News

Dr. Roberto Ramos, Assistant Professor of Physics, presented an invited talk entitled "Quantum-to-Classical Crossover in a Conventional Josephson Junction and New Results from MgB2 Junctions" at Northrup-Grumman Corporation, Baltimore, MD, November 12, 2009.

Dr. Roberto Ramos, Assistant Professor, presented an invited lecture entitled "Really Cool Science: Artificial Atoms Cooled to Near Absolute Zero Temperatures" at the Science Career event, Chestnut Hill College, Philadelphia, October 19, 2009.

Dr. Jelena Maricic, Assistant Professor, received $300,000 grant award from the U.S. Department of Energy, for her research on "Enhancing the Precision of Low Energy Neutrino Experiments with Novel Calibration Technique".

Dr. Charles Lane, Professor, received $310,000 grant award from the U.S. Department of Energy, for his research on "Physics at KamLAND and Double Chooz".

Dr. Brigita Urbanc, Associate Professor, presented an invited colloquium on "Computational Studies of Beta Amyloid-protein Assembly Relevant to Alzheimer's Disease" in the Physics Department, University of Delaware on Wednesday, October 7, 2009.

Dr. David Goldberg, associate professor, and Gordon Richards, assistant professor, were awarded $149,998 grant from the National Science Foundation for their project “Where is the Information in Cluster Lensing?”. This is a collaborative project with the Tohoku University in Japan.

Dr. David Goldberg, associate professor, presented “Telescopes from Galileo to the Large Synoptic Survey Telescope (LSST)” during the CoAS Alumni Event at the Franklin Institute, August 26, 2009.

Dr. Roberto Ramos, Assistant Professor, presented “Superconducting Artificial Atoms for Quantum Computing” at a Physics colloquium, Temple University, Philadelphia, September 14, 2009.

Tatjana Miletic successfully defended her PhD thesis "Search for the Disappearance of a Neutron with KamLAND", August 26, 2009. CONGRATULATIONS Tanya!

Brigita Urbanc, Ph.D, Associate Professor of Physics, presented an invited talk "Protein structure-toxicity relationship relevant to Alzheimer's disease: Discrete molecular dynamics study" in the session "Molecular Basis of Protein Aggregation and Amyloid Formation" at the 2009 American Chemical Society Meeting, Washington DC, August 16-20, 2009.

Dr. Goldberg has written an article published in Slate entitled "Time-Traveling for Dummies: a physicist looks at The Time Traveler's Wife."

Dr. Roberto Ramos, assistant professor of physics, was invited to give a special oral presentation on "Quantum States in Graphene-based Josephson Junctions" at the 2009 International Quantum Fluids and Symposium Conference at Northwestern University, Evanston, IL, August 5-11, 2009.

15^th Kaczmarczik Lecture: 2004 Nobel Laureate Dr. David J. Gross will be presenting "The Coming Revolutions in Fundamental Physics". The event will be held on March 4, 2010.

Dr. Gordon Richards, presented the invited talk "The Build-up of Quasars" at "Harvesting the Desert: The Universe between Redshift 1 and 3" conference, Marseille, France, June 29-July 3, 2009.

Erica Caden, graduate student of physics, spent two months in France installing PhotoMultiplier Tubes (PMTs) for the Double Chooz experiment. Her responsibilities included transporting PMTs down a 0.25 tunnel, testing them to ensure proper functionality and performance, attaching the correct mounting legs, and attaching the PMT cables to the electrical splitter boxes. The Double Chooz experiment, located in the French Ardennes, will allow a precise measurement of neutrino oscillations. The Double Chooz collaboration is composed of institutions from Brazil, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, Russia, United Kingdom and USA. The experiment should turn on in April 2010.

Dr. Roberto Ramos presented "Quantum Metastable States in Superconducting Graphene Josephson Junction Devices", "Berry's Phase in the Josephson Phase Qubit" and "Multiple Resonators Coupling Josephson Junction Qubits as a Multi-Channel Bus" at the 2009 International Superconductive Electronics Conference in Fukuoka, Japan, June 16-19, 2009.

Mikhail Zakharov successfully defended his PhD thesis "AMicrorheological Study of Sickle Hemoglobin Polymerization", June 11,2009. CONGRATULATIONS MIKHAIL!

Dr. Gordon Richards, Assistant Professor of Physics has being selected as the 2008-09 recipient of the Antelo Devereux Award for Young Faculty. Congratulations Gordon!

Assistant Professor Jelena Maricic has been selected to receive an Outstanding Junior Investigator Award in High Energy Physics. The award, given by the US Department of Energy's Office of High Energy Physics, is designed to identify exceptionally talented new high-energy physicists early in their careers, and to assist and facilitate the development of their research programs. Congratulations Jelena!

Dr. Gordon Richards, Assistant Professor of Physics, received $20,000 grant award for his project "SERVS: The Spitzer Extragalactic Representative Volume Survey" from the Jet Propulsion Laboratory.

Dr. Roberto Ramos, Assistant Professor of Physics, two graduate and two undergraduate physics students represented Drexel's Low Temperature Quantum Device Group at the 2009 March meeting of the American Physical Society last March 16-20 in Pittsburgh, PA. The group presented 4 talks and two research posters. Graduate students Zechariah Thrailkill and Joseph Lambert presented "Three and Four Coupled Josephson Junction Phase Qubits" and "Investigating the quantum behavior of a graphene-based Josephson Junction", respectively, while senior undergraduate students Anthony Tyler and Alyssa Wilson presented "Berry's Phase of a Current-Biased Josephson Junction" and "Undergraduate Research with Josephson Qubits: From Fabrication to Spectroscopy", respectively. Two posters, "Higher Energy Levels in Qubit Networks" and "Lasing in Superconducting Qubits" were also presented.

Dr. Gordon Richards, assistant professor of physics, was quoted in a February 26, 2009 ScienceDaily.com article about the discovery of dust-like particles in outer space.

Dr. Roberto Ramos, assistant professor, co-wrote the poster "Berry's Phase in a Superconducting Josephson Phase Qubit" and Anthony Tyler, undergraduate physics student, presented a contributed talk at the 2009 American Association of Physics Teachers on February 12-16 at Chicago, IL. Dr. Ramos, also presented the posters "Contemporary Physics Experiments for a Redesigned Physics Curriculum" and "Teaching How Things Work Using Clickers, Demonstrations and Videos".

Our Society of Physics Students chapter was selected as one of the recipients of the 2009 Sigma Pi Sigma Chapter Project Awards. These annual awards recognize chapter efforts to raise public awareness of the honor society, build Sigma Pi Sigma's student/alumni community, and promote inter-chapter activities.

For third year in a row, the Drexel University chapter of the Society of Physics Students has received the Marsh W. White Outreach Award for the proposal submitted by Amanda White and Alyssa Wilson. The Marsh W. White Awards are made to Society of Physics Students Chapters "to support projects designed to promote interest in physics among students and the general public." The Drexel University Society of Physics chapter proposed a mentorship program with a local middle school. The purpose of the program is to expose students to new issues in physics and the sciences in general as well as principles of physics that the students would not normally encounter until much later in their academic careers. See the article at the SPS website.

Alyssa Wilson has been selected as a Gates-Cambridge Scholar. The Gates Cabridge Scholarships are awarded on the basis of the candidate's academic excellence, a good fit between the Scholar and the University of Cambridge, evidence of leadership potential and a commitment to improving the lives of others. This award will enable Alyssa to attend Cambridge for her PhD in Physics.

There were 37 Gates-Cambridge Scholars selected this year, from a pool of 752 candidates. The list of this year's Scholars can be found at the Gates Scholarship website.

Dr. Som Tyagi presented an invited talk "Eighty Years of Raman Spectroscopy - An Amazing Journey from Physics to Bio-pharmaceuticals" at the 60th Indian Pharmaceutical Congress, 2008, held in New Delhi, India from December 12- 14, 2008.

Paul Kaczmarczik, Professor Emeritus of Physics, passed away on Tuesday, January 20, 2009. Prof. Kaczmarczik will be remembered fondly and missed by the Drexel community. Prof. Kaczmarczik's academic career began in the Department of Physics in 1953. A key player in building the Department of Physics and Atmospheric Science, he made important contributions to teaching at Drexel during his many years of service. He received the Christian R. and Mary F. Lindback Award for Excellence in Teaching in 1968 and was named the Stanley J. Gwiazda Professor in 1992. He became professor emeritus in 1989. The highly successful Kaczmarczik Lecture Series was established in 1995 in his honor. A memorial service will be held on campus at a later date.

Donna Yosmanovich, PhD candidate, received the 2009 Robert E. Davies Student Travel Award from the Philadelphia chapter of American Women in Science (AWIS-Phl) to attend the 2009 Biophysical meeting in Boston, Massachusetts, Feb 28 - March 4, 2009. Donna will be presenting the poster: "Ligand Binding and Sickle Hemoglobin Polymerization Kinetics: Implication for Therapies" at the Protein Assembly session.

Dr. Jelena Maricic, presented an invited talk on "Small Neutrinos for Big Discoveries" at Kansas State University, Manhattan, Kansas, on January 22, 2009.

Dr. Roberto Ramos, Assistant Professor of Physics presented a colloquium entitled "Superconductor-based Artificial Atoms for Quantum Computing" to the Departments of Mathematics / Physics / Statistics and Bioinformatics / Computer Science at the University of the Sciences in Philadelphia, on Nov. 11, 2008.

Dr. Shyamalendu Bose has co-edited a book entitled "Mesoscopic, Nanoscopic and Macroscopic Systems", which has been published by the American Institute of Physics in October 2008. This book is based on the papers presented at the international Workshop on Mesoscopic, Nanoscopic and Macroscopic Materials he co-organized in Bhubaneswar, India during January 2-4, 2008.

Dr. Michael Vogeley, associate professor of Physics, presented an invited review "Cosmic Voids and Void Galaxies" at the 3rd KIAS Workshop on Cosmology and Structure Formation, Seoul, Korea (October 27-28). He presented an invited review "Cosmology Results from the Sloan Digital Sky Survey" at the Cosmology and Particle Astrophysics 2008 meeting in Pohang, Korea (October 28-November 1).

Dr. Brigita Urbanc, was selected as a member of the Advisory Board of the Alzheimer Research Forum. Every year, a group of Alzheimer Disease researchers agree to contribute their time and energies to reviewing the literature, alerting readers about hot topics, and in so many other ways providing guidance on how Alzforum can deliver value to the community.

Congratulations to Timothy Jones and John Parejko, winners of the 2008 Graduate Student Research and Service Award.

Congratulations to Travis Hoppe, winner of the 2008 Junior Graduate Student Research Award.

Congratulations to Edward Damon, winner of the 2008 First Year Graduate Student Award.

Miss Sanghamitra Deb, graduate student in physics, will speak at the conference "Ozlenz 2008: Dark Matter, Dark Energy, and Dark Ages with Gravitational Lensing" to be held in Sidney Australia from 29th September-3rd October 2008. Miss Deb will present "Reconstruction of Cluster Masses using Particle Based Lensing(PBL)". Miss Deb has received a Drexel "International Travel Award" to support her participation in this conference.

Dr. Roberto Ramos will present "Energies and Entanglement in Multiply-coupled Phase Qubits" at the 25th International Conference on Low Temperature Physics to be held in Amsterdam, The Netherlands on Aug. 6-13, 2008. Dr. Ramos received a "Faculty International Travel Award" to support his participation. On the occasion of the 100th year anniversary of the discovery of liquid helium, he will visit the Kamerlingh Onnes Lab, birthplace of liquid helium and superconductivity.

Dr. Gordon Richards was invited to speak at the workshop "Classification and Discovery in Large Astronomical Surveys" to be held in Ringberg Castle, Germany from 14-17 October 2008. Dr. Richards will present "Detection of QSOs and the problems of defining the QSO luminosity function". Dr. Richards has received a Drexel "International Travel Award" to support his participation in this conference.

Welcome New Faculty Members: Dr. Brigita Urbanc and Dr. Luis Cruz Cruz have joined our department as Tenure Track Associate Professors.

Dr. Brigita Urbanc completed her Ph.D. study on the Landau theory of ferroelectric liquid crystals at the J. Stefan Institute and University in Ljubljana, Slovenia. From 1994 to 2008 she worked at Boston University on several computational physics topics: self-organized criticality, application of statistical physics methods to Alzheimer's disease and aging. Her current research interests are (a) development and application of statistical physics methods to neuroscience of Alzheimer's disease and normal aging; and (b) application of discrete molecular dynamics simulations to study folding and aggregation of proteins associated with disorders, such as Alzheimer's amyloid beta protein and Parkinson's alpha-synuclein, as well as other proteins, such as mucin.

Dr. Luis Cruz Cruz, received his PhD at MIT. His research interests are the study of: (a) the loss of spatial organization of neurons in the aged brain using density maps, (b) the folding of the Alzheimer amyloid beta protein using all-atom molecular dynamics, (c) growth of plaques in Alzheimer's disease using cellular automata models, and (d) fluid flow through porous media using lattice models.

Dr. Jelena Maricic, Assistant Professor of Physics is the recipient of the 2008 Antelo Devereux Award for Young Faculty. Congratulations!

Weijun Weng has successfully defended his PhD thesis entitled "Universal Metastability of Sickle Hemoglobin Polymerization" in May 2008. CONGRATULATIONS WEIJUN!

Dr. Roberto Ramos, Assistant Professor of Physics is the recipient of the 2008 Allen Rothwarf Award for Teaching Excellence. Congratulations!

Dr. Frank Ferrone will speak at a Symposium in Honor of William A. Eaton "New Challenges in Protein Science" to be held in Parma, Italy, June 4-6, 2008. Dr. Ferrone will present "Sickle hemoglobin polymerization: Lessons for protein association diseases". Dr. Ferrone has been selected to receive a Drexel "International Travel Award" to support his participation in this conference.

Physics Junior Alyssa Wilson achieved national distinction as a recipient of the prestigious Barry M. Goldwater Scholarship. Alyssa was among 321 sophomores and juniors who were recognized for success in math and sciences, chosen from among 1,035 nominees for the Goldwater Scholarship and Excellence in Education Foundation. Based on Alyssa's nomination as a Senior Scholar, she will receive $7,500 (maximum award) toward her education. This Scholarship Program was designed to foster and encourage outstanding students to pursue careers in the fields of mathematics, the natural sciences, and engineering. The Goldwater Scholarship is the premier undergraduate award of its type in these fields. CONGRATULATIONS ALYSSA!!

Erica Caden, Ph.D. candidate in physics has been invited to participate in the "58th Meeting of Nobel Laureates." The Lindau Nobel Laureate Meetings provide a globally recognized forum for the exchange of knowledge between Nobel Laureates and young researchers. These young researchers belong to the scientific elite of their respective countries, and have passed a multi-stage international selection procedure. Erica passed the final selection from this pool of Best Talents and she is one of the 500 best applicants to receive an invitation (more than 20,000 young researchers apply to attend each Meeting). The meeting will be held in Lindau Germany, on Lake Constance from June 29 through July 4, 2008. CONGRATULATIONS ERICA!!

CoAS Research Day: Congratulations Jeff Blomquist for the award! Please click here for pictures of the event.

The Department of Physics mourns the passing of Dr. Maria Rotter, Research Assistant Professor. She passed away unexpectedly on April 6, 2008. Maria was a valuable member of the Biophysics research team. She will fondly be remembered by her warm smile, wisdom, and caring nature.

David Miller has successfully defended his PhD thesis entitled "Time Adaptive Integration of Reaction-Diffusion Systems" in March 2008. CONGRATULATIONS DAVE!

Professor Robert Gilmore has published a new book, "Lie groups, Physics, and Geometry: An Introduction for Physicists, Engineers and Chemists", (Cambridge University Press, January 2008).

Dr. Robert Gilmore received the "Outstanding Referee" award from the American Physical Society. This is a highly selective award that recognizes scientists who have been exceptionally helpful in assessing manuscripts for publication in the APS journals. The selection of "Outstanding Referees" was made based on two decades of database records on over 50,000 referees (some no longer in active service) who have been called upon to review manuscripts, of which 33,000 were submitted in 2007. Most of the referees chosen in this inaugural year have given dedicated service for many years. In this first year of the program the lifetime of work contributed by a referee was emphasized. In future years, the focus will be on the more recent work of referees.

For the second year in a row, the Drexel University chapter of the Society of Physics Students has received the Marsh W. White Outreach Award for the proposal submitted by Vede Ramdass and William Stephenson. The Marsh W. White Awards are made to Society of Physics Students Chapters "to support projects designed to promote interest in physics among students and the general public." The Drexel SPS have been involved in several outreach activities to promote physics awareness to high school students and the community.

Ryan McKeown, undergraduate student of physics, received the Sigma Xi Committee on Grants-in-Aid of Research grant award for his Senior Project work on "Can muon spallation and a lead target be used to create a fast neutron source?" under the direction of Dr. Charles Lane. The Sigma Xi Grant-in-Aid of Research program has a highly competitive application process and only approximately 20% of applicants receive any level of funding.

John Parejko, graduate student in physics, won Honorable Mention for best student poster at the American Astronomical Society meeting in Austin, Texas for his work on "Soft X-ray Properties of Ordinary SDSS Galaxies" in collaboration with Michael Vogeley, associate professor of physics, and colleagues.

Prof. Jelena Maricic, Assistant Professor of Physics has been awarded a $600,000 CAREER Grant from the National Science Foundation for her project entitled "Enhancing the Precision of the Double Chooz Experiment by Calibration with an Articulated Robotic Arm". NSF offers these highly-competitive grants "in support of the early career development of those teacher-scholars who most effectively integrate research and education within the context of the mission of their organization."

Professor Gordon Richards received the prestigious 2007 Sloan Research Fellowship Award. This is an extraordinarily competitive award which recognizes outstanding young scientists. The Sloan Research Fellowships are intended to enhance the careers of the very best young faculty members in specified fields of science. Dr. Richard was 1 of only 3 to receive this award in astrophysics; 22 awards were given in Physics.