Research, teaching and outreach in Physics at UW–Madison
Awards and Honors
Cary Forest, Jay Anderson, and John Wallace part of WARF Innovation Awards finalist team
Posted on
Each fall the WARF Innovation Awards recognize some of the best of inventions at UW-Madison.
WARF receives hundreds of new invention disclosures each year. Of these disclosures, the WARF Innovation Award finalists are considered exceptional in the following criteria:
Criteria
Has potential for high long-term impact
Presents an exciting solution to a known important problem
Could produce broad benefits for humankind
Cary Forest, Jay Anderson, and John Wallace are part of one of six finalists teams selected by WARF for their disclosure, “High-Energy Plasma Generator for Medical Isotope Production, Nuclear Waste Disposal & Power Generation.” Watch Video
Two Innovation Award winners will receive $10,000, split among UW inventors, and will be named at a virtual ceremony December 8. Learn more and register for the event.
Jimena González named Three Minute Thesis® finalist
Posted on
Congrats to Jimena González, a physics graduate student in Keith Bechtol’s group, who is one of nine finalists for UW–Madison’s Three Minute Thesis® competition! Watch Jimena’s video on YouTube, and check out all nine finalists’ videos at the UW–Madison 3MT® website. The videos are only available through November 29. The finals will be held on February 3, 2021.
Jimena González presents a virtual 3MT
Chuanhong (Vincent) Liu named to Fall 2020 cohort of the Quantum Information Science and Engineering Network (QISE-NET)
Posted on
Graduate student Chuanhong (Vincent) Liu (McDermott Group) has had his project awarded funding through QISE-NET, the Quantum Information Science and Engineering Network. Run through the University of Chicago, QISE-NET is open to any student pursuing an advanced degree in any field of quantum science. Liu and other students in his cohort earn up to three years of support, including funding, mentoring and training at annual workshops. All awardees are paired with a mentoring QISE company or national lab, at which they will complete part of their projects. Liu describes his project, below. Cecilia Vollbrecht, a grad student in Chemistry, also earned this honor. Both Liu and Volbrecht are students in the Wisconsin Quantum Institute.
The Single Flux Quantum (SFQ) digital logic family has been proposed as a scalable approach for the control of next-generation multiqubit arrays. With NIST’s strong track record in the field of SFQ digital logic and the expertise of McDermott’s lab in the superconducting qubit area, we expect to achieve high fidelity SFQ-based qubit control. The successful completion of this research program will represent a major step forward in the development of a scalable quantum-classical interface, a critical component of a fully error-corrected fault-tolerant quantum computer.
The J.J. Sakurai Prize is considered one of the most prestigious annual prizes in the field of theoretical high energy physics. Barger, who joined the UW–Madison faculty in 1965, is a world leader in theoretical particle physics where theory meets experiment. He is one of the founders of collider phenomenology as it is practiced today.
“This prize belongs to the hundreds of students, postdocs, faculty and visiting colleagues who entered the portal of UW–Madison to discover the quarks, leptons and bosons of particle physics,” Barger says. “Only at UW–Madison could this research at the interface of theory and experiment so thrive.”
The techniques that Barger helped develop have been crucial in establishing the experimental foundations of the Standard Model of particle physics and in guiding the search for signals of new physics. His contributions have played a key role in many important milestones in particle physics, including the discovery of the W boson in 1985, the top quark in 1995, and the Higgs boson discovery in 2012.
UW–Madison physics professor Lisa Everett and University of Hawaii professor Xerxes Tata, both phenomenologists, co-nominated Barger for the prize.
“We are thrilled that Vernon Barger has been awarded the 2021 J.J. Sakurai Prize, for which we nominated him for his seminal accomplishments and leadership record in collider physics phenomenology over five decades in the field,” Everett says. “The techniques he has pioneered have and continue to be of pivotal importance for elucidating physics signals at particle colliders, and these contributions are only part of a very long and distinguished research career in theoretical particle physics. He is highly deserving of this honor.”
UW–Madison chemistry professor Martin Zanni also won an APS award, the Earle K. Plyler Prize for Molecular Spectroscopy & Dynamics. Read the UW–Madison news piece about both Barger and Zanni’s awards here.
Robert McDermott elected Fellow of the American Physical Society
Posted on
Robert McDermott
Congratulations to Prof. Robert McDermott, who was elected a 2020 Fellow of the American Physical Society! He was elected for seminal contributions to quantum computing with superconducting qubits, including elucidating the origins of decoherence mechanisms, and development of new qubit control and readout methods. He was nominated by the Division of Quantum Information.
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.
WQI team named winners in international quantum research competition
Posted on
A WQI faculty team was one of 18 winners in the Innovare Advancement Center’s “Million Dollar International Quantum U Tech Accelerator” competition, which awarded a total of $1.35 million last week. The winning teams, including UW–Madison physics professors Shimon Kolkowitz and Mark Saffman, each earned $75,000 toward their proposed research.
The competition attracted nearly 250 proposals from teams across the world in the areas of quantum timing, sensing, computing and communications, and 36 teams were invited to present at the live virtual event.
Prof. Brian Rebel promoted to Senior Scientist at Fermilab
Posted on
Brian Rebel
Yesterday, Fermilab promoted Prof. Brian Rebel to Senior Scientist. He has a joint appointment there, and his new title at Fermilab is the closest equivalent to full professor for which scientific staff are eligible. Congrats, Brian!
NSF Physics Frontier Center for neutron star modeling to include UW–Madison
Posted on
A group of universities, including the University of Wisconsin–Madison, has been named the newest Physics Frontier Center, the National Science Foundation announced Aug. 17. The center expands the reach and depth of existing capabilities in modeling some of the most violent events known in the universe: the mergers of neutron stars and their explosive aftermath.
The Network for Neutrinos, Nuclear Astrophysics, and Symmetries (N3AS) is already an established hub of eight institutions, including UW–Madison, that uses the most extreme environments found in astrophysics — the Big Bang, supernovae, and neutron star and black hole mergers — as laboratories for testing fundamental physics under conditions beyond the reach of Earth-based labs. The upgrade to a Physics Frontier Center adds five institutions, provides $10.9 million in funding for postdoctoral fellowships and allows members to cover an expanded scope of research.
“For 20 years, we’ve expected that the growing precision of astrophysical and cosmological measurements would make this field an increasingly important part of fundamental physics. Indeed, four monumental discoveries — neutrino masses, dark matter, the accelerating universe, and gravitational waves — have confirmed this prediction,” says A. Baha Balantekin, a professor of physics at UW–Madison and one of the principal investigators for N3AS.
Kevin Black named co-coordinator of LHC Physics Center at Fermilab
Posted on
Professor Kevin Black has been named one of the next co-coordinators of the LHC (Large Hadron Collider) Physics Center at Fermilab (LPC at FNAL), LPC announced recently. His initial appointment starts on September 1st, 2020 and lasts for two years.
Prof. Kevin Black
As co-coordinator, Black’s roles will include leading the several hundred physicists who are residents or visit the LPC for research on CMS, managing the distinguished research program, and leading the training of students and young physicists at FNAL.
According to their website, LPC at FNAL is a regional center of the Compact Muon Solenoid (CMS) Collaboration. It serves as a resource and physics analysis hub primarily for the seven hundred US physicists in the CMS collaboration. The LPC offers a vibrant community of CMS scientists from the US and overseas who play leading roles in analysis of data, in the definition and refinement of physics objects, in detector commissioning, and in the design and development of the detector upgrade.
Black joined the CMS experiment in 2018 when he joined the UW–Madison physics faculty after 13 years on CMS’s companion experiment, ATLAS. Since that time, he has been involved in the forward muon upgrade project — which will install GEM (Gas Electron Multiplier) detectors — as manager of the U.S. component of the electronic readout project. He has also served as deputy run coordinator of the GEM system, and his group is focusing on the data-acquisition development for that system. Additionally, his students and post-docs are working on a variety of physics analysis ranging from searches for new physics with the top quark, flavor anomalies in bottom quark decays, and searches for pair-production of Higgs bosons.
“I am excited for this important leadership opportunity to play a crucial role in facilitating U.S. participation in cutting edge particle physics research at a unique facility,” Black says. It will allow me to continue the excellent tradition of the LPC and bring my own ideas and initiatives to the center.”
As LPC at FNAL co-coodinator, Black will also serve as co-Chair of the LPC Management Board. He will be working with Dr. Sergo Jindariani, a senior scientist at FNAL, and succeed Prof. Cecilia Gerber from the University of Illinois at Chicago.
Three undergraduate students awarded Hilldale Fellowships
Posted on
Congratulations to the three physics undergraduate research students who earned Hilldale fellowships for 2020-21! They are:
Owen Rafferty, in Robert McDermott’s group
Yanlin Wu, in Peter Timbie’s group
Yan Qian, in Sau Lan Wu’s group
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.
