Department News Archive


Arts & Sciences Magazine: Beyond Our Solar System, Exoplanets 101

Arts & Sciences Magazine: Beyond Our Solar System, Exoplanets 101
Faculty from the Department of Earth and Planetary Sciences, including Bloomberg Distinguished Professor David Sing, who is also a member of the Department of Physics & Astronomy, and P&A Assistant Professor Kevin Schlaufman, explain how planets outside of our solar system are created and discovered—and whether life might exist on them.


Remembering Jan V. Vandenberg

Remembering Jan V. Vandenberg
Jan Vincent Vandenberg, a Johns Hopkins University computer scientist and systems architect who made astronomical images accessible to the public and helped catapult citizen science forward, passed away on May 13, 2021.


Sloan Digital Sky Survey Given the 2021 SIGMOD Systems Award

Sloan Digital Sky Survey Given the 2021 SIGMOD Systems Award
Special Interest Group on Management of Data (SIGMOD) of the Association for Computing Machinery (ACM) has named a team of Sloan Digital Sky Survey members the recipients of the 2021 SIGMOD Systems Award. The citation reads “…Sloan Digital Sky Survey, an early and influential demonstration of the power of data science to transform a scientific domain.  Not […]


Marc Kamionkowski Receives 2021 Gruber Cosmology Prize

Marc Kamionkowski Receives 2021 Gruber Cosmology Prize
William R. Kenan, Jr. Professor Marc Kamionkowski has been awarded the 2021 Gruber Cosmology Prize, along with Uroš Seljak of the University of California at Berkeley and Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, and Matias Zaldarriaga of the Institute for Advanced Studies, for their contributions to methods essential for studying the early universe through analysis of the […]


‘Hubble Sees Double’

‘Hubble Sees Double’
JHU’s Hub highlights the research of graduate student Hsiang-Chih Hwang and Associate Professor Nadia Zakamska.


Turner Woody Receives 2021 Donald E. Kerr Memorial Award

Turner Woody Receives 2021 Donald E. Kerr Memorial Award
The department is pleased to announce physics major Turner Woody as recipient of the 2021 Donald E. Kerr Memorial Award.  The Kerr Award, established in 1979, acknowledges outstanding graduating physics majors who have distinguished themselves through their performance in the classroom, their accomplishments in research, and their other positive contributions to the department.  Congratulations, Turner! 


Justin Otter, Bastian Pradenas, Isu Ravi, Sanjana Sekhar, and Nicholas Speeney Receive Graduate Teaching Awards

Justin Otter, Bastian Pradenas, Isu Ravi, Sanjana Sekhar, and Nicholas Speeney Receive Graduate Teaching Awards
The Graduate Program Committee is pleased to announce their selection of the most outstanding graduate student Teaching Assistants in the department with their annual graduate teaching awards. Justin Otter is awarded the Agnew Prize for Excellence in Teaching for his fall 2020 performance in introductory physics, where he prioritizes students’ success and clear communication and […]


Erwin Tanin Receives International Student Prize Fellowship

Erwin Tanin Receives International Student Prize Fellowship
Second year graduate student Erwin Tanin has been awarded an International Student Prize Fellowship by the department. Tanin is working in Theoretical Particle Physics and Cosmology with David Kaplan and Surjeet Rajendran, and has published two papers during his time at JHU. Currently, Tanin is focusing on theoretical ideas for dark energy. Furthermore, Tanin has also […]


Hsiang-Chih Hwang and Nadia Zakamska’s publication unveils discovery of “Dual Supermassive Black Holes” in the Distant Universe

Hsiang-Chih Hwang and Nadia Zakamska’s publication unveils discovery of “Dual Supermassive Black Holes” in the Distant Universe
Graduate student Hsiang-Chih Hwang and Associate Professor Nadia Zakamska are part of the research team that has published an article in Nature Astronomy titled “A hidden population of high-redshift double quasars unveiled by astrometry.” The study presents the discovery of two supermassive black hole pairs in the early universe. Professor Zakamska’s “Behind the Paper” article […]