Research, teaching and outreach in Physics at UW–Madison
Undergraduate
Three students receive Sophomore Research Fellowships
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Three students — two physics majors, one astronomy-physics — have received a UW–Madison Sophomore Research Fellowship as a fellow or honorable mention. The students are:
Ella Chevalier, Astronomy-Physics; working with Ke Zhang (Astronomy)
Erica Magee, Mathematics, Physics; working with Martin Zanni (Chemistry)
Elias Mettner, Physics; working with Abdollah Mohammadi (Physics)
The fellowships include a stipend to each student and to their faculty advisers. Fellowships are funded by grants from the Brittingham Wisconsin Trust and the Kemper K. Knapp Bequest, with additional support from UW-System, the Chancellor’s Office and the Provost’s Office.
Opening doors to quantum research experiences with the Open Quantum Initiative
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This past winter, Katie Harrison, then a junior physics major at UW–Madison, started thinking about which areas of physics she was interested in studying more in-depth.
“Physics is in general so broad, saying you want to research physics doesn’t really cut it,” Harrison says.
She thought about which classes she enjoyed the most and talked to other students and professors to help figure out what she might focus on. Quantum mechanics was high on her list. During her search for additional learning opportunities, she saw the email about the Open Quantum Initiative (OQI), a new fellowship program run by the Chicago Quantum Exchange (CQE).
“This could be something I’m interested in, right?” Harrison thought. “I’ll apply and see what happens.”
What happened was that Harrison was one of 12 undergraduate students accepted into the inaugural class of OQI Fellows. These students were paired with mentors at CQE member institutions, where they conducted research in quantum science information and engineering. OQI has a goal of connecting students with leaders in academia and industry and increasing their awareness of quantum career opportunities. The ten-week Fellowship ran through August 19.
OQI students attend a wrap-up at the University of Chicago on August 17. Each student presented at a research symposium that day, which also included a career panel from leaders across academia, government, and industry and an opportunity to network. | Photo provided by the Chicago Quantum Exchange
OQI also places an emphasis on establishing diversity, equity, and inclusion as priorities central to the development of the quantum ecosystem. Almost 70% of this year’s fellowship students are Hispanic, Latino, or Black, and half are the first in their family to go to college. In addition, while the field of quantum science and engineering is generally majority-male, the 2022 cohort is half female.
This summer, UW–Madison and the Wisconsin Quantum Institute hosted two students: Harrison with physics professor Baha Balantekin and postdoc Pooja Siwach; and MIT physics and electrical engineering major Kate Arutyunova with engineering physics professor Jennifer Choy, postdoc Maryam Zahedian and graduate student Ricardo Vidrio.
Harrison and Arutyunova met at OQI orientation at IBM’s quantum research lab in New York, and they hit it off immediately. (“We have the most matching energies (of the fellows),” Arutyunova says, with Harrison adding, “The synergy is real.”)
OQI Fellow Kate Arutyunova with her research mentors. (L-R) Engineering Physics professor Jennifer Choy, graduate student Ricardo Vidrio, Kate Arutyunova, and postdoc Maryam Zahedian. | Photo provided by Kate Arutyunova
Despite their very different research projects — Harrison’s was theoretical and strongly focused on physics, whereas Arutyunova’s was experimental and with an engineering focus — they leaned on each other throughout the summer in Madison. They met at Union South nearly every morning at 7am to read and bounce ideas off each other. Then, after a full day with their respective research groups, they’d head back to Union South until it closed.
Modeling neutrino oscillations
Harrison’s research with Balantekin and Siwach investigated the neutrinos that escape collapsing supernovae cores. Neutrinos have a neutral charge and are relatively small particles, they make it out of cores without interacting with much — and therefore without changing much — so studying them helps physicists understand what is happening inside those stars. However, this is a difficult task because neutrinos oscillate between flavors, or different energy levels, and therefore require a lot of time and resources to calculate on a classical computer.
Harrison’s project, then, was to investigate two types of quantum computing methods, pulse vs circuit based, and determine if one might better fit their problem than the other. Previous studies suggest that pulsed based is likely to be better, but circuit based involves less complicated input calculations.
“I’ve been doing calibrations and calculating the frequencies of the pulses we’ll need to send to our qubits in order to get data that’s as accurate as a classical computer,” Harrison says. “I’m working with the circuit space, the mathematical versions of them, and then I’ll send my work to IBM’s quantum computers and they’ll calculate it and give results back.”
While she didn’t fully complete the project, she did make significant progress.
“(Katie) is very enthusiastic and she has gone a lot further than one would have expected an average undergraduate could have,” Balantekin says. “She started an interesting project, she started getting interesting results. But we are nowhere near the completion of the project, so she will continue working with us next academic year, and hopefully we’ll get interesting results.”
Developing better quantum sensors
Over on the engineering side of campus, Arutyunova was studying different ways to introduce nitrogen vacancy (NV) centers in diamonds. These atomic-scale defects are useful in quantum sensing and have applications in magnetometry. Previous work in Choy’s group made the NV centers by a method known as nitrogen ion beam implantation. Arutyunova’s project was to compare how a different method, electron beam irradiation, formed the NV centers under different starting nitrogen concentrations in diamond.
Briefly, she would mark an edge of a very tiny (2 x 2 x 0.5 millimeter), nitrogen-containing diamond, and irradiate the sample with a scanning electron microscope. She used confocal microscopy to record the initial distribution of NV centers, then moved the sample to the annealing step, where the diamond is heated up to 1200 celsius in a vacuum annealing furnace. The diamonds are then acid washed and reexamined with the confocal microscope to see if additional NV centers are formed.
“It’s a challenging process as it requires precise coordinate-by-coordinate calculation for exposed areas and extensive knowledge of how to use the scanning electron microscope,” says Arutyunova, who will go back to MIT after the fellowship wraps. “I think I laid down a good foundation for future steps so that the work can be continued in my group.”
Choy adds:
Kate made significant strides in her project and her work has put us on a great path for our continued investigation into effective ways of generating color centers in diamond. In addition to her research contributions, our group has really enjoyed and benefited from her enthusiasm and collaborative spirit. It’s wonderful to see the relationships that Kate has forged with the rest of the group and in particular her mentors, Maryam and Ricardo. We look forward to keeping in touch with Kate on matters related to the project as well as her academic journey.
Beyond the summer fellowship
Both Harrison and Arutyunova think that this experience has drawn them to the graduate school track, likely with a focus on quantum science. More importantly, it has helped them both to learn what they like about research.
“I would prefer to work on a problem and see the final output rather than a question where I do not have an idea of the application,” Arutyunova says. “And I realized how much I like to collaborate with people, exchange ideas, propose something, and listen to people and what they think about research.”
They also offer similar advice to other undergraduate students who are interested in research: do it, and start early.
“No matter when you start, you’re going to start knowing nothing,” Harrison says. “And if you start sooner, even though it’s scary and you feel like you know even less, you have more time to learn, which is amazing. And get in a research group where they really want you to learn.”
Physics undergraduates named 2022 Hilldale Fellows
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Three UW–Madison undergraduate physics majors have been named 2022 Hilldale Fellows, in addition to one engineering physics major who is conducting their research in the Physics Department.
The Hilldale Undergraduate/Faculty Research Fellowship provides research training and support to undergraduates at UW–Madison. Students have the opportunity to undertake their own research project in collaboration with UW–Madison faculty or research/instructional academic staff. Approximately 97 – 100 Hilldale awards are available each year.
The students are:
Astronomy-Physics and Physics major Elyse Incha, in Susanna Widicus Weaver’s group (Chemistry)
Mathematics and Physics major Haoyi Jia, in Sridhara Dasu’s group (Physics)
Music and Physics major Daniel Laws, in Mary Halloran’s group (Integrative Biology)
Engineering physics major Nico Ranabhat, in Shimon Kolkowitz’s group (Physics)
Four University of Wisconsin–Madison students have been named winners of 2022 Barry Goldwater Scholarships, one of the most prestigious awards in the U.S. for undergraduates studying the sciences.
The UW–Madison winners are sophomore Lucy Steffes and juniors Sarah Fahlberg, Elias Kemna and Samuel Neuman.
Each university in the country may nominate up to four undergraduates for the annual award. To have all four candidates win is remarkable, says Julie Stubbs, director of UW’s Office of Undergraduate Academic Awards.
Lucy Steffes is a sophomore from Milwaukee, double-majoring in astronomy-physics and physics with a certificate in German. Her freshman year, Steffes began working with astronomy professor Snezana Stanimirovic on the ALMA-SPONGE project, for which she co-authored two papers recently published in the Astrophysical Journal. The project looks at molecular formation in the interstellar medium to describe potentially star-forming regions. At the end of her freshman year, Steffes earned a Hilldale Undergraduate Research Fellowship to calculate the upper limits of molecular detections in the Magellanic Stream. She spent last summer working at the Green Bank Observatory in West Virginia examining the chemical composition and evolution of two globules in the Helix Nebula. This summer, she will be returning to the observatory to examine neutral atomic carbon across the Helix Nebula. She plans to pursue a Ph.D. in astrophysics.
Physics & math senior Gage Siebert awarded NSF GRFP
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Gage Siebert
Congratulations to Gage Siebert for being awarded a National Science Foundation Graduate Research Fellowship! Gage is a senior math and physics major who has been conducting research in radio astronomy and cosmology. He is working on the optics of NASA’s EXCLAIM mission and constructing a periodicity search using the Tianlai Radio Array. Gage is also a 2021 Hilldale Fellow and Goldwater Scholar, and has won the department’s Hagengruber Scholarship, Liebenberg Family Scholarship, and Henry & Eleanor Firminhac Scholarship. He plans to attend graduate school but has not decided where yet.
Peter Timbie, Gage’s research advisor, says:
Congratulations Gage on winning one of these exceedingly rare awards! We’re really proud of you,Best of luck with you proposal to search for periodic signals in cosmological survey data and your plans for graduate school.
21 UW–Madison students in total received the fellowship, a highly sought and competitive award. The Graduate Research Fellowship Program supports high-potential scientists and engineers in the early stages of their careers. Each year, more than 12,000 applicants compete for 2,000 fellowship awards.
Awardees from UW–Madison, including both undergraduate and graduate students, represent a variety of specializations across science, engineering, and technology. Another 23 UW–Madison students were recognized with honorable mentions.
The program provides awardees with three years of financial support consisting of a $34,000 annual stipend and a $12,000 education allowance. UW–Madison contributes toward fringe benefits.
Coral skeleton formation rate determines resilience to acidifying oceans
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A new University of Wisconsin–Madison study has implications for predicting coral reef survival and developing mitigation strategies against having their bony skeletons weakened by ocean acidification.
Though coral reefs make up less than one percent of the ocean floor, these ecosystems are among the most biodiverse on the planet — with over a million species estimated to be associated with reefs.
The coral species that make up these reefs are known to be differently sensitive or resilient to ocean acidification — the result of increasing atmospheric carbon dioxide levels. But scientists are not sure why.
In the study, researchers show that the crystallization rate of coral skeletons differs across species and is correlated with their resilience to acidification.
“Finding solutions that are science-based is a priority,” says physics professor Pupa Gilbert, shown here with samples of scleractinian coral along the Lake Monona shoreline in Madison. | Photo: Jeff Miller
“Many agencies keep putting out reports in which they say, ‘Yes, coral reefs are threatened,’ with no idea what to do,” says Pupa Gilbert, a physics professor at UW–Madison and senior author of the study that was published Jan. 17 in the Journal of the American Chemical Society. “Finding solutions that are science-based is a priority, and having a quantitative idea of exactly what’s happening with climate change to coral reefs and skeletons is really important.”
Reef-forming corals are marine animals that produce a hard skeleton made up of the mostly insoluble crystalline material aragonite. Aragonite forms when precursors made up of a more soluble form, amorphous calcium carbonate, are deposited onto the growing skeleton and then crystallize.
The team studied three genera of coral and took an in-depth look at the components of their growing skeletons. They used a technique that Gilbert pioneered called PEEM spectromicroscopy, which detects the different forms of calcium carbonate with the greatest sensitivity to date.
When they used these spectromicroscopy images to compare the thickness of amorphous precursors to the crystalline form, they found that Acropora, which is more sensitive to acidification, had a much thicker band of amorphous calcium carbonate than Stylophora, which is less sensitive.
A third genus of unknown sensitivity, Turbinaria, had an even thinner amorphous precursor layer than Stylophora, suggesting it should be the most resilient of the three to ocean acidification.
Coral skeletons were studied with PEEM spectromicroscopy, which identifies the calcium spectrum associated with each imaging pixel, then renders it in false color depending on the form of calcium. Blue is aragonite, the insoluble, crystalline form of calcium carbonate; the other colors represent one of the two amorphous precursor forms, a mix of the two, or a mix of aragonite and precursor form. Acropora spp. (left), has more non-blue pixels compared to Turbinaria spp. (right), indicating that Acropora has more of the soluble, non-crystalline form in its growing skeleton. | Pupa Gilbert and team in JACS
The thicker the band of uncrystallized minerals, the slower the crystallization process.
“If the surface of the coral skeleton, where all this amorphous calcium carbonate is being deposited by the living animal, crystallizes quickly, then that particular species is resilient to ocean acidification; if it crystallizes slowly, then it’s vulnerable,” Gilbert says. “For once, it’s a really simple mechanism.”
The mechanism may have worked out to be simple, but the data analysis required to process and interpret the PEEM images is anything but. Each pixel of imaging data acquired has a calcium spectrum that needs to be analyzed, which results in millions of data points. Processing the data includes many decision-making points, plus massive computing power.
The team has tried to automate the analysis or use machine-learning techniques, but those methods have not worked out. Instead, Gilbert has found that humans making decisions are the best data processors.
Gilbert did not want to base conclusions off the decision-making of just one or two people. So she hired a group of UW–Madison undergraduates, most of whom came from the Mercile J. Lee Scholars Program, which works to attract and retain talented students from underrepresented groups. This team provided a large and diverse group of decision makers.
Gilbert and her research team met several times a week via Zoom, where students were assigned the same dataset to process in parallel and discuss at their next meeting. The Cnidarians — named after the phylum to which corals belong — include current and former UW–Madison undergraduates: Celeo Matute Diaz, Jorge Rivera Colon, Asiya Ahmed, Virginia Quach, Gabi Barreiro Pujol, Isabelle LeCloux, Sydney Davison, Connor Klaus, Jaden Sengkhamee, Evan Walch and Benjamin Fordyce; and graduate students Cayla Stifler, and Connor Schmidt. Schmidt was also the lead author of the study. | Provided by Pupa Gilbert
Dubbed the Cnidarians — from the phylum to which corals, anemones and jellyfish belong — this group of students became integral members of the team. They met several times a week via Zoom, when Gilbert would assign multiple students the same dataset to process in parallel and discuss at their next meeting.
“If multiple people come up with precisely the same solution even though they make different decisions, that means our analysis is robust and reliable,” Gilbert says. “The Cnidarians’ contributions were so useful that 13 of them are co-authors on this study.”
THIS STUDY WAS SUPPORTED BY THE DEPARTMENT OF ENERGY (DE-FG02-07ER15899 AND DE-AC02-05CHH11231), THE NATIONAL SCIENCE FOUNDATION (DMR-1603192) AND THE EUROPEAN RESEARCH COUNCIL (755876).
Several physics majors awarded Hilldale Fellowships
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Six UW–Madison undergraduate physics or AMEP majors have been named 2021 Hilldale Fellows, in addition to one computer science major who is conducting their research in the Physics Department.
The Hilldale Undergraduate/Faculty Research Fellowship provides research training and support to undergraduates at UW–Madison. Students have the opportunity to undertake their own research project in collaboration with UW–Madison faculty or research/instructional academic staff. Approximately 97 – 100 Hilldale awards are available each year.
Three students are conducting research in the Department of Physics, including:
Mathematics and Physics major Gage Siebert, in Prof. Peter Timbie’s group
Physics major Haley Stueber, in Prof. Dan McCammon’s group
Computer Sciences major Nikhilesh Venkatasubramanian, in Prof. Tulika Bose’s group
The physics or AMEP majors who have been named Hilldale Fellows and are conducting research outside the department are:
Mathematics and Physics major Sam Christianson, with Saverio Spagnolie (Mathematics)
Astronomy – Physics, Biochemistry, Chemistry, Mathematics, Molecular & Cell Biology, Neurobiology, Physics, Psychology, and Zoology major Renxi Li, with Catherine Gallagher (Neurology)
AMEP major Shenwei Yin, with Joseph Andrews (Mechanical Engineering)
Computer Sciences and Physics major Heqiao (Wonder) Zhu, with Kevin Eliceiri (LOCI)
Gage Siebert named 2021 Goldwater Scholar
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Gage Siebert
Three University of Wisconsin–Madison students, including junior Physics and Math major Gage Siebert, have been named 2021 winners of the Barry Goldwater Scholarship, considered the country’s preeminent undergraduate scholarship in the natural sciences, mathematics and engineering.
As a freshman, Siebert studied the origins of life in Professor David Baum’s lab at the Wisconsin Institute for Discovery. Siebert then interned at the Arecibo Observatory in Puerto Rico, studying the radio emission from several of the millisecond pulsars used in the search for gravitational waves. He later presented this work at a meeting of the American Astronomical Society. For the past two years, Siebert has worked in Professor Peter Timbie’s observational cosmology lab on the Tianlai Array, a radio astronomy experiment built to map hydrogen. He plans to pursue a Ph.D. in physics.
More than 1,250 students were nominated this year from 438 academic institutions; 410 were named Goldwater Scholars. The scholarship program honors the late Sen. Barry Goldwater and was designed to develop highly qualified scientists, engineers and mathematicians. The scholarships were first awarded in 1989. Each scholar will receive up to $7,500 for their senior year of undergraduate study.
Three undergraduate students awarded Hilldale Fellowships
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Congratulations to the three physics undergraduate research students who earned Hilldale fellowships for 2020-21! They are:
Owen Rafferty, in Robert McDermott’s group
Yanlin Wu, in Peter Timbie’s group
Yan Qian, in Sau Lan Wu’s group
The Hilldale Undergraduate/Faculty Research Fellowship provides research training and support to undergraduates at UW–Madison. Students have the opportunity to undertake their own research project in collaboration with UW–Madison faculty or research/instructional academic staff. Approximately 97 – 100 Hilldale awards are available each year.
2020 Commencement
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Please join us for a live virtual Commencement ceremony for undergraduate Physics and AMEP majors and Physics PhDs. For more info and a list of graduates, please visit https://www.physics.wisc.edu/commencement-2020/
