On August 14, 2017, a groundbreaking University of Maryland-designed cosmic ray detector will travel to the International Space Station (ISS) aboard the SpaceX-12 Commercial Resupply Service mission. The instrument, named ISS Cosmic Ray Energetics and Mass (ISS-CREAM), is roughly the size of a refrigerator and will remain installed on the ISS’ Japanese Experiment Module for at least three years. The massive amounts of data ISS-CREAM will collect could reveal new details about the origin and diversity of cosmic rays.

This year, instruments designed and built by Eun-Suk Seo's group (Physics/IPST) will journey to the International Space Station for a three-year mission to capture cosmic ray data beyond Earth’s atmosphere.

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.

The University of Maryland recently received a five-year, $3 million National Science Foundation Research Traineeship (NRT) grant to establish a new training and research program in network biology. Graduate students in the Computation and Mathematics for Biological Networks (COMBINE) program will learn to marry physics-style quantitative modeling with data processing, analysis and visualization methods from computer science to gain deeper insights into the principles governing living systems. COMBINE’s principal investigator is associate professor Michelle Girvan (Physics/IPST). 

Two professors and an alumnus from the University of Maryland have been selected as 2016 Thomson Reuters Citation Laureates in physics. 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.

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.

Within social networks, information spreads and ideas compete. People can be persuaded by strong arguments on social media to change their opinions on, say, who is the best presidential candidate in the 2016 race. However, the level of difficulty in changing an individual’s opinion through social media varies—while some people stand firm, others waver in their opinions on certain issues.

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.

Three evenings a week, Mathematics Professor Konstantina Trivisa and her teammates carry their rowing shell down to the Potomac River for a workout on the water.  For Trivisa, it’s more than good exercise, it's a celebration of teamwork.

David Fushman, Professor in the Department of Chemistry and Biochemistry and Interim Associate Director of the Maryland Biophysics Program, and Sergei I. Sukharev, Professor in the Department of Biology and Interim Director of the Maryland Biophysics Graduate Program, 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.