Department News Archive


K. D. Kuntz Participates in STORM, NASA’s New Mission to Study the Earth’s Magnetosheath

K. D. Kuntz Participates in STORM, NASA’s New Mission to Study the Earth’s Magnetosheath
Research Scientist K. D. Kuntz will contribute to the Solar-Terrestrial Observer for the Response of the Magnetosphere (STORM) mission that has been selected by NASA for Phase-A study, in preparation for a possible launch in 2026. STORM would provide the first-ever global image of the size and shape of the Earth’s magnetosheath, the vast region […]


Undergraduate Vedant Chandra Leads Successful White Dwarf Research

Undergraduate Vedant Chandra Leads Successful White Dwarf Research
A team of student researchers supervised by Associate Professor Nadia Zakamska recently authored a study in The Astrophysical Journal describing their new measurement of the white dwarf mass-radius relationship. The paper was led by undergraduate student Vedant Chandra (pictured), graduate students Hsiang-Chih Hwang and Sihao Cheng, and is titled “A Gravitational Redshift Measurement of the […]


Jeffrey (Heshy) Roskes Receives Springer Award

Jeffrey (Heshy) Roskes Receives Springer Award
Jeffrey (Heshy) Roskes, who earned his PhD in the department in October 2019, working on studies of the Higgs boson with Prof. Andrei Gritsan, has received the Springer Award for an outstanding PhD thesis. Together with his colleagues in the CMS group at JHU, Heshy developed precise analysis of the Higgs boson properties. The Springer Award is composed of […]


Tyrel McQueen and Surjeet Rajendran Involved in the DOE’s New Quantum Information Science Research Centers

Tyrel McQueen and Surjeet Rajendran Involved in the DOE’s New Quantum Information Science Research Centers
The U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) Office of Science announced the formation of five National Quantum Information Science (QIS) Research Centers and two members of the department are involved with two of the new centers. The interdisciplinary, multi-institutional centers will facilitate the advancement of QIS technology and realizing the full potential of quantum-based applications in […]


Remembering Mark Robbins

Remembering Mark Robbins
Professor Mark Robbins taught at Johns Hopkins for more than 30 years, studying the atomic origin of macroscopic phenomena such as earthquakes and avalanches and helping lead the establishment of major university computer facilities. He died unexpectedly on Thursday, August 13, 2020. Read the full remembrance of Mark Robbins on the Hub.


Jonathan Bagger to Become CEO of American Physical Society

Jonathan Bagger to Become CEO of American Physical Society
From Philip H. Bucksbaum, President of the American Physical Society (APS), regarding Research Professor Jonathan Bagger: I have the pleasure to announce that theoretical physicist Jonathan Bagger has been selected to succeed Kate Kirby as APS CEO in 2021. Bagger is Director of TRIUMF, Canada’s particle accelerator center in Vancouver, British Columbia. The APS Board of Directors unanimously […]


Remembering Ron Allen

Remembering Ron Allen
From Ken Sembach, Director of the Space Telescope Science Institute: Dear Colleagues, It is with sadness that I inform you that our colleague and emeritus astronomer Ron Allen passed away Saturday morning. Ron joined the Institute in 1989 and had recently retired. During his tenure at STScI, he held many positions, served on numerous external […]


Alex Szalay Receives the Viktor Ambartsumian International Science Prize

Alex Szalay Receives the Viktor Ambartsumian International Science Prize
Professor Alex Szalay is one of three recipients of the 2020 Viktor Ambartsumian International Science Prize. The award is in recognition of Professor Szalay’s “pioneering work on demonstrating that the Dark Matter in the Universe might be a neutral, weakly interacting particle and for his contributions to data-driven, statistical cosmology.” The Viktor Ambartsumian International Science […]


Jeffrey Cummings and Sihao Cheng Author Paper on Carbon’s Origin in the Milky Way

Jeffrey Cummings and Sihao Cheng Author Paper on Carbon’s Origin in the Milky Way
Associate Research Scientist Jeffrey Cummings and graduate student Sihao Cheng are among the authors of a new study in Nature Astronomy that sheds light on carbon’s origin in the Milky Way. The paper is titled “Carbon star formation as seen through the non-monotonic initial–final mass relation.” “The findings pose new, stringent constraints on how and when carbon was […]


Graduate Teaching Awards for 2019-2020

Graduate Teaching Awards for 2019-2020
The graduate program committee recognizes an outstanding performance by co-head teaching assistants Melissa Diamond and Joshua Kable who have performed significantly above and beyond the call of duty this term, and have made major substantive contributions to the success of their extremely large course (AS.171.104, Physics for Biological Majors, nearly 400 undergraduates) this semester. Joshua Kable receives this year’s […]