News
Physics majors Srinivas Mandyam and Adithya Sriram awarded 2020 NSF Graduate Research Fellowships
Congratulations to Physics majors Srinivas Mandyam and Adithya Sriram for being awarded the 2020 NSF Graduate Research Fellowship! Srinivas is a Vagelos MLS Scholar who will graduate with a bachelor’s degree in Physics, Mathematics, and Biophysics, along with a master’s degree in Physics. He is also the recipient of the Churchill Scholarship and Goldwater Scholarship. Adithya is a VIPER Scholar who will graduate with a bachelor’s degree in Physics, Biophysics, and Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering, and also with a master’s in P
Graduate student Amanda Bacon awarded a 2020 NSF Graduate Research Fellowship
Amanda is a first-year graduate student who came to Penn from Bennington College. As an undegraduate she worked on the MiniCLEAN dark matter experiment at SNOLAB and in solar astrophysics at Harvard. She is now working with the neutrino group.
Prof. Mark Devlin chosen as a winner of Lindback Award for Distinguished Teaching
Congratulations to Prof. Mark Devlin, who has been chosen as a winner of this year’s Lindback Award for Distinguished Teaching, the highest teaching honor given by the University. In recent years we have been honored with a string of these recognitions of our outstanding teachers.
Bill Ashmanskas selected for the Provost's Award for Teaching Excellence by Non-Standing Faculty
Congratulations to Bill Ashmanskas, who has been selected for the Provost's Award for Teaching Excellence by Non-Standing Faculty. This award is in recognition of his commitment to teaching at Penn, and only one such award is made each year across all the non-health schools (Annenberg, Design, Engineering and Applied Science, GSE, Law, SAS, Social Policy & Practice, Wharton).
Ashley Baker awarded a 51 Pegasi b Fellowship
Congratulations to Ashley Baker, who has been selected for a 51 Pegasi b Fellowship from the Heising-Simons Foundation! These fellowships were established in 2017 and are named for the first exoplanet discovered orbiting a Sun-like star.
Penn researchers help find new minor planets beyond Neptune
This updated catalog of trans-Neptunian objects and the methods used to find them could aid in future searches for undiscovered planets in the far reaches of the solar system.
Penn senior Srinivas Mandyam awarded a Churchill Scholarship
Congratulations to Penn senior, Srinivas Mandyam, who has been awarded a Churchill Scholarship for one year of graduate research study at the University of Cambridge in England!
Two Physics graduate students selected as finalists in the Natural Sciences division for the 2020 Grad Ben Talks
Congratulations to Pedro Bernardinelli, "Hunting for Icy Bodies in the Outer Solar System" and Võ Tiến Phong, "An Electron Wave Conspiracy" who were selected as finalists in the Natural Sciences division for the 2020 Grad Ben Talks.
Penn Science Cafe: "Physics of Mechanical Metamaterials Design" - Professor Andrea Liu
Andrea Liu and her lab have discovered new principles that allow them to easily design mechanical metamaterials. These include some with a negative Poisson ratio, which stretch in the horizontal direction when you stretch them vertically. (Most materials have a positive Poisson ratio, so that if you stretch them vertically they contract in the horizontal direction, like a rubber band). They are also working with systems that have even more complex responses inspired by biology, like allostery, which underlies nearly every biochemical process in our bodies.
Cullen Blake works on a new astronomical instrument on the hunt for exoplanets
New astronomical instrument on the hunt for exoplanets - A state-of-the-art instrument called NEID, from the Tohono O’odham word meaning “to see,” collected its “first light” and is poised to look for new planets outside the solar system.