Month: November 2013

Alumni Reunite at New Faculty Workshop

Changgong Zhou Lin Pan Haiying HeThree physics alumni reunited at the New Faculty Workshop, sponsored by the AAPT (American Association of Physics Teachers), the AAS (American Astronomical Society), APS Physics, the Research Corporation for Science Advancement, and NSF (National Science Foundation). Changgong Zhou, ’06, Lin Pan, ’08, and Haiying He, ’09, were the only cohorts that originated from the same school and knew each other personally.

Zhou, now at Lawrence Tech University, was a student of Edward Nadgorny working on aperture assisted laser direct write. Pan, now at Cedarville University, studied atomic physics with Donald Beck. He, now at Valparaiso University, did research on electron transport in molecular systems with Ravi Pandey.

The Workshop for New Physics and Astronomy Faculty was held on November 7-10, 2013, in the American Center for Physics, College Park, MD. AAPT sponsors programs to help new faculty become more effective educators and support their quest to gain tenure.

Microcavity Exciton-Polariton Condensates Physics and Applications

Na Young KimPhysics Colloquium
Michigan Technological University
Thursday, November 14, 2013
at 4:00 pm
Room 139 Fisher Hall
Microcavity Exciton-Polariton
Condensates Physics and Applications
Na Young Kim
Edward L. Ginzton Laboratory,
Stanford University, Stanford California

Partially sponsored/funded by the
Visiting Women & Minority Lecturer/Scholar Series

View the PDF Document

Alum Vithal Tilvi Co-Discovers Universe’s Most Distant Galaxy

Vithal TilviVithal Tilvi, who graduated in 2006 with an MS in Physics from Michigan Tech, co-authored a paper in Nature on the most distant galaxy as it was 13 billion years ago.

UT, Texas A&M Astronomers Discover Universe’s Most Distant Galaxy

The paper’s lead author is Steven Finkelstein, an assistant professor at the University of Texas at Austin and 2011 Hubble Fellow who previously was a postdoctoral research associate at Texas A&M under the mentorship of Texas A&M astrophysicist Casey Papovich, who is second author as well as current mentor to Tilvi. Ten other international institutions collaborated on the effort, from California to Massachusetts and Italy to Israel.

On a crisp, clear April night, Tilvi, Finkelstein and his graduate student, Mimi Song, sat behind a panel of computers in the control room of the W.M. Keck Observatory, which is perched atop the summit of Hawaii’s dormant Mauna Kea volcano and houses the two largest optical and infrared telescopes in the world, each standing eight stories tall, weighing 300 tons and equipped with 10-meter-wide mirrors.

They detected only one galaxy during their two nights of observation at Keck, but it turned out to be the most distant ever confirmed.

Read more at Science, Texas A&M University. Watch the video of the interview with Tilvi.

New Physics Faculty Ramy El Ganainy

Ramy El GanainyRamy El-Ganainy, PhD

Ramy El-Ganainy joins the Department of Physics as assistant professor. He comes to Michigan Tech from the University of Toronto, where he was a postdoctoral fellow in the Department of Physics.

El-Ganainy received his PhD in Optics and Photonics and MS in Optics from the College of Optics and Photonics at the University of Central Florida. He also received an MS in Electromagnetics and BS in Electronics and Communication Engineering from Cairo University.

El-Ganainy’s work has been published in Optics Express, New Journal of Physics and International Journal of Theoretical Physics. He is a member of the Optical Society, International Society of Optics and Photonics and Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers. His research experience includes theory and applications of non-Hermitian optics, quantum effects inside photonic crystal structures and optical nonlinearities in interaction nano-suspensions.

Read more at Tech Today.