Current News

03/27/13 - Congratulations to Emilio Cobanera, whose dissertation, “A New Theory of Dualities and Dimensional Reduction: Applications to Phase Transitions, Topological Quantum Order, and Quantum Information Processing” has been selected as the winner of the Esther L. Kinsley Ph.D. Dissertation Award for 2012-2013. This is the highest honor for research that Indiana University bestows upon its graduate students.

01/24/13 - Long distance mentoring of high school student Jiayi Peng by Physics Assoc. Prof. John Beggs helped her win the $50,000 second-place prize in the national Siemens Competition in Math, Science and Technology "for her study of how neuronal networks could self-organize to the critical point and thereby avoid diseases like Alzheimer’s and Parkinson’s and disorders like autism and epilepsy."

'Without Dr. Beggs, I could not have made such progress'

"The work Beggs and Peng have done together has also led to the pair co-authoring a research article, “Attaining and Maintaining Criticality in a Neuronal Network Model,” that has just been published in Physica A, a peer-reviewed academic journal for the field of statistical mechanics. Beggs’ research was funded by the National Science Foundation."

More information from the Inside IU.

10/05/12 - Congratulations to IU physics alumna Kathleen Plinske on receiving the 2012 Outstanding Young Alumni award from the College of Arts And Sciences. Kathleen graduated with a BA in physics and Spanish in 2001 and is now the President of the Osceola and Lake Nona campuses of Valencia College in Florida. Award information should soon be posted on the College Awards and Recognitions page.

09/24/12 - Teppei Katori (Ph.D. 2008 with Rex Tayloe) has been selected to receive the 2013 Henry Primakoff Award for Early-Career Particle Physics from the American Physical Society. Teppei has been recognized for his outstanding contributions in accelerator-based neutrino experiments, notably his cross section measurements and searches for Lorentz and CPT violation.
The Award is given annually to recognize outstanding contributions made by early-career physicists. It consists of a certificate and a monetary award, which this year will be presented at the APS April Meeting in Denver, CO, April 13-16, at a special Ceremonial Session during which Teppei will give an invited lecture.

08/28/12 - Gang Shen who received his PhD in 2010 under supervision of Chuck Horowitz will receive the 2013 Dissertation Award in Nuclear Physics of the American Physical Society. Gang is recognized "for development of a new self-­consistent equation of state of hot and dense matter intended for use in numerical simulations of core-­collapse supernova, neutron star mergers and related extreme astrophysical phenomena. This equation of state provides a unified description of matter at the relatively low density and temperature where nuclei are present, and the high density and temperature phase where uniform nuclear matter with neutrons, protons and electrons exists." The award is given to a recent Ph.D. in experimental or theoretical nuclear physics from a North American university within two years from graduation.

07/09/12 - For Immediate Release: IU physicists, IT personnel contribute to success of Higgs boson search - More information from the IU News Room

07/04/12 - CERN experiments observe particle consistent with long-sought Higgs boson More... View the report 9am CEST - NY Times article - CERN - The U.S. LHC groups - See specific IU contributions and details

05/07/12 - Teppei Katori, IU grad student alumus, awarded the 2012 IUPAP C11 Young Scientist Prize

07/02/12 - Tevatron scientists announce their final results on the Higgs particle More...

06/13/12 - "The White House has announced that Indiana University School of Education alumna Stacy McCormack, the 2011 Indiana Teacher of the Year and a teacher at Penn High School in Mishawaka, is the Indiana recipient of the Presidential Award for Excellence in Mathematics and Science Teaching for teaching science. The award is the highest recognition that a kindergarten through 12th-grade mathematics or science teacher may receive for outstanding teaching in the U.S." More at the IU News Room.

06/05/12 - Prof. Lisa Kaufman part of international team unveiling first results of underground search for neutrino properties. The Enriched Xenon Observatory 200 experiment reports the best result to date showing that neutrinos behave like other elementary particles at the quantum level. More at the IU News Room.

06/03-09/12 - During June 3-9 2012, the Indiana University Center for Spacetime Symmetries (IUCSS), http://www.indiana.edu/~iucss, hosted a summer school on the Lorentz- and CPT-violating Standard-Model Extension in the Physics Department. Organized by Ralf Lehnert and Mike Snow, the school attracted 72 registrants from about a dozen countries. The school offered reviews of theoretical and experimental aspects of Lorentz and CPT violation in the SME context, aimed at educating interested workers in the field. The lectures and scientific expertise of the attendees covered a broad range of topics spanning astrophysics, atomic physics, neutrino physics, nuclear physics, particle physics, theoretical physics, and mathematics. The school web site is http://www.indiana.edu/~lorentz/sme2012. The school was the fourth event sponsored by the IUCSS since its inauguration in 2010. Previous meetings included the Fifth Meeting on CPT and Lorentz Symmetry (CPT'10) in June 2010, which is the major scientific conference in the field, and workshops on Theoretical Aspects of the Standard-Model Extension (August 2011) and on Exploring Lorentz Symmetry with Neutrinos (March 2012). Additional events currently being planned for the 2012-2013 academic year will be announced at a later date on the IUCSS web site, http://www.indiana.edu/~iucss/workshops.shtml.

05/07/12 - Teppei Katori, IU grad student alumus, awarded the 2012 IUPAP C11 Young Scientist Prize... More

05/03/12 - Sloppy shipping of human retina leads IU researchers to discover new treatment path for eye disease...More at the IU News Room.

05/01/12 - Thesis work of Denver Whittington on looking for tiny differences between top quarks and antitop quarks that would be a signal for Lorentz violation featured as Fermilab's Result of the Week.

04/30/12 - With NOvA building complete, IU physicists, astronomer ready to construct particle detector... More at the IU News Room.

04/19/12 - Profs. Sima Setayeshgar and Mike Snow honored for excellence in teaching by receiving Outstanding Undergraduate Teaching and Outstanding Graduate Teaching awards, respectively, as selected by undergraduate Physics majors and graduate students at our Annual Awards Colloquium.

03/08/12 - Area high school students can register for summer science and math institute at IU Bloomington in a program initiated by Physics graduate students. More at the IU News Room.

03/07/12 - Congratulations to Prof. Radovan Dermisek for receiving an Outstanding Junior Faculty Award - only 4-5 of these are awarded each year from the entire campus.

03/02/12 - Treasured faculty member Prof. Brian Serot passed away March 2, 2012

02/20/12 - Prof. Steve Gottlieb has been elected to a three-year term as an APS Councilor through the Division of Computational Physics. The Council is the governing board of the American Physical Society.

01/05/12 - IU Physics Research Scientist Jason Gardner has been appointed editor-in-chief of prestigious Journal of Physics: Condensed Matter. His introductory editorial is online. Read more on Dr. Gardner's research here.

01/01/12 - Prof. Alan Kostelecky's 1985 paper "The neutrino as a tachyon" listed as number 1 "hottest article" in Physics Letter B for 2011.

12/13/11 - With mounting evidence of a possible sighting of the Higgs Boson from the Large Hadron Collider, IU physicists find themselves in thick of new results. Members of the IU Department of Physics belong to the ATLAS detector collaboration, which reported their recent results on the search...read more at the IU News Room.

12/02/11 - Adam Szczepaniak has been named a 2011 Fellow of the American Physical Society "For the development of perturbative and nonperturbative methods in Quantum Chromodynamics in the lightcone and equal time formalisms and for their application to properties of exotic mesons". Fellowship is a distinct honor signifying recognition by one's professional peers and normally restricted to 1% of the membership of the American Physical Society in any given year.

12/01/11 - Mark Gebhard, Master Electronic Technician, is one of six IU Bloomington staff selected to receive the 2011 Staff Merit Award. For the last 24 years, Mark has been instrumental in designing, building and repairing equipment essential to the success of astrophysics and neutrino physics experiments. His ability to quickly and expertly conceptualize, implement, and trouble-shoot these highly specialized instruments is not only remarkable in itself but it has been essential to the success of many research projects. As further evidence of his commitment to IU, Mark has taken his own time to chronicle the history of the Indiana University Department of Physics in a 700 page volume.

11/04/11 - IUB Physics team led by Prof. Tayloe developed a novel neutrino and neutron detector called SciBath, which has now been installed for testing at Fermi National Laboratory. Read more from Fermilab..

10/20/11 - Researchers in the IU Biocomplexity Institute have developed a computational model for early embryonic development in vertebrates. The model was simulated in the CompuCell3D environment, which reproduced early stages of embryonic development when segments called somites form...Read more from IU News Room.

09/23/11 - Observed "faster than light" travel of neutrinos was predicted by IU theorist Prof. Alan Kostelecky and coworkers in 1985. On the other hand, IU alum Chang-Kee Jung (now at SUNY Stony Brook) remains skeptical. Read more from the IU News Room.

09/08/11 - Prof. Lisa Kaufman involved in the slowest Standard Model process ever: As a member of the EXO collaboration, Prof. Kaufman has been involved in the measurement of an extremely rare process of two-neutrino double-beta decay of an isotope of Xenon: How slow is slow? EXO knows!. IU and Kaufman provided key parts for the calibration system that was used to understand the detector's behavior and for measuring the purity of the liquid xenon. Kaufman was instrumental in organization of the running of the experiment and data taking, as well as installing an emergency recovery system for the xenon.

09/06/11 - IU PhD and postdoctoral research Nikodem Poplawski is featured in the episode "Parallel Universes: Are They Real?" on "Through the Wormhole with Morgan Freeman" appearing on both the Discovery and Science Channels. More from this episode.

08/29/11 - Recruiting is underway for the new IU Bloomington Medical Physics program. Classes begin Fall 2012; to learn more about the program, please visit the IUB Medical Physics website or read more from IU News Room.

06/29/11 - IU physics PhDs offer tutoring assistance in math, physics to area high school students. The summer program is now running in its second year. Read more from IU News Room.

06/24/11 - MINOS experiment observes rare neutrino events. Scientists of the MINOS experiment at the Department of Energy's Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory announced the results from a search for a rare phenomenon, the transformation of muon neutrinos into electron neutrinos. Read more at the Fermilab news room.

04/19/11 - IU alumnus and postdoctoral research Nikodem Poplawski has a different way of looking at the universe. Read about his research in the IU news article

04/13/11 - The Indiana University Board of Trustees rededicated and renamed the IU Cyclotron Facility as the Integrated Science and Accelerator Technology (ISAT) Hall. President McRobbie used the opportunity to award the President's Medal to Professor Emeritus Robert Pollock. See the IU news article.

03/28/11 - The American Physical Society has recognized Indiana University physicist Charles Horowitz with a lifetime award as an Outstanding Referee for his work assessing manuscripts submitted to the society's publications. See the IU news article.

03/25/11 -Physics graduate student Justin Stevens awarded the College of Arts and Sciences Dissertation Year Research Fellowship of $18,000 for 2011-12. This 10-month fellowship is intended to provide support for him while he is conducting his research and writing your dissertation. With this award the College recognizes the quality of his past graduate work and expresses the confidence of the College and his department in his promise as a developing scholar.

03/11/11 -Physics graduate student Leo Mesquita awarded the McCormick Science Grant for 2011. The grant of $2,500.00 is intended to provide support for him while he is conducting his research in collaboration with Professor Rob de Ruyter. Charles O. McCormick III, M.D., established the McCormick Science Grant Fund to honor his father and grandfather and to support basic science research.In creating the fund Dr. McCormick asked the College to identify the graduate student member of a faculty/graduate student team whose research is judged most creative, visionary, and innovative.

02/11/11 - IU Physics Professor Chuck Horowitz named an "Outstanding Referee" by the editors of the American Physical Society journals.