Department News Archive


Brice Ménard to give the Hans Jensen Lecture at University of Heidelberg

Brice Ménard to give the Hans Jensen Lecture at University of Heidelberg
Prof. Brice Ménard has been invited to give the Hans Jensen Lecture at the University of Heidelberg as part of the doctoral program’s biannual “Heidelberg Physics Graduate Days.”  The lecture is named for Hans Jensen, who shared the 1963 Nobel Prize for the nuclear shell model, and is intended to honor speakers who  have made fundamental contributions […]


Liang Wu Receives McMillan Prize for Research in Condensed Matter Physics

Liang Wu Receives McMillan Prize for Research in Condensed Matter Physics
Liang Wu, who earned his Ph. D. in the department in 2015 (supervised by Peter Armitage), received the McMillan Prize “for novel terahertz and optical spectroscopy experiments on topological insulators and semimetals.” The McMillan Prize is an annual award given by the Department of Physics at the University of Illinois to an outstanding young researcher […]


Tommi Tenkanen Publishes a New Explanation for Dark Matter

Tommi Tenkanen Publishes a New Explanation for Dark Matter
Postdoctoral Fellow Tommi Tenkanen recently had a paper published as editor’s suggestion in Physical Review Letters that provides a new explanation for dark matter and explains how it may have been produced already before the Big Bang. The paper also presents a way to test the hypothesis by observing the distribution of galaxies in the […]


CLASS Telescope Featured on NPR’s All Things Considered

CLASS Telescope Featured on NPR’s All Things Considered
In a segment titled “Telescope In Chile’s Mountains Looks For Signals To Explain How The Universe Began,” NPR Science Journalist Joe Palca interviews Associate Professor Toby Marriage and others to share the science behind the Cosmology Large Angular Scale Surveyor (CLASS) project. Listen to radio segment on NPR’s website.


Emanuele Berti Named Fellow and President Elect of ISGRG

Emanuele Berti Named Fellow and President Elect of ISGRG
At last week’s meeting of the International Society of General Relativity and Gravitation (ISGRG), Professor Emanuele Berti was named a Fellow, and was also voted as the new President Elect of the society.  He will rotate in as President in three years. Prof. Berti joins many prominent researchers who have been officers or committee members of the ISGRG in the past.


What Gives Animal Cells Their Agency? Yu Shi Measures Cytoskeletal Fluctuations

What Gives Animal Cells Their Agency? Yu Shi Measures Cytoskeletal Fluctuations
Graduate student Yu Shi is the lead author of a paper published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences that examines cellular dynamics using micropost arrays. The ability of animal cells to crawl, change their shape, and respond to applied force is due to their cytoskeleton: a dynamic, cross-linked network of actin protein […]


Far Ultraviolet Spectroscopic Explorer (FUSE) 20th Anniversary Reunion

Far Ultraviolet Spectroscopic Explorer (FUSE) 20th Anniversary Reunion
Last Friday the Department of Physics and Astronomy and the Center for Astrophysical Sciences at JHU hosted a reunion of those who worked on the Far Ultraviolet Spectroscopic Explorer (FUSE) mission. FUSE was operated by JHU for NASA from a control room in the Bloomberg building from June 1999 until October 2007, with a large […]


Riccardo Giacconi Memorial Symposium Held at National Academy of Sciences

Riccardo Giacconi Memorial Symposium Held at National Academy of Sciences
The Space Telescope Science Institute, Center for Astrophysics (Harvard & Smithsonian), Johns Hopkins University, the European Southern Observatory, and Associated Universities, Inc. organized a memorial symposium in honor of Riccardo Giacconi held at the National Academy of Sciences last week. Nobel Laureate and Professor in the Department of Physics and Astronomy, Giacconi died on December […]


Two Department Members Chosen for Decadal Survey in Astronomy and Astrophysics

Two Department Members Chosen for Decadal Survey in Astronomy and Astrophysics
Prof. Marc Kamionkowski and Associate Research Scientist Rachel Osten have been selected to steering committee for the upcoming National Academy of Sciences decadal survey in Astronomy and Astrophysics.  We are the only department with more than one member.  Andrew Driesman, from APL is also a member, so Hopkins is very well represented!


JHU Undergrads Earn First Place at International Theoretical Physics Olympiad

JHU Undergrads Earn First Place at International Theoretical Physics Olympiad
David Carcamo, Ross Dempsey, Wenzer Qin, and Katherine Xiang earned first place in the 2019 International Theoretical Physics Olympiad for Undergraduates. The team solved 6 challenging problems on modern research topics within a 24-hour time frame. The JHU team outlasted over twenty other competitors in this year’s competition.