Physics Department

VISUAL IDENTITY SYSTEM VISUAL IDENTITY SYSTEM Physics Department February 2016 HIGHLIGHTS recreated in accelerators. Rosi is now a member of the STAR collaboration at Brookhaven The obvious highlight of this year was the National Lab. addition of two new faculty to our department: Rosi Reed and Sera Cremonini. They have been Both Sera and Rosi Rosi Reed with us since the Fall, and their energy is join us as tenure track already felt throughout the 4th floor of Lewis Assistant Professors, Lab, in the classrooms, and beyond. They were with their active hired after a very competitive search resulting research programs in more than 400 excellent applicants from adding to the around the world. Prof. Mc Swain headed the department's research search committee. This group worked very hard oppor tunities for to make the initial selections of six candidates undergraduate and that came for campus visits last spring. As a graduate students. result, we enjoyed a series of very exciting colloquia on topics in experimental and theoretical high energy physics, nuclear physics, and computational plasma physics. While the final selection was difficult, we know now From the Chair’s Desk that we made the right As you see in the newsletter, another exciting year is choices: behind us, both for the department and the University. We celebrated the 150th anniversary of the school and Sera Cremonini joins us the inauguration of our new president John Simon. f rom the Mitchel l New initiatives are getting started across the Institute for Funda- University, among them a $250 million investment into mental Physics at Texas critical needs in infrastructure, education, and research. A&M University. Her The new ambitious capital campaign of Lehigh will also go into its active phase and will be announced this Sera Cremonini research field is String year. You will certainly hear about this through the Theory. The excitement alumni association and the development office. for this field in our Nevertheless, the ways to help our department remain department is readily the same: apparent, judging by the high enrollment in her new course, “Introduction to String Theory.” (1) Stay in touch with the department. We love to hear about how our graduates are doing. Rosi Reed enriches our department through her (2) Make a donation. Consider making a donation research in experimental high-energy physics. directly to the department to support student travel, She joins us from Wayne State University where student research, or some of the activities of our she was an Assistant Professor, and a member great student organizations. of the ALICE experiment at the large hadron (3) Come and visit us. Our students love to meet you collider (LHC) at CERN in Switzerland. She personally and profit from your experiences. studies the properties of a peculiar state of Interested? Send me a note !!! matter, the quark-gluon plasma, which existed for a short time after the big bang and can be Volkmar Dierolf Page 1 ! FACULTY AND RESEARCH in February 2016. His group has contributed HIGHLIGHTS several chapters. His work with Himanshu Jain M. Virginia McSwain, was appointed Class of ’61 from Materials Science on writing single Professorship, which recognizes mid-career crystal waveguides inside of a glass has recently faculty that have demonstrated excellence in been published in the Nature Journal, Scientific research, teaching, and service. Reports. His work with an international group from USA, Japan, and Portugal, dealing with Rosi Reed was elected to become a member of the role of oxygen in rare doped nitrides has the STAR collaboration, which is currently also been published in Scientific Reports, as developing a new experiment at Brookhaven well. Both publications have already drawn national lab. More specifically, the STAR some media attention (pg. 14). management team has considered and approved the application by Prof. Rosi Reed John Huennekens and Peet Hickman started their from Lehigh University for an institution work on their new NSF grant. Huennekens membership in STAR collaboration. Rosi has graduated two PhD students last year and is been an active STAR member as a student and working on the respective publications. postdoc for many years. Hickman spent three weeks at the University of Montpelier, France, with a collaborator Ivan Biagio has started the work on his new during his sabbatical in the fall of 2015. Our NSF grant on small molecular vapor deposited AMO team published 4 papers in various high materials for integrated nonlinear optics. He is impact journals last year. the chief editor for a special issue of JOSA B on nonlinear optics near the fundamental limit. Michael Stavola published with B. Fowler, a book chapter on the microscopic structure of Slava Rotkin, had a very productive year. He NHn complexes in dilute nitride received a renewal grant from NSF for his work semiconductors. on rare earth ions and their interactions with nanotubes. He moved into his new lab where Dan Ou-Yang visited the Solvay Laboratory of the Future (LOF), Bordeaux, France, for two months during Summer 2015. In the fall, Rotkin’s new lab Charles Roussert, a CNRS postdoctoral fellow from LOF, visited the department to conduct research in Ou-Yang's Soft Matter and Biophotonics Lab. Physics students from Lehigh plan to visit LOF and conduct research there for a few months during the summer of 2016 and 2017. This will further deepen collaboration and help to establish it for the a long-term. For his academic leave, Ou-Yang will he and his students quickly built up a nice be a Visiting Professor of Physics at the Hong characterization facility centered around a Kong University of Science and Technology in home-build novel optical microscope. Among Spring 2016. his publications were three high-impact papers Dimitrios Vavylonis looks back on a very in Nature Communications, ACS Nano, and successful sabbatical that he had in the Nano Research. All of them have already been Academic Year 2014/15. This sabbatical leave highlighted by several news outlets (see pg. 14), was partially supported through grants from Volkmar Dierolf has finished editing of a book the Netherlands Organization for Scientific on the Rare Earth and Transition Metal Doping Research for a visit to the laboratory of Gijsje of Semiconductor Materials. This book will be Koenderink at the AMOLF research institute published by Elsevier and will be on the market in Amsterdam in Spring 2015. He then moved to Japan for the summer as a Scholar of the Page !2 ! Vavylonis in Japan characterization of extrasolar planets. She helped the NASA Kepler mission distinguish between real planet discoveries and false candidates, was a member of the KELT planet discovery survey, and used large telescopes to probe the atmospheres of exoplanets. After working at Lehigh for two years, Knicole left in summer 2015 to take a staff scientist position at NASA Ames Research Center, working on the K2 mission. She continues to collaborate with many of her Lehigh colleagues. Michael Alexander joined the astrophysics group Japan Society for the Promotion of Science and at Lehigh during August 2013. He worked with worked in the laboratory of Naoki Watanabe at Prof. McSwain to study the gamma-ray Kyoto University Medical School. The work he emission properties of the binary star HD performed during his leave led to several co- 215227, a Be star recently discovered to have a authored papers in Science, PLOS Biology, and black hole companion. He also co-taught the Current Biology. He also became a member of Introduction to Astronomy course with Prof. the editorial board of Cytoskeleton and was McSwain during Spring 2015, which has led him invited to give a series of seminars in to pursue a faculty career. Michael is now Netherlands, Japan and US (AMOLF, working as a Visiting Assistant Professor at Wageningen Univ, Kyoto Univ, Nagoya Univ, Lafayette College, and collaborating with Prof. NYU, UT Southwestern Medical Center and McSwain to identify new massive stars in the Ohio State University). Carina star-forming region. Our astro-group around Ginny McSwain and Ta m a ra B i d o n e received a postdoctoral offer Joshua Pepper was very well represented at the from the group of Greg Voth at the University annual AstroPhilly conference at the Franklin of Chicago, where she plans to move in March Institute in Philadelphia in July 2015. Four 2016. Lehigh Physics REU students (Valerie Bernstein, In 2016, we are expecting new blood. Li Li has Lorena Mezini, Marcus Keil, and Steven Waskie) just accepted the offer to work with Sera and four graduate students (Rebecca Bolton, Jon Cremonini . He will join us from previous post- Labadie-Bartz, Joey Rodriguez, and Richard Hanes) doc at the University of Crete. accompanied Profs. McSwain and Pepper to the Ta r i q R a fiq received a grant from the meeting. All of the students presented their Department of Energy for his research on research and had the chance to network with theoretical plasma physics faculty from other research universities around the Philadelphia metro area. New External Funding NSF, Dierolf, Jain, GOALI: OP: Incongruent POST-DOCS Growth of Single Crystal 3D Architecture for New Our department has become an excellent Optical Functionalities in Glass, $640K. stepping stone for postdoctoral researchers. Our efforts in mentoring and giving them Industry Contract, OuYang, Elastomeric Roof opportunity to hone their research and Coatings, 280K. teaching skills is paying off. This year was again DOE, Rafiq, Advances in the Theory of Reduced a year of transitions and successes: Anomolies, 425K. Knicole Colon was a key member of the astro NSF, Rotkin, Nanophotonics of RE/DNA/ group at Lehigh. Working with Professor nanotube materials: From bio-sensing-on-chip to live Pepper, her focus was on the discovery and stem cel measurements, $390K.

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