AAAS honors Mark Eriksson and Gary Shiu

UW Physics professors Gary Shiu and Mark Eriksson have been elected fellows of the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS).

Mark Eriksson was elected “for innovative and important contributions to the understanding and development of nanodevices for spintronics and quantum information processing applications.”

Gary Shiu was elected “for pioneering contributions to string phenomenology and cosmology, for leadership in connecting fundamental theory to experiment, and for promoting basic science in the U.S. and Asia.”

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UW Alum Dr. Angela Laird (Ph.D. 2002) named APS Woman Physicist of the Month

UW alum Angela Laird was named Woman Physicist of the Month for November, 2015 by the American Physical Society. Dr. Angela Laird is an Associate Professor of Physics at Florida International University and the director of FIU’s Neuroinformatics and Brain Connectivity Laboratory. She was recently identified on the Thompson Reuters’ list of “The World’s Most Influential Scientific Minds of 2014,” and she ranks among the top 1 percent most cited for the field of neuroscience and behavior between 2002 and 2012.  Laird received her Ph.D. in Physics/Medical Physics from the UW in 2002.

Other UW Physics people who have been recognized include

January 2015 – Marjorie Corcoran (Post Doc 1977-79)
June 2013 – Reina Maruyama (former faculty)
February 2013 – Laura Reina (Scientist 97-98)
December 2012 – Jodi Cooley (UW Ph.D. 2003)

UW Alum Dr. Gene Amdahl, Pioneer of Mainframe Computing, Dies at 92

Dr. Gene Amdahl died today at the age of 92.  As a young computer scientist at IBM in the early 1960s, Amdahl played a crucial role in the development of the System/360 series, the most successful line of mainframe computers in IBM’s history.  He received his doctorate in theoretical physics from the UW in 1952.

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Winners of 2016 W.K.H. Panofsky Prize in Experimental Particle Physics announced

Stephen Olson, Ph.D. (UW-Madison 1970, advisor Pondrom) along with Drs. Jonathan Dorfan, Davis Hitlin, and Fumikko Takasaki have been awarded the 2016 W.K.H. Panofsky Prize in Experimental Particle Physics.

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Campus Dining Spots Going Receipt-free

Through the Office of Sustainability, Professor Carlsmith connected with undergraduate Rachel Feil, who developed a receipt reduction project through her sustainability internship and as a class project for an environmental studies capstone course before graduating in 2014.  In addition to cutting down on litter and exposure to BPA, housing will cut receipt paper expenses by close to 90 percent, saving about $20,000 to $30,000 per year.

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Garage Physics: a makerspace for undergraduate brainstorms

Duncan Carlsmith (left) discusses an advanced search engine with Josh Cherek, the student who developed it, at the Garage Physics makerspace. The twin copper pipes in the foreground replicate an 1851 experiment that Albert Einstein cited as one foundation for his special theory of relativity.

Photo: David Tenenbaum

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Francis Halzen Awarded Balzan Prize

The Balzan Prizewinners 2015 were announced today in Milan by the Chairman of the Balzan General Prize Committee, Salvatore Veca, together with the President of the Balzan Prize Foundation, Enrico Decleva, at the Corriere della Sera Foundation. Francis Halzen was awarded the prestigious prize “for his unparalleled accomplishments which have led to the construction of the large IceCube Neutrino Observatory in the south polar ice, a facility that has opened up a new window into the Universe through the study of cosmological high-energy neutrinos.”

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Antarctic Neutrino Detector Firms Up Cosmic Neutrino Sighting

Sorting through the billions of subatomic particles that zip through its frozen cubic-kilometer-sized detector each year, researchers using the IceCube Neutrino Observatory have gathered powerful new evidence in support of 2013 observations confirming the existence of cosmic neutrinos.

         The new observations are important because they herald a new form of astronomy using neutrinos, nearly massless high energy particles generated in nature’s accelerators: black holes, massive exploding stars and the energetic cores of galaxies. In the new study, the detection of 21 ultra high-energy muons – secondary particles created on the very rare occasions when neutrinos interact with other particles – from the mass of particles coursing upward through the IceCube detector provides independent confirmation of astrophysical neutrinos from our galaxy as well as cosmic neutrinos from sources outside the Milky Way.

The results are published today in the journal Physical Review Letters.

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Entrepreneurial student R&D support

Garage Physics and Venturewell offer a program of support for UW-Madison entrepreneurial teams to conduct R&D and to participate in local and national business plan competitions.

Garage Physics is a makerspace in Sterling Hall for innovative student-focused research, education, and entrepreneurship. Venturewell (formerly National Collegiate Inventors and Innovators Alliance, NCIIA) is a national organization supporting student entrepreneurship.

For additional information and to apply, visit the website.

Garage Physics Website