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News and Events
Archive of older News and Events.
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Bruce Carney elected Chair of AURA Board
Astronomy professor Bruce Carney has been elected Chair of the
Board of Directors of
AURA (Association of Universities for Research in Astronomy), which
manages the Hubble Space Telescope and three national ground-based
observatories (NOAO, NSO, and Gemini). He was also elected Chair of the
Member Representatives group that elects the Board of Directors and
recommends to the board members of the management councils that oversee
the observatories. At UNC, Prof. Carney also serves as Senior Associate
Dean for the Natural Sciences and Mathematics in the College of Arts &
Sciences.
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Two grad students win dissertation fellowships
Graduate student Leslie Prochaska has been awarded the Linda
Dykstra Science Dissertation Fellowship by the Graduate School and made a
member of the Royster Society of Fellows, an award recognizing her
"exceptional scholarship, leadership abilities, and capability for
contributing to the Society." The Fellows meet regularly with senior
faculty for interdisciplinary academic enrichment, and professional and
leadership development. They also act as ambassadors for graduate
education within and beyond the University. Leslie is a student of Jim
Rose.
Brian Collins has been awarded a Dissertation Completion Fellowship by the
Graduate School, based upon the quality of the research he is conducting
and the progress he has made toward completion of his degree. Brian is a
student of Frank Tsui.
The Department of Physics & Astronomy is very proud of these outstanding
students, and congratulates them on their achievements.
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Hugon Karwowski wins Johnston Teaching Excellence Award
Prof. Hugon Karwowski has received a 2008 Johnston Award for
Teaching Excellence. Nominations for this award come from Johnston
Scholars, recipients of UNC-Chapel Hill's premier need-based scholarships.
Every year approximately 70 entering freshmen are chosen to be Johnston
Scholars, based on outstanding high school records and leadership
potential. The citation for Prof. Karwowski's award reads as follows:
Professor Karwowski's devotion to teaching undergraduates can best be
described as "fanatical." Despite a distinguished career as a nuclear
physicist, he is best known by students as an exemplary professor,
consistently described as "considerate," "extremely approachable," "always
available," "humorous," "bright," and even "crazy."
Questions are "expected, not encouraged" in Dr. Karwowski's courses. He
teaches by helping students think through ideas, rather than simply
lecturing. He eschews examples from the textbook. Instead, he develops
his own clever means of illustrating physics concepts which are "memorable
as well as pedagogically sound," using examples which include beavers,
toys, sleds, and other scenarios rarely found in an introductory physics
course.
One specific example quoted by a former student: "He challenged us
regularly in class to tackle design problems that integrated all our
undergraduate knowledge and applied it to creating a feasible solution.
One such problem that I particularly remember was posed to us on
Valentine's Day. He challenged us to design a system that could monitor
the heart rate and the amount of blood drips per minute of an individual
whose heart was pierced by Cupid's arrow. The problem initially seemed to
have no relevance with electronics, but once our class began to think and
come up with new ideas, we were able to apply our electronics knowledge to
come up with an innovative solution. Several problems like these not only
made the materials learnt in class digestible, but also helped me retain
the information and observe how the classroom knowledge can be applied in
practice."
Dr. Karwowski is extremely dedicated to helping students succeed outside of
class as well, spending "hours upon hours with students in office hours and
with review sessions," sending multiple e-mails per day, and offering
advice on everything from grad schools to building a distortion-free
speaker system. Even in his larger classes, he knows everyone's name and
regularly greets students from previous semesters. According to one
student, "all 50 people [in his class] would vouch for his being
approachable."
He is widely known for working nights and weekends; one student sent him an
e-mail Friday night, and in his prompt response, he offered an impromptu
help session that Saturday evening. According to the chair of the Physics
and Astronomy Department, "he never says he has something more important to
do than help a student understand a physics concept...This is contagious!"
Professor Karwowski's tremendous efforts to impart his passion for physics
and to ensure students learn clearly set him apart among faculty. As one
interviewed student said: "He is far and away the best professor I have
ever had at Carolina...Make sure he wins an award!"
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Three graduate students from the nuclear group to give talks at APS Spring Meeting
Three graduate students from the nuclear physics group will give talks at the APS Spring meeting in St. Louis in April. Padraic Finnerty will talk on "Systematic study of cosmogenic activation with low background Ge spectroscopy at the Kimballton Underground Research Facility", Samantah Hammond will present her work on "Search for dipole states in 235,238U" and Chris Angell will talk on "Gamma strength function for p-process nucleosynthesis calculations".
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UNC graduate Rachel Rosen wins Graduate Dean's Distinguished Dissertation Award
Rachel Rosen, who recently completed her PhD under the supervision of Prof. Chris Clemens, has received the 2008 Graduate Dean's Distinguished Dissertation Award for Mathematical and Physical Sciences and Engineering. Recipients of this award, which was recently established by the UNC Graduate School, are selected for their originality, scholarly excellence, methodological sophistication and significant contribution to the discipline. In order to recognize timely completion of doctoral training, preference is given to candidates who complete their doctoral training in a timely manner (i.e., 6 years or less in most disciplines). The title of Dr. Rosen's dissertation is "A Non-radial Oscillation Model for Radio Pulsars." We congratulate her on her significant achievement.
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Six physics majors inducted into Phi Beta Kappa
Six physics majors were inducted into the Phi Beta Kappa
national academic honor society in March 2008. Only juniors and seniors
who have at least a 3.85 grade point average are eligible for membership.
Nationally less than 1% of college seniors are invited to join. The
picture shows (left to right) Sheel Shah, Joshua Schwartz, Alan Liu,
Jonathan Toledo, and Alex Mellnik. Not shown is Nicholas Cook, who is
studying abroad at Oxford University this year. We are very proud of these
outstanding young physicists!
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Sean Washburn named Outstanding Referee
Professor Sean Washburn has been named an Outstanding Referee by
the American Physical Society (APS), one of only 534 of the 42,000 active
referees for the physics journals published by the APS. This is the first
year of this very selective award, and the physicists chosen are truly
exceptional in their contributions to the physics community by their hard
work and careful attention to the peer review process. The efforts of the
honorees in peer review not only keep the standards of the journals at a
high level, but in many cases also help authors to improve the quality and
readability of their articles-even those that are not published by APS.
The basis for choosing the honorees was the quality, number and timeliness
of their reports. The names of this year's honorees are listed at
http://publish.aps.org/OutstandingReferees, and will be printed in each APS
journal. Prof. Washburn is to be congratulated and thanked for his
outstanding service to the physics community.
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Graduate student Brian Collins wins award at conference
Graduate student Brian Collins has been selected as the
Outstanding Student Paper Award winner for the best poster presentation at
the 24th North American Conference on Molecular Beam Epitaxy (NAMBE). His
paper was entitled "Effects of complementary doping on structure and
magnetism of Co and Mn co-doped Ge magnetic semiconductor epitaxial films"
with Liang He and Frank Tsui (Physics and Astronomy) as co-authors. The
award includes a plaque and a check of $500 presented at this year's
conference banquet on September 25 in Albuquerque, New Mexico. Frank Tsui
is Brian's advisor. For more information about the award, see
http://nambe07.chtm.unm.edu/awards.html.
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Graduate student Guang Yang wins Radiological Society prize
Guang Yang, a physics graduate student working under the supervision of
Prof. Otto Zhou, has won the RSNA Trainee Research Prize from the
Radiological Society of North America (RSNA) at its 2007 meeting. This
meeting is the world's largest professional meeting on medical science and
technology. It hosts more than 60,000 attendees from around the world every
year. The RSNA Trainee Research Prizes are given for the best paper or
poster in each subspecialty presented by a resident/physics trainee, fellow
or medical student at the RSNA meeting. The Research Trainee Prize consists
of $1000 and a certificate.
Guang Yang' paper, "Novel Gantry-free Digital Breast Tomosynthesis (DBT)
System Using a Stationary Multibeam Field Emission X-ray Source Array Based
on Carbon Nanotubes," describes an interdisciplinary study in which the
authors developed a novel multibeam field emission x-ray source array based
on carbon nanotubes, and built a digital breast tomosynthesis system
(Argus) for breast imaging. Argus is the first stationary tomosynthesis
system for clinical diagnostic imaging. Compared to its clinical
counterparts, the Argus system can provide diagnostic images with similar
quality, but the total imaging time is reduced by factor of 10 to 100. This
research result shows great potential for clinical applications.
The research was supported by the National Cancer Institute and UNC's
Lineberger Comprehensive Cancer Center.
The co-authors of this paper are: Guang Yang, Ramya Rajama, Guohua Cao,
Shabana Sultana, David Lalush, Jianping Lu, and Otto Zhou.
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Physics department alum serves as technical expert to North Korea disarmament negotiations
Kevin Veal, who received his PhD from our department in 1998 (Profs.
Ludwig and Karwowski were his advisors), has worked at Los Alamos National
Laboratory since 1999. He currently serves as the leading US DOE technical
expert to the Six-Party talks seeking an end to North Korea's nuclear
weapons program. The six parties, which also include North Korea, China,
South Korea, Russia, and Japan, have held sporadic talks over the past four
years aimed at disabling the North's nuclear facilities. Last week the
US-led delegation of nuclear experts conducted a site survey of North
Korea's Yongbyon nuclear facility and engaged in technical discussions on
the scope and feasibility for disablement actions there. Kevin can be seen
at the left in the picture accompanying Sung Kim, the chief Korea expert
for the U.S. State Department. The photo is courtesy of China's Xinhua news agency.
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Three physics students receive research and funding from the Office of Undergraduate Research
Three physics majors received funding from the Office of Undergraduate Research to support their research. Two of these received travel awards to present their research results at conferences. Lauren Hartle, who is working with Prof. Richard Superfine on "Electrospun Substrates for Cell Growth," will present her work at the 2007 ACC Meeting of the Minds at UVA. Nora Tramm, a student of Prof. Paul Tiesinga working on "Interneuron Diversity" attended the Neuroscience Conference 2006 in Atlanta GA and reported on her research. Shibani Dogra, who is working with Prof. Darin Knapp in the Dept. of Psychiatry, received research support for his study of "Ethanol and Cytokines effect on brain function and behavior."
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Physics department alum becomes Division Director at NASA
Jon A. Morse, who received his Ph.D. in astrophysics from our department
in 1992, has been selected as director of the Astrophysics Division of
NASA's Science Mission Directorate, effective April 2.
Morse's career to date spans more than 15 years in the academic, private
and federal arenas, including a recent 1-year assignment to the Office of
Science and Technology Policy in the Executive Office of the President. He
was senior astrophysicist in the Laboratory for Observational Cosmology at
NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center, Greenbelt, Md., arriving in 2005 from
the Arizona State University where he had been an Associate Professor in
the Department of Physics and Astronomy. He has extensive science,
technical and program management experience, and has authored or
co-authored over 60 publications and dozens of scientific and technical
white papers and conference proceedings.
NASA's Astrophysics Division coordinates the space missions and related
research to study the origin and evolution of planets, stars and galaxies,
including such exotic phenomena as exploding supernovae, neutron stars and
black holes. With its $1.5B annual budget, the Division's work increases
our understanding of the nature of the universe and the fundamental laws of
space, time, and energy.
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Archive of older News and Events.
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