Month: August 2024

UConn Celebrates National Academies Members

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Nora Berrah, Board of Trustees Distinguished Professor of Physics, speaking at the UConn National Academy of Sciences Celebration at UConn School of Law on Aug. 27, 2024. (Sean Flynn/UConn Photo)

On August 27, 2024, scholars, trustees, and friends of UConn gathered at the University of Connecticut School of Law to honor members of the university community elected to the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine. Established by an Act of Congress in 1863, the National Academy of Sciences was followed by the National Academy of Engineering in 1964 and the National Academy of Medicine in 1970, all under the same congressional charter. Collectively, they are known as the National Academies.

“Few honors can compare with election to a National Academy. It is a recognition by peers and the Academy itself of outstanding achievements in research and scholarship,” President Radenka Maric said at the celebration. Six UConn faculty members are elected members of the National Academies, with the most recent being Professor of Physics Nora Berrah, whose election was announced in May 2024.

For more information about the event, see the UConn Today article.

Department Head greeting

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Dear Friends of UConn Physics,

Last year, I wrote to you as a new Interim Head of Physics and only barely a month into my appointment. During the past year, we conducted a search for a permanent head and I was selected. For this, I am very grateful for the trust and support I received from the department. The past year has been a bit of a rollercoaster: on the one hand, the complex budget situation has preoccupied the department heads and upper administration and student protests sparked discussions about free speech and activism on campus. On the other hand, the Physics Department had another excellent year in terms of research, teaching, and outreach and I had the pleasure of meeting several of our generous donors.

The most notable achievements of the past year were the election of Prof. Nora Berrah to the National Academy of Sciences, one of the highest honors in science, and her appointment as a UConn Board of Trustees Distinguished Professor, the highest honor at UConn. These will be celebrated at a special Edward Pollack Distinguished Lecture, on October 14, 2024, given by a longtime friend and colleague of Nora’s, Prof. Philip Bucksbaum, himself a member of the National Academy of Sciences and the Marguerite Blake Wilbur Professor in Natural Science at Stanford University.

A number of other faculty received notable awards this year. Prof. Moshe Gai will travel to Romania on a U.S. Fulbright Scholarship. Two faculty received awards from the College of Liberal Arts and Science (CLAS): Prof. Peter Schweitzer for Faculty Mentoring of Faculty and Prof. Erin Scanlon for promoting Climate, Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion. CLAS also funded a Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion Initiative: “UConn STARs (Science, Technology, and Astronomy Recruits),” Prof. Cara Battersby, PI.

We gave out our two undergraduate awards: the Katzenstein prize for the best undergraduate research paper went to Danya Alboslani and our Mark Miller award to fund a summer research project went to Leilani Ainsworth, working with Prof. Simone Colombo

We are fortunate to welcome two new faculty this year:

  • Assistant Professor Aleksandra Kuznetsova is currently a fellow at the Flatiron Institute and works on star and planet formation. She will join us this August.
  • Assistant Professor Shohini Bhattacharya currently holds an Oppenheimer Fellowship at Los Alamos National Laboratory in theoretical nuclear physics and will join us in January 2025.

This was also a great year for outreach. We welcomed over 100 enthusiastic second graders for a variety of hands-on activities, organized by Prof. Jason Hancock and Sarah Trallero. We held a viewing party for the opening of our newly renovated observatory, spearheaded by Prof. Matt Guthrie and we got permission to officially name it in honor of the late Prof. Cynthia Peterson, who funded and built the observatory in 1980. And, we had another exciting eclipse viewing party organized by Prof. Jonathan Trump – the second in seven years! We are looking forward to hosting CU*IP: Conference for Undergraduate Women and Under-represented Minorities in Physics, sponsored by the American Physical Society. It will take place in January2025 and is being organized by Prof. Nora Berrah, along with a large local organizing committee. Finally, I would like to cordially invite you to attend our 26th annual Katzenstein Distinguished Lecture on Friday, November 15, 2024, which will be held in our department. This year’s speaker is Professor Adam Riess from Johns Hopkins University where he is the Bloomberg Distinguished Professor. He was a joint winner, with Drs. Saul Perlmutter and Brian P. Schmidt, of the 2011 Nobel Prize for Physics, awarded “for the discovery of the accelerating expansion of the Universe.” I hope you can all attend and catch up on everything that is going on in the department and the Universe! I look forward to seeing you there.

Sincerely,

George Gibson
Department Head, Physics

UConn Physics Department Hosting January 2025 CU*iP.

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Every year, the American Physical Society (APS) sponsors CU*IP – Conference for Undergraduate Women and Gender Minorities in Physics – at several locations around the country. This year, led by Prof. Nora Berrah, UConn Physics applied to host this national conference in Storrs and our proposal was accepted for January 24-26, 2025! The purpose of the conference is to bring together over 120 undergraduates from around the country to learn about many research areas in physics and also to lean many skills for pursuing a career in Physics or Science, such as networking, applying to graduate school, finding role models in academia or industry, learning how to succeed as an underrepresented minority, etc.

While the conference is partially funded by the APS, the host institution needs to raise a substantial amount of funds. So far, we have commitments from UConn, some generous donors, such as the Ed Eyler and Karen Greer foundation, alumnus Mark Miller, and the Del Boca family, as well as the American Association for the Advancement of Science, and Mirion Technologies.

The current members of the local organizing committee, composed of faculty, staff and students, are Cara Battersby, Tom Blum, Cameron Brady, Carrie Cichocki, Simone Colombo, Meg Davis, Elena Dormidontova, George Gibson, Matt Guthrie, Adam Kolano, Luchang Jin, Dani Lipman, Jessica Mitlehne, Michael Rozman, Dave Perry, Erin Scanlon, Peter Schweitzer, Juliette Stecenko, Sarah Trallero, Kaley Wilcox, Alan Wuosmaa and Nora Berrah.

The planned events demonstrate the Physics Department’s and UConn’s commitment to helping undergraduate women and gender minorities pursue physics following their undergraduate degree by providing them the opportunity to learn about different career tracks in STEM fields, graduate studies, and various professions in physics.

We will be very grateful to receive any donations to assist the Department in hosting the conference, which will be used to cover students’ meals, accommodation and travel, as well as the invited speakers’ and panelists’ travel and accommodation. Please visit our website at: https://physics.uconn.edu/cuwip/

In Memoriam: Lawrence “Larry” Kappers

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Lawrence “Larry” Kappers, passed away on Friday, August 2, 2024. Professor Lawrence (Larry) Kappers (aka “Kap”) retired in 2009, having joined the UConn Physics Department in 1973. After receiving his Ph.D. from the University of Missouri-Columbia and completing postdoctoral appointments at the University of Minnesota and Oklahoma State University, he developed an active research program in the optical and ESR spectroscopy of color-centers in inorganic insulators. Larry later became interested in the optical properties of 3d ions at high pressure and developed a diamond-anvil cell to complete the spectroscopic measurements. He was especially proud of his service to the department as director of the Perkin-Elmer Program, which led to a Masters degree in Physics with a concentration in optics, and also his involvement with the collaborative program between the physics department and the Institute for Crystal Physics in Budapest, Hungary. Larry continued his productive research contributions with a project funded by Radiation Monitoring Devices, Inc. on the luminescent properties of scintillator materials.

For the full obituary, see https://www.wenigfh.com/obituaries/lawrence-larry-kappers.

UConn STARs visits Hartford Public High School

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The UConn STARs group visited Hartford Public High School (HPHS) to teach physics for a total of eight class periods from May 6th-9th, 2024. UConn brought 16 undergraduate students from the STARs program to HPHS for our annual outreach program, during which we interacted with about 100 high school students. We collaborated with physics teacher Dr. Thomas Longyear to develop four lesson plans on topics of: 1) Phases of Matter, 2) Waves, 3) Electrostatics, and 4) Gravity over the course of the academic year. During our visit to HPHS, the STARs participants led these engaging lesson plans with hands-on demos and activities, over the course of four days. The goal of the STARs program is to improve the retention of students from Historically Excluded Groups (HEGs) in physics at UConn by addressing key factors responsible for their attrition. We have academic year events that focus on social engagement, professional development, and community building. The STARs program just concluded its 3rd year, with consistent progress and growth, and is looking forward to continued growth in our fourth year!

Pictured below are the STARs participants and the HPHS students during our May 2024 visit.