A potentially useful material for building quantum computers has been unearthed at the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST), whose scientists along with colleagues from the University of Maryland and Ames Laboratoryhave found a superconductor that could sidestep one of the primary obstacles standing in the way of effective quantum logic circuits.
Aravind Chandrasekaran, a chemistry Ph.D. student in the NCI-UMD Partnership program, published a first-author paper "Remarkable structural transformations of actin bundles are driven by their initial polarity, motor activity, crosslinking, and filament treadmilling" with co-authors Arpita Upadhyaya (Physics/IPST) and Garegin Papoian (Chemistry and Biochemistry/IPST). The paper was published on July 9, 2019, in the journal PLoS Computational Biology.
Professor Wolfgang Losert was appointed interim director of IPST, effective July 1, 2019.
Professor Daniel Lathrop (IPST / Physics) has been named a 2019 Distinguished Scholar-Teacher.
Samuel M. Brewer (Ph.D. '12, Chemical Physics) was featured in Physics World on June 6, 2019. A member of NIST’s Ion Storage Group, Brewer built a quantum-logic clock using a positive ion of aluminum-27 as its timekeeper. The group, located in Boulder, Colorado, conducts experiments on atomic ions that are confined in electromagnetic traps and laser-cooled, in some cases, to the ground state of motion.
A very rare piece of atomic history—a mysterious block of uranium metal—landed on the desk of Tim Koeth in 2013.
So marks the beginning of a years-long investigation into the many secrets of the two-inch square cube, and the intriguing note that came with it: Taken from the reactor that Hitler tried to build. Gift of Ninninger.
Chemical Physics Ph.D. Student Brandon Wilfong co-authored the paper "Magnetic order effects on the electronic structure of KMMnS2(M=Cu,Li) with the ThCr2Si2-type structure" with Efrain Rodriguez, associate professor of chemistry and biochemistry. The paper was published in the journal Physical Review Materials on April 30, 2019.
The College of Computer, Mathematical, and Natural Sciences has always been driven by fearless science. Reaching back more than a half-century, the college highlighted some of the most exciting scientific discoveries made by its faculty members. One of those discoveries was Distinguished University Professor James Yorke's (Math/Physics/IPST) and Edward Ott (ECE/Physics/IREAP) co-authored paper in 1990 that described a method for stabilizing a chaotic system.
The College of Computer, Mathematical, and Natural Sciences has always been driven by fearless science. Reaching back more than a half-century, the college highlighted some of the most exciting scientific discoveries made by its faculty members. One of those discoveries was from Russell Dickerson, currently a professor of atmospheric and oceanic science at UMD.
Researchers at the University of Maryland have created a heat-to-electricity device that runs on ions that could someday harness the body’s heat to provide energy.