriched Xenon Observatory (EXO-200), and the Large Underground Xenon (LUX) detector, and is the new spokesperson for the LZ Dark Matter Experiment, based in the Sanford Underground Research Facility in the former Homestead gold mine in South Dakota.

Peter Shawhan, who was promoted to the rank of Professor, works on the LIGO experiment based in Louisiana and in Washington state. In recent years, LIGO made major news by confirming the existence of gravitational waves and thereby validating Einstein’s theory of relativity. Prof. Shawhan is also the Chair of the American Physical Society’s Division of Gravitational Physics.

Sylvester James “Jim” Gates Jr. has been appointed a College Park Professor. Gates joined the UMD faculty in 1984, and in the ensuing decades became an internationally-known advocate of science education. He is a member of the National Academy of Sciences and a recipient of the National Medal of Science. He is now the Co-Director of the Presidential Scholars Program at Brown University.

Sergio Picozzi, who was promoted to the rank of Senior Lecturer, received his Ph.D. in Physics from Southern Illinois University. Dr. Picozzi had appointments at American, George Washington and Catholic universities before joining UMD in 2012.

David Clarke was promoted to the rank of Assistant Research Scientist. He received his Ph.D. at Johns Hopkins University, and his research focuses on the design, analysis, and manipulation of topological phases of matter for applications in quantum information processing.

Cornelius Griggs was promoted to the rank of Assistant Research Scientist. He received his Ph.D. at the University of Notre Dame, and works on advancing the techniques of superconducting gravity gradiometry and its applications, such as earlier detection of earthquakes.

Greg Jenkins was promoted to the rank of Associate Research Scientist. He received his Ph.D. at the University of Maryland, and studies the magneto-optical studies of Dirac and Weyl semimetals.

Hyunsoo Kim was promoted to the rank of Assistant Research Scientist. Kim received his Ph.D. at Iowa State University, and works in the development and application of very low-temperature instrumentation for the study of the electronic properties of novel materials.

Norbert Linke was promoted to the rank of Assistant Research Scientist. Dr. Linke received his Ph.D. at the University of Oxford, and at UMD was part of the team that realized the first programmable quantum computer based on five Ytterbium ions.

Professor Tom Antonsen has been named a University of Maryland Distinguished University Professor. This designation is the campus’ highest academic honor, reserved for those whose scholarly achievements “have brought distinction to the University of Maryland.”  He was cited for fundamental contributions to the related fields of plasma physics, charged particle beam research, and nonlinear dynamics.

Prof. Antonsen, who received his PhD at Cornell University, joined the University of Maryland in 1984 and currently holds appointments in the Department of Physics, the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering and the Institute for Research in Electronics and Applied Physics (IREAP).  In 2016, he received the John R. Pierce Award for Excellence in Vacuum Electronics “for contributions to the theory of charged particle beam generation and the development of computational design tools for fast and slow wave devices.” He is a fellow of the American Physical Society. 

 Distinguished University Professors in the Department of Physics

Please join us as the University of Maryland and Bowie State University jointly observe a moment of reflection on August 30 at 12:05 pm. Together we will pause in silence for one minute to honor and remember the life of Second Lt. Richard Collins III.

Vladimir Manucharyan has received a 2017 Young Faculty Award from the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA). Prof. Manucharyan's proposal, "Multi-terminal hybrid semiconductor/superconductor junctions", is aimed at developing devices to serve as robust building blocks of a topological quantum computer and act as test beds for topological effects predicted in exotic materials.

Dr. Manucharyan, the Alford Ward Assistant Professor of Physics, received his Ph.D. in 2010 from Yale Univerity and was a Junior Fellow at Harvard University before his 2014 arrival at UMD, where he is a Fellow of the Joint Quantum Institute and a member of the Center for Nanophysics and Advanced Materials. In 2015, he received a Sloan Research Fellowship and NSF CAREER Award. 

The University of Maryland College of Mathematical and Natural Sciences is home to major research efforts in quantum science through the Joint Quantum Institute and the Joint Center for Quantum Information and Computer Science. As part of a new effort focused on quantum technology, the Department of Physics invites applications for a tenure-track faculty position in atomic, molecular and optical physics. The Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering seeks candidates for a similar position. 

Only applications accepted through the links below will be considered:

Physics: https://ejobs.umd.edu/postings/54649

Engineering: https://ejobs.umd.edu/postings/54794

In addition, the Department of Physics' Experimental High Energy Physics group seeks applications for a new position in experimental particle physics: https://ejobs.umd.edu/postings/54846

Professor Emeritus Charles Misner, long an expert in the study of gravity, spent a week this summer at the University of Cambridge as an invited participant in the celebration of Stephen Hawking's 75th birthday.  Prof. Misner's daughter Benedicte, who has known Stephen and Jane Hawking since she was a school girl near their home 50 years ago, joined in the festivities.

At a conference called Gravity2017 at the University of British Columbia in Vancouver, Prof. Misner gave two short invited talks.  One was mostly on the early history as the black hole concept was beginning to gel, and one was on the question of what the Einstein equations might believably tell us about spacetime inside black holes.

The third project was writing (with Kip Thorne) an introduction to the forthcoming republication of their 1973 textbook, Gravitation.  After a long life, unrevised but always in print, this classic work was dropped by a publisher who had acquired it after many publishing mergers and acquisitions and mistakenly only advertised it in their Chemistry catalog.  Princeton University Press then obtained rights to the book (popularly called “MTW”, after its authors Misner, Thorne and John Archibald Wheeler) and will reprint it as a $60 cloth bound volume on October 24.

On October 3, 2017, the Nobel Committee for Physics announced the 2017 laureates for the 2017 Nobel Prize in physics.