Physics & Astronomy
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Peter Koch, 9 September 2008 Physics & Astronomy – Our Community Another Friday afternoon (29 August 2008) A Friday afternoon (17 August 2007) DepartmentDepartment StaffStaff Peter Koch, Chair Pam Burris, Assistant to the Chair Laszlo Mihaly, Graduate Program Director Pat Peiliker, Assistant Graduate Program Director Phil Allen, Undergraduate Program Director Elaine Larsen, Assistant Undergraduate Program Director Bob Segnini, Director of Physical Laboratories Rich Berscak, Building Manager Sara Lutterbie, Business Officer Maria Hofer, Main Office Diane Diaferia, Main Office Joe Feliciano and Frank Chin, Instructional Laboratories Chuck Pancake and Gene Shafto, Electronics Center Walt Schmeling and crew, Machine Shop Sal Natale, Receiving Since 1999 we have been “fenced in” to our building when some bricks fell off the façade. The ~2 M$ fix to the roof and bricks has been completed. HELP! Removal of the scaffolding and fencing around the building is now underway !!! The “fixing the concrete deck” project is now out for bid. Start/completion date: ??? thanks to Sara Lutterbie for making this slide New faculty Stan Metchev, observational astronomer, just joined us as Assistant Professor. He was a Spitzer Postdoc at UCLA. Stan’s research focuses on understanding the physical properties and dynamical evolution of extrasolar planetary systems and brown dwarfs - objects with intermediate characteristics between those of stars and gas giant planets. Stan uses the high-contrast imaging capabilities of the Hubble Space Telescope and ground-based telescopes equipped with adaptive optics systems to resolve protoplanetary disks around young stars. Resolved images of such circumstellar disks allow us to study the formation and architectures of extrasolar planetary systems. Stan uses sensitive optical to infrared spectroscopy to characterize the atmospheres of brown dwarfs at all ages. The chemical composition and physical structure of brown dwarf atmospheres are not unlike those of gas giant planets in the Solar System, thus allowing us to project the properties of extrasolar giant planets expected to be imaged in the next few years. From Brown Dwarfs to Giant Planets stars brown dwarfs planets • brown dwarfs: Sun – properties intermediate (G dwarf) M dwarfL dwarf T dwarf Jupiter between those of stars and planets – a key step toward understanding the 5600 K ~3500 K ~2000 K ~1000 K 160 K atmospheres of extrasolar giant planets – detectable 0.76 µm 0.91 µm 1. as isolated objects via (F star) their peculiar colors brown dwarf 2. as faint companions to (not detected) brown dwarf stars 1.20 µm 2.15 µm • extrasolar giant planets: – will be directly visible size of Pluto’s orbit Image from Keck with next-generation 10m telescope adaptive optics-equipped 1. free-floating brown dwarf 2. brown dwarf companion telescopes (imaged at 4 wavelengths) (imaged using adaptive optics) New faculty Jin Koda, extragalactic astrophysics, will join us as Assistant Professor in Jan. 2009. He is now a Senior Postdoc at Caltech. The primary goal of Jin’s research is to understand the gas dynamical evolution of galactic disks, with an emphasis on interstellar medium evolution and star formation. Jin is an expert in millimeter-wavelength observations and often performs numerical simulations. He is leading the survey of molecular gas in nearby galaxies using the Combined Array for Research in Millimeter Astronomy (CARMA) in the Inyo Mountains of California. Jin is a member of the key science project of the ESA Herschel Space Observatory (launch expected 2009) that will investigate star formation in galactic gas dynamics via the Whirlpool Galaxy M51) observations in the far-IR and sub-mm ranges. New faculty Dmitri Tsybychev, experimental high- energy physics, will join us as Assistant Professor in Jan. 2009. He recently transitioned from D-Zero at the FNAL Tevatron to ATLAS at the CERN LHC and is now Research Assistant Professor. The focus of Dmitri’s research is the understanding of the source of electroweak symmetry breaking and CP-symmetry violation. He has joined the ATLAS experiment at CERN Large Hadron Collider to search for fundamental scalar particles - the Higgs boson and supersymmetric particles. High energy physicists hope that this new machine at the energy frontier will allow them to make a breakthrough in understanding the nature of matter and the relationship between the fundamental forces. He is involved in development of novel type detectors based on semiconductor technology to select and study rare processes in hadron collisions. A Higgs boson event as (would be) seen by the ATLAS detector Faculty news Welcome back to faculty members on leave during last academic year: Dima Averin (fall) Rod Engelmann (fall, spring) Bon (or continuing) voyage to faculty members on leave during this academic year: Concha Gonzalez-Garcia (fall) Bob McCarthy (fall, spring) Gilad Perez (fall, spring) Deane Peterson (fall) Tom Weinacht (fall) Good luck to our colleagues who retired Bob McGrath – (2007) after ~ a decade as Provost and four decades in our department Michal Simon – (2008) remains active as Research Professor after 39 years in our dept. Amos Yahil – (2008) after 31 years in our department or to colleagues who resigned to take other positions Aaron Evans – (2007) to NRAO and UVa Astronomy Dept. In Memoriam: Distinguished Professor Phil Solomon Our Stony Brook faculty colleague of three and one-half decades, Distinguished Professor Phil Solomon, passed away on 30 April 2008 after a bout with cancer. Phil gained an international reputation for a series of observations/investigations on the presence of light molecules and their role in the Galaxy, atmospheres of stars and planets, interstellar molecular clouds, and the earth’s atmosphere. He participated in many of the discoveries of millimeter wave astronomy, and focused primarily on the role of carbon monoxide (CO), using it to discover and map giant molecular clouds. Another favorite molecule was the chlorine monoxide (CIO), but this time in the earth’s atmosphere, in particular in the stratosphere, where it plays an important role in the formation and destruction of ozone. Phil published more than 160 papers and supervised 7 PhD students, 6 at Stony Brook. He served on numerous review, visiting, and advisory panels and received the Alexander von Humboldt Senior Scientist Award in 1989. Faculty news Phil Allen, Tom Bergeman, Fred Goldhaber, Barry McCoy, Hal Metcalf, & Ed Shuryak received Outstanding Referee Awards from American Physical Society Ilan Ben Zvi elected Fellow of AAAS and received IEEE/NPSS Merit Award Abhay Deshpande named Deputy Group Leader, Experimental Division, RIKEN BNL Research Center Steve Dierker led NSLS-II project at BNL through “Critical Decision 2” of DOE Axel Drees named Assoc. Dean (Operations & Budget) in College of Arts and Sciences Fred Goldhaber & Tom Kuo received departmental Outstanding Teaching Awards Barbara Jacak elevated to Distinguished Professor by SUNY Board of Trustees. She continues as Spokesperson of PHENIX collaboration of ~ 500 scientists working at BNL Relativistic Heavy Ion Collider Faculty news Jim Lattimer awarded Glidden Visiting Professorship at Ohio Univ. for 2008-2010 Michael Marx appointed Assoc. Vice Pres. for Brookhaven Laboratory Affairs Clark McGrew promoted to Associate Professor with tenure Laszlo Mihaly received Dean’s Award for Excellence in Service to Graduate Education by a Graduate Program Director Peter Paul will be handed the Merit Cross First Class of the Republic of Germany on 6 Oct. 2008 by the German President at his residence in Berlin Derek Teaney selected as Alfred P. Sloan Foundation Research Fellow Tom Weinacht promoted to Associate Professor with tenure Some fall-semester undergraduate course enrollments 4 yrs. ago 3 yrs. ago 2 yrs. ago 1 yr. ago “now” Delta AST101 161 113 179 190 165 -15 AST105 266 265 220 257 266 +11 AST248 225 239 140 216 173 -43 PHY113 50 50 50 50 74 +24 PHY121 426 523 661 677 666 -11 PHY122 150 144 135 162 132 -30 PHY131 270 293 308 309 333 +24 PHY132 59 81 72 72 83 +11 PHY125 98 137 151 164 191 +27 PHY126 81 72 96 104 106 +2 subtotal 2188 -12 PHY300 22 38 15 20 22 +2 PHY301+571 31 31 37 30 38 +8 PHY303+573 28 38 38 27 46 +19 PHY and AST intro. course enrollments are still increasing, but less so. Higher-level courses fluctuate. The number of senior majors is small; the number of sophomore and junior majors is up sharply. Our new effort in undergraduate education: the CRI A 12 June 2007 memo entitled Course Redesign Initiative was sent by SUNY Provost Risa Palm to all SUNY Presidents. Sent down the chain of command to chairs, its first two paragraphs said it all to this chair: I am pleased to announce the SUNY Course Redesign Initiative (SUNY-CRI). We want to encourage faculty in departments that have large-enrollment, multi-section courses to consider re-designing them using technology-supported active learning strategies. The goal is to achieve improvements in learning outcomes as well as reductions in instructional costs. During the 2007-2008 academic year, the program expects to award 10 departmental grants of $40,000 for activities over the 3-year period of the initiative. We are limiting participation to departments-only; that is, we will not accept applications from individual faculty, but instead the entire department will have to agree to experiment with the course re-design. Faculty, staff, and administrators involved in (teaching) the CRI of PHY 121/3 and PHY 122/4: Core from P&A: Phil Allen, Pam Burris, Frank Chin, Matt Dawber, Abhay Deshpande, Axel Drees, Adam Durst, Rod Engelmann, Joe Feliciano, Erle Graf, Peter Koch, Elaine Larsen, Kim-Kwee Ng, Deane Peterson, Dean Schamberger, Bob Segnini, Peter Stephens. 40 k$ SUNY CRI Award won on 16 May 2008. The Department has already invested significant resources of its own. TL+T personnel: Stanley Chan, Nancy Duffrin, Matt Froehlich, Graham Glynn, Paul St.