Reading in Fall 2010'S Inside Physics
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F A L L 2 0 10 Greetings Friends, Colleagues and Alumni! I have good news to share! maintain excellence both in research and The National Research in educating and preparing bright young Council just recently minds for successful future careers. released its new 2010 rankings of graduate Many of you know Francesc Roig from his research programs, and outstanding teaching and leadership of UCSB Physics has done the physics program in the College of Cre- very well. Our Depart- ative Studies. He has now earned a very ment has gone from well-deserved retirement, and we very being the 21st top physics much hope that the new lecturer we seek department in the nation to hire will be able to build on his tremen- in 1982, to 10th in 1995, dous legacy. to now being in the top 5! It is a distinction shared I also want to welcome two truly excel- only with Harvard, Princeton, Berkeley lent scientists, Ania Bleszynski-Jayich and and MIT. We are significantly smaller than Cenke Xu, who have just joined our fac- these other departments, and it is now ulty in the Department. critical that we maintain (and improve!) our high stature. As you will see from this I want to thank my predecessor, Mark newsletter, the Department continues to Srednicki, for his outstanding leadership attract excellent students and postdocs, as chair of the Physics Department in the and continues to receive accolades for our last five years. Mark successfully navigated research and education. the Department through some very sig- nificant challenges, and it will be difficult The academic world is not isolated from to fill his shoes. I feel extremely fortunate the rest of the economy, and the past few to be leading a Department that is filled years have been a particularly challenging with superb faculty, staff, researchers, and and difficult time for everyone at the Univer- students. From the Chair sity of California. There have been layoffs, faculty and staff have been furloughed, I am also very grateful for the support retirements have not been replaced, there of you, our alumni and friends in the is less support for graduate teaching assis- community, especially in these difficult tant positions, and undergraduates have economic times. Please always feel free to faced more crowded classes. contact me or visit with us at the various events (page 12) that we are organizing However, the situation is improving, and throughout the year. Or drop by if you I am very optimistic about our future. are in town! Thanks to support from the new Califor- nia state budget, the furloughs have just ended and the hiring freeze at UCSB has just been lifted. The Physics Department has requested and been granted leave to fill two new faculty positions: a new lecturer position to be shared between the College of Creative Studies and the College of Letters and Science, and an Omer Blaes experimentalist in condensed matter phys- Department Chair ics (broadly defined). This will help us to UCSB Physics News Briefs Appointments Awards and Honors Ania Bleszynski-Jayich is David Awschalom has a condensed matter experi- been awarded the Turnbull mentalist who earned her Lecturer Award which recog- bachelors degree at Stanford nizes the career of a scientist University and her PhD at Har- who has made outstanding vard University. She specializes contributions to understand- in scanning probe microscopy ing materials phenomena and cantilever torque mag- and properties through research, writing, and netometry to perform electron transport and lecturing, as exemplified by David Turnbull. magnetization studies of semiconducting and metallic nanostructures and single molecule magnets. In 2008 she was awarded the L’Oreal UCSB Astrophysicist, Lars Postdoctoral Fellowship for Women in Bildsten a permanent mem- Science as well as the Martin and Beate Block ber of the Kavli Institute for Winter Fund Award for Outstanding Young Theoretical Physics, has been Scientist. In addition to her excellence as a physi- awarded the Wayne Rosing, cist, she was also ranked the number one junior Simon and Diana Raab Chair tennis player in the nation in 1994! We also offer in Theoretical Astrophysics in our congratulations to Ania Bleszynski for being recognition of his pioneering awarded an Air Force Office of Scientific Research contributions to the discipline. Young Investigator grant, one of only 43 scien- tists to receive this award. Gary Horowitz has been 2 elected as one of the 72 new members of the National Academy of Sciences, in rec- ognition of his research on Cenke Xu is a condensed questions involving gravity matter theorist who earned his under the most extreme con- bachelor degree at Tsinghua ditions. University in Beijing and his PhD at UC Berkeley. He was also awarded a prestigious Tommaso Treu has been Harvard Junior Fellowship for named the 2010 recipient of three years. He does cutting the Newton Lacy Pierce Prize edge work in areas such as in Astronomy by the Ameri- topological insulators, quan- can Astronomical Society. The tum criticality, new iron-based prize is awarded annually for superconductors and ultra-cold trapped atoms. outstanding achievement, He is currently helping to organize the over the past five years, in upcoming 2011 program on Holographic Duality observational astronomical and Condensed Matter Physics at the Kavli research based on measurements of radiation Institute for Theoretical Physics. from an astronomical object. It is given to an astronomer who has not attained 36 years of age in the year designated for the award. News Briefs Highlights Department News On October 1st, graduate stu- The annual event, Parents dents joined faculty, senior and Family Weekend, researchers, postdocs, and held on October 22nd, undergraduate researchers attracted over 50 parents from UCSB, the Kavli Institute who visited and toured for Theoretical Physics (KITP), the physics department. and the Las Cumbres Observa- The weekend provided Federica Bianco tory Global Telescope (LCOGT) an opportunity for parents to familiarize them- in a local astrophysics research symposium. The selves with the undergraduate program, student event- “Santa Barbara Astro Day’’ - was orga- research opportunities and research currently nized by Professor Lars Bildsten, being conducted by UCSB Physics Faculty. TABASGO Postdoctoral Fellow Moire Prescott, LCOGT Postdoc- toral Fellow Federica Bianco According to the results and KITP Postdoctoral Fellow from the National Research Greg Dobler, with the goal of Council (NRC), the Phys- informing both students and ics program at UCSB is more senior researchers alike ranked in the top five grad- about the diversity of ongoing, Greb Dobler uate programs across the cutting-edge astrophysical research being done country. Chancellor Henry throughout the Santa Barbara Yang commented “These new rankings... serve area. Participants presented as a resounding affirmation of the quality and their latest results on subjects diversity of our doctoral programs...” ranging from eclipsing white 3 dwarfs and unusual super- novae to colliding galaxies, The Las Cumbres Obser- supermassive black holes, and vatory Lecture Series took cosmology. This highly suc- place from May 10-13 and Moire Prescott cessful event is held yearly in the hosted Professor Robert hope of sparking new research investigations, Kennicutt Jr. of the Uni- inspiring new scientific collaborations, and fos- versity of Cambridge. His tering new connections across the entire Santa lecture, Hot Results on Barbara astrophysics community. Cool Galaxies: The Hid- den Universe Revealed, was presented to great turn-out at the Santa Barbara Museum of David Awschalom, Physics Natural History. professor, and graduate stu- dent Shawn Mack published their research on gallium man- UCSB Physics alumnus, ganese arsenide in the online Amir Abo-Shaeer, has edition of Nature Materials. This been awarded a MacArthur semiconductor might one day “Genius Grant”, the first pub- allow computers to turn waste heat into power. lic high school teacher to win this award. Department Milestones to be prepared to answer questions that they’ll ask you. I Q&A with Francesc Roig also like the large classes. I especially liked Physics 6. I had good rapport with the students. If I had an especially good lecture that I could see that I had gotten the point across, either in the CCS classes or the L&S classes, those were very rewarding moments. What do you think are the strengths of the CCS program? I think it is the students. Many of them would have gone to UC Berkeley or Caltech or MIT, and we are able to get these students because of the small size of the classes plus the in-depth coverage of material. I developed the curriculum for the CCS program and I always covered the material much more in-depth, even doing Lagrangian methods in the freshman class, things like that. So that gave the CCS program a depth that students wouldn’t get many other places, or in general physics classes or large classes. Also the Francesc Roig has retired after 30 years of leading the College problem sessions, which are extra lectures with problem of Creative Studies (CCS) Physics program. To understand solving where you interact with the students: the students how Francesc came to be such a successful teacher and go to the board and then they show how to go about mentor, Ben Mazin interviewed him for Inside Physics. solving some of the challenging problems. All these things together make the CCS program so strong. How did you get into Physics education? We’ve had a lot of successful students here. Do Well, I was at the time a visiting lecturer at the University of you think there is one characteristic that stands Wisconsin, Milwaukee. I got a letter - out of the blue - from out that makes someone a successful CCS student? Jose Fulco, who was the chairman of this department, asking The enthusiasm that they have: the single-minded enthusi- me if I would be interested in coming to UCSB to teach classes.