Research, teaching and public engagement in Physics at UW–Madison
Wasikul Islam, a postdoc in Sau Lan Wu’s group, was recognized by the UW–Madison Postdoc Association with an Excellence in Service Award. He was nominated for his science outreach activities, promotion of basic sciences, volunteering and mentorship to undergrad Physics students through various non-profit organizations including the American Physical Society. The Postdoc Excellence Awards recognize …
To truly understand our physical world, scientists look to the very small, subatomic particles that make up everything. Particle physics generally falls under the discipline of high energy physics (HEP), where higher and higher energy collisions — tens of teraelectronvolts, or about ten trillion times the energy of visible light — lead to the detection …
Ten years ago, on July 4, 2012, the CMS and ATLAS collaborations at the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) at CERN — including many current and former UW–Madison physicists — announced they had discovered a particle that was consistent with predictions of the Higgs boson. In the ten years since, scientists have confirmed the finding was …
The Department of Physics is happy to announce that Professor Brian Rebel has been promoted to full professor. Rebel is a high energy experimentalist whose research focuses on accelerator-based neutrino physics. He joined the department as an associate professor with a joint appointment at Fermilab in 2018, where he is now a senior scientist. “Professor …
The International Astronomical Union (IAU) has named a minor planet ‘Saulanwu’ after UW–Madison physics professor Sau Lan Wu. The planet (177770) ‘Saulanwu’ (=2005 JE163) was discovered on May 8, 2005 at Mt Lemmon observatory in southern Arizona by a NASA funded project, the Catalina Sky Survey. More details about the planet can be found from …
The Department of Energy’s (DOE) Office of Science announced the selection of 83 scientists — including University of Wisconsin–Madison physics professor Keith Bechtol — to the Early Career Research Program. The funding will allow Bechtol and his group to first work on commissioning the Vera C. Rubin Observatory in preparation for the Legacy Survey of …
High energy physicist Sridhara Dasu was recently named a member of the International Committee for Future Accelerators (ICFA), a term he’ll serve for three years. ICFA was created to facilitate international collaboration in the construction and use of accelerators for high energy physics. The Committee has 16 members, selected primarily from the regions most deeply …
This story, by Meghan Chua, was originally published by the Graduate School In 2012, scientists at CERN’s Large Hadron Collider announced they had observed the Higgs boson particle, verifying many of the theories of physics that rely on its existence. Since then, scientists have continued to search for the properties of the Higgs boson and …
Note: This story has been modified slightly from the original, which was published by the CMS Collaboration. Their version has some nice interactive graphics to check out, too! The standard model of particle physics is our current best theory to describe the most basic building blocks of the universe, the elementary particles, and the interactions …
A biography of Professor Sau Lan Wu was included as the cover story in a recent issue of the AIP History Newsletter (see pages 14-15). The story covers her early life in Hong Kong, her arrival in the U.S. to attend college at Vassar which she attended on a full scholarship, and into her graduate …