News
We are accepting applications!
The Department of Physics and Astronomy at the University of Pennsylvania will be accepting applications for the PhD program during the 2020-21 admissions cycle, despite any disruptions associated with the COVID-19 pandemic. We look forward to receiving applications this Fall.
September 21-25 is Climate Week at Penn!
The long list of events is listed here:
https://climateweek.provost.upenn.edu/
The EES department will be hosting 2 separate events next week:
Werner Teutsch Memorial Prize Winners
Established by the friends of Werner Teutsch, to memorialize his exuberant creativity during a tragically short career. Awarded annually to the graduate student(s) who, by his or her performance in the first year courses, shows the most promise for outstanding achievement in research.
2020 winners:
Statement on the passing of Ward Plummer
The Department is sad to report the passing of Ward Plummer, former faculty member in our department.
Bhuvnesh Jain is organizing the “Summer 2020 data science hangout,” for Arts and Sciences undergraduate researchers
The summer 2020 hangout is intended for undergraduate students whose summer research involves quantitative analysis of datasets, including variants of machine learning.
Robyn Sanderson's research on a "new stellar stream, born outside the Milky Way, discovered with machine learning"
Finding this new collection of stars, named after Nyx, the Greek goddess of night, was made possible using machine learning tools and simulations of data collected by the Gaia space observatory.
Also, see coverage on CNN:
Special Statement Regarding Graduate Admissions in 2020
Because of the global COVID-19 pandemic, in our graduate admissions process this year:
1) Students who have taken courses in Spring 2020 Pass/Fail rather than for a letter grade will not be penalized in any way.
2) GRE scores will *not* be required this year, and their absence will not be used to count against any applicant.
Welcome new Assistant Professors, Arnold Mathijssen and Martin Claassen!
The department is pleased to announce the hiring of two new assistant professors in Condensed Matter Physics. Arnold Mathijssen (https://profiles.stanford.edu/arnold-mathijssen) is an experimentalist working in the general area of soft and living matter, currently as a postdoc at Stanford. His particular research interests are in the collective functionality of intelligent active matter, bridging multi-scale biology with the physics of solids, fluids and information. Martin Claassen (
Arjun Yodh: Using stress to shape microlevel structures
A new study describes how external forces drive the rearrangement of individual particles in disordered solids, enabling new ways to imbue materials with unique mechanical properties.