Awards and Honors

High Energy Physics group awarded three grants totaling over $14 million

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a woman in a helmet wearing a disposable facemask stands in front of lots of metal hardware and wires
HEP post-doc Dr. Camilla Galloni next to the CMS end cap supporting the GEM detectors that were installed this fall. The primary structure in this photo was engineered at the UW–Madison Physical Sciences Lab. The big CSC chambers were installed, upgraded and reinstalled and operated by UW physicists. The smaller GEM chambers, which are barely visible in the interstices, are being commissioned by UW–Madison physicists through the second grant mentioned in this post.

The High Energy Physics (HEP) group at UW–Madison, which broadly focuses on identifying and understanding the fundamental aspects of particles and forces in Nature, has been awarded three significant grants in 2020. The grants — two from the Department of Energy (DOE) and one from the National Science Foundation (NSF) — are awarded either directly to UW–Madison or indirectly through multi-institution international collaborations, bringing over $14 million to the department.

The first grant, $7.37 million from DOE, funds research that is expected to help physicists understand how our Universe works at its most fundamental level. At UW­–Madison, this research includes experimental and theoretical studies into topics such as using the Higgs boson as a tool for new discoveries and identifying principles of dark matter.

The grant will fund five areas of research: 1) studies of high energy proton-proton collisions; 2) studies of neutrino interactions; 3) studies of super-weak signals from galactic dark matter particles; 4) wide-area imaging surveys using powerful new telescopes; and 5) computational and mathematical methods of quantum field theory and string theory.

Sridhara Dasu is principal investigator on this DOE grant. Co-investigators include Yang Bai, Vernon Barger, Keith Bechtol, Kevin Black, Tulika Bose, Lisa Everett, Matthew Herndon, Kimberly Palladino, Brian Rebel, Gary Shiu, Jennifer Thomas (WIPAC), and Sau Lan Wu. The grant was awarded in June 2020 and provides funding through March 2023.

The other two grants awarded will provide funding for upgrades to the Compact Muon Solenoid (CMS) project at the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) at CERN. The first is an NSF-funded grant for which Kevin Black is leading the UW–Madison effort to upgrade the CMS End Cap muon system upgrade. The $900,000 to the department is part of a larger multi-institutional grant through Cornell University and runs through 2025.

“The GEM detectors are novel micropattern gas detectors which can handle the high background rates expected in the end-cap muon detectors. They will enhance the triggering and reconstruction of forward muons which are expected to make significant improvements and increased acceptance to search for new particles and make precision measurements of known particles and interactions,” Black explains. “UW has a long history with CMS muon system with Prof Matt Herndon, Senior Emeritus Scientist Dick Loveless, and Senior Scientist Armando Lanaro leading to the design, construction, operation, and upgrade of the other end-cap subdetector system instrumented with Cathode Strip Chambers.”

The other CMS-specific grant is a four-year, $5.3 million DOE grant through Fermilab that will fund the CMS trigger upgrade. This funding will allow the UW–Madison CMS group to perform all aspects of the work involved in design, prototyping, qualification, production and validation of the calorimeter trigger system for the upgrade. When completed, the project is expected to result in the collection of 25 times more data than is currently possible. Sridhara Dasu is the principal investigator of this grant.

Ellen Zweibel elected AAAS Fellow

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Congrats to Astronomy and Physics professor Ellen Zweibel on her election as a Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science. She was elected “for distinguished contributions to quantify the role of magnetic fields in shaping the cosmos on all scales.” Read the full story about all six UW–Madison faculty who earned this honor.

Cary Forest, Jay Anderson, and John Wallace part of WARF Innovation Awards finalist team

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profile photo of Cary Forest

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.

See all six finalists and watch their videos at WARF’s Innovation Awards website.

Jimena González named Three Minute Thesis® finalist

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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.

a still from a YouTube video of Jimena giving a presentation
Jimena González presents a virtual 3MT

Chuanhong (Vincent) Liu named to Fall 2020 cohort of the Quantum Information Science and Engineering Network (QISE-NET)

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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.

Vernon Barger earns 2021 APS Sakurai Prize

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Vernon Barger

University of Wisconsin­–Madison Physics professor Vernon Barger has won the J.J. Sakurai Prize for Theoretical Particle Physics, the American Physical Society announced October 7.

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

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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.

See the full list of 2020 honorees at the APS Fellows archive.

WQI team named winners in international quantum research competition

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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.

Full story

Prof. Brian Rebel promoted to Senior Scientist at Fermilab

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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

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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.

Read the full story