In this edition of the Friday Newsletter, we look ahead to graduation and the conclusion of the academic year, and we celebrate accomplishments!
Contents
CHAIR’S WEEKLY MESSAGE
It’s Final Exam Time!
It’s quiet in the halls of Fondren Science this week. Classes ended on Tuesday (which was a Friday). The reading day and our last Hbar Coffee Bar of the term were on Wednesday. Exams began yesterday. We’re in the thick of finals now, which conclude next Wednesday. Our graduating seniors have their last exams now and a graduation celebration and ceremonies coming up in a week’s time.
It was great to begin the week with an intellectual feast, courtesy of Professor Bonnie Fleming (Yale University). She delivered a masterful lecture on the “phantom particle,” the neutrino. She met with students over lunch in the Fondren Library, and she mingled with the department at our Monday evening reception and end-of-year celebration. She even checked out the Honors Physics Posters that were part of the evening’s festivities, and engaged with those students as they delivered their final report on their semester-long projects.
It’s wonderful to end an academic year with a harvest of knowledge and discovery. To me, as a teacher and a research, these are the great moments of university life: immersion in the frontier of human knowledge.
As we approach the end of the semester and the final “graduation edition” of the Friday newsletter, let us use this penultimate newsletter to celebrate the end of the term, support our students during challenging final exams, and look ahead to celebrating the accomplishments and futures of our graduating seniors.
Sincerely,
Stephen Jacob Sekula Chair, Department of Physics |
DEPARTMENT VIEWS
Physics Graduation Celebration on Friday, May 13 at 3:30pm in McCord Auditorium
Before the official Saturday graduation events proceed, the Department will gather to honor and celebrate our graduating Physics Majors and Biophysical Science Majors. The event will begin at 3:30pm on Friday, May 13 in McCord Auditorium (3rd floor of Dallas Hall). Graduating seniors and their families and friends have received personal invitations to RSVP for the event. All members of the department are welcome to attend and honor our outstanding students as they embark on the next phases of their lives and careers.
Congratulations to Dr. Cynthia Trendafilova on her CAPS Fellowship!
The Department received word from Professor Joel Meyers that cosmology post-doctoral researcher, Dr. Cynthia Trendafilova, has earned (and accepted) a Center for AstroPhysical Surveys (CAPS) Postdoctoral Fellowship at the National Center for Supercomputer Applications (NCSA) located at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. These fellowships are competitive and it’s a hallmark of Cynthia’s excellence and potential for future success that she was awarded one of these positions. We congratulate her on her accomplishments!
Miss a Lecture? The Department Speaker Series is Online for You!
Did you miss a lecture that your friends and colleagues were just raving about? Regret that conflicting course that is always scheduled at the same time as our Monday 4pm Speaker Series events? Did you just learn about our Physics Department Speaker Series?
Never fear! Past Speaker Series events are available from our YouTube playlist. Catch up any time!
Scenes from the Department Receptions, Celebration, and Honors Physics Poster Night
FACULTY NEWS
If you have something to share please feel free to send it along. Stories of your activities in research, the classroom, and beyond are very welcome!
Final Department Faculty Meeting of AY2021-2022 on Monday, May 9 at 4pm
The final departmental faculty meeting of the academic year will be held on Monday, May 9 at 4pm. These meetings are scheduled much earlier in the academic year and posted on the department calendar on the web. The subject of this meeting will be graduate issues and new funding for the department.
STAFF NEWS
The department staff continue to work on behalf of Research Operations (Michele Hill) and Academic Operations (Benisha Young). They can be contacted for assistance, or to make appointments for input and help, through the Department Main Office (FOSC 102).
STUDENT NEWS
If you have something to share please feel free to send it along. Stories of students in research, the classroom, internships or fellowships, awards, etc. are very welcome!
Large Hadron Collider Masterclass in Nepal: Students Engaged in Teaching and Learning
By Santosh Parajuli, SMU Physics Ph.D. Candidate
I am excited to share information about the Masterclass in Particle Physics that was held at Kathmandu University in Nepal during the week of April 28. Thirty-five students (a mix of undergraduate and masters) degree students) participated in the program from Kathmandu University and Tribhuvan University.
It was a one day program with the motivational lecture in particle physics by Steven Goldfarb from the ATLAS Experiment (Dr. Goldfarb is the chair of International Particle Physics Outreach Group, or IPPOG). This was then followed by hands-on session where students learned to use the Hypatia (http://hypatia.phys.uoa.gr/) tool and try to find the Z particle decaying to electron or muons pairs. This was all done using real ATLAS data!
Dr. Suyog Shrestha (The Ohio State University) and myself co-led the hands-on session and helped the student to learn and use tools and identify the signature of Z particle events. The students were able to identify the Z particles and plot its invariant mass histogram at the end as a demonstration of observation and discovery with real data.
The students also learned about the different opportunities at CERN (for example Summer studentship program , Teacher training program etc.).
ALUMNI NEWS
If you are an alum of the doctoral, masters, majors or minor programs in Physics at SMU, or have worked in our program as a post-doctoral researcher, and wish to share news with the community, please send your story to the Physics Department and we’ll work with you to get it included in a future edition.
THE BACK PAGE
The Physics Teacher’s May Physics Challenge!
Society of Physics Students Faculty Advisor and our department’s informal “Puzzle Master,” Prof. Randy Scalise, invites you to try to solve this month’s physics challenge from The Physics Teacher. The first correct solution he receives (scalise@physics.smu.edu) from an SMU Physics faculty member, staff member, or student (Ph.D. or Master’s candidate, SMU SPS member, Physics Major or Minor, or Biophysical Science Major) will be awarded a prize. You needn’t be a Physics major or minor to be a member of the SPS, and all students with an interest in physics are encouraged to join the SMU SPS. Prof. Scalise can help you with that!
The winner will get to select from the following four books,
- Gleick, J. “Chaos: Making a New Science“.
- Crease, R. P. and Mann, Charles C. “The Second Creation: Makers of the Revolution in Twentieth-Century Physics“.
- Thorne, K. “Black Holes and Time Warps: Einstein’s Outrageous Legacy“.
- Greene, B. “The Fabric of the Cosmos: Space, Time, and the Texture of Reality“.
Solutions must be complete enough to understand your strategy, reasoning, and methods; providing answers with no explanations are not acceptable. Dr. Scalise urges submitters who believe they have the correct answer to, of course, also submit their solution to The Physics Teacher using the email address challenges@aapt.org. Make sure to follow the journal’s guidelines for submissions (see below). The deadline is the last day of this month.
Solutions must be complete enough to understand your strategy, reasoning, and methods; providing answers with no explanations are not acceptable. Dr. Scalise urges submitters who believe they have the correct answer to, of course, also submit their solution to The Physics Teacher using the email address challenges@aapt.org. Make sure to follow the journal’s guidelines for submissions (see below). The deadline is the last day of this month.
