Featured News Archives - Page 3 of 10

signal:noise

May 16, 2025

Let’s kick off summer with some physics and electronic music! Your Harmonic Motion favorites are back with a new show!

What: signal:noise

Science & Reason (DJ Set) + ColliderScope (Physics VJ Set)

Who: Science & Reason + ColliderScope

Science & Reason = a mix of techno, dance, and house music (Bains Professor Steve Johnston)

ColliderScope = audio waveform-created images from CERN + sound waves across oscilloscope screens (Assistant Professor Larry Lee)

Where: Fly by Night, 906 Sevier Ave., Suite 126, Knoxville TN 37920

When: 24 May 2025 @ 9 PM, (21+, $5)

WiP Wraps up the Year with Mingling and Mentoring

May 13, 2025

The Women in Physics (WiP) group closed the academic year with good company: both social and professional.

On May 8 the group hosted the spring 2025 edition of the Women in Physics lunch. These biannual get-togethers allow undergraduate and graduate students, as well as post-docs and faculty, to share experiences and advice while enjoying great food. A record 40+ people attended. The next meeting will be December 3, 2025, where WiP hopes to attract even more attendees.

Among the discussion topics was the WiP Mentorship Program, which held its end-of-term meeting two days prior. The Undergraduate Women in Physics group spearheaded this program and launched it this semester. Interested undergraduate and graduate students, as well as post-docs, sign up and are assigned to a small group led by a faculty member. Each group gathers about once a month to discuss a variety of subjects that impact the development of a physicist and to exchange ideas, experiences, and guidance.

WiP enjoys department support and its programs are open to anyone interested in building a stronger physics community.

—Courtesy of Professor Adriana Moreo

Honors Day 2025

May 8, 2025

The Department of Physics and Astronomy gathered on May 5 for our annual Honors Day celebration to mark another year of amazing achievements. Staff, students, and faculty were recognized for their outstanding service, academic accomplishments, and research contributions.

Staff Honors

Extraordinary Departmental Service Award

This award recognizes extraordinary contributions of physics staff members. For her exceptional service organizing travel and managing reimbursement for hundreds of students, researchers, and faculty in the Department of Physics & Astronomy, this year’s honor went to Paula Keaton.

Undergraduate Awards

The undergraduate awards recognize both beginning and senior students for their accomplishments in academics, research, and leadership. For 2025 there were 10 exceptional nominees for these honors: Jordan Ashley, Olivia Clark, Daniel Dumont, Isabelle Garrett, Lindsey Hessler, Adam Krcal, Kinsley Lane, Isaac Noe, Jack Peltier, and Nathan Whittington.

The Outstanding First Year Physics Student Awards recognize extraordinary achievement by students in the first year of physics study. This year there were four honorees: Olivia Clark, Isabelle Garrett, Kinsley Lane and Nathan Whittington.

The Talley Awards are named for the late Robert Talley, who was a physics department distinguished alumnus and whose generosity made these honors possible.

The Talley Award for Outstanding Undergraduate Research went to Jack Peltier, who works in Professor Robert Grzywacz’s nuclear physics group. He started out providing technical support like 3D printing and CAD design, with his responsibilities growing to include data analysis and detector construction. He is the first author on a Physics Letters B paper under review.

The Talley Award for Outstanding Undergraduate Leadership went to Lindsey Hessler. A double major in physics and business, she is part of the medium energy physics research group and took an active role in helping set up Assistant Professor Dien Nguyen’s 3He polarization lab. She has also designed presentations on professionalism and secured funding for a Women in Physics Mentorship Matrix to build camaraderie and offer career advice and mentoring to students and faculty.

The James W. McConnell Award for Academic Excellence recognizes students who have excelled in the classroom. This year’s awardee, Daniel Dumont, is a double major in physics along with biochemistry and cellular and molecular biology. He has a stellar transcript and has also excelled in the lab and in data analysis.

The most prestigious of our undergraduate awards is the Douglas V. Roseberry Distinguished Upper Classman Major Award, supported by the generosity of the Roseberry Family. This honor recognizes an upper level student who has excelled in academics, research, leadership, and building a departmental community. This year’s honoree is Jordan Ashley, who came to the department as a transfer student and has excelled both at particle physics research and revitalizing UT’s chapter of the Society of Physics Students. She has organized workshops, social events, conference travel, public outreach, and fundraising efforts. As SPS president, she has worked hard to make sure the chapter serves the physics student community.

Photo of Isabelle Garrett — Isabelle Garrett

A Photo of Nathan Whittington — Nathan Whittington

A Photo of Lindsey Hessler — Lindsey Hessler

A Photo of Daniel Dumont — Daniel Dumont

A Photo of Jordan Ashley — Jordan Ashley

Service Awards

Physics students make meaningful and thoughtful contributions to the department’s classrooms and teaching laboratories. This year 11 students were nominated for the service awards that acknowledge their investment of time and talent: Dessie Durham, Daniel DeSena, Ryan Elder, Josiah Elliott, Joseph Hewa, Ahmed Ismail, Ben Johnson, Brodie Kane, Marianna Pezzella, Caroline Riggall, and Adam Vendrasco.

For those efforts over the past academic year the department presented three Outstanding Graduate Teaching Assistant Awards. The honors went to:

Ahmed Ismail: For extraordinary service as a GTA for graduate-level quantum mechanics.

Brodie Kane: For outstanding performance as a GTA in the studio labs for pre-health majors.

Caroline Riggall: For outstanding performance as a GTA in astronomy labs.

A Photo of Caroline Riggall — Caroline Riggall

The department also recognized Ryan Elder with the James E. Parks Award, established by Physics Alumnus Richard Manley to honor students whose creativity and innovative thinking make a significant and positive difference in the teaching laboratories.

Graduate Awards

Graduate students are crucial to the department’s success in research, teaching, mentoring, and leadership. This year nine students were nominated for graduate awards: Chathuddasie Amarasinghe, Nora Bauer, Jordan O’Kronley, Louis Primeau, Caroline Riggall, Aya Rutherford, Brandi Skipworth, Jinu Thomas, and Colby Thompson.

The Stelson Fellowships are named for the late Paul Stelson, who had a prestigious career at Oak Ridge National Laboratory and served as an adjunct professor in the physics department. The Stelson Family established these honors to support outstanding graduate students, especially in their research endeavors.

The Stelson Fellowship for Beginning Research went to Louis Primeau. Working with Assistant Professor Yang Zhang, his focus is on topological transition, and quantum transport in two dimensional semiconductors for the precise measurements of quantum wavefunctions and potential applications. He has published papers in PRL and Progress in Quantum Electronics and has another accepted in Nature Electronics.

Jinu Thomas won the Stelson Fellowship for Professional Promise. As part of Bains Professor Steve Johnston’s group, he is working on an inelastic photon scattering technique that has become an essential probe of correlated materials. He has published in high-profile journals like npj Quantum Materials and Physical Review X. Last year he won a competitive US Department of Energy Office of Science Graduate Student Research fellowship.

The Fowler-Marion Award recognizes a graduate student who has made exceptional contributions to the department in scholarship, research, and departmental citizenship. This year’s honoree is Brandi Skipworth. She has been an outstanding GTA and plays a crucial role in a track-finder project for the high-luminosity Large Hadron Collider, mastering the intricacies of track finding and statistical methods in her work with Assistant Professor Tova Holmes. She also mentors new graduate students, hosts social events for her fellow students, and serves on panels to best represent the department.

A Photo of Louis Primeau — Louis Primeau

A Photo of Brandi Skipworth — Brandi Skipworth

Faculty Awards

Each year the Society of Physics Students and the Graduate Physics Society choose an outstanding teacher and research advisor to recognize at Honors Day. This year’s awardees were:

A Photo of Christine Nattrass — Christine Nattrass

Society of Physics Students Teacher of the Year Award: Professor Christine Nattrass

Society of Physics Students Research Advisor of the Year Award: Assistant Professor Tova Holmes

A Photo of Steve Johnston — Steve Johnston

Graduate Physics Society Teacher of the Year Award: Bains Professor Steven Johnston

(Special Mention: Lincoln Chair Professor Cristian Batista)

Graduate Physics Society Research Advisor of the Year Award: Assistant Professor Dien Nguyen

(Special Mention: Professor David Alan Tennant)

A Photo of the University of Tennessee Physics Office Staff — Yvonne Reall, Cheryl Huskey, Paula Keaton, Showni Medlin-Crump

Honors Day would not be possible without the hard work of the physics office staff: Yvonne Reall, Cheryl Huskey, Paula Keaton, and Showni Medlin-Crump. Thanks also to Brad Gardner and Paul Lewis for technical support and photography.

A Night at the Planetarium: The Incredible Sun

May 7, 2025

Join us Friday, May 9, for this month’s planetarium show: The Incredible Sun!

Every second, the Sun emits a million times more energy than the world consumes every year. Where does such a huge amount of power come from? Discover our star through the breathtaking time lapses. Thanks to the real images taken by the Solar Dynamics Observatory and processed by advanced mathematical methods, you will experience the true nature of the Sun and find out that it is far from being as calm as it seems at first glance.

The one-hour event begins at 8 PM in the Nielsen Physics Building Planetarium (Room 108). The show is free and open to all ages, but seating is limited so please sign up beforehand. See you there!

Jack Peltier Wins Goldwater Scholarship

April 14, 2025

Congratulations to Jack Peltier, a math and physics honors major, on winning a prestigious Goldwater Scholarship! Peltier works with Professor Robert Grzywacz exploring the structure of atomic nuclei. A native of Franklin, Tennessee, he is one of three UT students to win a Goldwater Scholarship for 2025-2026.

Holmes and Johnston Win CAS Honors

April 4, 2025

Faculty members Steven Johnston and Tova Holmes at the College of Arts and Sciences Faculty Convocation Award Ceremony on March 31, 2025. — Steve Johnston and Tova Holmes

Each year the College of Arts and Sciences honors faculty members who’ve excelled in teaching, advising, outreach, research and creative activity, and other aspects of the college’s mission. The Department of Physics and Astronomy was well-represented at the annual awards ceremony on March 31, when Assistant Professor Tova Holmes and Bains Professor Steve Johnston were recognized as outstanding researchers.

Understanding Matter’s Foundations

Holmes works in elementary particle physics and is deeply involved with research at the Large Hadron Collider at CERN. She started at the ATLAS Experiment and is now part of the CMS Experiment, which sorts through the results of the LHC’s powerful particle collisions to search for new particles (and new physics) using the Compact Muon Solenoid Detector. She’s also turned her attention to the promise of a muon collider to further test the limits of what we understand about the particles and forces that make up all matter. Since joining the physics faculty in 2020, Holmes has won significant support and recognition for her work. In 2022 she was awarded a U.S. Department of Energy Early Career Research Award. In 2024 she won the university’s first-ever Cottrell Award and earlier this year she was named a Sloan Research Fellow. The college presented her with an Excellence in Research and Creative Achievement Award (Early Career.)

Decoding Quantum Materials

While Holmes focuses on particles, Bains Professor Steve Johnston wants to understand how and why quantum materials behave the way they do. As a condensed matter theorist, he applies mathematical models to demystify the complex interactions in quantum systems—those that defy the rules of classical physics models and have the potential to revolutionize science and technology (e.g., superconductivity). Johnston joined the faculty in 2014. Since then he has won a National Science Foundation CAREER Award (2019), a UT Chancellor’s Citation Award for Extraordinary Professional Promise (2020), seen his research featured on the cover of Nature Physics, and played a key role in the university’s successful bid to win NSF funding for the Center for Advanced Materials and Manufacturing (CAMM). Last year the department named him the Elizabeth M. Bains and James A. Bains Professor of Physics and Astronomy, support that enables him to develop and share a collection of codes (called SmoQy) to describe new quantum materials without having to start from scratch. He was honored with the college’s Excellence in Research and Creative Achievement Award (Mid-Career.)

While Holmes and Johnston have both won campus and national honors, the department’s students are equally impressed with their work, having selected Holmes as the Society of Physics Students Research Advisor of the Year and Johnston as the Graduate Physics Society Graduate Teacher of the Year (both in 2023).

In the past 10 years, physics faculty members have won 11 college research and creative achievement awards. Learn more about all the 2025 convocation awardees from the College of Arts and Sciences newsroom.

The FRIB Decay Station: New Horizons with Rare Isotopes

March 25, 2025

Artistic rendering of FDSi Phase 1, credit ORNL and US DOE — Artistic rendering of Phase 1 of the FDSi. Image courtesy of Gary Hollenhead, Toby King, and Adam Malin/Oak Ridge National Laboratory, U.S. Department of Energy.

We depend on rare isotopes often without realizing it—in smoke detectors or PET scans, for example. These exotic nuclei are born in the cosmos and decay into elements found on Earth. Now scientists can create them at the state-of-the-art Facility for Rare Isotope Beams (FRIB), where UT physicists play an important role.

For nearly three years FRIB has produced rare isotopes so researchers can figure out their structure and interactions, learning more about the science behind them and how they can be of benefit to society, all while training a new generation of scientists. A key to FRIB’s success is the innovative and flexible design of a detector system called the FDSi (FRIB Decay Station Initiator).

In an article for Nuclear Physics News, principal FDSi scientists Robert Grzywacz (UT Physics) and his colleague J.M. Allmond (Oak Ridge National Laboratory) review the system’s history, as well as its role in FRIB’s first experiments and potential for new discoveries.

The FDSi is an international collaborative effort stretching back a decade and Grzywacz has been involved from the beginning. This group of researchers designed, built, and put in place a modular combination of beta, neutron, and gamma-ray detectors to measure the decay of the most exotic nuclei produced at FRIB. The FDSi deployment is a three-phase mission, with the first completed in May 2022 and the second in February 2025. The third phase will expand the infrastructure to study FRIB beams with high-precision techniques. Ultimately the initiator system will lead to the FRIB Decay Station (FDS), which will adopt state-of-the-art detector technologies now in development.

Since FRIB began delivering isotopes in May 2022, the FDSi has been part of six experiments in support of the facility’s mission, with 13 approved experiments and 26 proposals submitted last fall. The impact includes four papers published in American Physical Society journals, including a Physical Review Letters outlining the first complete decay pattern of chlorine-45. UT Physics alumnus Ian Cox (’24), a student of Grzywacz, was the first author.

Nuclear Physics News reports on modern research in nuclear physics, including profiles of labs and facilities leading the way in innovation and discovery. Grzywacz and Allmond’s article “The FRIB Decay Station: New Horizons with Rare Isotopes” appeared online March 4.

Join us for the Lunar Eclipse!

March 10, 2025

NASA Image for Total Lunar Eclipse March 2025

Come join us on the roof of the Nielsen Physics Building for the total lunar eclipse March 13-14!

We will open the roof at 11:45 p.m. on Thursday and stay through totality at 3:31 a.m. Friday.

Please see the university’s interactive campus map for visitor/paid parking options.

The eclipse progression schedule is as follows:

11:45 pm Thu, Mar 13	Nielsen Rooftop opens
11:57 pm Thu, Mar 13	Penumbral Eclipse begins The Earth’s penumbra start touching the Moon’s face.
1:09 am Fri, Mar 14	Partial Eclipse begins Partial moon eclipse starts – moon is getting red.
2:26 am Fri, Mar 14	Total Eclipse begins Total moon eclipse starts – completely red moon.
2:58 am Fri, Mar 14	Maximum Eclipse Moon is closest to the center of the shadow.
3:31 am Fri, Mar 14	Total Eclipse ends Total moon eclipse ends. Nielsen Rooftop closes
4:47 am Fri, Mar 14	Partial Eclipse ends Partial moon eclipse ends.
6:00 am Fri, Mar 14	Penumbral Eclipse ends The Earth’s penumbra ends.

A Night at the Planetarium: Cosmic Origins Spectrograph

March 7, 2025

Join us Friday, March 14, for Cosmic Origins Spectrograph!

The fun gets underway at 8 PM in the Nielsen Physics Building planetarium (Room 108) with a viewing of Cosmic Origins Spectrograph. The COS was an instrument installed on the Hubble Space Telescope in 2009 during Servicing Mission 4. This show covers the basics of spectroscopy at a high level and touches on the processing of galactic and extragalactic gas. After the screening we’ll have a live star show!

The event is free and open to all ages, but due to limited seating registration is required. Sign up here!

Harmonic Motion Returns!

March 7, 2025

Poster for March 22, 2025 Event: Harmonic Motion (Physics x Electronic Music)

If you missed it last fall, never fear—we’re bringing science back to the dance floor with Harmonic Motion!

What: Harmonic Motion: Physics x Electronic Music

Who: Science & Reason + ColliderScope

Science & Reason = a mix of techno, dance, and house music (Bains Professor Steve Johnston)

ColliderScope = audio waveform-created images from CERN + sound waves across oscilloscope screens (Assistant Professor Larry Lee)

Where: Scruffy City Hall, 32 Market Square in Downtown Knoxville (parking information)

When: March 22, 2025

9:00 PM Science & Reason

10:00 PM: ColliderScope

11:00 PM: Science & Reason (second set)

Please note the venue is for patrons age 21 or older. Free admission before 7 PM or with a UT ID ($10 cover otherwise).

A perfect ending to your Spring Break!