News

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Congratulations to the Department of Physics and Astronomy’s Student Award Winners!

Award certificates will be presented before the Department Colloquium on September 11th at 3:30pm in DRL A8.

Chairman’s Teaching Award   - Margot Young

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Boosting the frequency of sound waves to make the next generation of wireless devices

Vincent Kerler, a second-year physics major in the College of Arts and Sciences, says he spent his summer running “a whole bunch of simulations to explore how mechanical waves move through a class of materials that convert mechanical stress into electricity and vice versa, or piezoelectric nanomaterials.”

Robyn Sanderson and Adrien Thob of the School of Arts & Sciences are part of a team of astronomers using NASA’s upcoming Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope to uncover the “fossil record” of the universe as they look to clues to unearth key insights into its formation. (Image: Courtesy of NASA, Ralf Crawford (STScI))

NASA’s Roman Space Telescope will investigate the history of galaxies

Robyn Sanderson and collaborators are unearthing the history of the universe's formation by looking for clues that reveal its 'galatic fossil record.'

The universe is a dynamic, ever-changing place where galaxies are dancing, merging, and changing appearance. Looking ever deeper into the universe, astronomers see galaxies at earlier stages in their lives. Unfortunately, because these changes take millions or billions of years, telescopes only provide snapshots, squeezed into a human lifetime.

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How a Flipped Classroom Stokes the Collaborative Spirit of Physics

Bill Ashmanskas is using the Structured Active In-Class Learning format to help his students grasp high-level physics concepts.
Read full article here

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Four academic journeys explored

PennToday explores Vijay Balasubramanian's academic career.

Sam Dillavou, a postdoc in the Durian Research Group in the School of Arts & Sciences, built the components of this contrastive local learning network, an analog system that is fast, low-power, scalable, and able to learn nonlinear tasks.

A first, physical system learns nonlinear tasks without a traditional computer processor

Sam Dillavou, a postdoc in the Durian Research Group in the School of Arts & Sciences, built the components of this contrastive local learning network, an analog system that is fast, low-power, scalable, and able to learn nonlinear tasks. (Image: Erica Moser)

Penn physics and engineering researchers have created a local learning network that is fast, low-power, and scalable.

Read full article here

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From English Major to Doctor, Lawyer, VP

Vivian Lee, C’99, CGS’01, M’06, considers herself a Penn lifer, having done undergrad, medical school, and medical residency here before becoming an assistant professor of ophthalmology at the Perelman School of Medicine. 

Read full article here

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Center for Soft & Living Matter Kickoff Meeting

The new Center for Soft and Living Matter at the University of Pennsylvania brings together over 60 faculty and their groups from more than 10 departments across campus in order to facilitate collaborations and to help attract outstanding students and postdocs.

Robyn Sanderson

Researchers upend theory about the formation of the Milky Way Galaxy

New findings by Robyn Sanderson and collaborators suggest galaxy’s last major collision was billions of years later than previously thought.