Mirrors on the Moon

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Published: Wednesday, 17 July 2019 07:42

Along with Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin, University of Maryland scientists left a lasting mark on the moon when Apollo 11 landed there 50 years ago this week, one that is still imprinting on the world of physics.

That’s because a piece of equipment the astronauts left behind—a small panel of 100 mirrors designed by UMD physicists Doug Currie and the late Carroll Alley and a national team—remains in use for experiments. It may soon get an upgrade, too, thanks to NASA’s new project to send astronauts back to the moon by 2024 and, eventually, to Mars.

Called the lunar laser ranging array, it works in tandem with two others placed by the Apollo 14 and 15 missions in 1971, and provides a target for lasers beamed from telescopes on Earth. The bounce-back from those pulses enables precise measurements of distance that in the past five decades have led to discoveries ranging from the moon’s liquid core to confirming that Earth’s continents are still (slowly) moving.

In fact, the arrays are responsible for “really the only verification” of some aspects of Einstein’s general theory of relativity, said Currie, now a professor emeritus at UMD.

“Science has come out of it remarkably,” he said.

There’s plenty more to learn, as Currie has been working with the National Laboratories of Frascati, Italy, and commercial space company Moon Express to get a new generation of arrays onto the moon. NASA announced earlier this month that the arrays will be one of 12 experiments placed on future payload missions as part of the Artemis lunar program and in partnership with private space companies.

Gorshkov Receives Early Career Research Award

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Published: Monday, 15 July 2019 09:42

(Credit: J. Consoli/UMD)Adjunct Associate Professor Alexey Gorshkov has received a Presidential Early Career Award for Scientists and Engineers (PECASE). Gorshkov is a physicist at the National Institute of Standards and Technology Physical Measurement Laboratory, as well as a Fellow of the UMD Joint Quantum Institute and the Fellow of the Joint Center for Quantum Information and Computer Science.  

Read more: https://jqi.umd.edu/news/gorshkov-receives-early-career-research-award

Wolfgang Losert Named Interim Director of IPST

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Published: Tuesday, 02 July 2019 10:37

Wolfgang Losert has been named interim director of the university’s Institute for Physical Science and Technology (IPST), effective July 1, 2019.

Losert will serve as interim director while the College of Computer, Mathematical, and Natural Sciences (CMNS) conducts a national search to find a replacement for Christopher Jarzynski, who recently completed his five-year term as director. In addition to his IPST role, Losert will continue to serve as CMNS associate dean for research while CMNS Associate Dean Gerald “Jerry” Wilkinson takes on Losert’s responsibilities for graduate education.

“I want to thank Wolfgang for agreeing to serve in this capacity while we search for a new director of IPST,” said CMNS Dean Amitabh Varshney. “IPST is an important institute in our college. The interdisciplinary research the faculty members and students in IPST pursue is extremely valuable—they are truly expanding our understanding of the world around us.

IPST conducts interdisciplinary research in emerging areas at the boundaries between physics, chemistry, the mathematical and life sciences, and engineering. The institute also supports three interdisciplinary graduate programs in chemical physics, biophysics and applied mathematics.

“It is a great honor to serve as interim director of IPST, working with our star faculty and outstanding junior scientists at the forefront of interdisciplinary research,” Losert said. “When I look at our institute, interdisciplinary graduate training really stands out as a major accomplishment. IPST supports three interdisciplinary graduate programs and IPST faculty lead two prestigious NSF-funded interdisciplinary graduate training programs, the COMBINE program in network biology and the UMD node of the Physics of Living Systems Student Research Network. I look forward to working with our dedicated staff in support of IPST’s mission in the coming year.”

In his personal research, Losert aims to discover emergent dynamic properties of complex systems at the interface of physics and biology, with a focus on collective migration and activity of cells. He currently leads a $7.5 million Multidisciplinary University Research Initiative program funded by the Air Force Office of Scientific Research and serves as co-principal investigator on a $20 million Brain Research through Advancing Innovative Neurotechnologies (BRAIN) initiative center grant from the National Institutes of Health. Additional funding for Losert’s research comes from the National Science Foundation and the National Institute of Standards and Technology. He was elected fellow of the American Physical Society in 2017. 

Within CMNS and the broader scientific community, Losert actively fosters cross-disciplinary interactions and new research and educational opportunities. He helped launch and currently co-leads the American Physical Society Group on Data Science. He is part of a trans-university initiative of the Howard Hughes Medical Institute (called NEXUS) that is developing new science and math courses for biology majors and pre-health care students that can serve as a national model. He helped initiate and co-directs the NCI-UMD Partnership for Integrative Cancer Research, which provides UMD faculty members and graduate students the opportunity to tackle pressing problems in cancer research in collaboration with National Cancer Institute experts. 

Losert joined UMD in 2000 as an assistant professor and has served as an associate dean in CMNS since 2014. He earned his Ph.D. in physics from the City College of the City University of New York in 1998 and his diplom in applied physics from the Technical University of Munich in Germany in 1995.

During Jarzynski’s time as IPST director, he facilitated the recruitment of several faculty members to the institute: Cell Biology and Molecular Genetics Assistant Professor Daniel Dwyer, Mathematics Assistant Professor Lise-Marie Imbert-Gerard, Chemistry and Biochemistry Assistant Professor Pratyush Tiwary, and Mathematics Professor Konstantina Trivisa. Jarzynski also launched an interdisciplinary research team program in IPST to incubate new research fields. The first seed-funded team, led by Dwyer, is using microfluids to study antimicrobial resistance. The institute also advanced its leadership in the field of phase transitions in fluids and plasmas under Jarzynski by hosting U.S.-Russia workshops on the topic in 2016 and 2017.

Media Relations Contact: Abby Robinson, 301-405-5845, This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.

Physics Faculty Promotions

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Published: Monday, 01 July 2019 07:54

Arpita Upadhyaya, who was promoted to the rank of Professor, is a biophysicist studying how physical properties of living cells are regulated to guide mechanical behaviors such as cell shape changes and force generation and how these guide physical regulation of cell function. Upadhyaya has received a Pappalardo Fellowship in Physics at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, an Alfred P. Sloan Research Fellowship, and the Richard A. Ferrell Distinguished Faculty Fellowship from the UMD Department of Physics. She holds a doctorate from the University of Notre Dame, and in addition to her work at MIT, was a researcher at UNC Chapel Hill before joining the Department of Physics and the Institute for Physical Science and Technology (IPST) in 2006.

Jay Sau, who was promoted to the rank of Associate Professor, is a condensed matter theorist studying topological principles to create protected solid-state and cold-atomic systems for quantum information processing. He is a member of the Joint Quantum Institute and Condensed Matter Theory Center, and has won an Alfred P. Sloan Research Fellowship and a National Science Foundation CAREER Award. He also received the Richard A. Ferrell Distinguished Faculty Fellowship from the UMD Department of Physics. Sau holds a doctorate from the University of California at Berkeley, and held postdoctoral appointments at Berkeley, the University of Maryland and Harvard University before his appointment as a UMD Assistant Professor in 2013.

Alberto Belloni, who was promoted to the rank of Associate Professor, is an experimental particle physicist who works on the Compact Muon Solenoid (CMS) experiment at CERN’s Large Hadron Collider. He has held several posts within the collaboration, and in September 2018 became convener of the CMS Standard Model Physics Vector-Bosons subgroup of about 100 physicists, dedicated to inclusive electroweak boson studies. In August 2018 he received the Richard A. Ferrell Distinguished Faculty Fellowship from the UMD Department of Physics. Belloni holds a doctorate from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and was a post-doctoral associate and research associate at Harvard University before his appointment as a UMD Assistant Professor in 2013. 

Dan Lathrop Named Distinguished Scholar-Teacher

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Published: Friday, 28 June 2019 10:37

Professor Daniel Lathrop has been named a University of Maryland Distinguished Scholar-Teacher.  He will be recognized during the university’s annual Convocation ceremony on September 18.

The Distinguished Scholar-Teacher Program, established in 1978, honors a small number of faculty members each year who have demonstrated notable success in both scholarship and teaching. Distinguished Scholar-Teachers receive an honorarium of $5,000 to support their professional activities, and make public presentations on a topic within their scholarly discipline. Lathrop will give his lecture on October 29 at 4 p.m. in the PSC lobby.  

An interdisciplinary researcher with additional joint appointments in UMD’s Department of Geology, Institute for Research in Electronics and Applied Physics, and Institute for Physical Science and Technology, Lathrop studies turbulence—the chaotic motion of fluids such as air or water. Understanding turbulence is crucial to studying phenomena such as the flow of air over an airplane wing, water flowing down a drain or the behavior of Earth’s molten outer core.

Lathrop is particularly interested in Earth’s core, which generates a magnetic field that shields Earth from the sun’s radiation, allowing life to exist. Geological records show that the Earth’s magnetic field has reversed polarity numerous times in the past. When it does so, the magnetic field weakens, leaving the planet unprotected. However, scientists do not understand how Earth’s magnetic field is generated and what causes it to reverse. To investigate this question, Lathrop constructed a 3-meter spinning sphere filled with molten liquid sodium to model Earth’s core.

Lathrop was elected a fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science in 2011 and a fellow of the American Physical Society in 2005. He also received a Presidential Early Career Award from the National Science Foundation in 1997.

In addition to his research career, Lathrop is an enthusiastic mentor. Since joining UMD in 1997, he has mentored nine postdoctoral scholars, 19 Ph.D. students, 10 M.S. students, and more than 60 undergraduate and high school students.

“It is rare—and wonderful—to find a teacher and mentor as fully engaged and enthusiastic as is Professor Lathrop,” wrote Steven Rolston, professor and chair of the UMD Department of Physics, in a letter nominating Lathrop for the award. “He provides not only scientific knowledge but his deep-down love of the lab and of learning.”

Lathrop earned his B.A. in physics from the University of California, Berkeley, in 1987 and his Ph.D. in physics from the University of Texas at Austin in 1991.

Distinguished Scholar Teachers in the Department of Physics