Department of Physics and Astronomy

The 2007 Nanoscience and Nanotechnology Forum was a success this year with 38 posters submitted for the Nanoscience Poster Competition. http://www.vanderbilt.edu/vinse/news_details.php?NewsID=47 Awards for outstanding presentations go to:
1st Place - Eugene Donev - Physics,     (Advisor: Richard Haglund and Leonard Feldman)
"Modulation of the Gold Particle Plasmon by the Metal-insulator Transition of Vanadium Dioxide"
2nd Place - T. Grant Glover - Chemical Engineering,     (Advisor: Douglas LeVan)
"Development of a Molecularly Engineered Nanoporous Carbon Adsorbent"
3rd Place - Drew Steigerwald - Physics (Fisk University),     (Advisor: Richard Mu)
"Angle-resolved Spatial and Compositional Variations in Pulsed Electron-beam Deposited Thin Films"

Phill Cargile presented his research on an unusual eclipsing binary star at the American Astronomical Society's Winter meeting in Seattle in January..

Leonidas Tsetseris and Sokrates Pantelides' modeling of the oxidation process that leads to smooth silicon-silicon dioxide interfaces, a key property underlying the success of silicon-based electronic devices, was recently published in Phys Rev. Letters and is featured in the Research Highlights of the 28 September issue of Nature.

A research team including professors Len Feldman, Norm Tolk, and research associate Zhiheng Liu has reported the successful use of a laser to strip hydrogen atoms from a silicon surface. The research, carried out at the W. M. Keck Free Electron Laser Center, was reported in the May 19 issue of Science. The work is highlighted in Exploration and a press release from VUCast has appeared on several websites.

Keivan Stassun is interviewed on Earth and Sky, discussing the discovery of the first brown dwarf eclipsing binary system. This research appeared in the March 16 issue of the journal Nature and has been featured in a number of other news stories including Vanderbilt's online research journal Exploration, ScienceNOW, and UPI.

Bob O'Dell has received major press coverage for his research on the Orion Nebula reported recently at the annual meeting of the American Astronomical Society, including Vanderbilt's online research journal Exploration, Science Daily, SPACE.com, and MSNBC.

Norm Tolk's research, musical talents, and faith are profiled this month in Vanderbilt's online research journal, Exploration. The story has been featured on a number of other online sites including Daily Science News and physorg.com.

Tobias Hertel's research on carbon nanotube luminescence is featured in Vanderbilt's online research journal, Exploration. His work has also been picked up by over a dozen technology and science news websites: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, ...

The discovery of a liquid of strongly interacting quarks and gluons, made at the Relativistic Heavy Ion Collider (RHIC), has been chosen as the Top Physics Story of 2005 by The American Institute of Physics. Congratulations to Vicki Greene, Julia Velkovska, and Charlie Maguire, members of the PHENIX collaboration (one of the four large detector groups at RHIC) who contributed to this research.

Leading the Way: The Fisk Astronomy and Space Science Training (FASST) Program was recently featured on NASA's Space Science Explorers Website

Astronomers from Vanderbilt's Dept. of Physics and Astronomy presented research at the annual meeting of the American Astronomical Society. Using new observations of a pair of young stars, Dr. David Weintraub and graduate student Sonali J. Shukla, suggested that X-rays can penetrate through the gas and dust surrounding youngs stars to reveal details of their development. New images released by a team that included Dr. Keivan Stassun dramatically illustrates the birth and death of nebula at the cosmic scale. At left is the Carina Nebula (courtesy NASA).

Michael Fogel (UC, Berkeley) is the winner of the 2005 Vanderbilt Prize for Undergraduate Research in Physics and Astronomy for his research in APEX-SZ Observation Simulations. Finalist are Alicia Aarnio (Smith College - The Stellar Moving Group Associated With HD 141569), David Lopez Mateos (MIT - CMS Heavy Ion Physics), and Adam Scheer (University of Nebraska, Lincoln - Uncovering the Secrets of Radiation Induced Damage to DNA: Measurement and Calculations on Uracil). Register Article.

Dr. Julia Velkovska, Dr. Victoria Greene, and Dr. Charles Maguire are part of an international collaboration of physicists who have discovered evidence for a new state of matter using the PHENIX detector at the Relativistic Heavy Ion Collider at Brookhaven National Laboratory. The announcement was made at a press conference on April 18 at the spring meeting of the American Physical Society in Tampa, Florida. A peer-reviewed paper summarizing the first three years of RHIC findings has been accepted for publication in Nuclear Physics A. “The truly stunning finding at RHIC that the new state of matter created in the collisions of gold ions is more like a liquid than a gas gives us a profound insight into the earliest moments of the universe,” said Dr. Raymond L. Orbach, Director of the DOE Office of Science. (Vanderbilt News Service article) (The American Institute of Physics Bulletin of Physics News)

UPDATE: Articles in Exploration and in the March issue of Optics Letters.

Dr. René Lopez, Dr. Richard Haglund, and Dr. Leonard Feldman’s research into the optical properties of vanadium dioxide nanoparticles has been published in the Virtual Journal of Nanoscale Science & Technology (Size-Dependent Optical Properties of VO2 Nanoparticles Arrays, Nov. 1, 2004 Volume 10, Issue 18) and in the Virtual Journal of Ultrafast Science (Optical Nonlinearities of VO2 Nanoparticles and Thin Films, Jan. 2005 Volume 85, Issue 22, pp. 5191-5193). They are using ultrafast, 800 nm laser pulses to compare the ultrafast optical nonlinearities of VO2 nanoparticles and thin films in both semiconducting and metallic states.

Distinguished Research Professor of Physics and Astronomy Dr. Robert O'Dell has led a team of astronomers that has created a new model of the Helix Nebula using images from the Hubble Space Telescope and the best ground-based observations. His achievement was highlighted in the November issue of Astronomical Journal and in Vanderbilt's research journal Explorations. The image on the right is courtesy Dr. O'Dell.

Dr. Julia Velkovska reviewed hadron production in relativistic nuclear collisions in a plenary talk at the 17th international conference Quark Matter 2004 in Oakland, California. Dr. Velkovska and Vanderbilt are mentioned in the latest issue of the CERN Courier which presents highlights of the conference.
Dr. Rob Knop, Supernova Cosmology Project (picture at right)
Holladay Lecture
- September 23: Lee Riedinger, Deputy Director for Science and Technology at Oak Ridge National Laboratory, discussed science opportunities at Oak Ridge National Laboratory.
- February 11 and 12: Scott Hubbard, Director of the NASA Ames Research Center, discussed the Mars landing.
Dr. Julia Velkovska co-organized the Hot Quarks 2004 workshop which was held inTaos, New Mexico this July. The aim of the workshop was to enhance the direct exchange of scientific information amongst the younger members of the Relativistic Heavy Ion community, both from the experiment and theory.
Findings by researchers Dr. John Wikswo, Dr. Veniamin Sidorov, Rubin Aliev, Marcella Woods, Dr. Franz Baudenbacher and Petra Baudenbacher were published in the Nov. 14 issue of Physical Review Letters on their research about little-studied waves in the heart may be the cause of defibrillation failure.
Exploration article of Dr. Rob Knop's study which shows "New measurements of the light from exploding stars confirm that the universe is being blown apart by dark energy and provide some new clues about this mysterious force."
Exploration article about Dr. Bob O'Dell's dream of becoming an astronomer: "The Spirit of East St. Louis" by Dwayne O'Brian
Dr Vicki Greene, Dr Charles Maguire, and Dr. Julia Velkovska are attempting to create and characterize quark-gluon plasma, an exotic state of matter. Read more in the Vanderbilt Register article, "Transmuting gold into primordial energy-matter soup" by David F. Salisbur
Research by Dr. David Weintraub and Jeff Bary proposes that there may be more planets similar to Earth circling stars like the Sun than the currently accepted model predicts.
Dr. John Wikswo received a $443K Public Health Service Grant for “Electrophysiological Implications for Cardiac Bidomain.”
Dr. Paul Sheldon organized the Workshop on High Performance, Fault Adaptive Large Scale Real-Time Systems.
Astrophysicists, including Dr. Didier Saumon from Vanderbilt University, discover a luminous component of dark matter.

Grants

Dr. Kelly Holley-Bockelmann has recieved a 3 year grant in the amount of $143,000 for her research "LISA Observations of Galaxy Structure". It's part of NASA's Astrophysics Theory and Fundamental Physics program. LISA stands for Laser Interferometer Space Antenna.

Shane Hutson, Antonio Jacinto at the University of Lisbon, and G. Wayne Brodland at the University of Waterloo have been awarded a Research Grant from the Human Frontier Science Program for their project "Integrating the genetics, mechanics, and phenomenology of embryonic wound healing." The grant is for $350,000 per year for three years.

Kalman Varga has received a $240,000 grant from the National Science Foundation Division of Electrical and Communications Systems.

Tobias Hertel has recently received two grants from the National Science Foundation Division of Materials Research:

$547,000 over three years for his proposal: "Development of a Nanoparticle Trap for Student Training and Nano-spectroscopy."
$271,000 over three years for his proposal: "Pump-Probe Excitation Spectroscopy of Carbon Nanotubes."

Keivan Stassun has received a Cottrell Scholar Award from Research Corporation. Cottrell Scholar Awards are for beginning faculty members who wish to excel at both research and teaching.

Shane Hutson received a CAREER Award from the National Science Foundation for his research on the forces underlying cell movement during development. Read the full story in The Vanderbilt Register and on VUCast, Vanderbilt University's News Network.

Tobias Hertel has received a Petroleum Research Fund Grant from the American Chemical Society to carry out femtosecond time-resolved pump-probe studies on the role of adsorbates for excited state dynamics in carbon nanotubes.

Graduate student Eugenii Donev received a Dissertation Enhancement Grant from the Graduate School.

Congratulations to Julia Velkovska, who received a venture fund grant for creativity in curricular and pedagogical approaches from the College of Arts and Sciences for the implementation of a web-based electronic logbook in the advanced undergraduate physics laboratory course.

May 2004

Dr. Shane Hutson has received $168,326 from the DoD MFEL Program for "Supplemental Applications: Anomalous Wavelength-Dependence of FEL Ablation Efficiency". This is a supplement to the Vanderbilt FEL Center grant. David Piston is co-principal investigators.
Dr. Volker E. Oberacker has been awarded a grant in the amount of $130,000 by the Department of Energy for “Microscopic Heavy Ion Theory.” Dr. Sait Umar and Dr. David J. Ernst are co-principal investigators.
Dr. Keivan Stassun has been awarded a grant of $138,161 by the National Science Foundation for “CAREER: Order-of-Magnitude Problems in Star Formation and Minority Representation.”
Dr. Norman H. Tolk has been awarded a grant in the amount of $104,651 by the Department of Defense for “Spintronics and Spin-photonics in Ferromagnetic InAs/GaSb-based Heterostructures.” Ilias E. Perakis is co-principal investigator.
Dr. Thomas J. Weiler has been awarded a grant of $120,000 by the Department of Energy for “Theoretical Investigations in Elementary Particle Physics.” Dr. Thomas W. Kephart is co-principal investigator.
Dr. David A. Weintraub has been awarded a grant of $60,000 by the National Aeronautics and Space Administration for “Molecular Hydrogen Gas in Disks of T Tauri Stars.” C. Richard Chappell is co-principal investigator.

April 2004

Dr. Robert Knop has been awarded a grant of $115,000 by the National Aeronautics and Space Administration for “Exploration of the SN la Hubble Diagram at z>1.2.”
Dr. Charles F. Maguire has been awarded a grant of $450,000 by the Department of Energy for “Relativistic Heavy Ion Experiments.” Dr. Senta Victoria Greene and Dr. Julia A. Velkovska are co-principal investigators.

Dr. Will Johns has been awarded a grant of $38,127 by the University of Colorado-Boulder for “Support for Spring 2004 Semester.”
Dr. Julia Velkovska has been awarded a Research Scholar Grant of $3,000from the provost's office to support the Hot Quarks 2004 Conference in July.
The Relativistic Heavy Ion Collider group's Department of Energy grant has been renewed for 3 years, totaling over $1.4 million.

January 2004

Dr. C. Robert O'Dell,: $52,320 by the National Aeronautics and Space Administration. Dr. C. Richard Chappell is co-principal investigator.
Dr. David Piston: $2,950,000 by the Department of Defense. Dr. Charles A. Brau, Dr. Richard F. Haglund, Dr. Norman H. Tolk, Dr. E. Duco Jansen and Dr. Anita Mahadevan-Jansen are co-principal investigators.
Dr. Sandra J. Rosenthal: $152,537 by the Department of Energy, and another grant of $76,500 by the Public Health Service.
Dr. John P. Wikswo Jr.: $66,440 by the Public Health Service. Dr. Franz J. Baudenbacher is co-principal investigator.

December 2003:

Dr. Charles R. Chappell has been awarded a grant of $70,000 by the National Aeronautics and Space Administration, for the Study of Ion Outflow as a Source of Plasma for the Magnetosphere.?
Dr. Leonard C. Feldman has been awarded a grant of $200,000 by the Department of Energy for Hydrogen-Bond Specific Materials in Group IV Semiconductors. Dr. Norman H. Tolk is co-principal investigator.
Dr. C. Robert O'Dell has been awarded a grant of $36,907 by the National Aeronautics and Space Administration for calibration of the ACS Emission Line Filters.
Dr. Sokrates Pantelides has been awarded a grant of $45,462 by the Department of Energy for Salary Support of Alberto Franceschetti.

Dr. Norman Tolk, PI, and Dr. Richard Haglund, co-PI, have received a Major Reseach Instrumentation (MRI) grant from the National Science Foundation for over $571,000. The grant will provide funds for a state-of-the-art ultra-fast tunable 100 femtosecond laser that will permit a wide range of vibrational and spin/carrier dynamics measurements. The new measurements to be performed will impact on important energy exchange issues in physics, chemistry and biology. Also part of the grant are Dr. Leonard Feldman,Dr. Sandra Rosenthal, and Dr. Duco Jansen
John Gore received a new T32 NIH Institutional training grant for postdoctoral training in biomedical NMR. The grant will support 8 postdoctoral fellows each year for 5 years, a value of $1.7 million over 5 years
The Nanocience/Nanoengineering group has won a National Science Foundation grant of almost $3 million dollars for the proposal titled: "IGERT (Integrative Graduate Education and Research Traineeships) : The Vanderbilt-Fisk Interdisciplinary Program for Research and Education in the Nanosciences (VaFIPREN)." The PI and co-PIs for the project are Dr. Leonard C. Feldman, Dr. James E. Wittig, Dr. Peter T. Cummings, Dr. Sandra J. Rosenthal, and Warren E. Collins (Fisk).
The Academic Venture Capital Fund has award the High Performance Computing Center proposal, with Dr. Paul Sheldon as PI, $8.3 million over the next five years. This will enable Vanderbilt to be a major player in the areas of distributed and parallel computing.
The Department of Physics at Fisk and the Department of Physics and Astronomy at Vanderbilt have been awarded a $900k grant from NASA to support the development of a joint research/teaching/outreach program in astrophysics and space science over the next three years. Arnold Burger (Fisk) and Keivan Stassun (Vanderbilt) are the co-PIs

July 2003

Dr. Robert Weller has been awarded a grant of $125,000 by the Department of Defense for “Fabrication, Metrology and Modeling of Protective Coatings for MEMS Components.”
Dr. John Wikswo has been awarded a grant of $75,000 by NCI Information Systems for “Corrosion Studies at Robbins AFB.”

June 2003:

Dr. Walter J. Chazin has been awarded a grant of $235,219 by the Public Health Service for “Molecular Biophysics Training Program at Vanderbilt.”
Dr. Richard Haglund Jr has been awarded a grant of $50,000 by the National Science Foundation for “Size Effects on the Structural Phase Transitions in Oxide Nanocrystal Composites.” Dr. Leonard Feldman and Dr. Charles Lukehart are co-principal investigators.
Dr. Sergey Rashkeev has been awarded a grant of $132,173 by the National Science Foundation for “Structural Properties of Alumina.” Dr. Sokrates Pantelides and Dr. Stephen Pennycook are co-principal investigators.
Dr. Paul D. Sheldon, Dr. Will Johns, and Dr. Med Webster have been awarded a grant of $220,318 by the National Science Foundation for “Heavy Flavor Physics with FOCUS and BTeV.”
Dr. Paul Sheldon has been awarded a grant of $995,600 by the National Science Foundation for “Methodologies and Tools for Designing and Implementing Large-Scale Real-Time Systems.” Dr. Theodore Bapty is co-principal investigator.

May 2003:

Dr. Volker Oberacker has been awarded a grant of $130,000 by the Department of Energy for “Microscopic Heavy Ion Theory.” Dr. Sait Umar and Dr. David Ernst are co-principal investigators. Note: The Vanderbilt Register misprinted the grant amount- $130,000 is correct.
Dr. Thomas Weiler has been awarded a grant of $120,000 by the Department of Energy for “Theoretical Investigation in Elementary Particle Physics.” Dr. Thomas Kephart is co-principal investigator.

April 2003:

Dr. Leonard Feldman: $77,500 by the Department of Defense for “Development of Process Technologies to Substantially Improve the Performance of MOS1 Sic Power Switching Devices.” Dr. Sokrates Pantelides is co-principal investigator.
Dr. Leonard Feldman: $54,800 by the Department of Energy for “Fabricate Nanometer–Scale Fluid Channels.”
Dr. Norman Tolk: $343,800 by the Department of Defense for “Spintronics and Spin-photonics in Ferromagnetic InAs/GaSb-based Heterostructures.” Dr. Ilias Perakis is co-principal investigator.
Dr. John Wikswo: $41,600 by the Public Health Service for “Imaging Action Potentials and Currents in Cardiac Tissue.” This award is a Kirschstein National Research Service Award on behalf of Dr. Jenny Holzer.
Dr. John Wikswo: $306,600 by the Department of Defense for “High-Content Toxicology Screening Using a Massively Parallel, Multi-Phasic Cellular Biological Activity Detectom.” Dr. Franz Baudenbacher, Dr. Robert Balcarcel and Dr. Theodore Bapty are co-principal investigators.

March 2003:

Dr. Charles Maguire: $300,000 by the Department of Energy for “Relativistic Heavy Ion Experiments.” Dr. Senta Victoria Greene is co-principal investigator.
Dr. David Weintraub: $60,000 by the National Aeronautics and Space Administration for “Molecular Hydrogen Gas in Disks of T Tauri Stars.”

2001 - 2002 Fiscal Year:

The external funding tops $8 million for the Department of Physics and Astronomy. This is a new record

Awards and Appointments

Dr. Joseph Hamilton has been awarded an Honorary Degree Of Doctor Of Science by Berea College. The presentation was made December 9th, 2007 at a Recognition Service for Graduation Candidates in Berea, Kentucky.

Dr. John Wikswo who has been named a Fellow of the IEEE (Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers), for "contributions to understanding electromagnetic effects on materials and biological tissues".

Fall 2007 Awards
Dr. Shane Hutson - Vanderbilt University College of Arts and Science Nordhaus Award for Outstanding Teaching
Dr. Ken Schriver - Vanderbilt University College of Arts and Science Award for Freshman Advising
Dr. Keivan Stassun - Vanderbilt University Chancellor's Award For Research

Jordan McDonnell of Franklin & Marshall College has received the 3rd Annual Vanderbilt Prize for Undergraduate Research in Physics and Astronomy. Pictured at the 29 June award luncheon for the finalists are (l-r): S. Victoria Greene, Prize Committee Chair; J. Michael Burgess, University of Alabama, Huntsville (finalist); Jordan McDonnell, and Robert Scherrer, Dept. Chair. Other finalists unable to attend were David Hernandez, University of Arizona, and Layne Price, University of Texas, Arlington.

Congratulations to Marcin Jankiewicz, first recipient of the Akunuri V. Ramayya Award, to be given each year to the most outstanding Graduate Teaching Assistant in the Department of Physics and Astronomy.

Congratulations to Holley Lynch, recipient of the 2007 Robert T. Lagemann Award, given annually to an entering or first-year graduate student for exceptional promise in physics, and also recipient of the first Royal G. Albridge Award, to be given annually to a first-year graduate student in the Department of Physics and Astronomy in recognition of outstanding work as a graduate teaching assistant.

2006-2007 Physics and Astronomy Undergraduate Awards and Scholarship Winners:

John Michael Jumper, recipient of the Underwood Memorial Award, recognizing the most deserving and promising graduating senior or graduate student majoring in physics.

James Hunter Ovelmen, recipient of the Larry Ross Cathey Award, given to an outstanding undergraduate student who has shown particular interest and enthusiasm for astronomy.

Calen Barnett Henderson and Julie Elizabeth Managan, recipients of the Ernest A. Jones Scholarship, traditionally awarded to a freshman or sophomore who indicates an interest in majoring in physics or physics/astronomy.

Brittany Rohrman, Calen Barnett Henderson and Julie Elizabeth Managan, have received McMinn Awards from the College of Arts and Science.

Dr. Victoria Greene's journey from ballet to exotic states of matter has been profiled in Vanderbilt's online research journal Exploration.

Congratulations to Peter Scully, who has been awarded a 2007 Barry M. Goldwater Scholarship!

Joshua Haislip Receives 2nd Annual Vanderbilt Prize for Undergraduate Research in Physics and Astronomy

(l-r): Dennis Hall, Associate Provost for Research & Graduate Education; William F. McConville Jr., Pennsylvania State University (Finalist); Cary L. Pint, University of Northern Iowa (Finalist); Joshua Haislip, Univ. of North Carolina at Chapel Hill; S. Victoria Greene, Prize Committee Chair and Dir. of Graduate Studies; Robert Scherrer, Dept. Chair. Other finalists not able to attend the awards dinner on 29 June were Travis Denton, Middle Tennessee State University and Stephanie Moyerman, Harvey Mudd College.

Julia Velkovska has received a 2007 Alfred P. Sloan Foundation Research Fellowship Award; read the full article in the Register.

David Ernst has been named Vice Chair of the Southeastern Section of the American Physical Society (SESAPS) for 2007. He will advance to Chair-Elect in 2008 and Chair in 2009. Other department faculty who have served as chair of the APS Southeastern section include (pictured in this undated photo l-r): Professor Emeritus Ernie Jones, Joe Hamilton, Tom Pinkston (dec.), and Bob Lagemann (dec.).

Marcin Jankiewicz received the Perlmutter Award at the Miami 2006 Conference on elementary particles, astrophysics, and cosmology.

Tom Kephart was promoted to full Professor.

Jay Dickerson was named Chair of the American Physical Society Committee on Minorities for 2007.

John Jumper received a 2007 Marshall Scholarship to study Theoretical Condensed Matter physics at the University of Cambridge.

Paul Sheldon has been named a 2006 Fellow of the American Physical Society.

Akunuri V. Rammaya received the 2006 Jesse W. Beams Award from the Southeastern Section of the American Physical Society. The award was presented at the SESAPS meeting in Williamsburg, VA on 10 November.

Don Pickert has received the 2006 Commodore Award, Vanderbilt's highest staff honor. Presented annually, the award recognizes achievements and contributions of a significant nature by individual staff members, and honors select individuals who have made exceptional performance contributions to Vanderbilt University. The award will be presented at the Service Awards Recognition Ceremony Monday 11 September at 2:00 in Memorial Gym. Congratulations, Don!

Congratulations to our 2006 graduates and award recipients:

August 2005: Madras Marie Whitefield.

May 2006: Theodor Dan Brasoveanu, Andrew Charles Collazzi, Kevin Mitchell Givens, David Nicholas Mashburn, Matthew Ryan McGrath, Herbert William Pablo, Craig William See, Nur Adila Faruk Senan, Jordan James Smith, Daniel Stephen Walker, Rachel Elizabeth Wooten, and Chiu Dennis Ma (minor in physics).

2005-2006 Awards and Scholarships:

Andrew C. Collazzi has received the Larry Ross Cathey Award (for the most outstanding student in Astronomy).
Theodor D. Brasoveanu, Kevin M. Givens, and David N. Mashburn have received the Underwood Memorial Award (for the most outstanding student in Physics).
Brittany A. Rohrman has received the Ernest A. Jones Scholarship.

This year's graduates will be attending the following graduate programs next year: Princeton, Louisiana State University, University of Colorado - Boulder, Stanford, University of Tennessee - Knoxville, Vanderbilt, and Iowa State.

Alan Bradshaw and John Wikswo have been awarded the Nightingale Award for the best paper published in 2005 in the journal Medical and Biological Engineering and Computing. The paper for which they received the prize is "Vector Projection of Biomagnetic Fields". This prize is sponsored by the Institute of Physics and Engineering in Medicine.

Tom Weiler has been named a Distinguished Alumni Fellow by his Ph.D. Alma Mater, University of Wisconsin - Madison.

Joe Hamilton was honored with an honorary Doctor of Science degree from Pandit Ravishankar Shukla University, Raipur, India, on 27 February 2006.

Congratulations to Volker Oberacker, recipient of the College of Arts and Science Award for Excellence in Graduate Teaching at the December 6 College faculty meeting.

Congratulations to Keivan Stassun and Len Feldman, who each received an Affirmative Action and Diversity Initiative Award from Vanderbilt's Opportunity Development Center. These awards were given on behalf of the Fisk-Vanderbilt Masters-to-Ph.D Bridge Program and IGERT program, respectively.

Congratulations to Will Johns, recipient of the 2005 Jeffrey Nordhaus Award for Excellence in Undergraduate Teaching in the College of Arts & Science.

Congratulations to David Weintraub,who received a Chancellor's Award for Research at the Fall Faculty Assembly on 25 August 2005.

Congratulations to Vanderbilt Physics and Astronomy students for the following awards:

William A. & Nancy F. McMinn Honor Scholarships in Natural Sciences - Daniela Stefan

The Robert T. Lagemann Award - Christopher Tyler Goodin & Stephen Lee Johnson Jr.

Barry M. Goldwater Scholarship - John Michael Jumper (Exploration article)

Ernest A. Jones Scholarship - John Michael Jumper & Daniela Stefan

The Underwood Memorial Award - Jonathan David Stricker

Larry Ross Cathey Award - Naved Imran Mahmud

Dr. Julia Velkovska has been appointed a convenor of the Probes of the Equation of State physics working group in the RHIC II Science Initiative. The charge of the working group is to refine the physics agenda of RHIC (Relativistic Heavy Ion Collider) upgrades at Brookhaven National Laboratoy and to give input into the DOE/NSF Long Range Planning.

Dr. Ernie Jones, Emeritus Professor of Physics at Vanderbilt University, has been named the 2004 winner of the Slack Award for Service by the Southeastern Section of the American Physical Society. Professor Jones was a Vanderbilt professor for 35 years. He is also credited for his work on the Manhattan Project, working on the barrier for the gaseous separation of 235U from 238U.

Graduates Marcin Jankiewicz and Matthew McMahon have been awarded Dissertation Enhancement Grants by the Graduate Faculty Council. Marcin Jankiewicz is investigating techniques to further understanding of String Theory. He is trying to fit a special kind of string model into 24 dimensions. Matthew McMahon is working to link the optical response of silver nanoparticles to the control of their structural details.

Former graduate student Mark-Anthony Bray has been recognized by the School of Engineering for the Best Student Research Paper, “Interaction Dynamics of a Pair of Vortex Filament Rings”, which he wrote with his adviser, John P. Wikswo, Gordon A. Cain University Professor, Professor of Biomedical Engineering, Professor of Molecular Physiology and Biophysics, Director of Vanderbilt Institute for Integrative Biosystems Research and Education.

Dr. Keivan Stassun has won the National Science Foundation's CAREER award, for a total of $800,000 funded over 5 years, the largest NSF CAREER award in Vanderbilt history. This award is the NSF's most prestigious award for new faculty. It is intended to recognize and support the early careers of those scholars who are most likely to become the academic leaders of the 21st century. Keivan's award leverages Vanderbilt's investments in the SMARTS telescopes and the VAMPIRE computing facility for his research into the formation of stars, and builds upon the Department's ongoing partnership with Fisk University toward increasing minority participation in physics and astronomy. The award also includes public outreach activities through Keivan's Scopes for Schools program in partnership with Vanderbilt's Dyer Observatory, as well as graduate student professional development activities through Vanderbilt's new Center for Science Outreach. His achievement was featured in The Daily Register and in the Nashville Business Journal.

The Robert T. Lagemann Award, annually given to an "entering or first-year graduate student for exceptional promise in physics" was awarded to Rupam Das.
Dr. Julia Velkovska has won the U.S. Department of Energy Outstanding Junior Investigator award. The award is for a total of $180,000 which will be funded over 3 years. Her achievement was featured in The Daily Register and in the Nashville Business Journal.
Marcin Jankiewicz has been awarded the American Association Physics Teacher's Outstanding TA Award for Vanderbilt this year and recieved membership into AAPT.
David Salisbury, assistant director of Science and Research Communications, has been promoted to associate director and will continue as editor-in-chief of Exploration, Vanderbilt’s online science journal.
Rick Chappel has assumed the permanent position of executive director of the Vanderbilt Dyer Observatory and senior adviser for Science and Research Communications.
Dr John Wikswo , the Gordon A. Cain University Professor and biomedical engineering professor, served as the program chair for the annual meeting of the Biomedical Engineering Society held in Nashville. The meeting was the largest in the history of the national Biomedical Engineering Society, with more than 1,700 registrants. The meeting is an annual forum for recent advances in biomedical engineering research and attracts an international audience.
The Department of Physics and Astronomy has been awarded a certificate by the Opportunity Development Center for its exemplary effort in support of the University's commitment to affirmative action, equal opportunity, and diversity initiatives
Joseph H Hamilton, The Landon C. Garland Distinguished Professor of Physics, received the G. N. Flerov Prize for major achievements in Nuclear Physics Research, upon selection by a committee of the Russian Academy of Science in Moscow, Russia.
Dr Sokrates Pantelides is one of two Vanderbilt faculty members to be named fellows of the American Association for the Advancement of Science. Fellows are selected based on their efforts toward advancing science or fostering applications that are deemed scientifically or socially distinguished. Read more in the Register article by Dwayne O’Brien.
Dr Joe Hamilton received the National Prize of International Scientific and Technological Collaborations of China – the highest award that the Chinese government bestows on foreign scientists.
Dr. David Weintraub won the Jeffrey Nordhaus award! This award is for the most outstanding teacher in the College of Arts and Science at the undergraduate level. Particularly given the number of excellent teachers in A&S, this is an impressive accomplishment.
Lynn Boatner, Vanderbilt PhD 1968, has been awarded the Crystal Growth Award by the American Association for Crystal Growth (AACG). This is the highest award given by the AACG and is given only every third year. Lynn is a laboratory fellow at Oak Ridge National Laboratory.
Dr. Tom Weiler, Professor of Physics, and Ken Galloway, Dean of Engineering, chosen Fellows of the American Physical Society.
S. Victoria Greene chosen Chair-Elect of the AGS-RHIC Users Group at Brookhaven National Laboratory.
David J. Ernst received the Alexander Heard Distinguished Professor Award.
Dr. David Ernst has been appointed by the American Physical Society to Chair a Task Force on US-African Exchanges in Physics.
The high-energy particle physics group of Med Webster, Paul Sheldon, and Will Johns have been asked to join the International Virtual Data Grid Laboratory (iVDGL), a global Data Grid that will serve forefront experiments in physics and astronomy with resources in the U.S., Europe, Asia and South America.
Dr. David Ernst has been appointed to two committees: The International Advisory Committee for a proposed center on the Interface of Gravitational and Quantum Realms, Astronomy, and Cosmology, to be located in the Mathematics Department of the Universidad Autonoma de Zacatecas, Zacatecas, Mexico, and the Executive Committee of the Southeast Laboratory Astrophysics Consortium, a group led by David Schultz of Oak Ridge National Lab, that is examining the possibility of attracting a new astrophysics facility to Oak Ridge National Lab.
Undergraduate physics majors, Mikel Barry and Adam Bryant, have won prestigious Goldwater Scholarships. These scholarships are very competitive and having two in one department in the same year is quite remarkable.
Dr. Leonard Feldman now holds a secondary appointment as a Professor of Materials Science and Engineering in the Department of Electrical Engineering in the School of Engineering. This is a clear recognition of his efforts to build interdisciplinary programs that span physics and engineering.

Faculty Publications

Dr. Richard Haglund has a featured article by Vanderbilt's news service titled Ultrafast Optical Shutter is Switched Entirely By Laser Light.

The 2007 August issue of Scientific American has an article titled Dimensional Shortcuts by Mark Alpert about Tom Weiler's work related to the recent anomalous results from the MiniBooNE detector. This work is also mentioned prominently in the cover story of the Aug. 4 New Scientist.

Is Pluto a Planet? Check out David Weintraub's new book, and cast your vote here!

Jay Dickerson and his research are profiled in "Scientists on the Cutting Edge," a textbook for middle school students and teachers. The textbook, part of a series highlighting scientific work in areas such as nanotechnology and astrophysics, is published by Newbridge.

Quantum Mechanics: An Accessible Introduction, a new textbook written by Department Chair Robert Scherrer, has recently been published by Addison Wesley.

Dr. Julia Velkovska presented three invited talks over the summer:

Professor Sokrates Pantelides presented an invited lecture at the international Workshop on “Advances in Molecular Electronics: From molecular materials to single-molecule devices.” The workshop was held at the Max Planck Institute for the Physics of Complex Systems in Dresden, Germany.

Adam Bryant, one of our senior physics majors, has had a paper based on his honor's thesis accepted for publication in Physics Letters B.

Tobias Hertel and his colleagues have published an article on Carbon Nanotubes. The article is featured in Technology Review (German Edition), which is published by MIT and features articles that highlight recent significant scientific and engineering advances.

Daniel W. Weedman, "Seyfert Galaxies, Quasars, and the Edge of the Universe". An American Astronomical Society Public Lecture May 27, 2003 at the Nashville Convention Center. .

Dr. Sokrates Pantelides, the William A. and Nancy F. McMinn Professor of Physics, presented an invited talk at the ESF PESC Exploratory Workshop in Zurich, Switzerland, titled "Lessons from Si-SiO2: The Mother of All Interfaces". Dr. Pantelides has also recently been awarded a grant of $29,000 by the Department of Energy for Excited-State Electronic Structure and Response Functions."

The Exploration Research Journal produced a Multimedia Feature on the Free Electron Laser.

"To Quarks and Quasars: A History of Physics and Astronomy at Vanderbilt University" book is now available.

Fission and Properties of Neutron-Rich Nuclei" in Sanibel Island, Florida.

Exploration Article: "A basic new phenomenon has been discovered in the evolution of planetary nebulae..."

New Academic Programs

Vanderbilt has been designated as a participating university in the Nuclear Engineering/Health Physics (NEHP) Fellowship Program, sponsored by the Department of Energy, and administered by the Special Programs Office of the Medical University of South Carolina. For more information see the Health Physics page.
The new Communication of Science and Technology major, which has benefited from the efforts of Dr. Rick Chappell and leadership of Dr. David Ernst, will give students the skills to describe science and engineering to lay audiences. For more information, see The Register article by David Salisbury, and the CST website.
Receive a Masters degree at Fisk University and continue at Vanderbilt University for a Ph. D. The program allows students to seamlessly move from the Masters degree program at Fisk University into the PhD program at Vanderbilt University. The two universities are 1.5 miles apart and have a long history of collaboration, particularly in physics.