Fall2015PhysicsCover_NEW_OUTLN.pdf 1 11/4/15 3:07 PM C M Y CM MY CY CMY K LETTER FROM THE CHAIR DEAR ALUMNI, PARENTS, COLLEAGUES, AND FRIENDS, and staff are dedicated to maintaining the best education Greetings from Berkeley! and career opportunities for these students. Toward this 2015-2016 is shaping up to goal, we have been actively planning several major revisions be an incredible year for to our undergraduate curriculum, which we will roll out in Berkeley Physics. This stages over the coming years. issue of Physics at Berkeley Starting with the freshman curriculum, these revisions profiles groundbreaking will better prepare students to take advantage of research research our faculty is opportunities, maximizing their participation as undergradu- conducting in the areas of ates in cutting-edge research at Berkeley. The revisions will biophysics and quantum also create more flexibility in the curriculum during junior materials, remembers the and senior years, allowing students to better specialize for lives of esteemed colleagues Eugene Commins and Charles careers in industry, teaching, or academic research. Townes, and summarizes the past year in the department, The first of the curriculum changes began this year, with with faculty, staff, students, and alumni. the introduction of two new courses. This Fall, we are offering As I begin my third year, I am still proud and humbled “Introduction to Mathematical Physics,” a course designed to to be Chair of this remarkable department. Berkeley Physics launch majors into their sophomore year with all the math tools grows stronger each year – whether through expanding the they need to master higher-level physics subjects. In the Spring, frontiers of fundamental physics research, educating the next we are offering “Introduction to Computational Techniques in generation of scientific and educational leaders, or continuing Physics,” a freshman course designed to introduce students to to produce an impact on the community commensurate with basic concepts for solving physics problems numerically, a the distinguished history and tradition of this great department. powerful tool for succeeding in class and preparing for research. There are good reasons why Berkeley Physics is #1 - again! Next year, we hope to introduce two new laboratory In August, the 2015 Academic Ranking of World courses, “Introduction to Experimental Physics I & II,” Universities identified Berkeley Physics as the top physics designed specifically for freshman physics majors. More department worldwide for the second year in a row. This challenging and quantitative than our current undergraduate ranking reflects the combined research accomplishments of laboratory classes, which are targeted to the broader Cal our students, faculty, and alumni as well as the unmatched undergraduate population, the new classes will enable freshman support and loyalty of our friends and staff. I am thrilled to physics majors to begin exploring hands-on physics from the see that Berkeley continues to demonstrate to the world the critical role that public research universities play in advancing very start of their Cal adventure. These two lab courses will research, education, and service. I am grateful every day to also better prepare students for upper-division work in the be part of such a distinguished institution. Donald A. Glaser Advanced Lab. Making these new lab courses a reality will require support from our Berkeley Physics UNDERGRADUATE DIGS friends and family. Stay tuned for more details! As I write, construction is proceeding on the new Reading Room and Collaboration Center on first floor of LeConte ENSURING A SAFE, NURTURING CAMPUS ENVIRONMENT Hall, set to open in early 2016. This newly designed space, You might have read about recent events involving sexual accessible from the main entryway of our building, will welcome harassment on the Berkeley campus. This kind of behavior all Cal students to Berkeley Physics and provide a central home simply cannot be tolerated, and the Berkeley Physics faculty for our majors. The center provides space for quiet study and and staff have made it a top priority to create a respectful collaboration, social interaction, and tutoring. It’s designed to and welcoming atmosphere, starting from within our own enhance the undergraduate experience by supporting study, department. active learning, mentoring, advising, diversity, and community. As a first step, our faculty released a statement that reads, Your continued support is appreciated in making this center in part, “As faculty members in the UC Berkeley Physics a completed reality for our students. I hope to see many of Department, we stress our own commitment to developing you at the opening in 2016! and maintaining a supportive and open environment, free of sexual harassment and fear of retribution.” We are now PHYSICS MAJOR CURRICULUM Berkeley Physics is proud to graduate more physics majors developing department programs to ensure we have the type than any other research university in the country – a statistic of community that complements our world-renowned research, verified by the American Physical Society. We are even prouder faculty, and students. We are committed to this process and of the students themselves, who eagerly embrace their I look forward to updating you on our progress. opportunities here at Cal. We have 350 majors, and graduate Thank you again for your support. Fiat lux! roughly 120 physics undergraduate majors each year. Faculty - Steve Boggs 2 Biophysics at Berkeley 24 4 17 Department News Protein Motors and Telomere End Caps Invited Lectures Tracking cargo transport along cellular highways and learning how telomeres protect 18 44 Remembering chromosomes Eugene Commins 30 Commencement 2015 Faculty News 34 Physics in the Media Excerpts from print, 10 online, and broadcast Evolutionary Biophysics 20 media coverage of 46 Combining physics theory Remembering Berkeley physics research Class Notes with experimental biology Charles Townes to study population-scale biological phenomena 48 Historical Moment 22 Faculty Q&A 40 Barbara Jacak, 14 Nuclear Physicist Student Affairs Quantum Materials Finding new physics by creating new materials 23 Alumna Profile Lorraine Sadler uses physics to help protect the nation Biophysics at Berkeley Using physics to understand the complexities of living matter BIOPHYSICS seeks to uncover Carlos Bustamante, Berkeley Physics fundamental rules behind the emergence Professor and world-renowned biophysics of structure and function in living pioneer, puts it this way: “I believe a matter – to reveal how physical laws great deal of the excitement in biological govern biological processes, and how research is taking place at the interface the modeling of biological processes can between biology and these other shed light on the nature of physical laws. disciplines, and that significant increase in Biophysics is broadly interdisciplinary, our understanding of biological processes populated with experts from the fields of is resulting from development of novel physics, biology, chemistry, biochemistry, methodologies arising from this interface.” engineering, medicine, epidemiology, Several members of the Berkeley physics mathematics, and computer science. faculty are deeply immersed in biophysics This combination of disciplines has research. This issue of Physics at Berkeley led to groundbreaking advances in the spotlights their work, with special focus understanding of a variety of living on discoveries recently achieved by systems, from deciphering the structure Professors Ahmet Yildiz and Oskar and function of proteins and the DNA Hallatschek. double helix, to the sequencing of genomes, to the direct imaging and manipulation of individual biological molecules within living organisms. Fall 2015 | Physics at Berkeley 3 Protein Motors and Telomere End Caps Tracking cargo transport along cellular highways and learning how telomeres protect chromosomes he cytoplasm of a eukaryotic cell Materials prepared at one end, in the cell body, have to be teems with molecules and organelles transported to synapses at the opposite end. Diffusion along travelling from sites where they are the length of this cell could take years.” manufactured to where they are Eukaryotic cells have a way around this limitation. needed. Waste materials are col- Intracellular transport is accomplished by complex protein lected and disposed of. How are motors that carry cargo as they “walk” along tracks formed these activities organized? How are by the microtubules and actin filaments of the cytoskeleton. materials transported? These are Yildiz compares the structure of these proteins to the some of the questions Assistant Professor Ahmet Yildiz is bipedal structure of the human body. “We can use that analogy helping to answer. He is an experimental biophysicist who to name the different domains of these proteins,” he says. uses highly precise single-molecule imaging and manipulation “We can say they have two feet, two legs, a body, and two methods to study fundamental biological processes that take arms. With their arms they hold the cargo. With their feet place inside the cell. they walk along actin or microtubules. By consuming ATP energy, they take tiny little steps, on the order of nanometers PROTEINS THAT WALK (nm), along the track.” A primary research focus of Yildiz and his colleagues is the “There are many kinds of motors with a wide variety structure and function of motor proteins involved in intra- of biological functions,”