Research, teaching and outreach in Physics at UW–Madison
Awards and Honors
Physics major Caleb Youngwerth wins poster prize at APS Eastern Great Lakes meeting
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Caleb Youngwerth
Congrats to physics, astronomy-physics, mathematics and french major Caleb Youngwerth on winning the Meeting Award for Undergraduate Student Poster at the Fall 2024 meeting of the Eastern Great Lakes Section of APS!
Youngwerth’s poster, entitled, “Harnessing Molecular Simulation of the DLVO Potential to Engineer New Battery Technologies,” was presented at the meeting held October 18-19 at Marietta College in Ohio. The work was conducted in the chemical and biological engineering group of Prof. Rose Cersonsky.
The award was announced at the meeting and comes with a cash prize.
Baha Balantekin wins 2025 APS Bethe Prize
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Baha Balantekin
Congrats to Prof. Baha Balantekin on winning the American Physical Society’s 2025 Hans A. Bethe prize!
The Bethe prize is awarded to recognize outstanding work in theory, experiment or observation in the areas of astrophysics, nuclear physics, nuclear astrophysics, or closely related fields. Balantekin won “for seminal contributions to neutrino physics and astrophysics — especially the neutrino flavor transformation problem — both for solar neutrinos and the nonlinear supernova environment.”
Balantekin works at the intersection of particle physics, nuclear physics, and astrophysics. For much of his career, he has studied theoretical aspects of neutrino transport originating in the Sun, supernovae, or neutron star mergers.
“The concepts (I brought to the field) were marrying neutrino physics with many-body physics,” Balantekin says. “Of course, incorporating many-body aspects is common in condensed matter and nuclear physics, but it’s not as common in environments studied in astrophysics.”
Several fundamental astrophysical processes produce neutrinos as byproducts, and scientists have been studying neutrino origins and patterns for decades. Detecting the Sun’s neutrinos can reveal insights into its nuclear reactions, for example, and detecting neutrinos from core collapse supernovae can reveal insights into the early universe.
Balantekin’s early research was on the theory of neutrino transport from the Sun. He has also been studying core collapse supernovae, the result of a star running out of nuclear fuel. During collapse, a very hot star cools very quickly, emitting neutrinos on the order of 10^58.
“A number of that magnitude means you can no longer ignore the neutrino-neutrino interactions,” Balantekin says. “And then it becomes a very interesting many-body problem, where you have two-body interactions between neutrinos, and the propagation, and then it becomes a very complex problem.”
Balantekin and department collaborators in 1995. Balantekin is seated, right. Seated next to him is former PhD student Alan DeWeerd. Standing row, L-R: Franco Ruggeri, John Beacom, Jonathan Fetter, late physics professor Kirk McVoy, and William Friedman.
To describe this problem, has more recently begun using techniques from quantum information science to study entanglement of neutrinos with each other and to look at the signatures of such interactions and how they might contribute to heavy element formation.
The Bethe Prize was awarded solely to Balantekin, but he says he would not have won it without his collaborators over the years.
“You don’t do work in a vacuum,” Balantekin says. “I’ve worked with a lot of very talented young people. I would like to acknowledge first not only my graduate students at Wisconsin, but also the Fellows who came from the N3AS Physics Frontier Center we have. And the people I collaborate with around the world. We also have colleagues here in the department like Sue Coppersmith and Mark Saffman who contributed many ideas.”
The Bethe prize consists of $10,000 and a certificate citing the contributions made by the recipient. It is presented annually.
Britton Plourde elected Fellow of the American Physical Society
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Britton Plourde (credit: Syracuse University)
Congratulations to Prof. Britton Plourde for being elected a Fellow of the American Physical Society!
Plourde was elected “For important contributions to the physics and operation of superconducting qubits, including the development of techniques for scalable qubit control and readout, and investigations of decoherence from vortices and nonequilibrium quasiparticles.” He was nominated by the Division of Quantum Information Fellowship.
APS Fellowship is a distinct honor signifying recognition by one’s professional peers for outstanding contributions to physics. Each year, no more than one half of one percent of the Society’s membership is recognized by this honor.
Daniel Den Hartog earns Progress Award from Laser Society of Japan
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Congrats to plasma scientist Daniel Den Hartog who is part of a team that was recently awarded a Progress Award from the Laser Society of Japan. This award is given to research that has shown a significant impact on the advancement of laser engineering.
The work was led by Ryo Yasuhara of the National Institute for Fusion Science in Japan. The team was recognized for “research on transient plasma electron and temperature distribution measurement by Thomson scattering method using a repetitive 20 kHz, 1.2 J, nanosecond laser.”
The Progress Award was one of a handful awarded recently by the Laser Society of Japan. For a full list, see LSJ’s awards site.
Pupa Gilbert earns WARF Named Professorship
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Front row from left: Dorota Brzezińska (UW-Vice Chancellor for Research), John D. Wiley (former UW Chancellor), Pupa Gilbert (John D. Wiley Professor of Physics), Jennifer Mnookin (UW Chancellor) Back row from left: Lauren Bishop (professor of Social Work, Romnes winner), Charles Lee Isbell, Jr. (UW Provost), Susan Harness (Maria Stuchly Professor of Electrical Engineering), Russ Shafer-Landau (Elliott Sober Professor of Philosophy).
Physics professor Pupa Gilbert is one of eight UW–Madison faculty awarded WARF Named Professorships, which come with $100,000 and honor faculty who have made major contributions to the advancement of knowledge, primarily through their research endeavors, but also as a result of their teaching and service activities. Award recipients choose the names associated with their professorships.
Gilbert, the John D. Wiley professor of physics, joined the Department of Physics in 1999 as a full professor, following staff scientist positions in the Italian National Research Council (CNR) in Rome and the Swiss Institute of Technology in Lausanne (EPFL). Her research focuses on biomineralization, that is, on understanding the nanoscale formation mechanisms of natural biominerals, especially coral skeletons, but on a side she also studies sea urchin spines, mollusk shell nacre, tooth enamel, and inner ear cochleaer bone. She also strives to understand the evolution of biomineralization, and how biominerals interact with the environment in the past, present, and future. She is actively working to save coral reefs from climate change.
Her role in the profession has included being research director for the NSF-funded Synchrotron Radiation Center at UW–Madison, chair of the Division of Biological Physics (DBIO) of the American Physical Society, a Radcliffe Fellow at Harvard University, and establishing “the Cnidarians,” a group of tens of diverse undergraduate students at UW–Madison who produce great discoveries by doing massively parallel data processing. She teaches Physics in the Arts, a popular course for non-science majors on light, color, and sound. She was knighted by Italian President Carlo A. Ciampi in 2001.
“Prof. Pupa Gilbert is a luminary in the field of biomineralization, developing a fundamental understanding of these crucial processes that are shared by many diverse organisms,” says Kevin Black, chair of the UW–Madison department of physics. “Prof. Gilbert is a knight of the Italian Republic, and stalwart advocate for involving undergraduates, in particular those from underrepresented groups in her research. This award recognizes the many contributions to the academy in her long and productive interdisciplinary research program and is well deserved.”
For her named professorship, Gilbert chose John D. Wiley, the former UW–Madison Chancellor who earned his MS and PhD from this department. He was a member of the technical staff at Bell Laboratories, then a visiting scientist at Max Planck Institute for Semiconductor Physics. He joined the faculty at UW–Madison as professor of electrical and computer engineering in 1975, where he did groundbreaking research on semiconductors and metals, and earned major patents at WARF. Later, he became Chair of the Materials Science Program, Dean of the Graduate School, Provost, and then Chancellor (2001-2008), all at UW–Madison.
Wiley also started campus-wide initiatives such as cluster hiring and originated many campus building projects. He was the first Director of the Wisconsin Institute of Discovery, a position he held from 2008 until he retired in 2011.
Gilbert chose Wiley, whom she calls “a brilliant physicist,” for her named professorship for all the reasons listed above. She also credits him with bringing her to UW–Madison.
“When there was a cluster hire in biophotonics back in 1999, John Wiley wanted me to join the university and he had them include the word spectromicroscopy — the synchrotron method that I developed — into the search to encourage me to apply,” Gilbert says. “I really didn’t want to apply, I was on my way to CalTech, but of course I couldn’t say no to John.”
In total, thirty-two University of Wisconsin–Madison faculty were awarded fellowships from the Office of the Vice Chancellor for Research for 2024-25, including eight WARF named professorships, 13 Romnes faculty fellowships, and 11 Kellett mid-career awards. The awardees span the four research divisions on campus: arts and humanities, physical sciences, social sciences and biological sciences.
“These awards recognize excellence in faculty research, academics, and outreach at various stages of their scholarly careers and provide an opportunity for continued development of their research programs,” says Cynthia Czajkowski, interim vice chancellor for research. “I look forward to seeing the results of their imaginative use of these funds.”
The awards are possible due to the research efforts of UW–Madison faculty and staff. Technology that arises from these efforts is licensed by the Wisconsin Alumni Research Foundation and the income from successful licenses is returned to the OVCR, where it’s used to fund research activities and awards throughout the divisions on campus.
Mark Eriksson named Steenbock Professor
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This story was originally published by the Office of the Vice Chancellor for Research
Mark Eriksson, professor of physics, and Mikhail Feldman, professor of mathematics, have been named recipients of UW–Madison Steenbock Professorships.
“This professorship is among the most prestigious and important professorships for researchers at the UW–Madison,” says Cynthia Czajkowski, interim vice chancellor for research. “This recognition is accompanied by discretionary funds to provide recipients the freedom to explore innovative research directions and to explore new approaches to their research areas.”
In the early 1980s, Evelyn Steenbock initiated a program to endow a series of professorships in the natural sciences in honor of her late husband, Harry Steenbock, emeritus professor of biochemistry.
Harry Steenbock (1886-1967) developed an inexpensive method of enriching foods with Vitamin D. His discovery led to the eradication of rickets, the bone-deforming deficiency disease, throughout most of the world. He is also renowned for his discovery of the conversion of carotenes to vitamin A.
Steenbock assigned his patents for advances in human and animal nutrition to the Wisconsin Alumni Research Foundation (WARF), and accumulated royalties from Steenbock’s patents supplied about half the funds for the Steenbock Memorial Library construction on campus. Steenbock Memorial Library is a primary resource library for the students, faculty and research staff at the UW–Madison.
The Steenbock Professorship provides research funds to recipients annually for 10 years and honors those faculty who have made major contributions to the advancement of knowledge, primarily through their research endeavors at UW–Madison, but also as a result of their teaching and service activities.
Mark Eriksson
Eriksson, awarded the Steenbock Professorship in the Physical Sciences, was recently chair of the Department of Physics. He joined the UW–Madison physics faculty in 1999 and is a world-leading expert in the development of quantum information systems using solid-state quantum dot qubits.
As department chair, Eriksson promoted the Wisconsin Idea by supporting the department’s role in connecting with audiences all around the state of Wisconsin, including restarting The Wonders of Physics Traveling Show.
Eriksson received a bachelor’s degree in physics and mathematics from UW–Madison in 1992, received his PhD from Harvard University and was a postdoctoral member of technical staff at Bell Labs.
His research has focused on quantum computing, semiconductor quantum dots and nanoscience. He leads a team dedicated to developing spin qubits in gate-defined silicon quantum dots with the goal of enabling quantum computers, which manipulate information coherently, to be built using many of the materials and fabrication methods that are the foundation of modern, classical integrated circuits.
Eriksson is widely recognized for engaging collaborative partnerships with industry, government leaders and other university research institutions to tackle some of the greatest challenges in quantum information science and technology. Last year, the Eriksson group announced its partnership with Intel and HRL Laboratories as part of the LPS Qubit Collaboratory (LQC) national Quantum Information Science Research Center hosted at the Laboratory for Physical Sciences at the University of Maryland, College Park to collaborate on research in advanced computer technologies.
“I intend to use the award to explore new opportunities in silicon-based quantum computing, including new ideas for connecting qubits to each other across large distances, and the use of near-atomic-scale metamaterials to endow semiconductors with properties even better suited to quantum computing than those available today,” Eriksson says.
Justin Edwards earns National Defense Science and Engineering Graduate Fellowship
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Physics PhD and ECE MS student Justin Edwards has been awarded the prestigious National Defense Science and Engineering Graduate Fellowship in the category of Physics (including Optics), with a proposal titled “Multispectral imaging in the near infrared for next-generation analog night vision systems”. Justin is advised by ECE Professor and physics affiliate professor Mikhail Kats and collaborates extensively with ECE PhD students Rabeeya Hamid and Demeng Feng, and the group of Dan Congreve at Stanford University.
Mark Saffman part of team awarded in latest round of Research Forward funding
The Office of the Vice Chancellor for Research (OVCR) hosts the Research Forward initiative to stimulate and support highly innovative and groundbreaking research at the University of Wisconsin–Madison. The initiative is supported by the Wisconsin Alumni Research Foundation (WARF) and will provide funding for 1–2 years, depending on the needs and scope of the project.
Research Forward seeks to support collaborative, multidisciplinary, multi-investigator research projects that are high-risk, high-impact, and transformative. It seeks to fund research projects that have the potential to fundamentally transform a field of study as well as projects that require significant development prior to the submission of applications for external funding. Collaborative research proposals are welcome from within any of the four divisions (Arts & Humanities, Biological Sciences, Physical Sciences, Social Sciences), as are cross-divisional collaborations.
Physics professor Mark Saffman is part of a team awarded funding in Round 4 of the Research Forward competition for their project:
Quanta sensing for next generation quantum computing
Future quantum computers could open new scientific and engineering frontiers, impacting existential challenges like climate change. However, quantum information is delicate; it leaks with time and is prone to significant errors. These errors are exacerbated by imperfect reading and writing of quantum bits (qubits). These challenges fundamentally limit our ability to run quantum programs, and could hold back this powerful technology. Fast and accurate qubit readout, therefore, is essential for unlocking the quantum advantage. Current quantum computers use conventional cameras for reading qubits, which are inherently slow and noisy.
This research project will use quanta (single-photon) sensors for fast and accurate qubit readout. Quanta sensors detect individual photons scattered from qubits, thus enabling sensing qubits at 2-3 orders of magnitude higher speeds (few microseconds from ~10 milliseconds), thereby transforming the capabilities (speed, accuracy) of future quantum computers, and for the first time, paving the way for scalable and practical quantum computing.
Principal investigator: Mohit Gupta, associate professor of computer sciences
Co-PIs: Mark Saffman, professor of physics; Swamit Tannu, assistant professor of computer sciences; Andreas Velten, associate professor of biostatistics and medical informatics, electrical and computer engineering
Four students named Hilldale Fellows
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Four physics majors have earned 2024 Hilldale Fellowships. They are:
Erica Magee, Mathematics and Physics major, working with Martin Zanni (Chemistry)
Quinn Meece, Astronomy – Physics and Physics major, working with Mark Saffman (Physics)
Elias Mettner, Physics major, working with Abdollah Mohammadi (Physics)
Leah Napiwocki, Astronomy – Physics and Physics major, working with Marsha Wolf (Astronomy)
The Hilldale Undergraduate/Faculty Research Fellowship provides research training and support to undergraduates at UW–Madison. Students have the opportunity to undertake their own research project in collaboration with UW–Madison faculty or research/instructional academic staff. Approximately 97 – 100 Hilldale awards are available each year.
The student researcher receives a $3,000 stipend (purpose unrestricted) and faculty/staff research advisor receives a $1,000 stipend to help offset research costs (e.g., supplies, books for the research, student travel related to the project).
MSPQC’s Preetham Tikkireddi wins second place at QED-C student poster presentation
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MSPQC student Preetham Tikkireddi won second place for his poster, “Understanding security side channel attacks on multi-tenancy quantum computers,” at the plenary meeting of the Quantum Economic Development Consortium (QED-C), held March 20-21 in Evanston, IL.
Students who attended the plenary first learned best practices for presenting their research to a non-science audience, a useful skill for a cutting-edge field where investors, hiring managers, and policy makers do not necessarily have a quantum background. Then, the students implemented those skills at the judged poster session.
“[The poster session attendees] are really smart people, but they’re not quantum people, so you set them up for asking questions, and based on the questions that they’re asking, you determine how deep you want to go into your research.” Tikkireddi says. “It was a very different kind of experience, rather than just a plain research presentation to a professor or people who already know the field.”
A total of 17 students presented posters at the first-ever QED-C student program and poster competition. UW–Madison MSPQC student Preetham Tikkireddi (right) was one of three graduate students to win the top honor at the competition. | Photo credit: QED-C
Tikkireddi’s research, conducted with computer sciences professor Swamit Tannu, looked at the potential for exploiting crosstalk when two users access the same quantum computer at the same time.
“Right now, quantum computers are really expensive, and the way we access them is by sending jobs to these quantum providers like IBM or IonQ,” Tikkireddi explains. “But the queues are really long. If you’re lucky, you can get the results back the next day.”
Quantum computing capacity is growing rapidly in the form of more and more qubits, and most jobs submitted to these long queues do not need to use all the qubits. Tikkireddi and Tannu thought that one way to increase throughput would be to allow users to share the same quantum computer, each using a subset of the qubits. But quantum computations rely on qubit entanglement, where physically separate qubits interact and share information. It was unclear if sharing a quantum computer opens users to security risks.
In his work, Tikkireddi asked if he could count C-NOTs — the gate that is used to create this entanglement — of another user. He entangled two qubits, then asked if two other qubits could “hear” what the first two were doing.
“We were able to use that to figure out how many C-NOTs the other guy is doing. That’s step one of an attack,” Tikkireddi says. “Your algorithm is your intellectual property, so you don’t want people to steal it. It’s a security problem.”
With this initial analysis identifying potential security risks amongst shared quantum computer use, Tikkireddi says providers should currently not let users share computing time, and that future research should focus on ways to mitigate these crosstalk attacks in an effort to balance efficiency with safeguarding intellectual property.
Tikkireddi credits Tannu for helping to guide his poster away from a traditional research poster and toward one more accessible to a non-science audience. He also appreciates the support from MSQPC associate director Katerina Moloni for encouraging and preparing students to take advantage of these training opportunities.
“It was a really good networking opportunity, especially for me, who is looking for a job right now,” Tikkireddi says. “I would highly recommend students to go to these kinds of events because we get a chance to interact with people in the industry.”
