- Home
- Welcome
- News
- Events
- Directory
- Research
- Graduate
- Undergraduate
- Alumni
- Community
- Courses
- Job opportunities
- Site Map
Boston University Physics News: 2008
- Female physicists change topic from labs to life
May 05, 2008
Women in Physics is proving the power of the personal narrative. Through a series of biographical seminars held this spring, WIP has made good on its promise to showcase the accomplishments of female scientists and educate the physics community on relevant issues. The talks are by women about women – yet have attracted and engaged both men and women. And in an environment where only 8 percent of faculty and 13 percent of graduate students are female, that means WIP has turned up the volume on a voice that has been relatively quiet.
Read the full story here.
- Slices of electromagnetism served up in class
May 01, 2008
As a delectable means to celebrate the end of the semester, students in Professor So-Young Pi’s Electromagnetic Field and Waves course brought in a special-edition cake, adorned with Maxwell’s Equations.
The creation, designed by Rosie’s Bakery, was filled with strawberries and cream. Professor Pi said she found it delicious.
. - Professor Redner ponders the effects of zealots and vacillators
March 31, 2008
What do air particles and voters have in common? According to Professor Sid Redner, they’re a lot more alike than you’d think.
As a statistical physicist, Redner applies the same physical principles used to study interacting particles to social situations, and in turn hopes to model large-scale social phenomena, such as voting behavior. “The human world provides such a rich laboratory that I can see statistical physics almost everywhere that I look.”
You can read more about Professor Redner’s research in his recent interview with physicsworld.com.
- Professor Averitt receives DARPA Young Faculty Award
March 20, 2008
Professor Richard Averitt has received a DARPA Young Faculty Award for his proposal “Metamaterial Enhanced MEMS for Terahertz Technology”. The Young Faculty Award program is designed to seek out ideas from non-tenured faculty with an emphasis on ideas that are innovative, speculative, and high-risk. DARPA’s Microsystems Technology Office sponsors the program. Read more about this award here.
- Elementary education bolstered by green science
March 20, 2008
“The United States is losing its competitive edge in science and engineering, one bored kid at a time.”
A recent article in BU Today describes this dilemma, and the ways in which several BU professors are trying to change this. They are developing hands-on programs that will help elementary school teachers more effectively approach math and science in the classroom.
Professors Bennett Goldberg and Andrew Duffy, as well as other members of the Boston University community, are featured.
- Education Brought to You by Bruce Willis and Will Smith
March 17, 2008
In PY103, “Cinema Physica,” Hollywood is a teaching tool. Professor Andy Cohen points to action films to demonstrate the possibilities of physics, while bringing the excitement of science to students outside the field.
“When you do an experiment, you don’t know what the answer is going to be,” he says. “And because we don’t know whether the movies actually obey the laws of physics, they are our experiments. They are our laboratories.”
To find out more, and catch a video that takes you inside the classroom, click here.
- GIMS Travel Grant awarded to graduate student Utku Kemiktarak
March 14, 2008
Utku Kemiktarak, graduate student and recent author of a Nature-published paper, won a travel grant from the APS Topical Group on Instrument and Measurement Science.
GIMS awarded travel grants of up to $800 each to students as the first author of contributed papers in sessions sponsored by GIMS at the March Meeting. Applicants were chosen on the basis of the quality of their work as evidenced by the abstract of the paper, a letter of support from their thesis advisor and the travel distances.
- Scientific Instrument Facility Brings Concepts to Completion
March 13, 2008
BU’s Scientific Instrument Facility (SIF), a 10,500-square-foot shop in the basement of the Physics Research Building, can build it all.
The Machine Shop opened its doors to the BU community in 1987, using its state-of-the-art equipment to fill a wide variety of requests. Its small staff develops intricate machinery for Physics, the School of Management and beyond. One example? A soap canister that plays music every time the dispenser is pumped.
To find out more about SIF, check out this article from BU Today.
- Professor El-Batanouny Wins Jefferson Fellowship
March 03, 2008
Professor Michael El-Batanouny has been selected as a 2008-2009 Jefferson Science Fellow at the U.S. State Department.
This select fellowship program was established in 2003 as an initiative of the Science and Technology Adviser to the Secretary of State to expand on scientific expertise within the Department.
Fellows work full-time for one year in the State Department or the U.S. Agency for International Development, after which they remain available to the Department as consultants as they return to their academic careers. The program is centered on the notion that “science and technology make fundamental contributions to the security, economic, health, and cultural foundations of modern societies, and are integral to the development and implementation of foreign policy.”
To learn more, click here.
- Professor Redner Among APS Outstanding Referees
February 29, 2008
Professor Sid Redner was recently named an Outstanding Referee of the American Physical Society. The APS award program is in its first year, aiming to applaud the efforts of a small number of their 42,000 referees annually.
The editors of the APS journals are honoring Redner and others whose “reports and advice have helped to advance and diffuse the knowledge of physics, while creating a resource that is invaluable to authors, researchers, students, and readers.”
- Oliver Celli: newborn physicist.
February 26, 2008
His name is Oliver and he was born Friday, January 25th weighing 8 lbs 8 oz. Father Jon sends his best to everyone in the department!
- Castro Neto Group Brings 'Tuneability' to Semiconductor
January 24, 2008
For the past several years, the one-atom-thick carbon material known as graphene has intrigued physicists. Its size, strength and conductivity make it a possible semiconductor alternative to silicon in modern technology.
An important property of a semiconductor is its energy gap, which can turn electrical currents on and off when receiving external voltage. Were this gap “tuneable,” the resulting semiconductor could bring with it new electronic devices.
Professor Antonio Castro Neto, as part of an international team, has created the first semiconductor with “tuneability.” In other words, the energy gap between the valence and conduction bands of the semiconductor’s graphene bilayer can be altered with external voltage. This development has possible applications in a variety of fields including laser technology.
Physicsworld.com recently published an article on Castro Neto’s research. To read it, click here.
If you do not have an IOP account, you can view the article here.
- Physics Today book review authored by Professor Stanley
January 24, 2008
Professor Gene Stanley reviewed “Random Processes in Physics and Finance” (M. Lax, W. Cai, M. Xu) in Physics Today:
“The term ‘econophysics’ was introduced just 14 years ago, but the tradition of physicists being fascinated by random processes in finance has a history much older than that. In fact, both Nicolaus Copernicus and Isaac Newton invested considerable intellectual energy in attempting to understand the economic problems of their day.”
To read the full review, click here.
- Professor Smith Named Fellow of American Vacuum Society
January 24, 2008
Professor Kevin Smith has been named a 2007 fellow of the American Vacuum Society. The honor recognizes members who have made scientific and technical contributions to areas of interest to AVS.
The citation read: “For pioneering studies of the band structure of complex materials using angle-resolved photoemission spectroscopy and high resolution x-ray emission and absorption spectroscopies.”
To read more about AVS awards, click here.
- Professor Narain Elected APS Fellow
January 17, 2008
Meenakshi Narain, an adjunct associate professor, was elected as an American Physical Society fellow in the division of particles and fields last week. Professor Narain was chosen for her work in the measurement of the properties of the top quark.
“We congratulate her,” said Dmitri Denisov, DZero co-spokesman. “We feel that this is also a success story for DZero, for the Tevatron and for Fermilab.”
About her work, Narain said, “It is nice to finish something I started a decade and a half ago, and to continue with that knowledge at the LHC.”
To read more about the honor, click here.
- Youth Research Internship Program Now in 30th Year
January 15, 2008
The BU Research Internship Program in Science and Engineering, co-founded by Professor Emeritus George Zimmerman, has a 30-year history of immersing high school students in the world of scientific research.
Featured in the BU Metropolitan College winter newsletter, the program enlists faculty mentors to help students explore their scientific interests and prepare for the rigor of college-level research.
“Our students find out that science is a relatively disorganized search for truth,” Zimmerman said. “Very often you don’t discover what you set out to discover.”
To read more about the program, including how a high school junior built a CAT-scanning robot out of Legos, click here.
- 'Nature' Cover Features Alum Castelnovo
January 07, 2008
The search for signatures of magnetic monopoles in the cosmos has been a subject of intense work within the Physics community. Claudio Castelnovo, a recent BU Physics graduate and now a postdoc at Oxford, has proposed an alternative strategy to finding magnetic monopoles
in nature: They can be realized not as elementary but rather as emergent particles, i.e., as manifestations of the correlations present in a strongly interacting many-body system.His results appeared in this week’s issue of Nature and are highlighted on the cover of the journal.
