News Archive (2008-2018)

How the desert could bloom

September 7, 2018. A new University of Maryland-led study, co-authored by Distinguished University Professor Eugenia Kalnay (IPST / AOSC) and Safa Motesharrei (IPST / AOSC / Physics), and published in Science shows that wind and solar farms in the Sahara would lead to a doubling of rainfall in the earth’s largest hot desert, potentially opening large expanses to agriculture.

Such precipitation increases could lead to substantial improvements of rain-fed agriculture in the region, and vegetation increases would lead to the growth in production of livestock, said Safa Motesharrei.

Their September 7th paper has attracted significant media coverage including BBC News, the Los Angeles Times, and The Japan Times.


Biophysics graduate student is first author in Nature Communications article

August 9, 2018. In "Interphase human chromosome exhibits out of equilibrium glassy dynamics", just published in Nature Communications, Guang Shi (lead author and graduate student, Biophysics Program) with Dave Thirumalai (IPST Visiting Professor) and Changbong Hyeon (Korea Institute for Advanced Study) have mapped the movement of a chromosome for the first time, using computer modeling to show how billions of base pairs of DNA get packed into an impossibly small space without getting tangled. The movement is sluggish and glass-like, differing from one cell type to the next and even among cells of the same type. Understanding this movement better could have big implications for the study of genetic diseases, human health and gene editing.

"Rather than the structure, we chose to look at the dynamics to figure out not only how this huge amount of genetic information is packaged, but also how the various loci move," said Dave Thirumalai, chair of UT Austin's chemistry department. "We learned it is not just the genetic code you have to worry about. If the timing of the movement is off, you could end up with functional aberrations."

"We found that the movement of the chromosomes was sluggish, reminiscent of glass-like behavior. We believe this might have profound consequences for how the cells behave both individually and collectively," said Shi. "In addition, different regions of the chromosome move at different speeds."


Ellen Williams, former Director of ARPA-E and Distinguished University Professor, comments in Science Magazine on recent pick to lead energy technology program

July 17, 2018. Distinguished University Professor Ellen Williams (IPST / Physics) was quoted in Science Magazine, July 13, in an article on the White House nominee for Director of the Advanced Research Projects Agency-Energy (ARPA-E).

From December 2014, Williams served as Director of ARPA-E where she was responsible for the oversight of the Agency. Launched in 2009, ARPA-E focuses on early-stage technologies that could fundamentally change the way we generate, use, and store energy. Prior to Senate confirmation to her role at ARPA-E she was a Senior Advisor, Office of the Secretary of Energy where she established the Office of Technology Transitions, defining its initial goals for technology commercialization and engagement with the business and industrial sectors.


Research reveals how energy dissipates outside Earth's magnetic field

May 22, 2018. NASA’s Magnetospheric Multiscale (MMS) mission, with help from James Drake (IPST / Physics), is the first to observe a new type of turbulent magnetic reconnection, providing important clues about heating in the Sun's outer layers. Read the full story.


Konstantina Trivisa earns 2018 Outstanding Director of Graduate Studies (DGS) Award

May 2, 2018. Konstantina Trivisa (IPST / Math), the Associate Director of IPST, has been selected for the Outstanding Director of Graduate Studies (DGS) Award for 2018, for her energetic leadership of the Applied Mathematics and Statistics, and Scientific Computation Program (AMSC).

The AMSC program is one of the most highly ranked applied math programs in the US. This program is supported jointly by the Department of Mathematics, the Center for Scientific Computation and Mathematical Modeling (CSCAMM), and IPST.

Konstantina's research, combining nonlinear partial differential equations and continuum physics with applications to problems in fluid dynamics, materials science and biology, has been recognized by a Sloan Fellowship, a Presidential Early Career (PECASE) Award, and a Simons Foundation Fellowship, among others. She has also been selected as an ADVANCE Professor and Leadership Fellow at UMD for her work on diversity and inclusion.


Elaine Oran Elected to American Academy of Arts and Sciences

May 2, 2018. Elaine Oran (IPST / Glenn L. Martin Institute professor of engineering) has been elected a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. She is among 213 new members of the academy being recognized for their accomplishments as scholars, scientists, writers, artists, and civic and philanthropic leaders.

The American Academy, founded in 1780, is a society and center for nonpartisan policy research dedicated to the cultivation of the arts and sciences. Other IPST faculty who are members of the American Academy include Distinguished University Professors Michael FisherChristopher JarzynskiEugenia KalnayJohn Weeks and Ellen Williams. Elaine will be inducted into the American Academy in October in Cambridge, Massachusetts.


IPST faculty use AI to predict chaos

April 26, 2018. Professors Michelle Girvan (IPST / Physics) and Brian Hunt (IPST / Mathematics) along with Edward Ott (Physics / ECE / IREAP) graduate student Jaideep Pathak (Physics / IREAP), and recent Chemical Physics Ph.D. Zhixin Lu (IPST / IREAP, now at the University of Pennsylvania) discovered artificial intelligence's amazing ability to predict chaos. They employed a machine-learning algorithm called reservoir computing to "learn" the dynamics of an archetypal chaotic system called the Kuramoto-Sivashinsky equation. Read the full story.


IPST External Review

April 17, 2018. On Monday and Tuesday, April 23-24, IPST will host a highly distinguished External Review Committee consisting of Professors Russel Caflisch (New York University, Courant Institute of Mathematical Sciences), Jean Carlson (UC Santa Barbara, Physics), Herbert Levine (Rice University, Bioengineering), and Steven Sibener, (University of Chicago, Chemistry). This committee has been invited by the College of Computer, Mathematical and Natural Sciences to review the Institute and to provide advice regarding its interdisciplinary research and education missions. The committee will meet with IPST faculty, staff and students, and with Dean Amitabh Varshney, and will conclude the visit by writing a report on their findings.


Lise-Marie Imbert-Gérard joins the faculty of IPST, Mathematics, and CSCAMM

April 13, 2018. Dr. Lise-Marie Imbert-Gérard joined the campus community as an Assistant Professor in January 2018, with a joint appointment in the Department of Mathematics, the Center for Scientific Computation and Mathematical Modeling, and IPST.

She earned her Ph.D. in 2013 from Université Pierre et Marie Curie, where she studied with Bruno Després at the Laboratoire Jacques-Louis Lions in Paris, after which she was a postdoctoral research associate at the Courant Institute at New York University. Her research in the propagation of time-harmonic waves in variable media has, more recently, focused on time-dependent problems for resonances.

John Weeks to give inaugural David Chandler Memorial Lecture in Physical Chemistry

April 12, 2018. Distinguished University Professor John Weeks (IPST / Chemistry and Biochemistry) will give the inaugural David Chandler Memorial Lecture in Physical Chemistry at the University of California, Berkeley, on April 17. Sponsored by the UC Berkeley College of Chemistry, the lecture series was established in 2017 to carry forward the scientific vision of David Chandler (1944-2017), a pillar of the theoretical physical chemistry community.

In the early 1970's, John Weeks, David Chandler, and Hans Andersen established the foundations of modern liquid state perturbation theory, providing accurate expressions for calculating thermodynamic properties of liquids, as well as deep insights into the crucial roles of short- and long-range forces in determining those properties.


Pratyush Tiwary obtains Graduate School Research and Scholarship Award

December 6, 2017. IPST and Chemistry/Biochemistry Assistant Professor Pratyush Tiwary has been awarded a Graduate School Research and Scholarship Award for Summer 2018. The award program supports faculty research, scholarship and creative activity, while enhancing graduate student mentoring. The award also encourages fellowship proposal writing, ensures accountability and increases visibility of faculty achievement. Tiwary's research group conducts inter-disciplinary theoretical and computational research to model and predict thermodynamics, dynamics and their interplay in complex real-world systems, relevant to pharmaceutical, chemical and materials sciences.


Michelle Girvan and Wolfgang Losert elected Fellows of the American Physical Society

October 12, 2017. Michelle Girvan (IPST / Physics) and Wolfgang Losert (IPST / Physics / IREAP) have been elected Fellows of the American Physical Society (APS) by the APS Council of Representatives upon the recommendations of the Topical Group on Statistical and Nonlinear Physics, for the former, and the Division of Biological Physics, for the later. Election to Fellowship in the APS is limited to no more than one half of one percent of the membership and it is a prestigious recognition by peers of outstanding contributions to physics. The citation for Michelle Girvan reads: For seminal contributions to the nonlinear and statistical physics of complex networks, including the characterization of network structures and dynamics, and interdisciplinary applications. The citation for Wolgang Losert reads: For his imaginative studies of complex living systems. We congratulate both Michelle and Wolfgang for their honors.


Miguel Sanjuán, Fulbright Visiting Scholar, elected member to the Academia Europaea: The Academy of Europe

October 6, 2017. Professor Miguel A. F. Sanjuán (Universidad Rey Juan Carlos, Spain), who is currently at IPST as a Fulbright Visiting Scholar, has been elected into the Academia Europaea: The Academy of Europe. He is a regular collaborator with Distinguished University Professor James A. Yorke (IPST / Mathematics / Physics). We congratulate Professor Sanjuán.


23rd Annual Shih-I Pai Lecture

September 19, 2017. The Institute for Physical Science and Technology and the Department of Physics announce the 23rd Annual Shih-I Pai Lecture. This year's lecture will be presented by Danielle S. Bassett, Eduardo D. Glandt Faculty Fellow, Bioengineering Department, University of Pennsylvania, MacArthur Fellow 2014. Her talk, "Perturbation and Control of Human Brain Network Dynamics," will be given on Tuesday, October 17, 2017 at 4:00 pm in room 1412 of the Physics building at the University of Maryland, College Park. A reception preceding the lecture will take place at the James A. Yorke Rotunda in William E. Kirwan Hall from 3 to 3:50 pm. All are invited. Further details can be found at the Annual Shih-I Pai Lecture news announcement.


Chris Jarzynski to give Pitzer Seminar in Physical Chemistry

September 19, 2017. Professor Christopher Jarzynski (IPST / Department of Chemistry and Biochemisty) will give the prestigious Pitzer Seminar in Physical Chemistry at the University of California, Berkeley. The Kenneth S. Pitzer Lecturship was established in the Department of Chemistry at UC Berkeley to bring to that department internationally distinguished physical chemists for the purpose of encouraging and stimulating interest in this field.


Eun-Suk Seo to Chair 19th US-Korea Conference

August 7, 2017. Professor Eun-Suk Seo (IPST / Physics) will be Chairing the 19th US-Korea Conference on Science, Technology and Entrepreneurship, taking place from August 9 to August 12 in Crystal City, VA. The conference will be attended by over 1,000 scientists, engineers, industry executives, government officials and policy-makers from both the U.S. and Korea. The program includes symposia, forums and workshops covering broad areas of science and technology and boasts prominent speakers including Nobel Laureate and College Park Professor John Mather.

Professor Seo is 46th President of the Korean-American Scientists and Engineers Association (KSEA) - the first woman to serve in this capacity. Seo joined the University of Maryland in 1991 where she is the leader of the ISS-CREAM project, an international collaboration investigating the origin of the extremely high energies of cosmic rays.


Second US-Russia workshop on Phase Transitions in Fluids and Plasma

April 18, 2017. Professor Mikhail Anisimov (IPST / ChBE) has organized the Second US-Russia workshop on Phase Transitions in Fluids and Plasma, which will be hosted by IPST on April 21, 2017. This workshop brings together experts from the University of Maryland and the Russian Academy of Sciences to discuss the physics, chemistry and modeling of fluids and plasmas under extreme conditions.


Don Reames publishes a book on Solar Energetic Particles

March 23, 2017. Senior Research Scientist Donald Reams (IPST) published a book entitled "Solar Energetic Particles: A modern Primer on Understanding Sources, Acceleration and Propagation" (Springer) on April 12. The book introduces the background environment and some basic properties of solar energetic particles (SEP) events, time durations, abundances, and solar cycle variations to the non-specialist reader.

Reames, who joined IPST in 2007, earned his Ph.D. in nuclear physics at the University of California at Berkeley. He subsequently joined NASA-Goddard Space Flight Center where he worked with experiments on the Gemini, IMP, ISEE, Helios, Voyager, Wind and STEREO missions. He is the recipient of the 2012 George Ellery Hale Prize from the American Astronomical Society in recognition "...of his pioneering work on the composition and transport of Solar Energetic Particles, and for the key insights that firmly established the modern paradigm for SEP production."


Ellen Williams returns to UMD

March 16, 2017. Our colleague Ellen Williams (IPST / Physics) has returned to the University of Maryland following a leave of absence spent sequentially working as Chief Scientist at BP and as Director of the Advanced Research Projects Agency-Energy (DOE). Her research interests include the applications of technological innovation for modernizing the world’s energy system, and understanding the uptake and pathways of innovative new energy technologies.


Eun-Suk Seo's work highlighted on eve of upcoming experiment flying to International Space Station

March 3, 2017. Today we are proud to share a new feature story on research from Eun-Suk Seo (IPST / Physics), who leads the Cosmic Ray Physics Group at IPST. For more than a decade, Seo's team has overseen seven Long Duration Balloon (LDB) missions in Antarctica dedicated to studying the nature of cosmic rays. This year, instruments designed and built by Seo's group will journey to the International Space Station for a three-year mission to capture cosmic ray data beyond Earth's atmosphere.


Michael Fisher publishes a book on statistical physics

March 3, 2017. Distinguished University Professor Michael E. Fisher (IPST) recently published a book entitled Excursions in the Land of Statistical Physics". The book provides a collection of selected reviews written by Professor Fisher, spanning a 50-plus year career. The first chapter, written in 1991 by Fisher’s postdoctoral advisor Cyril Domb, talks of his early academic life at King’s College London. The final article, "Statistical Physics in the Oeuvre of Chen Ning Yang" published in the International Journal of Modern Physics B in 2015, stems from the 2015 Conference on 60 Years of Yang-Mills Gauge Field Theories.

In 1983 Fisher was awarded the James Murray Luck Award for Excellence in Scientific Reviewing by the National Academy of Sciences for his "...continuing sequence of reviews that put into proper perspective discoveries concerning critical phenomena and defined the fundamental problems he and others subsequently resolved."


Chemical Physics Alumnus named a 2017 Sloan Research Fellow

February 23, 2017. Professor Suriyanarayanan Vaikuntanathan (University of Chicago) has been awarded a prestigious Sloan Research Fellowship in Chemistry. Suri received his Ph.D. in Chemical Physics from UMD in 2011. An Assistant Professor in the Department of Chemistry at the University of Chicago, Suri and his group develop and use tools of equilibrium and non-equilibrium statistical mechanics to understand the behavior of complex systems in physical chemistry, soft condensed matter physics and biophysics.

"I was delighted to hear the news that Suri was named a 2017 Sloan Research Fellow. This award is a testament to his scientific creativity and to the attention that his research has attracted", says Christopher Jarzynski (IPST / Chemistry / Physics), Suri’s Ph.D. advisor.

Vaikuntanathan’s current work has demonstrated how non-equilibrium growth dynamics can be harnessed for novel material self-assembly as well as how information processing mechanisms in biophysical circuits can be protected against rogue fluctuations.

The two-year $60,000 Sloan Research Fellowships are awarded to U.S. and Canadian researchers in the fields of chemistry, computer science, economics, mathematics, computational and evolutionary molecular biology, neuroscience, ocean sciences, and physics.

Since 1955, Sloan Research Fellows have gone on to win 43 Nobel Prizes, 16 Fields Medals, 69 National Medals of Science, 16 John Bates Clark Medals and numerous other distinguished awards.


UMD Student Interdisciplinary Team Head to SpaceX Hyperloop Pod Competition Design Weekend

January 27, 2017. The UMD Hyperloop Team is in Hawthorne, California testing their human-scale pod on the recently constructed SpaceX test track. One of 30 teams competing, the UMD multi-disciplinary team of more than 25 undergraduate students is supported by IPST, Engineering and CMNS. The SpaceX Hyperloop Pod Competition, geared towards university students and independent engineering teams, begins on January 27, with the winners being announced on January 29.

Update (1/30/2017): Congratulations to the UMD Hyperloop Team who won the Performance and Operations" award AND placed in the top 10 in the "Design and Construction" category.

See the team assemble the Loop’s frame.


Dan Lathrop elected Vice-Chair of APS/GSNP

January 20, 2017. IPST and Physics Professor Daniel Lathrop was recently elected Vice-Chair of the American Physical Society (APS) Group on Statistical and Nonlinear Physics (GSNP). The Vice-Chair serves in that capacity for one year, becomes Chair-Elect in year two, and then serves as Chair of GSNP in year three.

Lathrop’s research in the Nonlinear Dynamics Lab focuses on turbulent fluid flows, geomagnetism and experiments on superfluid helium. A Fellow of the American Physical Society and the American Association for the Advancement of Science, Lathrop was the recipient of the 2012 Stanley Corrsin Award in recognition of "...his striking observations of flow in a quantum fluid including detection of counter-flow that confirmed the two-fluid picture of quantum fluid, observation and characterization of reconnections of quantized vortices, and the discovery of an inverse-cube tail in the velocity distribution of superfluid turbulence."


Gemstone Team ARMIT wins prize from FedCentric LLC

December 7, 2016. Gemstone Team ARMIT undergraduate research is developing augmented and virtual reality (AR/VR) interfaces for UAVs (drones) for such missions as search and rescue. IPST’s Dr. Anil Deane is their mentor.

FedCentric LLC’s Big Data business recognized the innovation and value of Gemstone TEAM ARMIT by awarding team ARMIT $1000 towards their research. Shown in the picture is the team at the award ceremony at the FedCentric HQ in College Park on Nov 30th.
 


Michelle Girvan and colleagues awarded NFS grant

November 21, 2016. IPST and Physics Associate Professor Michelle Girvan and her University of Maryland colleagues Daniel ButtsBill FaganHector Corrada Bravo and Amitabh Varshney have been awarded a five-year $3 million National Science Foundation Research Traineeship grant to establish a new training and research program in network biology. Fewer than 10 percent of proposals submitted to the program are funded.

Graduate students in the COMBINE: Computation and Mathematics for Biological Networks program will be immersed in interdisciplinary research and training that integrates quantitative modeling methods from physics and mathematics with data processing, analysis, and visualization tools from computer science to gain deeper insights into the structural and dynamical principles governing living systems. "With the opportunities provided by this grant, our graduate students will learn how to apply cutting-edge quantitative tools to uncover the laws that govern life itself" said IPST Director Chris Jarzynski. For a detailed account of this story, please read the CMNS press release.

Thirteenth Burgers Symposium on Nov. 16th

November 14, 2016. Jim Wallace, Chair of the Burgers Program for Fluid Dynamics, invites you to the 2016 Burgers Symposium on Wednesday, November 16th, in the Kay Boardrooms (1107 & 1111) of the Jeong H. Kim Engineering Building. This year marks the 13th anniversary of the annual Burgers Lecture, which will be given by Jayanta Bhattacharjee, Harsh-Chandra Research Institute - Allahabad, India. There will also be lectures by Megan Leftwich, Department of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering, George Washington University; Johan Larsson, Department of Mechanical Engineering, University of Maryland; and James Carton, Department of Atmospheric and Oceanic Sciences, University of Maryland. The event will feature a poster session with prizes awarded to the best poster in each category. For details, visit the Burgers Program for Fluid Dynamics website.


James A. Yorke named a 2016 Thomson Reuters Citation Laureate

September 23, 2016. Distinguished University Professor James A. Yorke (IPST / Math / Physics), with UMD alumnus Celso Grebogi (University of Aberdeen) and Edward Ott (Physics / ECE / IREAP), was selected as a 2016 Thomson Reuters Citation Laureate in physics, for describing a control theory of chaotic systems, widely known as the OGY method. The Citation Laureates program uses a variety of criteria, including scientific research citations, to identify the most influential researchers who are likely to win the Nobel Prize. Yorke, the 2003 recipient of the Japan Prize, is a fellow of the American Physical Society, the American Association for the Advancement of Science, the American Mathematical Society, and the Society for Industrial and Applied Mathematics.

For more information read the CMNS story or the Web of Science story.


22nd Annual Shih-I Pai Lecture

September 15, 2016. The Institute for Physical Science and Technology and the Department of Physics announce the 22nd Annual Shih-I Pai Lecture. This year's lecture will be presented by Carlos J. Bustamante, Professor of Physics, Chemistry, Molecular and Cell Biology and the Raymond and Beverly Sackler Chair of Biophysics at the University of California, Berkeley. His talk, "The Folding Cooperativity of a Protein is Controlled by the Topology of its Polypeptide Chain", will be given on Tuesday, October 4, 2016 at 4 pm in room 1412 of the Physics building at the University of Maryland, College Park. A reception preceding the lecture will take place at the James A. Yorke Rotunda in the Mathematics building from 3 to 3:50 pm. All are invited. Further details can be found at the Annual Shih-I Pai Lecture news announcement.


New form of fire discovered by Elaine Oran and UMD colleagues

September 1, 2016. Professor Elaine Oran (IPST / Aerospace Engineering) and her University of Maryland colleagues Huahua Xiao and Michael Gollner have discovered a novel flame phenomenon: a "blue whirl" fire tornado that burns without producing soot. This discovery could lead to new approaches for reduced-emission combustion and improved oil spill cleanup. Their August 23rd paper in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences has attracted significant media coverage including the New York Times, the Christian Science MonitorNature World News and Live Science.


Mikhail Anisimov named Distinguished University Professor

August 23, 2016. Our colleague Professor Mikhail Anisimov (IPST / ChBE) has been named a Distinguished University Professor. Mikhail’s research on topics such as critical phenomena, supercooled water, and mesoscopic fluctuations have previously earned him the 2015 Touloukian Award — given once every three years for outstanding contributions to thermophysical properties — as well as a University System of Maryland Regents’ Faculty Award for Excellence in Research, Scholarship and Creative Activity (2015). This past Spring, Mikhail organized a fascinating US-Russia workshop on Phase Transitions in Fluids and Plasmas, hosted by IPST.

Mikhail and the other new Distinguished University Professors will be honored at this year's Campus Convocation on Wednesday, September 14th, at 3pm in the Memorial Chapel.


Ellen D. Williams named Caltech Distinguished Alumna

July 20, 2016. Distinguish University Professor Ellen D. Williams (IPST / Physics) was named a Distinguished Alumna from the California Institute of Technology (Caltech) during its 2016 Distinguished Alumni Awards "For her sustained record of innovation and achievement in the area of structural-surface physics. She founded the Materials Research Science and Engineering Center at the University of Maryland and was the chief scientist for BP. She now serves as director of the Advanced Research Project Agency–Energy (ARPA-E) in the U.S. Department of Energy."


Maryland researchers explain why traveling east exacerbates jet lag

July 14, 2016. University of Maryland researchers Zhixin Lu (Chemical Physics), Kevin Klein-Cardeña (student in TREND REU), Steven Lee (student in TREND REU), Professor Thomas M. Antonsen (Physics / ECE), Professor Michelle Girvan (IPST / Physics) and Distinguished University Professor Edward Ott (Electrical Engineering / Physics / IREAP) have uncovered an explanation for a common observation among travelers: jet lag tends to be worse when traveling east rather than west. Their explanation involves a mathematical model of the neurons in the human brain that are responsible for maintaining the body’s internal clock. This clock has a natural period that is about 24.5 hours instead of the 24 hours of the daily cycle, and the model suggests that this difference accounts for the different experiences of jet lag in eastward and westward travel. This research was published in the journal Chaos, and has been highlighted by the Washington Post, CNN, and numerous other news sites.


Chemical Physics graduate Richard Remsing wins prestigious ACS Postdoc Award

June 10, 2016. Dr. Richard Remsing, who received his Ph.D. in 2013 in Chemical Physics under the supervision of Distinguished University Professor John Weeks (IPST / Chemistry), has been awarded a Postdoctoral Research Award from the Physical Chemistry Division of the American Chemical Society. The award cites his research in electron transfer reactions within layered manganese dioxides, with his postdoctoral advisor, Professor Michael Klein (Temple University). Dr. Remsing's Ph.D. research investigated the structure and thermodynamics of molecular systems, particularly aqueous solutions, using the tools of Local Molecular Field Theory developed by the Weeks group at the University of Maryland.


James Drake collaborator in joint NASA and UMD mission to first ever observe how magnetic reconnection takes place in space

May 13, 2016. Professor James Drake (IPST / IREAP / JSSI / Physics) is a co-author in a research paper published in the May 13 issue of the journal Science that reports on the results of the first ever observed magnetic reconnection between the magnetic fields of the Sun and the Earth as recorded by NASA’s Magnetospheric Multiscale (MMS) mission. The interactions of both magnetic fields are essential for life on Earth as the Earth's magnetic field serves as a shield against the high energy particles emitted by the Sun. For more on this fascinating research read the official CMNS press release.


US-Russia workshop on Phase Transitions in Fluids and Plasma

May 10, 2016. Professor Mikhail Anisimov (IPST / ChBE) recently organized a US-Russia workshop on Phase Transitions in Fluids and Plasma, which was hosted by IPST on April 29 - May 2. This workshop brought together experts from the University of Maryland and the Russian Academy of Sciences to discuss the physics, chemistry and modeling of fluids and plasmas under extreme conditions.


Professor Eun-Suk Seo elected the 46th President of the Korean-American Scientists and Engineers Association

May 9, 2016. Professor Eun-Suk Seo (IPST / Physics) was elected the 46th President of the Korean-American Scientists and Engineers Association (KSEA). KSEA was established in 1971, and has grown to have ~10,000 members with ~70 chapters/branches across the US. Professor Seo will mark a historic moment by becoming the first woman to be President of KSEA. Professor Seo is the leader of the ISS-CREAM project, an international collaboration investigating the origin of the extremely high energies of cosmic rays.


Ellen Williams elected to Royal Society

May 3, 2016. Distinguished University Professor Ellen D. Williams (IPST / Physics) has been elected as a Foreign Member of the Royal Society. Ellen is known for her pioneering work in experimental surface science, exploring both fundamental issues in basic statistical mechanics and practical applications to nanotechnology. She founded the University of Maryland Materials Research Science and Engineering Center and served as its Director from 1996 through 2009, and is now on leave of absence, serving as Director of the Advanced Research Projects Agency–Energy (ARPA-E) in the US Department of Energy. The Royal Society is the national science academy of the United Kingdom, and is the oldest scientific academy in continuous existence (since 1660). Distinguished University Professor Michael E. Fisher is a Fellow of the Royal Society.


Chris Jarzynski elected to American Academy of Arts and Sciences

April 28, 2016. Distinguished University Professor Chris Jarzynski (IPST / Chemistry and Biochemistry) has been elected a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. The American Academy, founded in 1780, is a society and center for nonpartisan policy research dedicated to the cultivation of the arts and sciences. Other IPST faculty who are members of the American Academy include Distinguished University Professors Michael FisherEugenia KalnayJohn Weeks and Ellen Williams. Chris will be inducted into the American Academy this October in Cambridge, Massachusetts.


IPST Lends Support to the RUM SpaceX Hyperloop Competition

April 28, 2016. In the winter of 2015 IPST was approached by student members of the RUM Hyperloop Team seeking space for team meetings over the winter break. After some discussion with the student team leaders IPST was able to provide use of conference room space in the IPST building (Bldg. 085) for the students to meet and finalize their presentation to SpaceX in January 2016. It was a successful presentation and the RUM (University of Maryland and Rutgers University) Student Team was one of 22 universities selected to develop a prototype of their design to be tested over the summer.

IPST continues to support the RUM Hyperloop Team by providing space for team meetings, lab area for assembling rail and pod parts and testing the prototype. We are please to assist the Engineering College and the College of Computer, Mathematical, and Natural Sciences in supporting these undergrad students in their quest to have their design selected for development by SpaceX.


Sokhan Min receives Outstanding Employee Award

April 28, 2016. Ms. Sokhan Min (IPST) has received the Dean’s Outstanding Employee Award (exempt staff) from the College of Computer, Mathematical and Natural Sciences (CMNS). Min began working for IPST in 2004 as a student, and has progressed to Office Clerk, Administrative Assistant, Business Services Specialist, Research Coordinator, to her current position as Assistant Director of Administrative Services. Her service to IPST throughout these years has been characterized by exceptional diligence and professionalism. We are grateful for all she has done for the Institute, and truly proud that she has been recognized by this award.


Jeffrey Bub published book on quantum mechanics

April 28, 2016. Distinguished University Professor Jeffrey Bub (IPST / Philosophy) has recently published a book entitled "Bananaworld: Quantum Mechanics for Primates" (Oxford University Press). This engaging book explains the strange and counterintuitive features of quantum mechanics to non-physicist readers. Jeffrey emphasizes the close connections between quantum mechanics and information. These connections have come to be appreciated in recent decades and are actively being explored by researchers around the world, including at the Joint Quantum Institute (JQI) and the Joint Center for Quantum Information and Computer Science (QuICS) here at the University of Maryland.


John Weeks to be honored at upcoming Rutgers Statistical Mechanics Conference

April 28, 2016. The achievements of Distinguished University Professor John Weeks (IPST / Chemistry and Biochemistry) will be celebrated at the upcoming 115th Statistical Mechanics Conference at Rutgers University, May 8-10, 2016. The other two guests of honor at this meeting will be Professor David Chandler (Berkeley) who is John’s longtime colleague, and Professor Julia Yeoman (Oxford) who was a postdoc with Distinguished University Professor Emeritus Michael Fisher.


Teri Schuler and Alexandra Thirumalai join IPST staff

April 28, 2016. Ms. Teri Schuler has joined IPST as an Administrative Assistant, providing assistance to the faculty and staff in the IPST building. She has had extensive experience on campus, having worked since 1993 at various departments, including Family Studies, the History Department, the Department of Environmental Science and Technology and the National Foreign Language Center. Ms. Alexandra Thirumalai, who completed her Bachelor’s degree at the University of Maryland in 2012, has begun working as an Administrative Assistant Contract Employee in the IPST business office. Please welcome Teri and Alexandra to our staff!


Pratyush Tiwary to join the faculty of IPST and Chemistry/Biochemistry

April 28, 2016. Dr. Pratyush Tiwary has accepted an offer of a tenure-track faculty position, with a joint appointment in IPST and the Department of Chemistry and Biochemistry. Pratyush will join our University as an Assistant Professor in the summer of 2017, after finishing his current postdoctoral position at Columbia University in the group of Bruce Berne. Pratyush obtained his PhD in 2012 from the Department of Applied Physics and Materials Science at Caltech, and he spent two years as a postdoc with Michele Parrinello in Zurich. His research in computational and theoretical chemistry focuses on the development of algorithms for the simulation of complex systems characterized by multiple time scales.


Greg Morrison accepts faculty position in Physics at the University of Houston

April 28, 2016. Professor Greg Morrison (UMD Physics 2008) has accepted a tenure track faculty position at the University of Houston. Greg obtained his PhD in Physics in 2008, working in the research group of Distinguished University Professor Dave Thirumalai, now at the University of Texas. Professor Morrison’s research is in the field of complex networks.


Denise Abu-Laban to retire

April 28, 2016. Ms. Denise Abu-Laban, who has worked as Coordinator in the IPST Director’s Office since 2008, will take early retirement, effective June 1, 2016. Denise has worked tirelessly and with great professionalism in assistance to Dr. Roy and Dr. Jarzynski, and she has organized IPST Assemblies, promotion and appointment dossiers, and summer schools, among many other duties. Prior to working at IPST, Denise worked in the Dean’s Office of the College of Life Sciences as well as the Registrar’s Office. Her devoted service to the Institute and her gracious manner will certainly be missed!


Dave Levermore named Distinguished Scholar-Teacher

April 4, 2016. Dave Levermore (IPST / Mathematics) has been selected as a 2016-2017 Distinguished Scholar-Teacher. Each year, the Distinguished Scholar-Teacher Program at the University of Maryland honors a small number of faculty members with this award, which recognizes excellence in both scholarship and teaching. As part of this award, Dave will give a public presentation this fall on a topic related to his scholarship.


2016 Biophysics and Chemical Physics Spring Banquet

March 8, 2016. The Biophysics and Chemical Physics programs invite you to participate in the 2016 Spring Banquet in lieu of the annual fall and spring reception. This event serves to welcome prospective students and to celebrate current student achievements. The banquet will take place on Friday March 25, 2016 from 1 to 4 in room 3150 of the Physican Sciences Complex. Please RSVP by Monday March 18 to Debbie Jenkins (dajenkin@umd.edu) or Star Jackson (starj@umd.edu). There will be a poster session in which a $500 prize will be awarded. Please encourage your students to participate. A Student Achievement Award in the amount of $1,000 will be announced at the banquet.


Devarajan "Dave" Thirumalai named Chair of the Department of Chemistry at the University of Texas at Austin

February 10, 2016. After thirty years at Maryland, Distinguished University Professor Devarajan "Dave" Thirumalai (IPST / Chemistry) has moved to the University of Texas at Austin, to become the Chair of the Department of Chemistry. Dave is an outstanding scientist and educator, and was the founding Director of the Maryland Biophysics Program. His theoretical research at the interface of chemistry, physics and biology has been recognized by numerous awards, including his recent election as a Fellow of the American Physical Society, and the 2016 Award in Theoretical Chemistry given by the Physical Chemistry Division of the American Chemical Society "for outstanding contributions to physical and biophysical chemistry, especially work on protein and RNA folding, protein aggregation, and effects of molecular crowding in cells". Dave is a highly valued colleague who has contributed greatly to the intellectual life of the Institute. We will miss him, and we wish him all the best as he embarks on the next stage of his academic career.


Twelfth Burgers Symposium on Nov. 18th

November 18, 2015. Jim Wallace, Chair of the Burgers Program for Fluid Dynamics, invites you to the 2015 Burgers Symposium on Wednesday, November 18th, in the Kay Boardrooms (1107 & 1111) of the Jeong H. Kim Engineering Building. This year marks the 12th anniversary of the annual Burgers Lecture, which will be given by Juergen Kurths, Humboldt University of Berlin, Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research, Germany. There will also be lectures by Luca Moriconi, Department of Physics, Federal University of Rio de Janeiro Brazil; Anya Jones, Department of Aerospace Engineering, University of Maryland; and Stefan Hickel, Department of Aerospace Engineering, Delft University of Technology, The Netherlands. The event will feature a poster session with prizes awarded to the best poster in each category. For details, visit the Burgers Program for Fluid Dynamics website.


UMD student participation in NASA ISS-CREAM project is significant

October 22, 2015. The International Space Station Cosmic Ray Energetics and Mass (ISS-CREAM) experiment, one of the National Air and Space Administration (NASA) missions, provides opportunities for students at UMD to experience participation in a top level multi-national scientific project, all of this thanks to and under the supervision of professor Eun-Suk Seo (IPST / Physics). Over 100 graduate and undergraduate students have had and benefited from this opportunity. "The students play a very important role," Seo said. "They participate in all aspects of the mission, from the construction aspects, design aspects, to testing integration and data analysis."


Eitan Tadmor receives 2015 Peter Henrici Prize

October 22, 2015. Distinguished University Professor Eitan Tadmor (IPST / Math / CSCAMM) has received the 2015 Peter Henrici Prize for his "original, broad, and fundamental contributions to the applied and numerical analysis of nonlinear partial differential equations and their applications in areas such as fluid dynamics, image processing, and social dynamics." The Peter Henrici Prize is awarded once every four years by ETH Zurich and the Society for Industrial and Applied Mathematics (SIAM) for original contributions to applied analysis and numerical analysis and/or for exposition appropriate for applied mathematics and scientific computing. Professor Tadmor is the Director of the Center for Scientific Computation and Mathematical Modeling (CSCAMM) at the University of Maryland.


IPST faculty are Challenge Grant recipients in 2015

October 22, 2015. The University of Maryland, Baltimore and the University of Maryland, College Park launched the eighth year of their joint Research and Innovation Seed Grant program at the University of Maryland BioPark on October 14. The program, part of the University of Maryland: MPowering the State initiative, is intended to foster collaboration between disciplines and between the universities. It focuses upon projects in areas such as personalized medicine, bioinformatics, bioengineering, complex therapeutics, health care optimization, public health informatics, health information technology, and health science research. Professor Wolfgang Losert (IPST / IREAP / Physics / Fischell Department of Bioengineering) was one of the Challenge Grant recipients for 2015 in collaboration with John T. Fourkas (IPST / Chemistry and Biochemistry), and UMB Associate Professor of Physiology Stuart Martin. Their project is titled Nanotopographic Diagnostic Panel for Breast Cancer Metastasis.


Eun-Suk Seo presents ISS-CREAM work to the President of the Republic of South Korea, Park Geun-hye

October 20, 2015. Professor Eun-Suk Seo (IPST / Physics) was invited by NASA Goddard Space Flight Center to present ISS-CREAM at the historic visit of Park Geun-hye, President of the Republic of South Korea, to NASA on October 14. Professor Seo also attended the ROK-US Friendship Night 2015 at the Andrew W. Mellon Auditorium where the First Lady of Maryland, Yumi Hogan, attended the celebration.


21st Annual Shih-I Pai Lecture

October 15, 2015. The Institute for Physical Science and Technology and the Department of Physics announce the 21st Annual Shih-I Pai Lecture. This year's lecture will be presented by Chung S. Yang, Ph.D., Distinguished Professor and John L. Colaizzi Chair in Pharmacy Department of Chemical Biology and Director, Center for Cancer Prevention Research Ernest Mario School of Pharmacy at Rutgers, The State University of New Jersey. His talk, U.S. Training of Chinese Scientists and Its Impact, will be given on Tuesday, October 20, 2015 at 4 p.m. in room 1412 of the Physics building at the University of Maryland, College Park. A reception preceding the lecture will take place at the James A. Yorke Rotunda in the Mathematics building from 3 to 3:50 p.m. All are invited.

Abstract: In the 19th century, the agrarian Chinese society and the Manchu government could not defend China against the invasion of the industrialized Western powers. After a series of humiliating defeats, the Chinese leaders realized the need to learn Western industry and military technology. The government thereafter selected top students for training abroad. Many of the scholars, such as Hu Shi and Zhu Kenzhen who came to the U.S. in 1910, made a major impact in China, not only in science and education but also in cultural movement and societal change.

This lecture will highlight the stories of Professor Shih-I Pai and his contemporaries, who came from China to the U.S. to study in the 1930s and 1940s, and their contributions to both China and the U.S. This group of scientists included the gifted inventor Yao-Tzu Li, the famous rocket scientist Qian Hsusen and the Nobel laureates Chen-Ning Yang and Tsung-Dao Lee. After the normalization of diplomatic relationships between the U.S. and China in the mid-1970s, there has been tremendous scientific interactions, and many U.S.-trained Chinese scientists have actively contributed to the advancement of science and technology. I will highlight some activities in the biomedical field that I witnessed. In conclusion, U.S-trained Chinese scientists contributed greatly to the scientific development in both the U.S. and China and to societal change in China. They continue to benefit not only the U.S. and China, but the entire world.


Dave Thirumalai elected a Fellow of the American Physical Society

October 13, 2015. Professor Dave Thirumalai (IPST / Chemistry & Biochemistry) was elected a Fellow of the American Physical Society (APS) by the APS Council of Representatives at its September 2015 meeting upon the recommendation of its Division of Biological Sciences. Election to Fellowship in the APS is limited to no more than one half of one percent of the membership and is recognition by peers of outstanding contributions to physics. The citation reads as follows: For his pioneering applications of concepts form statistical mechanics and polymer physics in developing new computational tools and theoretical models that have greatly advanced our understanding of the behavior of bio-macromolecules. We congratulate Dave for this honor.


Chris Jarzynski featured in Physical Review E celebration

October 13, 2015. To celebrate its 50,000th publication, Physical Review E is presenting a series of milestone papers on its website: http://journals.aps.org/pre/. Each week the journal will highlight a different paper, selected as having made a significant contribution to its field. A paper so featured was written by professor Chris Jarzynski (IPST / Chemistry and Biochemistry): "Equilibrium free-energy differences from nonequilibrium measurements: A master-equation approach”, Phys. Rev. E 56, 5018 (1997). An earlier paper by Chris was highlighted by Physical Review Letters in 2008 to celebrate that journal’s 50th anniversary: http://journals.aps.org/prl/50years/milestones.


IPST faculty work at core of new guideline for calculation of thermodynamic properties of supercooled water

September 4, 2015. The International Association for the Properties of Water and Steam (IAPWS), at its meeting in Stockholm in 2015, has adopted a guideline for the calculation of thermodynamic properties of supercooled water, a metastable state of liquid water at low temperatures. The IAPWS guideline is valid at temperatures from 300 K down to the homogeneous ice-nucleation temperature and at pressures up to 400 MPa. It is based on an equation of state developed by Vincent Holten, Jan V. Sengers (IPST), and Mikhail A. Anisimov (ChBE/IPST) at the University of Maryland and published in the Journal of Physical and Chemical Reference Data 43, 043101 (2014). Knowledge of the thermophysical properties of supercooled water is of key importance for a variety of environmental and industrial applications, such as (i) elucidation of cloud micro-physical processes in terrestrial and extraterrestrial atmospheres, (ii) description of ice formation in oceanic water, (ii) search for habitable planets and moons in the solar system and its nearest neighbors, (iv) development of effective technologies for food production, freeze-waste-water treatment, cryo-desalination of seawater and for ice-heat storage.


Wolfgang Losert named interim associate dean for faculty affairs and graduate education

August 11, 2015. Professor Wolfgang Losert (IPST/IREAP/Physics/Fischell Department of Bioengineering) has been named interim associate dean for faculty affairs and graduate education in CMNS effective August 15, 2015. Wolfgang will assume the role previously held by Paul Smith, who served the college for over five years in this role. For more, read the official CMNS news release.


Eun-Suk Seo receives Scientist of the Year Award at US-Korea Conference on Science, Technology and Entrepreneurship

August 7, 2015. Professor Eun-Suk Seo (IPST/Physics) received the Scientist of the Year Award at the US-Korea Conference on Science, Technology and Entrepreneurship (UKC2015), in Atlanta, Georgia, that took place from July 29 to August 1, 2015. This award is given to one person annually by the Korean Federation of Science and Technology Societies and Korean-American Scientists and Engineers Association jointly. Dr. Seo was in The Hague attending the 34th International Cosmic Ray Conference when the news was announced. The importance of her CREAM work was well recognized in many presentations, including Plenary Review/Rapporteur talks at this conference.


Stu Antman winner of 2015 Lyapunov Award

August 7, 2015. Professor Stuart Antman (IPST/Math) is the winner of the 2015 Lyapunov Award of the American Society of Mechanical Engineers. This biannual award, established in 2003, is given for life-long contributions to the field of nonlinear dynamics. The award emphasizes impact of research contributions, education and training of researchers and/or practitioners, and overall leadership in advancing the corresponding field. The award is presented by ASME's Design Engineering Division, and awarded at the annual ASME International Conference on Multibody Systems, Nonlinear Dynamics and Control, as part of the ASME International Design Engineering Technical Conferences.


Dave Thirumalai to receive 2016 CRSI Medal

August 2, 2015. Professor Devarajan Thirumalai (IPST/Chemistry & Biochemistry) will receive the 2016 Chemical Research Society of India (CRSI) Medal. This medal is conferred on chemists of Indian origin working outside India and who have contributed extensively in the promotion of chemical research. The 18th CRSI National Symposium in Chemistry is scheduled to be held at Panjab University, Chandigarh, during February 5-7, 2016.


Dan Lathrop's research is showcased in Voice of America

July 22, 2015. Professor Dan Lathrop (Geology/IPST/Physics/Electrical & Computer Engineering/Mechanical Engineering) and his research studying the magnetic field of the Earth was highlighted in an article and video segment in Voice of America. Lathrop's research aims at understanding the mechanisms by which the Earths magnetic field flip over time.


Mikhail Anisimov receives Touloukian Award

June 21, 2015. Professor Mikhail Anisimov, with appointments in the Department of Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering (ChBE) and the Institute for Physical Science and Technology, was one of the recipients of the 2015 Touloukian Award. This is a national ASME award named in honor of Professor Touloukian, and presented at the triennial Symposium on Thermophysical Properties. For more information see the news release from ChBE.


Eugenia Kalnay elected into the American Academy of Arts and Sciences

May 12, 2015. Professor Eugenia Kalnay (Civil & Environmental Engineering/AOSC/ESSIC/IPST/Mechanical Engineering) was elected a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. Founded in 1780, the Academy is a leading center for independent policy research. The 197 new members will be inducted at a ceremony at the Academy’s headquarters in Cambridge, MA, on October 10.


Celebration of Professor Bob Dorfman

April 16, 2015. On April 1 we celebrated 50 years of the many contribution of Professor Bob Dorfman to science and the status and well-being of the Institute for Physical Science and Technology. In September 1964 J. Robert Dorfman joined the University of Maryland as an Assistant Professor in the Institute for Fluid Dynamics and Applied Mathematics, precursor of IPST. During the years 1983-1992 Professor Dorfman served as Director of the Institute for Physical Science and Technology, the Dean of the College of Computer Mathematical and Physical Sciences, and the Vice President for Academic Affairs and Provost of the University of Maryland, College Park.


Mikhail Anisimov recognized by USM Board of Regents

April 16, 2015. Professor Mikhail Anisimov was recognized at the 2015 USM Board of Regents Faculty Awards in the Research, Scholarship, and Creative Activity category.

"Dr. Anisimov's field of research includes thermodynamics of fluids, liquid crystals, polymers, surfactant solutions, and other nano-structured materials. Dr. Anisimov has an impressive ability to create connections between the basic sciences and engineering. His breakthrough work has real world applications including oil recovery, procedures for plane de-icing, food preservation, and climate research through cloud formation.

His research includes collaborations with scientists from Asia, Europe, and Latin America, and he also serves on the editorial boards of five international research journals. In addition to teaching courses, Dr. Anisimov has advised several PhD students, supervised the research of undergraduate students, and mentored junior faculty and community college instructors.

In 2013, Dr. Anisimov established the Light Scattering Center at UMCP to promote research, education, and commerce in new fields of materials science, chemical and biomolecular engineering, colloid science, and chemistry and biochemistry for academia, government labs, and industry." Reads the official announcement.


Elaine Oran recognized with Honorary Doctorate

April 16, 2015. Professor Elain Oran was recognized by the Institut National des Sciences Appliquées (INSA) Rouen with an Honorary Doctorate during the 30-year Anniversary Program on April 3.


DJ Patil named Chief Data Scientist at White House

April 16, 2015. On February 18 Dr. Dhanurjay "DJ" Patil, UMD alum and a student of Jim Yorke, was named Deputy Chief Technology Officer for Data Policy and Chief Data Scientist in the Office of Science and Technology Policy at the White House. He was interviewed by Amrita Jayakumar, from The Washington Post.


Work on neutron detection featured in local newspaper

April 16, 2015. Professor Michael Coplan’s work with his collaborators on neutron detection was featured in the Diamondback on its March 31, 2015 issue.


Fushman and Sukharev elected Affiliate Professors at IPST

March 4, 2015. David Fushman, Professor in the Department of Chemistry and Biochemistry, and Interim Associate Director of the Maryland Biophysics Program (in IPST), and Sergei I. Sukharev, Professor in the Department of Biology, and Interim Director of the Maryland Biophysics Graduate Program (in IPST), were considered by IPST faculty in February 2015 for appointment as Affiliate Professors in IPST. Both candidates’ nominations were unanimously approved by the Institute’s faculty. Congratulations and welcome to the Institute for Physical Science and Technology to both of them.


Mikhail Anisimov to receive 2015 USM Regents' Faculty Award

February 25, 2015. Professor Mikhail Anisimov (IPST/CHBE) has been selected to receive a 2015 University System of Maryland Regents' Faculty Award for Excellence in Scholarship, Research, or Creative Activity. This is the highest honor that the University System of Maryland Board of Regents bestows to recognize exemplary faculty achievement.
Professor Anisimov is an interdisciplinary scientist whose research focuses on the thermodynamics of fluids and fluid mixtures, liquid crystals, polymers, and other soft-matter materials, and he is an internationally recognized expert in the field of critical phenomena and phase transitions.


Michael E. Fisher awarded prize from NIHERST

February 13, 2015. On January 10, 2015, Trinidad and Tobago's National Institute of Higher Education, Research, Science and Technology (NIHERST), in collaboration with the Caribbean Academy of Sciences, and Trinidad and Tobago's Ministry of Science and Technology, honored Professor Michael E. Fisher with The Rudranath Capildeo Award for Applied Science and Technology — Gold in a ceremony that took place at the Hyatt Regency in Port of Spain, the capital of that country. Professor Fisher, a Distinguished University Professor Emeritus, Regents Professor, and Research Professor in IPST, was born in Trinidad, West Indies.


Michelle Girvan elected GSNP member at large at APS

February 13, 2015. Associate Professors Michelle Girvan (IPST/Physics) and Benjamin Vollmayr-Lee of Bucknell University (a former postdoc with Professor Michael E. Fisher), were elected members at large of the Topical Group on Statistical & Nonlinear Physics of the American Physical Society on December 24 2014. The appointment lasts for 3 years.


Ehrman and Oran elected Affiliate Professors at IPST

February 13, 2015. Sheryl H. Ehrman, Professor and Chair of the Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering Department, and Elaine S. Oran, Professor in the Aerospace Engineering Department, were considered by IPST faculty in December 2014 for appointment as Affiliate Professors in IPST. Both candidates’ nominations were unanimously approved by the Institute’s faculty. Congratulations and welcome to the Institute for Physical Science and Technology to both of them.


Brian Hunt voted Professor Emeritus in IPST and Mathematics, and Research Professor in IPST

February 13, 2015. On January 15 2015, upon his retirement, Brian Hunt became Professor Emeritus in the Institute for Physical Science and Technology, and Research Professor in the Institute for Physical Science and Technology. Dr. Hunt, a mathematical "child prodigy", began his studies at the University of Maryland, College Park, when he was a mere youngster – eleven years old - and began his professional career here in 1995 as Assistant Research Scientist, and then Research Associate in 1992 in IPST. In 1996 he became Assistant Professor in both Mathematics and IPST, was promoted to Associate Professor in 2000, and became a full Professor in 2006. He became the Undergraduate Director of Math in 2010, and skillfully served in that capacity for two years. Brian has served on many committees on campus, in Math, and in IPST, and has served as the Assistant Coach of the Montgomery County Math Team since 1992, earning an excellent record of campus and community service.


 

Professor Konstantina Trivisa (IPST and Mathematics) accepted a joint appointment in IPST and became the new Associate Director of the Institute. Since 2007 Professor Trivisa has been the Director of the highly ranked Applied Mathematics & Statistics, and Scientific Computation program at the University of Maryland. Her research is in the area of nonlinear partial differential equations, and in 2013 she was the recipient of a Simons Foundation Fellowship in Mathematics, for applications of fluid dynamics to biology and ecology. "Konstantina is a highly accomplished mathematician with wide-ranging, interdisciplinary interests. We welcome her in her new appointment as a faculty member in the Institute and as our Associate Director", said Dr. Christopher Jarzynski, IPST Director.


Special issue of Science sheds light on shape, evolution and lifespan of comet 67P-Churyumov/Gerasimenko

January 31, 2015. Three UMD scientists co-authored four papers revealing new discoveries on the shape, evolution, and lifespan of comet 67P-Churyumov/Gerasimenko. The papers are the result of the analysis of the data gathered so far by the European Space Agency’s Rosetta mission and published in a special issue of Science. One of the authors is Murthy Gudipati, a principal scientist at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory and a part-time senior research scientist at the UMD Institute for Physical Science and Technology. The other two are astronomers Michael A’Hearn and Dennis Bodewits. Read more about their fascinating work in the College of Computer, Mathematical, and Natural Sciences press release.


UMD and NIH Researchers Receive BRAIN Initiative Award

December 15, 2014. Professor Wolfgang Losert (IPST and Physics), Associate Professor of Biology Patrick Kanold, and Dr. Dietmar Plenz (NIH) obtained a Brain Research through Advancing Innovative Neurotechnologies (BRAIN) initiative award to study, measure and analyze the activity of large populations of neurons in multiple layers of the cerebral cortex in order to identify key groups of neurons —called "crowds"— that change over time. The UMD-led team will focus their efforts on the auditory cortex, a region in the brain’s cerebral cortex that is crucial for human language communication.


Eugenia Kalnay receives 2015 Joanne Simpson Mentorship Award

December 15, 2014. Distinguished University Professor Eugenia Kalnay (AOSC and IPST) is the recipient of the 2015 Joanne Simpson Mentorship Award by the American Meteorological Society (AMS) "...for effectively mentoring many early career scientists, with her unstinting generosity of time and attention in providing advice, encouragement, leadership, and inspiration." Kalnay was also awarded AMS Honorary Membership.


Wendell Hill elected official of the American Physical Society

December 15, 2014. Professor and Joint Quantum Institute Fellow Wendell Hill (IPST and JQI) has been elected Vice Chair of the Executive Committee of the Mid-Atlantic Section of the American Physical Society (APS), effective January 1, 2015. Recently established, the Mid-Atlantic Section has the goal of strengthening the physics community in its region and to aid APS in its mission to advance and diffuse the knowledge of physics at the regional level.


Ellen Williams Confirmed as Head of ARPA-E

December 11, 2014. Distinguished University Professor Ellen Williams (IPST and Physics) was confirmed by the U.S. Senate to lead the Advanced Research Projects Agency - Energy, or ARPA-E, a branch of the U.S. Department of Energy. In this capacity, Professor Williams will be in charge of the agency that advances high-potential, high-impact energy technologies that are too early for private-sector investment. ARPA-E projects have the potential to radically improve U.S. economic security, national security, and environmental well-being. ARPA-E empowers America’s energy researchers with funding, technical assistance, and market readiness. For more information on her confirmation, please read the official University press release.


Eleventh Burgers Symposium on Nov. 13th

November 5, 2014. Jim Wallace, Chair of the Burgers Program for Fluid Dynamics, invites you to the 2014 Burgers Symposium on Thursday, November 13th, in the Kay Boardrooms (1107 & 1111) of the Jeong H. Kim Engineering Building. This year marks the 11th anniversary of the annual Burgers Lecture, which will be given by Katepalli Sreenivasan, Executive Vice Provost for Science and Technology, President and Dean of the Polytechnic School of Engineering, and Professor of Physics and Mathematics at New York University. There will also be lectures by Gijs Ooms, Former Scientific Director of the J.M. Burgerscentrum, The Netherlands; Charles Meneveau, from Johns Hopkins University; Rachel Lee and Ken Kiger, both from the University of Maryland, College Park; and Bruno Eckardt, from Philipps-Universität Marburg, Germany. The event will feature a poster session with prizes awarded to the best poster in each category. For details, visit the Burgers Program for Fluid Dynamics website.


Washington Post Features UMD/Goddard Collaboration and Dr. Seo’s ISS-CREAM Project

October 31, 2014. Professor Eun-Suk Seo's ISS-CREAM probe and Michael Coplan's Ion Composition Instrument on the ISEE-3 satellite have been featured in a Washington Post article highlighting the long collaboration between the University of Maryland, College Park, and NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center (GSFC). The proximity of campus to GSFC has fostered a long time collaboration between both institutions that has translated into great learning and job opportunities for both undergraduate and graduate students at UMD. It is projects such as ISS-CREAM, lead by Dr. Seo, whose purpose is to detect cosmic rays at wide energy ranges with the ultimate goal of understanding the origin of cosmic rays and the implications that these phenomena carry for the universe, that capture the imagination and labor of students. The proximity to GSFC, the mentorship and direction of Dr. Seo, and the abundance of interest among students, have resulted in a very successful cosmic ray physics program at UMD that will see its culmination with the launch in February or June next year of ISS-CREAM.


Konstantina Trivisa appointed new Associate Director of IPST

September 30, 2014. Professor Konstantina Trivisa (IPST and Mathematics) accepted a joint appointment in IPST and became the new Associate Director of the Institute. Since 2007 Professor Trivisa has been the Director of the highly ranked Applied Mathematics & Statistics, and Scientific Computation program at the University of Maryland. Her research is in the area of nonlinear partial differential equations, and in 2013 she was the recipient of a Simons Foundation Fellowship in Mathematics, for applications of fluid dynamics to biology and ecology. "Konstantina is a highly accomplished mathematician with wide-ranging, interdisciplinary interests. We welcome her in her new appointment as a faculty member in the Institute and as our Associate Director", said Dr. Christopher Jarzynski, IPST Director.


20th Annual Shih-I Pai Lecture

September 22, 2014. The Institute for Physical Science and Technology and the Department of Physics announce the 20th Annual Shih-I Pai Lecture. This year's lecture will be presented by Scientist Emeritus Dr. Johanna M. H. (Anneke) Levelt Sengers, National Insititue of Standards and Technology. Her talk, Pride and Prejudice in Science and Engineering, will be given on Tuesday, October 7, 2014 at 4 p.m. in room 1412 of the Physics building at the University of Maryland, College Park. A reception preceding the lecture will take place at the James A. Yorke Rotunda in the Mathematics building from 3 to 3:50 p.m. All are invited.


Christopher Jarzynski named Distinguished University Professor

August 11, 2014. Christopher Jarzynski, director of IPST and professor in the Department of Chemistry and Biochemistry, has been awarded the title of Distinguished University Professor. This title, the highest academic honor that our university confers upon a faculty member, was awarded by President Wallace Loh in acknowledgement of Jarzynski’s work in the field of nonequilibrium thermodynamics. Jarzynski joins a long and prestigious list of IPST faculty members who have been awarded this title, including James Drake who received it earlier this year.


Zombie Spaceship

August 8, 2014. IPST professor Michael Coplan was quoted in an August 8, 2014 New York Times article about the International Sun-Earth Explorer-3, a NASA spacecraft launched in 1978 that passed near Earth recently, long after contact with the craft had been lost. A team of citizen scientists have rebooted many of the experiments on the spacecraft, including Coplan’s instrument that measured the ion composition of the solar wind from 1978 to 1985 and the composition of the tail of comet Giacobini-Zinner in 1985. A number of Maryland undergraduate and graduate students who went on to scientific and technical careers participated in the design, construction, and calibration of the instrument as well as the analysis of the data. More information about the spacecraft, including its 36-year trajectory and some of the data it has collected, can be found on spacecraftforall.com, a website started with help from Google.


Biology professor Sergei Sukharev named interim director of Maryland Biophysics

July 29, 2014. Sergei Sukharev has been appointed Interim Director of the Maryland Biophysics Program for the coming year. Sukharev is a professor of Biology, and has served as the Associate Director of the Maryland Biophysics Program. His research focuses on mechanosensitive ion channels, which convert mechanical forces into electrical or chemical signals in cells. He and the members of his research group study these channels using a combination of experimental approaches and computational modeling.

Sukharev is the recipient of the 2008 Michael and Kate Barany Award for Young Investigators “for his outstanding and creative contributions to membrane biophysics”. He has served on the editorial boards of the Journal of General Physiology and Journal of Biological Chemistry.

In his new role, Sukharev follows Wolfgang Losert, who has been appointed Interim Associate Dean for Research in the College of Computer, Mathematical, and Natural Sciences (CMNS).


IPST Professor Millard Alexander elected to IAQMS

July 9, 2014. Millard Alexander has been elected to membership in the International Academy of Quantum Molecular Science (IAQMS). Alexander is a Distinguished University Professor with a joint appointment in IPST and the Department of Chemistry and Biochemistry. His research focuses on non-adiabatic effects in molecular collisions, in weakly bound complexes and in molecular photodissociation. His previous honors include a Guggenheim Memorial Fellowship and the Hildebrand Award from the Chemical Society of Washington, among others.

The IAQMS promotes research and international collaboration related to the application of quantum theory to chemistry and chemical physics. According to its website, its members "are chosen among the scientists of all countries who have distinguished themselves by the value of their scientific work, their role of pioneer or leader of a school in the broad field of the application of quantum mechanics to the study of molecules and macromolecules".


IPST Professor Wolfgang Losert Named College's Associate Dean for Research

July 2, 2014. Wolfgang Losert has been named Interim Associate Dean for Research in the College of Computer, Mathematical, and Natural Sciences (CMNS) effective July 1, 2014. Losert has appointments in IPST, Physics, and the Institute for Research in Electronics and Applied Physics (IREAP). His research focuses on discovering emergent dynamic properties of complex systems at the interface of physics and biology, with a special emphasis on cancer biology. To take on this new position in the dean’s office, Losert will step down from his roles as member of the Burgers Board for Fluid Dynamics and director of the Maryland Biophysics graduate program.

“Given Wolfgang's outstanding research contributions, I am confident that he will have a tremendous impact on the college’s research excellence, interdisciplinary collaborations, and industry partnerships," said Jayanth Banavar, dean of CMNS.

Losert assumed the role previously held by IPST professor Dan Lathrop, an innovative experimentalist who assisted immensely in the development of the college during his tenure as associate dean for research.


Back-to-back Phys Rev Letters by IPST Faculty, Postdocs and Student

July 1, 2014. A recent issue of Physical Review Letters features two back-to-back papers on granular materials by Professor Wolfgang Losert (IPST/PHYS/IREAP) and colleagues. The first of these papers, describing numerical work with Professor Michelle Girvan (IPST/PHYS/IREAP) as one of the authors, revisits the problem of “cage-breaking” for a granular system and develops a new method for quantifying how grains move under the influence of their nearest neighbors. The second paper experimentally studies the rearrangement of particles upon impact of a projectile onto a bed of grains. University of Maryland postdocs Mitch Mailman, and Kerstin Nordstrom are first authors on these papers. Graduate student Matt Harrington co-authored both articles.


Expanded autobiographical notes of J. M. Burgers published by J. V. Sengers and G. Ooms

July 1, 2014. Distinguished University Professor Emeritus and Research Professor Jan V. Sengers (IPST) and his colleague G. (Gijs) Ooms, former director of the J. M. Burgerscentrum (JMBC) in the Netherlands, have published a new set of autobiagraphical notes of J. M. Burgers. The notes were composed in 1954 by Burgers. This work appears in the 2013-2014 Annual Report of the JMBC. Professor Sengers has also deposited a copy in the Niels Bohr Library of the the American Institute of Physics, where it appears in its catalogue.


UMD represented at prestigious conference

June 20, 2014. This year, the prestigious American Conference on Theoretical Chemistry, which has taken place every three years since 1972, will feature three invited speakers with joint appointments in IPST and the Department of Chemistry and Biochemistry: John WeeksGaryk Papoian and Chris Jarzynski. The conference will host speakers from a number of prominent institutions such as Stanford, Berkeley, Caltech, Princeton, Cornell, and MIT. The University of Maryland is the only institution being represented by three invited speakers.


Robert W. Zwanzig (April 9, 1928 - May 15, 2014)

May 19, 2014. Prof. Robert Zwanzig, Distinguished University Professor and Professor Emeritus in the Institute for Physical Science and Technology, died quietly in his sleep on May 15. He had a very distinguished career as a researcher and teacher in the field of statistical physics, was elected to the National Academy of Sciences in 1972, and was awarded the Debye Award by the American Chemical Society in 1976 and the Langmuir Award by the American Chemical Society in 1984. He joined the faculty of the University of Maryland in 1968 and retired in 1988, after which he joined the Chemical Physics Division of the National Institutes of Health.

Bob Zwanzig was a brilliant theoretical physicist and chemist. He was well known for his ability to describe a wide variety of physical phenomena using very sophisticated model systems of his own invention, and he possessed the mathematical skills to obtain results from them with striking clarity. Perhaps he is best known for his “projection operator method” which allows one to obtain equations for time-dependent distributions and correlation functions in a very simple and direct way, showing that a technical breakthrough can lead to deeper conceptual understanding of the behavior of many-particle systems. This method continues to be widely used by workers of all generations in his field.

Bob Zwanzig was a great teacher of graduate students and mentor for younger scientists. His insights and skill were greatly admired and in many instances helped his colleagues to successfully find their way in their own research efforts. He will be greatly missed.


Chemical Physics alumni get tenure-track positions at prestigious universities

May 8, 2014. Two Chemical Physics program alumni have obtained tenure-track positions at prestigious universities. Last year, Edward O’Brien (PhD 2008) started a tenure-track faculty position at Penn State. Ed was a member of the Thirumalai group here at Maryland, and then did postdoctoral work at the University of Cambridge in the UK.

Suriyanarayanan Vaikuntanathan (PhD 2011) has recently accepted a tenure-track faculty position at the University of Chicago. Suri was in Christopher Jarzynski’s research group, and did his postdoctoral work at UC Berkeley.


Two UMD LabTV videos capture Gold Awards at 2014 Tribeca Film Festival

April 29, 2014. Two University of Maryland (UMD) LabTV videos were awarded Gold Awards at the Tribeca Film Festival on April 25, in New York City. One of the winning videos featured Rachel Lee, a physics Ph.D. student in Wolfgang Losert’s lab. Ms. Lee works on a joint project with Carole Parent, from the National Cancer Institute, and it was shot by Kai Keefe (a double major in broadcast journalism and environmental science.) Dr. Losert’s lab was selected as one of only a few UMD labs to be featured on LabTV. The aim of the National Institutes of Health (NIH) sponsored LabTV project is to generate short videos of STEM graduate students working on NIH funded projects. The goal is to foster enthusiasm about health related science careers. Congratulations to Ms. Lee and Mr. Keefe.


Detecting neutrons with light

April 29, 2014. A joint paper on neutron detection, published by Michael Coplan (IPST), Charles Clark (NIST/JQI/IPST), and colleagues, was featured in a National Institute of Standards and Technology web site. The news release offers a short video highlighting the working principles behind the novel neutron detector.


Inauguration of the Frank W. J. Olver Reading and Seminar room

April 29, 2014. On April 21, Ms. Claire Olver and members of the Olver family, with distinguished university guests, attended the inauguration of The Frank W. J. Olver Reading and Seminar Room (4301 CSS bldg.) to commemorate the first anniversary of the passing of our dear colleague. The ceremony was conducted by professor and IPST director, Dr. Rajarshi Roy. At the inauguration, doctors Daniel Lozier (NIST), William Reinhardt (APS/IPST), and Charles Clark (NIST/JQI/IPST) offered their remarks. Dr. Peter Olver, son of Dr. Frank Olver and Head of the School of Mathematics at the University of Minnesota, gave a heartfelt speech on behalf of the Olver family. The dedication plaque was unveiled by Dr. Michael Coplan. A warm reception followed the formal inauguration. Photos of the occasion.


James Drake named Distinguished University Professor

April 24, 2014. Professor James Drake (Department of Physics/IPST/IREAP) has been awarded the title of Distinguished University Professor, adding to a long and prestigious list of IPST faculty members that have been recognized and honored this way. This official title, the highest academic honor that our university confers upon a faculty member, is reserved for a small number of exceptionally distinguished scholars. This title was awarded by President Loh in acknowledgement of Dr. Drake's internationally recongnized work in the field of plasma physics. Please join us in congratulating Jim on this accomplishment.


AMSC program ranked #10 by U.S. News and World Report

April 4, 2014. The Applied Mathematics & Statistics, and Scientific Computation program, under the direction of Konstantina Trivisa, and part of the Mathematics department at UMD, was ranked number 10 in 2014 by U.S. News and World Report in the category of Best Graduate Schools in Applied Mathematics. This reflects the great leadership and vision that Dr. Trivisa has brought to the AMSC program.


Biggest genome assembled by joint UC Davis-UMD-Johns Hopkins team

April 4, 2014. A team led by Jim Yorke at UMD and Steven Salzberg at Johns Hopkins assembled the genome of the loblolly pine, the largest genome ever sequenced. This was part of the overall effort led by David Neale at the University of California, Davis, to assemble this collosal genome. The UMD team - Jim Yorke, Aleksey Zimin, Guillaume Marcais and Mike Roberts - focused on the assembly alone. "The key person in the Maryland effort was Aleksey Zimin (in UMD’s IPST) and he will lead the assembly effort for the sugar pine assembly. Also, while we did use a super computer, it was a rather small super computer – 64 core processors with a terabyte of ram. Our assembly program is called MaSuRCA (MarylandSuperReadsCeleraAssembler) that is open source and freely available. It is being downloaded at a rate of 200 times per month (200 distinct web addresses) because it does a great job assembling genomes of all sizes, minimizing gaps and errors." Yorke said. The Genetics Society of America features an article with further details on this fascinating project.


2014 Chemical Physics and Biophysics Spring Reception and Poster Session

March 10, 2014. On Friday March 14, from noon to 3 p.m., the Chemical Physics and the Biophysics programs will celebrate the 2014 spring reception and poster session. All Chemical Physics and Biophysics students, as well as faculty and staff, are invited. The reception will take place at the IPST building lobby. Please RSVP to Debbie Jenkins or Star Jackson by Monday March 10.


Professor Christopher Jarzynski announced new IPST director

February 24, 2014. Professor Christopher Jarzynski, from the Department of Chemistry and Biochemistry and the Institute for Physical Science and Technology (IPST) has been offered and has accepted the position of Director of IPST, effective July 1, 2014. Dr. Jayanth R. Banavar, Dean of the College of Computer, Mathematical, and Natural Sciences, made the announcement at a short meeting with IPST faculty and staff on Thursday February 20. Dr. Jarzynski and his research group focus on statistical mechanics at the molecular level, the foundations of non-equilibrium thermodynamics, the application of statistical mechanics to problems of biophysical interest, and the development of efficient numerical schemes for estimating thermodynamic properties of complex systems. “He brings to the position an exceptionally distinguished scientific career and a broad understanding of science and technology”, Dr. Rajarshi Roy, current IPST director, said. Dr. Roy’s term will end June 30, 2014.


First Frank B. McDonald Award given at American Geophysics Union 2013 meeting

February 17, 2014. Ms. Beate Krøvel Humberset, a Ph.D. student at Birkeland Centre for Space Science, University of Bergen, Norway, was awarded the first Frank B. McDonald Award at the December 2013 American Geophysics Union (AGU) meeting. The award was presented to Ms. Humberset by Rene McDonald, wife of the late Dr. McDonald. This is a travel grant award that was instituted after the passing of Dr. McDonald from contributions from his friends and colleagues. In the picture above Dr. James A. Klimchuk, president of the Space Physics and Aeronomy Section of the AGU accompanies Ms. Humberset, center, and Rene McDonald.


William Reinhardt new Adjunct Professor at IPST

February 2, 2014. Dr. William P. Reinhardt has accepted the position of Adjunct Professor in the Institute for Physical Science and Technology (IPST) at the University of Maryland, College Park. Eligible IPST faculty voted unanimously in favor of Dr. Reinhardt’s appointment last month.

Dr. Reinhardt was most recently a Professor and Associate Chair of the Undergraduate Program in the Department of Chemistry at the University of Washington, Seattle, Washington. He has worked in many areas, including electron scattering from atoms and molecules, inter- and intra-molecular energy transfer, classical, semi-classical and quantum chaos, rotational and vibrational energy levels in polyatomic molecules. His current interests are phase transitions, solatons and vortices in Bose-Einstein condensates, and thermodynamics, and he is the author of three chapters in the NIST Handbook of Mathematical Functions.

His honors and awards include Couper Scholar of Phi Beta Kappa, Fulbright Senior Scholar, American Association for the Advancement of Science Fellow, American Physical Society Fellow and, Alfred P. Sloan Fellow.


Daniel Dwyer Joining CBMG and IPST

February 2, 2014. Dr. Daniel J. Dwyer has accepted a position as Assistant Professor in the Department of Cell Biology and Molecular Genetics (CBMG) (tenure home), with a joint appointment in the Institute for Physical Science and Technology (IPST), in the College of Computer, Mathematical and Natural Sciences, at the University of Maryland, College Park. Dr. Dwyer’s appointment is part of the Quantitative Biology Cluster hire initiative. He will join us at the beginning of August 2014.

Dan was awarded his Ph.D. in Molecular Biology, Cell Biology and Biochemistry in 2007 from Boston University. He is currently a Senior Post-Doctoral Research Fellow at Boston University, in the Department of Biomedical Engineering.

We are delighted to welcome Dr. Dwyer to CBMG and IPST.


Milestone reached by our colleague Catha M. Stewart

December 13, 2013. Our colleague Catha M. Stewart has completed the coursework to earn the Bachelor of Science Degree in Investigative Forensics at the University of Maryland University College (UMUC). Ms. Stewart provides administrative support to faculty research groups here at IPST and assists with the activities of the Burgers Program. She will be awarded her degree later this December. Congratulations!


Passing of Professor Marshall Ginter

December 12, 2013. We are sad to inform you that our colleague Professor Marshall Ginter passed away December 9 at his home in Laurel, Maryland. His wife Dorothy called with the news.

Marshall joined the Institute for Molecular Physics of the University of Maryland in 1966 from the University of Chicago where he worked with Nobel Laureate Robert Mulliken in the area of molecular spectroscopy. At Maryland, he was an energetic and productive scientist, who made important contributions to the understanding of highly excited Rydberg states in small molecules. He welcomed new ideas and mentored many students and colleagues as well as contributing to the field through extensive national and international collaborations. For his distinguished contributions, he received an honorary doctorate from California Sate University, Chico CA. Marshall became Emeritus Professor in 2008 and continued active research well into 2012. Those of us who knew him will miss his quick wit and perceptive remarks, his encouragement of others and positive attitude.

Marshall is survived by his long-time companion and wife Dorothy, their daughter Gretchen, son Karl, and several grand children.

Michael Coplan and Rajarshi Roy


The Olver Staff Development Activities Fund

December 11, 2013. Dr. Frank W. J. Olver (1924 – 2013), Professor Emeritus, Institute for Physical Science and Technology, and the Department of Mathematics, bequeathed a gift of $10,000 to support the professional advancement of IPST staff members. Dr. Olver had great appreciation for the work of the staff and their strong commitment to the success of IPST, the College, and the University. This gift, the first of its kind, recognizes the important work of the staff and is to be used for staff professional and educational development.

Mrs. Claire (Frank) Olver was instrumental in arranging the gift, and her thoughtfulness and generosity are very much appreciated.

Olver Staff Development Activities Fund, October 24, 2013

The Olver Staff Development Activities Fund will support professional development activities for exempt and non-exempt staff working in the Institute for Physical Science and Technology at the University of Maryland, College Park. Such activities may include but are not limited to courses at educational institutions, professional development courses, conferences, seminars, and on-line courses. Support can include expenses for travel to attend off-campus professional development activities. If campus tuition support is available for the activities, it should be used first, however, additional funds may be requested from the fund for expenses not covered (i.e., books, course materials, fees, etc.)

The Olver Staff Development Activities Fund will be administered by the Director of the Institute for Physical Science and Technology or his/her designee.

Full or Part-time Staff employed by the Institute may apply to the Director or his/her designee in writing for support from the Olver Staff Development Activities Fund for any professional development activity which will advance and enrich their career whether or not it is related to their current job responsibilities. In requesting support, the staff person should detail the professional development activity and the reason the activity will assist their career. The Director and/or his/her designee shall review the request for support and distribute funds from the Olver Fund to serve the best interests of the staff and the Institute. Multiple awards may be given in a year but no one staff person may expend the entire balance of the fund.


Rajarshi Roy to travel to India in January

December 11, 2013. In January, Rajarshi Roy will be a keynote speaker at the Indian Institute of Technology (IIT), Bombay - Techfest 2014. Dr. Roy will also speak at Jawaharlal Nehru University in New Delhi and Delhi University.


Ellen D. Williams nominated Director of ARPA-E by President Obama

November 8, 2013. Distinguished University Professor Ellen D. Williams, faculty member of IPST and Physics, and current Chief Scientist for BP, a position she has held since 2010 on a leave of absence from the University of Maryland, has been nominated by President Obama to be considered Director of the Advanced Research Projects Agency-Energy, at the Department of Energy. Of her nomination, announced by the White House together with other posts, President Obama said: "I am grateful these accomplished individuals have agreed to join this Administration, and I’m confident they will serve ably in these important roles. I look forward to working with them in the coming months and years."


Tenth Burgers Symposium on Nov. 20th

November 7, 2013. Jim Wallace, Chair of the Burgers Program for Fluid Dynamics, invites you to the 2013 Burgers Symposium on Wednesday, November 20th, in the Kay Boardrooms (1107 & 1111) of the Kim Engineering and Applied Science Building. The annual Burgers Lecture will be given by Ulrike Feudel, from the Carl von Ossietzky University in Oldenburg, Germany. There will also be lectures by Fulvio Scarano, from Delft Technical University, The Netherlands, and Amir Riaz and Kayo Ide, both from the University of Maryland, College Park. The event will feature a poster session with prizes awarded to the best poster in each category. For details, visit the Burgers Program for Fluid Dynamics website.


19th Annual Shih-I Pai Lecture

October 4, 2013. The Institute for Physical Science and Technology and the Department of Physics announce the 19th Annual Shih-I Pai Lecture. This year's lecture will be presented by Distinguished University Professor, and Chief Scientist of BP International Ltd., Ellen D. Williams. Her talk, Energy and our other natural resources: minerals, land, water, and the atmosphere, will be given on Tuesday, October 22, 2013 at 4 p.m. in room 1412 of the Physics building at the University of Maryland, College Park. A reception preceding the lecture will take place at the rotunda of the Mathematics building from 3 to 3:50 p.m. All are invited.


Mathematics rotunda to be named after James A. Yorke

October 4, 2013. As part of the Golden Jubilee for James Yorke celebrations commemorating the 50th anniversary of scholarly work and administrative service of Distinguished University Professor James A. Yorke, the Mathematics department rotunda will be named after him on Monday, October 14th at 2:30 p.m. Chancellor Kirwan, President Loh, and Dean Banavar will participate in the reception and ceremony. Please join us in recognizing the achievements of our colleague and former IPST director.


Arpita Upadhyaya Awarded the 2013 Richard A. Ferrell Distinguished Faculty Fellowship

September 20, 2013. Arpita Upadhyaya has received the 2013 Richard A. Ferrell Distinguished Faculty Fellowship, which recognizes outstanding personal effort and expertise in physics as well as dedicated service to the UMD Department of Physics. The Fellowship, established in 2001, honors Dr. Richard A. Ferrell, a deeply-respected physicist who joined the University in 1953, served 40 years, and remained active in the department even after his retirement. Dr. Ferrell died in 2005 at his nearby University Park home.


James A. Yorke awarded President's Medal

September 12, 2013. James A. Yorke, Distinguished University Professor of Mathematics and Physics, and IPST faculty member, has been honored with the 2013 President's Medal. The Medal will be presented at this year’s Faculty and Staff Convocation. Those being recognized are the Distinguished University Professors, Distinguished Scholar-Teachers, Kirwan Prize winners, the President’s Distinguished Service award recipients, and the President’s Medalist. The Faculty and Staff Convocation will be held on Tuesday, October 8, 2013, at 3:00 p.m., in the Memorial Chapel. The ceremony lasts approximately an hour and a half and will be followed by a reception in the Chapel Garden. The Convocation is always a wonderful occasion to salute our fantastic faculty and staff.


Rajarshi Roy at University Honors Program's event

September 11, 2013. Professor Rajarshi Roy gave a talk at McKeldin library as part of the University Honors Program's What Is Your Dream? programming series. The title of his talk was Dreams of Convergence - A Reconciliation of Science and Faith? In this talk, he offered an engaging presentation on dreams of convergence and how science and faith play a role in dreams. The presentation was accompanied by simple scientific demonstrations and discussions.


Voyager 1 leaves solar system

August 19, 2013. A new study, co-authored by James F. Drake, says that Voyager 1 has finally left the Solar System. Voyager 1 carries an instrument that Frank B. McDonald helped design, manufacture, and use to measure cosmic rays. In said study, the authors constructed a model of the outer edge of the Solar System that fits recent observations from this instrument, both expected and unexpected. To read more about this fascinating story, see the original press release.


Rajarshi Roy to talk at Workshop on Control of Self-Organizing Nonlinear Systems, in Germany

August 7, 2013. Professor Rajarshi Roy will participate as an invited speaker at the Workshop on Control of Self-Organizing Nonlinear Systems at the Institute of Theoretical Physics Collaborative Research Center in Leucorea, Lutherstadt Wittenberg, Germany, from August 28 to August 30, 2013. Dr. Roy will give a talk titled "Nonlinear Dynamics in Optical Networks: Patterns and Synchronization."


Michael E. Fisher makes the Top 20 Living Physicists list by Aneki World Rankings

August 1, 2013. Professor Michael E. Fisher has been ranked number 6 in the Top 20 Living Physicists by Aneki World Rankings. Aneki compiles data from numerous sources to promote wider knowledge of countries and regions.


Rajarshi Roy participates in Hands-on-Research

July 1, 2013. Professor Rajarshi Roy and Physics graduate student Aaron Hagerstrom participated in this year's Hands-On Research in Complex Systems school, July 1-12, Trieste, Italy. Sponsored by the Abdus Salam International Centre for Theoretical Physics, and co-sponsored by the National Science Foundation, this year's school had over 60 participants from 30 developing countries. The schools are designed to introduce graduate students and young faculty from developing countries to table-top scientific research on problems at the frontiers of science. "The idea behind small science is try to do experiments that cost less than a 1,000 Euros, but still do absolutely cutting-edge science."


Frank W. J. Olver 1924-2013

April 24, 2013. Frank William John Olver, Professor Emeritus in the Institute for Physical Science and Technology and Department of Mathematics at the University of Maryland, and Faculty Appointee of the National Institute of Standards and Technology, passed away on April 23, 2013, at the age of 88.

Born in 1924 in Croydon, UK, Frank showed deep interest in mathematics and proved himself a mathematical talent at a young age. He obtained a first class honors in mathematics for his bachelor’s degree from the University of London in 1944. He received a master’s degree in 1948 and completed the D.Sc. in mathematical analysis in 1961.

After completing his undergraduate studies at age 19, Frank was assigned to the British Admiralty Computing Service where he was first introduced to numerical analysis. It was at that time his research direction in special functions began to take shape. Soon after the war, he joined the Mathematics Division of the National Physical Laboratory (NPL), Teddington, UK, as Scientific Officer, and became one of the founding members of the Mathematics Division of the Laboratory from 1945-1961. There, he met his first wife, Grace E. Olver (nee Smith). They were married in 1948, and had three children, Peter (1952- ), Linda (1953-1965), and Sally (1955- ).

During 1957-58, Frank visited the National Bureau of Standards in Washington DC, which subsequently became the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST), to help work on the well-known and highly cited Handbook of Mathematical Functions by Abramowitz and Stegun. In 1961, he moved permanently to NIST, now in Gaithersburg, MD. He retired in 1986, but continued to be active in mathematics at NIST until his death. In 1969, he became a Research Professor at the University of Maryland where he worked and taught for 23 years until he retired in 1992 at the age of 68 and was appointed Professor Emeritus.

Frank’s first book, Asymptotics and Special Functions, published in 1974 by Academic Press, became a standard reference in the fields of asymptotics and special functions. In 2000, a two-volume commemorative collection of selected papers of Frank was published. The 1074-page collection consisted of 56 papers covering his most important contributions in the areas of asymptotic analysis, special functions, and numerical analysis, from 1949 to 1999. One review of the collection, said "the papers exemplify a redoubtable mathematical talent, the work of a man who has done more than almost anyone else in the 20th century to bestow on the discipline of applied mathematics the elegance and rigor that its earliest practitioners such as Gauss and Laplace would have wished for it."

Frank was very active in the Society for Industrial and Applied Mathematics (SIAM). He helped found the SIAM Journal on Mathematical Analysis and served as its first managing editor, from 1970-1975. He was also a long time member of the American Mathematical Society (AMS) and the Mathematical Association of America (MAA).

Frank's "life-time achievement" was serving as mathematics editor for the NIST Handbook of Mathematical Functions, which was published by Cambridge University Press in 2010, and its web counterpart, the NIST Digital Library of Mathematical Functions (DLMF), the updated, expanded, and online version of the old Abramowitz and Stegun Handbook. The NIST Handbook took 10 years to complete, and now serves as the authoritative reference volume for the special functions of mathematics and its many applications. In April 2011, the NIST co-organized a conference on "Special Functions in the 21st Century: Theory & Applications" in Washington DC in recognition of his seminal contributions to the advancement of special functions, especially in the area of asymptotic analysis and as Mathematics Editor of the DLMF. In appreciation of his work on the DLMF, Frank was awarded the Gold Medal of the US Department of Commerce, the highest honorary award granted by the Department in 2011. In the same year, the Digital Library of Mathematical Functions was chosen as one of 10 Government Computer News Award Winners for "Outstanding Information Technology Achievement in Government".

Frank is survived by his wife of 23 years, Claire, brother Terence, two children, Peter and Sally, their spouses Cheri and Neal, and five grandchildren, Parizad, Krista, Sheehan, Brian, and Noreen.

Peter Olver


Eugenia Kalnay featured in IANAS book

April 22, 2013. The Interamerican Network of Academies of Sciences (IANAS) has published a book - Women Scientists of the Americas. Their inspiring stories - in which the life of Eugenia Kalnay, a Distinguished University Professor and IPST faculty member, is profiled among those of other remarkable women who have worked, somtimes against great odds, to make a career in a world that has not alway been welcoming to them. The book demonstrates that even under difficult political conditions and without abundant resources, determined women scientists developed strategies to establish eminent careers throughout the Americas. The book is free for download from the IANAS book download page.


Nature Chemistry publication by Millard H. Alexander

April 22, 2013. Distinguished University Professor and IPST faculty member Millard H. Alexander's work OH electron, where art thou? was publish in the April 2013 (vol. 5, pp. 253-255) issue of Nature Chemistry. This is a perspective article, written at the level of a good chemistry undergraduate, in which Dr. Alexander describes new experiments that shed light on the intricacies of the reaction between oxygen and hydrogen, phenomenon that still defies full explanation.


Dark Matter Possibly Found by $2 Billion Space Station Experiment

April 20, 2013. The Alpha Magnetic Spectrometer (AMS) instrument on board of the International Space Station has recorded a signal, after billions of particle events, that may be the result of dark matter. Professors Eun Suk-Seo and Roald Z. Sagdeev, both IPST members, participated in this international effort. For more information, read CERN's press release.


Former IPST director K. Sreenivasan appointed president of NYU-Poly

April 11, 2013. Former director of IPST and Distinguished University Professor Katepalli Sreenivasan, affectionately known as Sreeni, has been appointed President of the Polytechnic Institute of New York University (NYU-Poly.) Read NYU-Poly's press release for more information.


New discovery sheds light on possible photochemical activity on Titan's low-altitude atmosphere

April 4, 2013. Murthy Gudipati, and his team at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, have discovered, in controlled experimental conditions that simulate the atmosphere of Titan, Saturn's moon, the presence of photochemical activity at lower altitudes than previously thought possible. This activity can produce complex organic compounds that could eventually lead to the building blocks of life. The results were published in Nature Communications this week. Read the full NASA press release for more information on this fascinating discovery.


Mikhail Anisimov elected member of Russian academies

April 2, 2013. Professor Mikhail Anisimov has been elected a foreign member of the Russian Academy of Engineering (RAE) and the Russian Academy of Natural Sciences (RANS). The RANS is a public organization that was founded on August 31, 1990 in Moscow, while the RAE is a public academy of sciences, which unites leading Russian and foreign scientists, engineers, scientific-research organizations, higher educational institutions and enterprises. It is the legal successor of the Engineering Academy of the USSR.


Konstantina Trivisa receives Simons Foundation Fellowship in Mathematics

March 4, 2013. Our Director of the AMSC graduate Program, Dr. Konstantina Trivisa, Professor in the Department of Mathematics and Affiliate Professor of IPST, has received the highly prestigious Simons Foundation Fellowship in Mathematics. As a result, she will be spending her upcoming sabbatical at the University of California, Berkeley (Fall 2013) and Ecole Normale Supérieure de Cachan (Spring 2014). Congratulations to Konstantina for this recognition and award!


Howard Milchberg elected fellow of Optical Society of America

February 7, 2013. Howard Milchberg (ECE/IPST/IREAP/Physics), has been elected a Fellow of the Optical Society of America. OSA fellows are nominated and selected by peers to recognize individuals who have significantly advanced the field of optics and photonics. Professor Milchberg is being honored for his research in intense laser-matter interactions. For more information, read OSA's press release.


School on Hands-On Research in Complex Systems

January 22, 2013. The Abdus Salam International Center for Theoretical Physics will organize a School on Hands-On Research in Complex Systems from July 1st to 12th, 2013. This school will provide interactive experiences with hands-on research involving table-top experiments with computer data acquisition and computational modeling. Professor Rajarshi Roy, director of IPST, is one of the three directors of the school. Deadline for requesting participation is February 1st, 2013.


Icy molecules and the origins of life on Earth

October 16, 2012. Researchers at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California, Murthy Gudipati (also a part-time senior research scientist at IPST) and his colleague Rui Yang (former post-doctoral fellow at IPST), have published in The Astrophysical Journal Letters their most recent research results. This research was carried out at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory. They try to understand how water and organic molecules come together in the coldest places in space to begin the chemical reactions necessary for organics to evolve into prebiotic molecules – molecules that are precursors of life. For a good summary of their work, read CNN's Light Years blog, or the official NASA’s JPL press release.


In Memoriam:
Frank B. McDonald (1925-2012)

Dr. Frank McDonald, Senior Research Scientist at the Institute for Physical Science and Technology, died on Friday, August 31, 2012, having lost consciousness moments after speaking at a scientific meeting near Ann Arbor, Michigan the previous day.

Frank was born on May 28, 1925. He received his B.S. degree from Duke University in 1948 and M.S. and Ph.D. degrees in Physics and Mathematics from the University of Minnesota in 1951 and 1955. Before coming to Goddard Space Flight Center as the Head of the Energetic Particles Branch in 1959, he was Assistant Professor of Physics at Iowa State University. Frank was Chief of Goddard’s Laboratory for High Energy Astrophysics from 1970 to 1982, and in 1982 became NASA’s Chief Scientist, serving until 1987 when he returned to Goddard as Associate Director/Chief Scientist.

Frank’s research was in the area of heliospheric physics including solar and galactic cosmic rays and the magnetospheres of Jupiter and Saturn. At Goddard, Frank was Principal Investigator on experiments flown on Explorer, IMP, OGO, and Pioneer spacecraft and co-investigator on experiments on ISEE-3, and Voyager 1 and 2. He was Project Scientist on Explorer XII and XIV and IMP I, II, III, IV, and VI.

Frank’s leadership and emphasis on the highest quality research had a large role in the technical and scientific success of Goddard. He had an eye for talent and recruited several scientists who have gone on to distinguished careers. He was especially effective in helping young scientists.

From 1963 to 1983 Frank was a Part-time Professor of Physics at the University of Maryland where he regularly gave advanced courses in cosmic ray physics and served as mentor to several Ph.D. students. In 1989, he joined the Institute for Physical Science and Technology as a Senior Research Scientist. He maintained a vibrant and active research program, and mentored a number of distinguished research scientists and faculty.

He was a Fellow of the American Physical Society and a member of the National Academy of Science. Among his awards were the Lindsay Award in 1982 and the NASA Award for Exceptional Scientific Achievement in 1986.

We are saddened by his death. His accomplishments, influence, and kindliness made him many friends and colleagues from all over the world. A commemorative celebration of Frank’s life and career is planned for later in the semester.

Michael Coplan
Rajarshi Roy

September 5, 2012


The 2012 Burgers Symposium on Nov. 14

November 1, 2012. Jim Wallace, Chair, Burgers Board invites you to the 2012 Burgers Symposium on Wednesday, November 14th, in the Kay boardrooms (1107 & 1111) of the Kim Engineering and Applied Science Building. The Ninth Annual Burgers Lecture will be given by Henk A. Dijkstra, Institute for Marine and Atmospheric Research, and Department of Physics and Astronomy, Utrecht University, The Netherlands. The other speakers for the symposium will be Jayanth Banavar, Dean of the College of Computer, Mathematical, and Natural Sciences, University of Maryland, College Park; Andrew Belmonte Associate Professor of Mathematics and Materials Science and Engineering, Pennsylvania State University; and Konstantina Trivisa Director of the Applied Mathematics & Statistics, and Scientific Computation Program, Department of Mathematics and Institute for Physical Science and Technology, University of Maryland, College Park.


Celebrating Michael E. Fisher
The Institute for Physical Science and Technology, the Department of Physics, and the College of Computer, Mathematical, and Natural Sciences of the University of Maryland, College Park, are pleased to invite colleagues and friends of Michael E. Fisher to celebrate his lifetime achievements in physics, chemistry, mathematics, and biophysics. The celebration will consist of a technical symposium on October 26-27, 2012 and a festive banquet on October 26, 2012.
For more information and free registration, please visit the official event site.
Registration deadline: October 15, 2012.

Eighteenth Annual Shih-I Pai Lecture and Sixtieth Anniversary of the Institute for Physical Science and Technology
The Shih-I Pai Lecture will celebrate its eighteenth year by featuring Professor Sir Michael Berry, from the University of Bristol. The lecture, Hamilton's diabolical singularity, will be on Tuesday, October 2, 2012 at 4:00 p.m. in the Physics Lecture Hall, rooms 1410 and 1412, located in the Physics Building. A reception will be held in the Math Rotunda prior to the lecture from 2:30 p.m. to 3:20 p.m. and a Historical review of IPST will be given by Distinguished University Professor James Yorke in the afore mentioned Physics Lecture Hall from 3:40 p.m. to 3:55 p.m.

Dan Lathrop receives Stanley Corrsin Award

July 2, 2012. Dan Lathrop (Physics, IPST, IREAP, Geology, Associate Dean CMNS) has been selected as the recipient of the 2012 American Physical Society’s Stanley Corrsin Award. This award was established to recognize and encourage a particularly influential contribution to fundamental fluid dynamics. It consists of $5,000, and a certificate on which his name and the citation for which he will receive the Prize will be inscribed. The citation reads: “For his striking observations of flow in a quantum fluid including detection of counter-flow that confirmed the two-fluid picture of quantum fluid, observation and characterization of reconnections of quantized vortices, and the discovery of an inverse-cube tail in the velocity distribution of superfluid turbulence.”


Postdoctoral research associate awarded an AAAS Mass Media Fellowship

June 26, 2012. Kerstin Nordstrom, a postdoctoral research associate in Wolfgang Losert's group, has been awarded a AAAS Mass Media Fellowship. The program is highly competitive and awards only 12 fellowships each year. Fellows are required to be science students or recent graduates, and are placed as reporters at news outlets across the country. The fellowship is designed to train future scientists to become more effective communicators, and also for them to realize the importance of communicating science to the public. In turn, the placement sites get a science expert in their newsroom over the summer. Dr. Nordstrom's placement is in the Research Triangle area of North Carolina, at the Raleigh News & Observer. The award is sponsored by the American Physical Society. She will return to UMD in August, where she works in the laboratory of Wolfgang Losert, investigating impacts into granular materials and the dynamics of cells. The department of Physics and IPST supplement the fellowship support of Dr. Nordstrom.


Physics graduate student receives Department of Defense's SMART Scholarship (Science, Mathematics, & Research for Transformation)

June 26, 2012. Joshua Parker, 2nd year Physics graduate student at UMD, received the Department of Defense's SMART Scholarship (Science, Mathematics, & Research for Transformation.) In addition to a stipend, the scholarship covers all tuition and education related fees, provides compensation for health insurance, and includes a book allowance for up to three years. Joshua is working in Wolfgang Losert's group on analyzing biological measurements and simulating the dynamics of the cell's scaffolding.


Physics graduate student receives a Chateaubriand Fellowship

June 26, 2012. Matt Harrington, 2nd year Physics graduate student at UMD working in Wolfgang Losert's laboratory, received a Chateaubriand Fellowship. This international research fellowship is awarded annually by the Embassy of France in the United States, Office of Science and Technology. The award allows doctoral students at American universities to carry out scientific research as a visiting student at a French university or laboratory for a period of 4-10 months. The Chateaubriand Fellowship also provides an avenue for the student to receive a cotutelle (double degree) from the two universities, co-supervised by the student’s advisors at the American and French universities. With the support from this fellowship, Matt will be working in Rennes at the University of Rennes for 6 months, under the supervision of Renaud Delannay and Patrick Richard. While in Rennes, Matt will be investigating the dynamics of sheared granular materials.


IPST faculty to participate in Hands-On Research in Complex Systems School

April 26, 2012. Brian HuntDan Lathrop, and Rajarshi Roy are participating in the Hands-On Research in Complex Systems School, June 17 – 29, 2012. Professor Roy is one of the founding directors of the School and will be participating in this year’s session which takes place at Shanghai Jiao Tong University (Shanghai, People’s Republic of China.) This year’s School is sponsored by Abdus Salam International Centre for Theoretical Physics, Shanghai Jiao Tong University, and the National Science Foundation.


IPST student is awarded prestigious fellowship

April 13, 2012. Richard Remsing and Zhechun "Lance" Zhang are two of the Ann G. Wylie Dissertation Fellowship awardees for the 2012-2013 academic year. The Fellowship carries a $10,000 stipend, $800 toward health insurance, and tuition remission for one semester. Wylie Fellows are expected to devote full attention to their dissertations. Mr. Remsing works under the supervision of John Weeks and Mr. Zhang is a student of professor Devarajan Thirumalai.


IPST students win GRID 2012 top awards

April 12, 2012. Deepa Subramanian, Davit Potoyan, and Alfredo Nava-Tudela won first prizes in their respective sessions at the Graduate Research Interaction Day (GRID) 2012 that took place on April 11, 2012. Deepa currently works with professor Mikhail Anisimov (IPST) studying colloids, Davit obtained his Ph.D. in Chemical Physics under professor Garegin Papoian (IPST), and Alfredo is a Ph.D. candidate in Applied Mathematics & Statistics and Scientific Computation with professor John J. Benedetto (Mathematics).


International Symposium on Mesoscale and Fluctuation Thermodynamics

April 6, 2012. An International Symposium on Mesoscale and Fluctuation Thermodynamics will be held on the occasion of the 70th birthday of Mikhail Anisimov. The symposium will deal with contemporary issues in thermodynamics and statistical physics emerging at mesoscales in a variety of soft condensed matter systems. The symposium will take place on Friday, April 27, 2012, from 9 a.m. to 6 p.m. in the Jeong H. Kim building, at the University of Maryland, College Park.


Research work by Murthy Gudipati gets wide news coverage

April 6, 2012. Murthy Gudipati's paper, "Survival Depths of Organics in Ice Under Radiation", published in Astrophysical Journal, has received wide news coverage. In particular, Astrobiology Magazine has written a story on Gudipati's research, which attempts to determine how deep life must lie beneath the crust of Europa in order to survive. This will be important for future missions looking for life on this Jovian icy moon. Gudipati is a part-time senior research scientist at IPST.


John Fourkas gets Regents Faculty Award for Research, Scholarship and Creative Activity

February 29, 2012. At its Executive Session meeting on February 17, 2012, the Board of Regents approved the recommendation to give Professor John Fourkas -- Chemistry, Biochemistry, and IPST -- its Board of Regents' Faculty Award for Research, Scholarship, and Creative Activity. The award ceremony will take place at a future Board of Regents meeting.


Wolfgang Losert elected vice-chair of the Division of Biological Physics of the APS

February 27, 2012. Wolfgang Losert, Director of the Maryland Biophysics Graduate Program, and a faculty member of IPST and the Department of Physics, was elected vice-chair of the Division of Biological Physics (DBIO) of the American Physical Society (APS). DBIO is composed of individuals who are interested in the study of Biological Phenomena using Physical techniques. As such, they are usually members of Physics departments, but in addition have many contacts with others in related fields such as Biophysics, Biochemistry, Chemistry, Mathematics and Computer Science. DBIO is one of the growing APS divisions with about 2100 members.


Eitan Tadmor receives major NSF grant

February 24, 2012. The National Science Foundation (NSF) renewed the Research Network in Mathematical Sciences (RNMS) proposal "Kinetic description of emerging challenges in multiscale problems of natural sciences," for the five-year period strating March 1, 2012. Professor Eitan Tadmor is the Principal Investigator for this NSF grant.


Work by Jan Sengers included in new IAPWS standard

February 24, 2012. For decades, the International Association for the Properties of Water and Steam (IAPWS) has expressed what is known to calculate the thermodynamic and transport properties of water by recommending standard formulations used by academia, research, and industry. In January 2012, IAPWS officially announced the new International Formulation for the Thermal Conductivity of Water. Professor Jan Sengers, together with scientists at NIST in Boulder, contributed a theory to the new standard that defines the thermal conductivity of supercritical water (water at temperatures above 647 K) and that incorporates the effects of fluctuations associated with the vapor-liquid transition of water at high temperatures.


2012 Chemical Physics/Biophysics Spring Reception

February 23, 2012. On Friday March 16, 2012 from 2:00 p.m. to 4:00 p.m. all Chemical Physics and Biophysics students, faculty, and staff are invited to the Chemical Physics/Biophysics Spring Reception. The reception will take place on the second floor atrium of the new wing of the Computer and Space Sciences building. Please RSVP to Debbie Jenkins by Monday, March 12, 2012.


Donald Reames awarded Hale prize

February 14, 2012. The George Ellery Hale Prize of the AAS Solar Physics Division (SPD) is awarded to a scientist for outstanding contributions to the field of solar astronomy. The 2012 prize goes to Don V. Reames (NASA Goddard Space Flight Center) and now also of the Institute for Physical Science and Technology, University of Maryland, "in recognition of his pioneering work on the composition and transport of solar energetic particles."


Cell Dynamics Symposium at UMCP

February 9, 2012. On March 13, 2012, from 9:00 a.m. to 5:00 p.m., Arpita Upadhyaya and Wolfgang Losert will host a Cell Dynamics Symposium at the University of Maryland, College Park. The symposium will feature a series of talks that will highlight the latest research on the biology and biophysics of cell migration. Talks will feature both experiments and modeling of cell dynamics from multiple angles, from the dynamics of the actin scaffolding during immune response to the collective dynamics of ensembles of cells. Faculty, graduate, and undergraduate students, as well as researchers from nearby institutions are invited to attend this symposium. There is no registration fee.


James Drake elected a Fellow of the American Geophysical Union

January 20, 2012. James F. Drake has been elected a Fellow of the American Geophysical Union (AGU). Only one in a thousand memebers is elected a Fellow each year. Professor Drake will be honored in person at the December 2012 Fall AGU meeting in San Francisco, CA.


Ellen D. Williams interviewed in Physics Today

January 20, 2012. Distinguished University Professor, and IPST faculty member Ellen D. Williams was interviewed by Jermey N. A. Matthews on page 18 of the January 2012 issue of Physics Today. After spending three decades in academia conducting nanotechnology research, Professor Williams, a chemist-turned-physicist, is now tackling the energy problem in the faster-paced industrial environment. She is currently on leave from the University of Maryland to serve as British Petroleum's chief scientist.


Dynamics Days organized by IPST faculty

January 20, 2012. Michelle Girvan and Wolfgang Losert, among others, organized Dynamic Days 2012, an annual conference on topics in nonlinear dynamics. The conference took place from January 4th to the 7th, and it included a celebration of Ed Ott's 70th birthday and his seminal contributions to the field of nonlinear dynamics.


Daniel P. Lathrop, new Associate Dean for Research in CMNS

January 3, 2012. Daniel P. Lathrop has been appointed Associate Dean for Research for the College of Computer, Mathematical, and Natural Sciences (CMNS). The announcement was made by Dean Jayanth Banavar, "Dan will work on identifying new opportunities for funded faculty research through large scale grants and on encouraging and supporting the development of successful proposals for these; strengthening old and building new partnerships with federal labs and agencies, increasing program development with support from private foundations, and enhancing opportunities with the private sector; and encouraging new areas of interdisciplinary collaboration by college faculty."


Dionisios Margetis to speak at local SIAM chapter meeting

October 10, 2011. Dionisios Margetis will be the plenary speaker of the fall 2011 SIAM Washington-Baltimore Section meeting on November 16 at 8:30 p.m. in the Clipper Room in Shriver Hall on the Homewood Campus of Johns Hopkins University. Professor Margetis will present the lecture entitled "A Tale of Two Scales: From discrete schemes to Partial Differential Equations in epitaxial growth."


Frank Olver to receive USDOC Gold Medal

August 8, 2011. Frank Olver has been selected to receive the Gold Medal of the US Department of Commerce (USDOC) for his work on the Digital Library of Mathematical Functions. The Gold Medal of the USDOC is the highest honorary award granted by USDOC's Secretary. "A Gold Medal is defined as distinguished performance characterized by extraordinary, notable, or prestigious contributions that impact the mission of the Department and/or one or more operating units, which reflects favorably on the Department", reads the criteria for this prestigious award.
The Digital Library of Mathematical Functions was chosen as one of 10 Government Computer News (GCN) Award Winners for "Outstanding Information Technology Achievement in Government" in 2011. This year's winning projects were selected from over 200 nominations submitted to GCN, based on the degree to which a given IT project improved an agency's ability to operate more efficiently or serve the public more effectively.


The 2011 Burgers Symposium on Nov. 16

July 18, 2011. Jim Wallace, Chair, Burgers Board invites you to the 2011 Burgers Symposium on Wednesday, November 16th, in the Kay Boardrooms (1107 & 1111) of the Kim Engineering and Applied Science Building. The annual Burgers Lecture will be given by Marie Farge, Directrice de Recherche CNRS - Ecole Normale Supérieure, Paris. We will also be celebrating the 80th birth-year of Jan Sengers with lectures by Katepalli SreenivasanGijs Ooms (Scientific Director of the J.M. Burgerscentrum in the Netherlands) and Jutta Luettmer-Strathmann (one of Jan's former students and a Physics Professor at the University of Akron). A gala reception will follow the symposium with opportunities to further wish Jan well.


The 2011 Shi-I Pai Lecture on Nov. 15

July 18, 2011. The Seventeenth Annual Shih-I Pai Lecture, in conjunction with the Physics Department, will be presented on Tuesday, November 15, 2011. A reception begins at 3:00 pm in the Math Rotunda, followed by the lecture at 4:00 pm in the Physics Lecture Hall, room 1410. We are delighted to announce that this year’s lecture will be presented by Dr. Andreas Acrivos, Albert Einstein Professor Emeritus of Science and Engineering at the City College of New York, where he was formerly the Director of the Benjamin Levich Institute for Physicochemical Hydrodynamics. He is concurrently an Emeritus Professor at Stanford University, where he was a Professor of Chemical Engineering for many years. Professor Acrivos is a member of the U.S. National Academy of Sciences and of the U.S. National Academy of Engineering, and he was awarded the prestigious 2001 National Medal of Science, which was presented to him by the President of the United States, George W. Bush.


Interview with Michael E. Fisher in Europhysics News

May 24, 2011. In the January-February issue of Europhysics News (Vol. 42, No. 1, pp. 14-16) José M. Ortiz de Zárate, a regular visitor to IPST, interviewed Michael Fisher during his visit to Spain on the occasion of the ceremony of the Frontiers of Knowledge Prizes, which Professor Fisher shared in the category of Basic Sciences with Richard N. Zare. In this interview, Fisher talks, among other things, about the work of his colleagues Jan SengersMikhail Anisimov, and Chris Jarzynski. A copy of this article can be found in the About Us/History section.


Jie Chen receives inaugural University of Maryland Distinguished Dissertation Prize

April 22, 2011. Dr. Jie Chen, a former Chemical Physics student mentored by Devarajan Thirumalai, has received the inaugural University of Maryland Distinguished Dissertation Prize in the disciplinary area of Biological and Life Sciences. Her dissertation “Link Between Dynamics and Function in Single and Multi-subunit Enzymes” was nominated by the College of Computer, Mathematical and Natural Sciences. A campus-level Award Committee, chaired by Distinguished University Professor Michael A’Hearn (Astronomy), selected Dr. Chen’s dissertation. The Prize carries with it an honorarium of $1,000.


Andrew Ballard awarded a 2011-2012 Ann G. Wylie Dissertation Fellowship

April 22, 2011. Mr. Andrew Ballard, a Chemical Physics student under Christopher Jarzynski, was awarded a 2011-2012 Ann G. Wylie Dissertation Fellowship. The fellowship is a one-semester award intended to support outstanding doctoral students who are in the final stages of writing their dissertation and whose primary source of support is unrelated to their dissertation. Wylie Dissertation Fellowships carry a stipend of $10,000 plus candidacy tuition remission and $800 toward the cost of health insurance. The Graduate School awards approximately 40 Wylie Dissertation Fellowships per year.


Davit Potoyan receives award from Biophysical Society

April 22, 2011. Mr. Davit Potoyan, a Chemical Physics student in the research group of Garegin Papoian, has been awarded a Biophysical Society 2011 Student Research Achievement Award. Three hundred and nine society student members participated in this competitive event held during the Biophysical Society Annual Meeting on March 6 in Baltimore, Maryland. Judges from the Society's subgroups selected twenty winners, who were recognized at the awards ceremony on March 7 and received a monetary award.


Michael Warehime receives a 2011 Graduate School Summer Fellowship

April 22, 2011. Michael Warehime, a Chemical Physics student, has been awarded a 2011 Graduate School Summer Fellowship. The fellowship provides support to outstanding doctoral students at "mid-career", that is, in the period approximately before, during, or after achievement of candidacy, and are intended to enable students to prepare for or complete a key benchmark in their program's requirements. Summer Research Fellowships carry stipends of $5,000. Mr. Warehime's advisor is Millard Alexander.


Jan V. Sengers receives the Clark School's Faculty Outstanding Commitment Award for 2011

April 4, 2011. Our colleague Jan V. Sengers has been honored by the A. James Clark School of Engineering with its prestigious Faculty Outstanding Commitment Award for 2011. A ceremony will take place at 2:30 pm on April 20 at the fountain gracing the Glenn L. Martin Engineering building immediately followed by a reception.


Eighth Monroe H. Martin Prize Lectures

March 31, 2011. It is our pleasure to announce that Adam Oberman, from Simon Fraser University, and Joel A. Tropp, from the California Institute of Technology, have been awarded the Eighth Monroe H. Martin Prize. Each winner will give a Monroe H. Martin Prize lecture on April 13, 2011. For those interested in attending, please visit our seminars section for more information. The event is sponsored by the Center for Scientific Computation and Mathematical Modeling, the Department of Mathematics, and the Institute for Physical Science & Technology, all at the University of Maryland, College Park.

Special Functions in the 21st Century: Theory & Applications / April 6 - 8, 2011 / Washington, DC

We proudly announce SF21, a conference dedicated to Professor Frank Olver, in light of his seminal contributions to the advancement of special functions, especially in the area of asymptotic analysis and as Mathematics Editor of the NIST Handbook of Mathematical Functions and Digital Library of Mathematical Functions (DLMF).
The conference will provide a forum for the exchange of expertise, experience and insights among world leaders in the subject of special functions. Participants will include expert authors, editors and validators of the works mentioned above. It will also provide an opportunity for DLMF users to interact with its creators and to explore potential areas of fruitful future developments. For more information and details, please read the official conference flyer.

Alexander published in Science Magazine

January 31, 2011. Professor Millard H. Alexander, a Distinguished University Professor in the Department of Chemistry and Biochemistry and the Institute for Physical Science and Technology, was published in the January 28, 2011 issue of Science. His article entitled "Chemical Kinetics Under Test" can be viewed at the Science website.


Stochastic Dynamics: Models, Analysis, and Numerics

January 25, 2011. A new Research Interaction Team (RIT) on "Stochastic Dynamics: Models, Analysis, and Numerics" is being organized by Maria Cameron, Sandra Cerrai, Leonid Koralov, and Dionisios Margetis, from the Mathematics Department at the University of Maryland, College Park. This RIT might be of interest to scientists and engineers alike. The first formal meeting will be held on February 9. For more information, please visit the RIT webpage.


Eun-Suk Seo, Fellow of the APS

December 8, 2010. The American Physical Society (APS) has awarded the distinction of Fellow to Eun-Suk Seofor leading the development and utilization of particle detectors for balloon and space-based experiments to understand cosmic ray origin, acceleration and propagation, especially as Principal Investigator of the Cosmic Ray Energetics And Mass balloon-borne experiment over Antarctica.
Founded in 1899, the APS is the world's second largest organization of physicists. Fellows are recognized by their peers for advances made in knowledge, through original research and publications.


Jack Moore Tribute

November 12, 2010. Concidence, Electrons, and Molecules: a Tribute to the Contributions of Jack Moore is being held today starting at 9:00 a.m. in the Marker Seminar Room of the Department of Chemistry and Biochemistry. The Featured Speaker is R. Stephen Berry of the University of Chicago, presenting "Electron Correlation in Atoms: The Demise of Hartree-Fock?". Invited speakers are: Michael Coplan, Kenneth Jordan, Jason Sanabia, Alan Migdall, Robert Continetti, and Nicholas Spencer.


Seventh Annual Symposium of the Burgers Program for Fluid Dynamics

November 10, 2010. The Seventh Annual Symposium for the Burgers Program for Fluid Dynamics will be held Wednesday, November 17, 2010. The location will be the Jeong H. Kim Engineering Building, rooms 1107 and 1111, at the University of Maryland College Park from 1:00 - 5:30 p.m. The Burgers Program Lecturer, W.J. Briels, Computational Biophysics Group, Twente University, The Netherlands, will be speaking on Memory and Transient Forces in Soft Matter. Additional information is found on the Burgers website.


Sixteenth Annual Shih-I Pai Lecture

October 8, 2010. The Sixteenth Annual Shih-I Pai Lecture will take place on Tuesday, November 2, 2010. The guest lecturer James A. Yorke, Distinguished University Professor of Mathematics and Physics, and the Institute for Physical Science and Technology, will speak on “CHAOS”. The Lecture will be from 4:00 to 5:00 pm in room 1410 of the Physics Building. A reception will precede the lecture from 3:15 – 4:00 pm in the Math Rotunda.


Eighth Monroe H. Martin Prize

October 8, 2010. The Monroe H. Martin Prize presents an award for an outstanding paper in applied mathematics (including numerical analysis) by a young research worker who is under the age of 36 prior to the deadline of October 31, 2010. The work must be by a single author and have been published or accepted for publication in the open literature. The work must not have been performed in connection with the completion for any degree and the candidate must not now, nor ever have been, affiliated with the University of Maryland. For further information, please contact Frank W. J. Olver.


IPST Faculty and Students to Participate in Hands-On Research in Cameroon

July 14, 2010. Professors Rajarshi Roy (IPST, Physics) and Brian Hunt (IPST, Math) and three graduate students, Bhargava Ravoori, Shelby Wilson, and Adam Cohen, will head to Cameroon August 2-13, 2010 for the Hands-On Research in Complex Systems Schools. Dr. Roy, one of the founders of the Hands-On Research Program, says the emphasis of the program is on conducting modern physical, chemical and biological research inexpensively. Working closely together – 4 or 5 participants with 2 instructors – leads to subsequent exchange visits and scientific collaborations. The program brings together some 100 faculty and graduate students from around the world to be part of the two week initiative. Previous programs have been held in Brazil and India.


Dave Thirumalai named Distinguished University Professor

July 8, 2010. Devarajan (Dave) Thirumalai, the Institute for Physical Science and Technology and the Department of Chemistry & Biochemistry, was awarded the title of Distinguished University Professor by University of Maryland College Park President C.D. Mote, Jr. on July 1, 2010. This is the highest academic honor that the university confers upon a faculty member and is reserved for a small number of exceptionally distinguished scholars. It recognizes his work in the area of biophysics and the application of theoretical techniques to chemistry and biology.


James Drake received 2010 James Clerk Maxwell Prize for Plasma Physics

June 24, 2010. James Drake, the Institute for Physical Science and Technology and the Department of Physics, has been named the 2010 recipient of the APS James Clerk Maxwell Prize for Plasma Physics. The prize recognizes outstanding contributions to plasma physics, and is the highest honor bestowed to plasma physicists by the APS. His citation and prize will be presented at the annual meeting of the Division of Plasma Physics, November 8-12, 2010 in Chicago, Illinois.


Responsible Conduct of Research Training

June 3, 2010. The Institute for Physical Science and Technology, the Chemical Physics graduate program and the Joint Quantum Institute will be hosting Responsible Conduct of Research Day on June 4, 2010 from 10 am to 4 pm, conducted by Charles W. Clark, National Institute of Standards and Technology; Fellow, Joint Quantum Institute; and Affiliate Professor with the Institute for Physical Science and Technology.

The 2007 America COMPETES Act directed NSF to require that all funded undergraduate and graduate students and postdoctoral scholars undergo training in the responsible conduct of research (RCR). The implementation of this requirement became effective January 4, 2010, when all institutions submitting proposals to NSF were required to certify that there was a training plan in place for undergraduate and graduate students, and postdoctoral scholars supported by NSF to conduct research.

This is an updated, condensed version of Case Studies in Scientific Ethics (CHPS 714) which was presented during Winter Term 2010.


Olver, Lozier, and Clark edit new book on Mathematical Functions

May 12, 2010. NIST Handbook of Mathematical Functions edited by Frank W.J. Olver, Daniel W. Lozier, Ronald F. Boisvert, and Charles W. Clark. Published by Cambridge University Press and NIST on May 12, 2010, with xv + 951 pages. Available in Hardback (ISBN 978-0-521-19225-5) and Paperback (ISBN 978-0-521-14063-8). This book is a completely revised and rewritten version of the highly successful Handbook of Mathematical Functions with Formulas, Graphs, and Mathematical Tables, edited by Milton Abramowitz and Irene A. Stegun that was published in 1964, and is still in print. Of the editors, Frank Olver is Editor-in-Chief and Mathematics Editor, and is Professor Emeritus in the Institute for Physical Science and Technology (IPST) and the Mathematics Department; Daniel Lozier is General Editor and was awarded his Ph.D. in Applied Mathematics by IPST and the Mathematics Department; Charles Clark is Physical Science Editor and is an Affiliate Professor in IPST. The new book also appears for free on the web.


Jeffrey Bub honored in Foundation of Physics

May 11, 2010. The journal Foundation of Physics, Volume 40, Number 4, April 2010 has published a Festschrift honoring Jeffrey Bub, Institute for Physical Science and Technology and Department of Philosophy, based on the papers presented at the conference that was held for his 65th birthday, New Directions in the Foundations of Physics, at the American Center for Physics in College Park, on April 13-15, 2007.


Stuart Antman to Serve on Presidential Search Committee

March 11, 2010. President C.D. (Dan) Mote Jr., President of the University of Maryland College Park, announced in February that he will retire on August 31, 2010. Distinguished University Professor Stuart Antman, Institute for Physical Science and Technology and the Department of Mathematics, has been appointed by Chancellor William E. Kirwan to the search committee. The search committee will conclude with its recommendation of finalists for consideration by Chancellor Kirwan and the Board of Regents; with the board making the final decision.


Michael E. Fisher Receives 2009 BBVA Foundation of Frontiers of Knowledge Award

Feb. 23, 2010. Michael E. Fisher of the Institute for Physical Science and Technology and Department of Physics was awarded the 2009 BBVA Foundation Frontiers of Knowledge Award in Basic Sciences. He has explained phenomena ranging from why water evaporates to the functioning of molecular motors in cells. The jury singled out his “fundamental contributions to statistical mechanics.” The Basic Sciences award honors outstanding contributions in Physics, Chemistry, and Mathematics.


Fifth Annual Systems Biology Workshop

Feb. 23, 2010. The University of Maryland and the National Cancer Institute hosted the fifth in a series of systems biology workshops on January 26, 2010 at the University of Maryland College Park. Organizers Wolfgang Losert (UMD), Jim McNally (NCI), and Dave Levens (NCI) said the aim of the workshops has been to transmit scientific information between the NCI and UMD in biophysics, systems biology, bioengineering, and bioinformatics.


IPST Faculty Members Obtain NSF Major Research Instrumentation Award

Feb. 23, 2010. Millard AlexanderChristopher JarzynskiDev Thirumalai and John Weeks have recently obtained an NSF Major Research Instrumentation award of $445,000 for the Acquisition of a High-performance Computer Cluster for the Computational Study of Complex Chemical Systems: from Small Molecules to Biological Nanomachines. The money will be used to purchase a large number of linked cluster computers administered by the University’s High-Performance Computing Consortium. Alexander, Jarzynski, Thirumalai and Weeks are theoretical Chemists with joint faculty appointments in the Institute for Physical Science and Technology and the Department of Chemistry and Biochemistry.


Rajarshi Roy named to CMPS/CLFS Merger Working Group

Feb. 23, 2010. On the recommendation of the deans of both colleges, a working group has been formed to look into 1) the merits of merging CMPS and CLFS, and 2) if they find the initiative worthy, to agree on a plan for moving forward. The Provost expects that the members will receive input from their colleagues so that the collective views of the faculty of the two colleges will be represented. Rajarshi Roy, Professor and Director of IPST, has been named to the committee as a representative from CMPS. Others named to this working group are: Norma Andrews (CLFS), Mike Brown (CMPS), Larry Davis (CMPS), Bonnie Dorr (CMPS), Mike Doyle (CLFS), Dean Kitchen (CMPS), Barbara Thorne (CLFS), Stuart Vogel (CMPS), and Jerry Wilkinson (CLFS).


External Review of IPST Scheduled February 25-26, 2010

Feb. 23, 2010. The Five Year review of IPST began with an Internal Review in the fall of 2009. The External Review by the Committee will be on February 25-26, 2010. Members of the External Review Committee are – William A. Eaton, National Institute of Diabetes and Digestive and Kidney Diseases, National Institutes of Health; Barbara Lee Keyfitz, Department of Mathematics, The Ohio State University; Joel L. Lebowitz, Department of Mathematics, Rutgers University; and Harry L. Swinney, Department of Physics, The University of Texas at Austin.


Scientists discover a new type of interaction between urea and RNA

Dec. 2, 2009. In the November 30, 2009 issue of the Chemical & Engineering NewsVolume 87, Number 48, page 29, the team led by Dave Thirumalai (IPST, UMCP) and Alexander D. MacKerell Jr. (UMBC) now reports all-atom molecular dynamics simulations that reveal how urea hydrogen bonds and stacks with RNA’s bases, making normal interaction between bases impossible.


 

Scientific ethics course to be taught by IPST faculty

Dec. 2, 2009. Ethical conduct by scientists and students is generally assumed; however recently a number of very serious events have shown that informal oral tradition is often insufficient for informing scientists of the proper ethical standards for their work. In response to this, and general National Institutes of Health (NIH) requirements that graduate students working in NIH laboratories receive training in scientific ethics, a new course is being offered – Case Studies in Scientific Ethics (CHPH 714) – which will be taught Winter Term 2010 by Charles Clark. The availability of this course was mentioned to the National Science Foundation (NSF) review panel that visited the Joint Quantum Institute Physics Frontiers Center on November 9, 2009 and the panel was enthusiastic about the offering. For more information, visit the new Ethical Conduct of Research portal on our site.


 

Intranet for IPST a reality

Dec. 2, 2009. IPST now has an Intranet, which Wikipedia lists as a a private computer network used to securely share any part of an organization's information within that organization. IPST will use the intranet to share documents with faculty and staff, such as APT materials, the IPST directory (with home phone numbers and addresses), and the Internal Review Report. Additional uses are in the planning stages. The IPST Intranet is password-protected, using your University log-in and password. Users will be given access to certain documents, specific to their needs. You can access the link on our website via http://www.ipst.umd.edu/intranet, or through the Business Office page.


 

Fifteenth Annual Shih-I Pai Lecture
The Shih-I Pai Lecture will celebrate its fifteenth year by featuring Dr. Simon A. Levin, Moffett Professor of Biology at Princeton University. The lecture, The Challenge of Sustainability: Lessons from an Evolutionary Perspective, will be on Tuesday, December 8, 2009 at 4:00 p.m. in the Physics Lecture Hall, Room 1410, located in the Physics Building. A reception will be held in the Math Rotunda prior to the lecture. Two additional talks are scheduled for 11 a.m. in the IPST Conference Room, room 1116. Dr. Michelle Girvan, Physics Department and the Insitutute for Physical Science and Technology, Unversity of Maryland, will speak on Modeling the Dynamics of Gene Networks. Dr. Ramanan Laxminarayan, The Center for Disease Dynamics, Economics and Policy, will speak on Global Public Goods in Surveillance, Reporting and Control of Infectious Diseases.

Devarajan Thirumalai receives Humboldt Research Award

Oct. 8, 2009. Devarajan Thirumalai has been elected the recipient of the Humboldt Research Award after having been nominated for this award by the German scientist Prof. Dr. Matthias Rief, Technische Universität München, Garching. This award is conferred in recognition of lifetime achievements in research. In addition, the awardee is invited to carry out research projects of his own choice in cooperation with specialist colleagues in Germany. We hope that thereby the international scientific cooperation will be further promoted.


 

Dio Margetis receives NSF Career Award

Dio Margetis of the Institute for Physical Science and Technology and the Department of Mathematics has been awarded an NSF Career Award for the project Thermodynamic and kinetic approaches for expitaxial material systems. These five year awards are among the most prestigious that a junior faculty member can receive in the nation. Dr. Margetis was tenured and promoted to Associate Professor earlier this year.


 

Sixth Annual Burgers Symposium
The Sixth Annual Symposium of the Burgers Program for Fluid Dynamics will be held on Wednesday, November 18, 2009 from 1:00 pm to 5:30 p.m. in the Kay Boardroom of the Kim Engineering Building. The scheduled Burgers Lecture will be given by Kees Vuik, Director, Delft Centre for Computational Science and Engineering, Delft University of Technology. Additional speakers are: Ralf Deiterding, Oak Ridge National Laboratory; Eugenia Kalnay, Institute for Physical Science and Technology and Atmospheric and Oceanic Science, University of Maryland; and Mohamed Gad-el-Hak, Mechanical Engineering, Virginia Commonwealth University. A poster session will be held for graduate students and post-docs.

Maryland Biophysics Symposium
The Second Annual Cohen Foundation Biophysics Symposium titled Topics in Protein Folding will be held on Tuesday, November 10, 2009. Featured speakers will be Doug BarrickJasna BrujicKen DillWilliam A. EatonLila Gierasch, and Jose Onuchic.

Katepalli Sreenivasan named College Park Professor

Katepalli R. Sreenivasan of IPST has been appointed College Park Professor by University of Maryland President C.D. Mote. Jr., effective October 1, 2009. This is a tribute to Professor Sreenivasan’s outstanding contributions and accomplishments in Science and Engineering.


 

Charles W. Clark elected Chair Elect of the Physics Section of the American Association for the Advancement of Science - 2009

Charles W. Clark, Adjunct Professor and Affiliate of the Institute for Physical Science and Technology, and Fellow of the Joint Quantum Institute, was elected to the position of Chair Elect of the Physics Section of the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS).


 

International Meteorological Organization Prize Awarded to Eugenia Kalnay

The 54th IMO Prize, WMO's most prestigious prize, was awarded by the 61st session of the WMO Executive Council, June 3-12, 2009, to Eugenia Kalnay, of the Institute for Physical Science and Technology and the Department of Atmospheric and Oceanic Studies.


 

Election to Royal Society of Chemistry and Humboldt Research Award - 2009

Professor Devarajan Thirumalai, of the Institute for Physical Science and Technology and the Department of Chemistry and Biochemistry, has just been elected Fellow of the Royal Society of Chemistry. He has also received a Humboldt Research Award for Senior U.S. Scientists in recognition of his past accomplishments in research and teaching.


 

John D. Weeks elected to the National Academy of Sciences, April 28, 2009

John D. Weeks, Distinguished University Professor, Institute for Physical Science and Technology and Department of Chemistry and Biochemistry, University of Maryland, College Park, was elected to the National Academy of Sciences April 28, 2009. The election was held April 28, 2009 during the business session of the 146th annual meeting of the Academy.


 

2008-09 Undergraduate Research Mentor of the Year

At the opening session of Undergraduate Research Day on Wednesday, April 22, 2009, Dr. Arthur La Porta was awarded the 2008-2009 Undergraduate Research Mentor of the Year Award. Dr. La Porta, who has a joint appointment in IPST and the Department of Physics, was nominated by his student Matthew Barr who said, "Working under Professor La Porta has been one of the most rewarding experiences of my college education. He has put together a lab in which an undergraduate student can feel a sense of pride from playing an important role in real research".


 

Professor Fisher Awarded Ph.D. Honoris Causa by Weizmann Institute

The Weizmann Institute of Science has conferred upon Professor Michael E. Fisher the title of Ph.D. honoris causa. Professor Fisher joins an illustrious group of men and women who have been honored by the Weizmann Institute in recognition of their outstanding contributions to science or society. The ceremony of conferment will take place at the 61st Annual Meeting of the Institute's International Board on Monday, November 9, 2009 in Rehovot, Israel.


 

2009 Abraham Pais Prize for History of Physics, American Physical Society

Dr. Stephen G. Brush has been awarded the 2009 Abraham Pais Prize for History of Physics. The award to Dr. Brush was "For his pioneering, in-depth studies in the history of nineteenth and twentieth century physics."


 

2008 Nicholson Medal for Human Outreach, American Physical Society

Dr. Katepalli Sreenivasan has been awarded the 2008 Nicholson Medal for Human Outreach. The citation that will appear on the certificate reads as follows: “For his commitment to mentoring students and junior colleagues and his significant contributions to fostering international collaborations and promoting the advancement and education of early career scientists from the developing world.” The Nicholson Medal will be presented at the APS March 2009 meeting in Pittsburgh, PA.


 

2008 Members Elected to the Amerian Philosophical Society

Roald Sagdeev, Director, East-West Center for Space Science, and Distinguished University Professor of Physics, has been elected to the American Philosophical Society.


 

R&D 100 Award for New NIST/UMD Neutron Detector

Michael Coplan, Associate Director of IPST, and Director of the Chemical Physics Program, and Charles Clark of NIST, and Adjunct Professor of the Chemical Physics Program, have been selected to receive a 2008 R&D 100 Award for their work on a new high sensitivity, high bandwidth neutron detector developed by the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) and the University of Maryland (UMD).


 

CREAM STATUS (Cosmic Ray Energetics and Mass)

Eun-Suk Seo, Physics and IPST, heads the Cosmic Ray Energetics and Mass (CREAM) experiment, which received recognition on Spaceref.com, the Palestine Herald and NSF.gov on January 7 as the experiment reached a new milestone in conducting scientific observations from balloons by launching and operating three long-duration flights within a single Antarctic summer. Seo leads a team of scientists from Maryland 's Institute for Physical Science and Technology, NASA and the NSF. The investigation searches for characteristic changes in elemental composition and energy spectra of very high-energy cosmic rays that might be associated with a particle acceleration limit in supernovae.
Scientific Balloons Achieve Antarctic Flight Record NSF Press Release 08-001, January 4, 2008