News
P&A grad student made Tyndale Fellow
Graduate student Jing Cai has been named Hector Tyndale Fellow 2013-2014. This fellowsihp supports the academic pursuits of meritorious graduate students in the School of Arts and Sciences.
Euclid-LSST-WFIRST meeting at Penn
Leaders of the 3 next-generation dark energy experiments, the Large Synoptic Survey Telescope (LSST), Euclid, and the Wide-Field Infrared Survey Telescope (WFIRST), meet at Penn on Friday, June 20 to discuss the possibility of joint analysis efforts that would increase the scientific reach of all 3 future experiments. Prof. Bhuvnesh Jain directs the meeting.
Graphene Frontiers
Prof. Charlie Johnson and his former postdoc Zhengteng Luo formed a company, Graphene Frontiers, to make graphene, a single atom-thick layer of carbon in a hexagonal pattern, in industrial size quantities. A story on the company is highlighted in Penn News Today.
Congratulations to the Roy and Diana Vagelos Science Challenge Awards for 2014/2015 Recipients
PHYSICS MAJORS
Xingting Gong Seth C. Koren
Noah A. Rubin Dahlia R. Klein
Stefan R. Torborg Allison P. Siegenfeld
Randy Kamien Chair of new APS Topical Group
The APS Topical Group on Soft Matter has just been established. Prof. Randy Kamien serves as Chair of the new Topical Group until 2016.
http://aps.org/publications/apsnews/updates/gsoft.cfm
Charlie Johnson on NPR's Science Friday
Prof. Charlie Johnson was on NPR's Science Friday on May 16 to talk about graphene, a highly conductive, atomically thin material that has a huge range of possible applications. The audio recording is here.
Bill Ashmanskas awarded for teaching
Senior Lecturer Bill Ashmanskas received an Excellence in Teaching Award from the Undergraduate program in Architecture on Sunday, May 18. The award signifies the creative and energetic teaching Bill has done for Phys8 and Phys9, the Physics for Architects courses.
Charlie Johnson featured in TV news piece
Prof. Charlie Johnson is interviewed in an Al Jezeera USA news video segment on detecting ovarian cancer through odor in the blood of patients. The link to the video and transcription is here.
Reappointed Director of LRSM, Professor Arjun Yodh
Vice Provost for Research Dawn Bonnell is pleased to announce the reappointment of Professor Arjun Yodh as Director of the Laboratory on the Structure of Matter (LRSM) for a six-year term ending June 30, 2020.
Scalable Chemical Sensors based on Graphene
A team led by Prof. Charlie Johnson has published a study in the journal Nano Letters of an artifical chemical sensor based on one of the human body's most important receptors, one critical to the action of anasthetics and painkillers. Attaching these receptors to strips of graphene shows the way to mass production of chemical sensor devices that could be useful in drug development and diagnostic tests.