Department News Archive


Physics Fair This Saturday, April 27, 11AM – 5:30PM

This Saturday, April 27th, is the department’s 16th annual Physics Fair! Bring your friends and family to enjoy a day of science, food, and fun — there’s a 0% chance of rain and a forecast high temperature of 17.778°C! The fair offers over 200 hands-on physics demonstrations, Two (2) Professor Extraordinaire Shows, The Science Challenge […]


Prof. Marc Kamionkowski Invited to Give Halley Lecture at Oxford University

Prof. Marc Kamionkowski has been invited to give the Halley Lecture at Oxford University. This lecture is named for Edmond Halley, for whom the comet is named and is intended to honor scientists who have made important contributions to astronomy or geophysics. Prof. Kamionkowski’s talk will be held 19 May 2019 and will be titled, […]


France Córdova to Present Robert Resnick Lecture on Thurs., April 11 @ 3:30

France Córdova, Director of the National Science Foundation, will present the department’s annual Robert Resnick Lecture on Thursday, April 11, at 3:30 PM in Schafler Auditorium. Córdova is an astrophysicist and the 14th director of the National Science Foundation (NSF)


Adam Riess to Present Department-Wide Colloquium on March 28th at 3:30

This week’s department-wide colloquium, on Thursday, March 28th, will be given by our own Adam Riess, Bloomberg Distinguished Professor, senior member of the science staff at STScI, and 2011 Nobel Laureate in Physics. His title is “A New Measurement of the Expansion rate of the Universe: Hints of New Physics?” The talk will take place at 3:30 […]


Kirsten Hall Selected to Participate in the 69th Lindau Nobel Laureate Meeting

Congratulations to Ph. D. student Kirsten Hall, who has been selected to participate in the 69th Lindau Nobel Laureate Meeting taking place from June 30th to July 5th 2019 in Lindau, Germany. Only the 600 most qualified young scientists are given the opportunity to enrich and share the unique atmosphere of the Lindau Nobel Laureate […]


Prof. C. Megan Urry Elected a Member of the JHU Society of Scholars

Prof. C. Megan (Meg) Urry has been elected a member of the JHU Society of Scholars. She received her PhD at JHU in 1984. She was a member of the senior science staff for many years at the Space Telescope Science Institute, before moving to Yale where she served as Chair of the Physics Department. […]


Brice Ménard Receives President’s Frontier Award

On Tuesday afternoon, Associate Professor Brice Ménard, received the $250,000 President’s Frontier Award to support his exploration of new ways to analyze astronomical data. He said it was unexpected to see university President Ronald J. Daniel Provost Sunil Kumar, Krieger School of Arts and Sciences Dean Beverly Wendland, and other colleagues walk into the classroom […]


Melissa Diamond Named 2019 Gardner Fellow

Melissa Diamond has been awarded the Gardner Fellowship in our department. Diamond is a third-year student working with David Kaplan. Her current research is focused on a project analyzing how polarized light from AGNs or other objects could be used to detect particles/fields with axion-like couplings to photons.


Society of Physics Students’ National Office Names JHU Outstanding Chapter

The National Council of the Society of Physics Students has awarded the Johns Hopkins University SPS Chapter a 2017-2018 Outstanding Chapter. Chapter designations are determined by carefully reviewing the information, photos and supporting material presented in the annual SPS Chapter Reports.


Vivian Poulin Leads Cosmology Theorists in Paper Concerning “Hubble Tension”

Postdoctoral fellow Vivian Poulin, along with graduate student Tanvi Karwal, Professsor Marc Kamionkowski, and Tristan Smith, of Swarthmore College, have published a paper that offers a resolution to one of cosmology’s biggest crises: “Hubble Tension.” The team of theorists point to a new exotic form of matter in the early universe as a possible solution […]