Research, teaching and public engagement in Physics at UW–Madison
By Doug Erickson On an August afternoon 50 years ago, graduate student Bill Evans bumped into Robert Fassnacht, a postdoctoral researcher, in Sterling Hall at the University of Wisconsin–Madison. The two didn’t know each other well, but they had talked before. Both were conducting physics experiments in Sterling Hall. Fassnacht mentioned he’d be working through …
Congrats to the 2019-20 Department of Physics Scholarship & Award Winners! Please join us in recognizing their achievements at a virual ceremony to be held via Blackboard Collaborate on Thursday, May 7, at 5pm CDT. Awards Gallery and Virtual Ceremony Information
It’s one thing to have to move a lecture course online, but lab courses — where students learn by doing — is an entirely different story. University Communications spoke to instructors in Physics, including Prof. Deniz Yavuz and Dr. Jim Reardon, about the transition to online lab instruction. Read the full story
Wisconsin Quantum Institute director and professor of physics Mark Saffman and his research group are part of a team that will attempt to make quantum computing hardware more applicable to real-world problems. The up to $7.4 million Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) funding is through the ONISQ program — Optimization with Noisy Intermediate-Scale Quantum devices. …
When a fire extinguisher is opened, the compressed carbon dioxide forms ice crystals around the nozzle, providing a visual example of the physics principle that gases and plasmas cool as they expand. When our sun expels plasma in the form of solar wind, the wind also cools as it expands through space — but not …
University of Wisconsin–Madison plasma physicists will harness the power of high-temperature superconducting magnets to design and build a more efficient plasma fusion device, thanks to a two-year, $5 million U.S. Department of Energy grant awarded April 7. The team, led by physics Professor Cary Forest, has been conducting fusion research for over two decades and expects this new …
Congrats to first-year grad student Sarah McCarthy on being named a 2020 NSF GRFP recipient!
Like course instruction, The Physics Learning Center and other tutoring and advising groups on campus have gone online to support their students’ learning. PLC was featured in an article about how these Centers are adapting to instructional changes during the pandemic. Full Story
Congrats to grad students Xiaoyu Jiang and Abigail Shearrow on earning QISE-NET awards! Jiang will work with Argonne National Labs and Shearrow will work with Google for their respective projects. Read more about their projects here
Prof. Stanislav Boldyrev earned a DOE Early Career Award in 2010. Ten years later, the DOE checked in to see what his research accomplishments in plasma turburlence have been during that time. Read the full story