Physics Newsblog

Faculty Position

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Image of Michigan Tech campus from above
Michigan Technological University
Est. 1885

The Department of Physics at Michigan Technological University (MTU) seeks a candidate to fill a faculty position as a tenure-track Assistant Professor or higher level in Optics, to begin in August 2025. Preference will be given to candidates with experience in quantum optics, optical sensing, polaritonics, or photonic quantum computation. However, researchers displaying excellence in any areas of optics that complement the activities of current physics faculty at MTU are encouraged to apply. The successful candidate will receive support from the Elizabeth and Richard Henes Center for Quantum Phenomena (https://www.mtu.edu/quantum/), housed within the department.

Required qualifications include a Ph.D. in Physics or a closely related field, postdoctoral experience, and a proven publication record. Candidates should demonstrate commitment to teaching and mentoring at undergraduate and graduate levels. 

Please apply online at https://www.employment.mtu.edu/cw/en-us/job/493716/assistantprofessor-optics, including vita, statements of research interests and teaching philosophy, and contact information for three references. Application evaluation will begin January 6, 2025, and continue until the position is filled. Detailed information about the department can be found at https://www.mtu.edu/physics/. 

MTU is Michigan’s flagship technological university and will be a Carnegie-classified R1 institution in 2025. The university provides its graduates with an extremely high return on investment through its academic rigor and focus on experiential learning. Located near the shore of Lake Superior in Michigan’s scenic Upper Peninsula, the university provides a high standard of living. The community offers a small-town environment with outstanding four-season recreational opportunities.

MTU is an Equal Opportunity Educational Institution/Equal Opportunity Employer that provides equal opportunity for all, including protected veterans and individuals with disabilities. 

About the Physics Department

Physicists at Michigan Technological University help students apply academic concepts to real-world issues. Our physicists take on the big questions to discover how the universe works—from the smallest particles to the largest galaxies. The Physics Department offers three undergraduate degrees and three graduate degrees. Supercharge your physics skills to meet the demands of a technology-driven society at a flagship public research university powered by science, technology, engineering, and math. Graduate with the theoretical knowledge and practical experience needed to solve real-world problems and succeed in academia, research, and tomorrow’s high-tech business landscape.

Questions? Contact us at physics@mtu.edu. Follow us on Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube for the latest happenings. Or read more at the Physics Newsblog.

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APS CU*iP at Michigan Tech

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CU*iP 2025
Conferences for Undergraduate Women and Gender Minorities in Physics (CU*iP)

We’re pleased to share that the American Physical Society has chosen Michigan Tech as a host institution for one of fifteen Conferences for Undergraduate Women and Gender Minorities in Physics (CU*iP) being held nationwide in 2025. CU*iP are three-day regional events for undergraduate women and gender minority physics majors to network and build their careers in physics.

The conference will be held January 24 – 26 with applications opening August 26. Detailed information can be found at the CU*iP at Michigan Tech website. Members of the Michigan Tech community are invited to apply to attend the conference, which will feature a grad school and career carnival in addition to the structured programming.

CU*iP conferences are sponsored in part by the National Science Foundation and by the Department of Energy. CU*iP at Michigan Tech is also made possible by support from multiple divisions within the university.

About Women in Physics at MTU

WiP at MTU hosts monthly Tutorials (open to all MTU students) to help build technical skills. Recent tutorials have featured introductions to Latex, MATLAB, and in Fall 2024 we’re featuring Python. We also invite speakers to campus about once a semester to tell us about exciting careers and build connections off campus. We provide community outreach to local schools. All of our programming is aimed at promoting women and gender minorities who want to pursue careers in STEM fields. Meetings and events are open to all students at MTU. Find out more on our involvement link here, or visit us on Instagram.

About the Physics Department

Physicists at Michigan Technological University help students apply academic concepts to real-world issues. Our physicists take on the big questions to discover how the universe works—from the smallest particles to the largest galaxies. The Physics Department offers three undergraduate degrees and three graduate degrees. Supercharge your physics skills to meet the demands of a technology-driven society at a flagship public research university powered by science, technology, engineering, and math. Graduate with the theoretical knowledge and practical experience needed to solve real-world problems and succeed in academia, research, and tomorrow’s high-tech business landscape.

Questions? Contact us at physics@mtu.edu. Follow us on Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube for the latest happenings. Or read more at the Physics Newsblog.APS CU*iP at Michigan Technological University

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Extension Ceremony for Pierre Auger Observatory

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Professor Emeritus David Nitz

Emeritus and Research Professor David Nitz attended a formal ceremony held in November in Malargüe, Argentina, to recognize a 10-year extension to the international agreement governing the Pierre Auger Observatory.

The Pierre Auger Observatory is the world’s largest cosmic ray detector, covering an area of 3,000 square kilometers. Located in Malargüe, it is operated by a collaboration of more than 400 scientists from 17 countries. The aim of the observatory is the study of the highest energy particles of the universe — ultra-high energy cosmic rays.

Michigan Tech is one of only eight U.S. institutions of higher education to collaborate with the Pierre Auger Observatory — and the University plays a crucial role in the observatory according to Nitz.

At the social event following the extension’s signing, Nitz addressed the assembled funding agency representatives, invited dignitaries, and collaboration members. He expressed heartfelt thanks to all in attendance for making the journey that brought the observatory from an impossible dream to the facility that exists today, describing it as “a stellar example of international cooperation in science that transcends political and country boundaries.”

Nitz is one of the founding members of the Auger Collaboration, having been invited in 1991 by Alan Watson (Fellow of the Royal Society), and Nobel prize winner James Cronin to join the effort to establish the observatory. After Watson, he is the longest-serving member of the collaboration.

See the news release from the Auger Observatory for more details on the extension.

About the Physics Department

Physicists at Michigan Technological University help students apply academic concepts to real-world issues. Our physicists take on the big questions to discover how the universe works—from the smallest particles to the largest galaxies. The Physics Department offers three undergraduate degrees and three graduate degrees. Supercharge your physics skills to meet the demands of a technology-driven society at a flagship public research university powered by science, technology, engineering, and math. Graduate with the theoretical knowledge and practical experience needed to solve real-world problems and succeed in academia, research, and tomorrow’s high-tech business landscape.

Questions? Contact us at physics@mtu.edu. Follow us on Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube for the latest happenings. Or read more at the Physics Newsblog.

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In Print: Testing the molecular cloud paradigm for ultra-high-energy gamma ray emission

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Portraits of 3 astrophysics graduate students
PhD Candiates Rhiannon Turner, Samuel Groetsch, and Mahsa Najafi, co-authors on a new paper in Astronomy & Astrophysics.

Graduate students and researchers from the Department of Physics are collaborators on a new paper published in Astronomy & Astrophysics.

Ph.D. candidate Rhiannon Turner is the paper’s lead author. Co-authors include Ph.D. candidates Samuel Groetsch and Mahsa Najafi, as well as Petra Huentemeyer and Xiaojie Wang.

The paper is titled “Testing the molecular cloud paradigm for ultra-high-energy gamma ray emission from the direction of SNR G106.3+2.7.” In it, the authors explore a PeVatron candidate located in the northern part of our galaxy’s plane and aim to answer a long-standing question for the region — where are the PeV cosmic rays being accelerated?

“When most people think of astronomy, they imagine the night sky sparkling with stars, or our Milky Way galaxy painted across the sky. However, there is an entire astrophysical world untouchable by the naked eye,” said Turner, the paper’s corresponding author. “The High Altitude Water Cherenkov (HAWC) Observatory is a wide-field gamma-ray observatory located in Puebla, Mexico, that is operated by a worldwide collaboration. HAWC surveys two-thirds of the sky throughout the day and is sensitive to particles with energies ranging from 100s GeV to 100s TeV, which is about a trillion times more energetic than visible light. These highly energetic particles give us a way to probe extreme astrophysical objects, like Galactic pulsar wind nebulae (PWNe), electron-positron winds surrounding a fast-rotating neutron star (or pulsar); and shell-type supernova remnants (SNRs), the ejecta and shock fronts left behind after a star’s core collapse and explosion. These objects are able to accelerate particles known as cosmic-rays up to PeV (10^15 eV) energies. These types of accelerators are known as Pevatrons.”

In the paper, HAWC collaborators present an updated analysis on the Boomerang region, which is home to two possible PeVatrons: supernova remnant G106.3+2.7 and the boomerang shaped pulsar wind nebula from pulsar J2229+6114. This analysis probes the highest energy emission for this region (>56 TeV) and utilizes molecular clouds, dense regions of molecular hydrogen, to model the region’s shape.

“This modeling technique has not previously been used for a PeVatron study, but the good spatial coincidence between the molecular cloud and the gamma-ray emission in this region provides confirmation that this new avenue for PeVatron identification could help close the information gap for which astrophysical objects accelerate cosmic-rays to PeV energies,” said Turner.

About the Physics Department

Physicists at Michigan Technological University help students apply academic concepts to real-world issues. Our physicists take on the big questions to discover how the universe works—from the smallest particles to the largest galaxies. The Physics Department offers three undergraduate degrees and three graduate degrees. Supercharge your physics skills to meet the demands of a technology-driven society at a flagship public research university powered by science, technology, engineering, and math. Graduate with the theoretical knowledge and practical experience needed to solve real-world problems and succeed in academia, research, and tomorrow’s high-tech business landscape.

Questions? Contact us at physics@mtu.edu. Follow us on Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube for the latest happenings. Or read more at the Physics Newsblog.

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The Reactive INTERFACE Force Field

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Professor Ravindra Pandey
Professor Ravindra Pandey

A team including Michigan Tech research groups led by Ravi Pandey and Greg Odegard (MAE) has published a research article in Nature Communications. The title is “Implementing reactivity in molecular dynamics simulations with harmonic force fields.”

The research highlights the development of the Reactive INTERFACE Force Field (IFF-R) for molecular dynamics simulations for various material systems, including molecules, nanotubes, metals and polymer composites. The newly developed IFF-R, which incorporates specific chemical environments and electronic structure effects as needed, is both accurate and efficient. IFF-R calculations use significantly fewer computational resources compared to current reactive force fields to predict the structural and mechanical properties of complex biological and material structures, from atomic to micrometer scales.

Recent physics alum Geeta Sachdeva (PhD ’22) was a key contributor to this project. The research groups of Hendrik Heinz of the University of Colorado Boulder, Adri van Duin of Penn State, and Pieter J. in ‘t Veld of BASF, Germany also collaborated on the study.

The work was partially supported by grant NNX17AJ32G from the NASA Space Technology Research Institute for Ultra-Strong Composites by Computational Design to Michigan Tech.

About the Physics Department

Physicists at Michigan Technological University help students apply academic concepts to real-world issues. Our physicists take on the big questions to discover how the universe works—from the smallest particles to the largest galaxies. The Physics Department offers three undergraduate degrees and three graduate degrees. Supercharge your physics skills to meet the demands of a technology-driven society at a flagship public research university powered by science, technology, engineering, and math. Graduate with the theoretical knowledge and practical experience needed to solve real-world problems and succeed in academia, research, and tomorrow’s high-tech business landscape.

Questions? Contact us at physics@mtu.edu. Follow us on Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube for the latest happenings. Or read more at the Physics Newsblog.

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Carly Robinson inducted into College of Sciences and Arts Academy

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Professors Jacek Borysow and Ravindra Pandey welcome Dr. Carly Robinson into the College of Sciences and Arts Academy

The College of Sciences and Arts has inducted physics alum Dr. Carly Robinson (BS ’07) into the College of Sciences and Arts Academy.

Dr. Robinson currently serves as Assistant Director for Information Products and Services at the U.S. Department of Energy Office of Scientific and Technical Information. As an undergraduate at Michigan Tech, Robinson worked with Dr. Will Cantrell to study the effect of biomass burning on cirrus cloud formation.

The College of Sciences and Arts Academy recognizes Michigan Tech graduates who have distinguished themselves in their professions and made extraordinary contributions to the advancement of the College of Sciences and Arts, Michigan Technological University, and society.

About the Physics Department

Physicists at Michigan Technological University help students apply academic concepts to real-world issues. Our physicists take on the big questions to discover how the universe works—from the smallest particles to the largest galaxies. The Physics Department offers three undergraduate degrees and three graduate degrees. Supercharge your physics skills to meet the demands of a technology-driven society at a flagship public research university powered by science, technology, engineering, and math. Graduate with the theoretical knowledge and practical experience needed to solve real-world problems and succeed in academia, research, and tomorrow’s high-tech business landscape.

Questions? Contact us at physics@mtu.edu. Follow us on Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube for the latest happenings. Or read more at the Physics Newsblog.

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Claudio Mazzoleni and Will Cantrell Receive 2024 Juan Fernandez de la Mora Prize

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Claudio Mazzoleni
Claudio Mazzoleni
Will Cantrell
Will Cantrell

Professor Claudio Mazzoleni (Physics) and Dean/Professor Will Cantrell (GS/Physics) are recipients of the 2024 Juan Fernandez de la Mora Prize from the American Association for Aerosol Research.

The prize recognizes Mazzoleni and Cantrell’s contributions to experimental research in aerosol science. Their group will receive a differential mobility analyzer (DMA) as a gift from Professor Juan Fernandez de la Mora, a faculty member at Yale University, to measure size distributions of nanometer particles at high resolution.

About the Juan Fernandez de la Mora Prize 

The study of nanometer particles at high resolution has been held back by the limited number of research groups having high-resolution nano-DMAs. To stimulate research in the field, a prototype of a Half-Mini DMA (1,2), which has been developed by Dr. Juan Fernandez de la Mora, a faculty member at Yale University, will be awarded by the AAAR to an AAAR member. One instrument will be awarded each year as a gift from Juan Fernandez de la Mora, and the license to operate it is a gift from the NanoEngineering Corporation (NEC).

About the Physics Department

Physicists at Michigan Technological University help students apply academic concepts to real-world issues. Our physicists take on the big questions to discover how the universe works—from the smallest particles to the largest galaxies. The Physics Department offers three undergraduate degrees and three graduate degrees. Supercharge your physics skills to meet the demands of a technology-driven society at a flagship public research university powered by science, technology, engineering, and math. Graduate with the theoretical knowledge and practical experience needed to solve real-world problems and succeed in academia, research, and tomorrow’s high-tech business landscape.

Questions? Contact us at physics@mtu.edu. Follow us on Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube for the latest happenings. Or read more at the Physics Newsblog.

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Professor Huentemeyer, Other Project Leaders Select Site for Southern Wide-Field Gamma-Ray Observatory

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Michigan Tech is a key contributor to the construction planning of the Southern Wide-Field Gamma-Ray Observatory (SWGO), a cutting-edge facility that will enable researchers to observe very-high- to ultra-high-energy gamma rays from cosmic sources.

Petra Huentemeyer - Gamma-Ray Observatory
Distinguished Professor of Physics Petra Huentemeyer, Vice-spokesperson for the Southern Wide-field Gamma-ray Observatory.

The project’s leaders, including the director of Michigan Tech’s Earth, Planetary, and Space Sciences Institute, Petra Huentemeyer, have selected Pampa La Bola in Chile as the future site of the Gamma-Ray Observatory, which will be the first of its kind in the Southern Hemisphere.

“Selecting the site for an Gamma-Ray Observatory is a major milestone on the path toward building it,” said Huentemeyer. “The fact that we reached a decision in such an effective manner really speaks to the strength of our collaboration of 15 countries.”

Gamma-Ray Observatory - array of detectors
A large array of detectors will allow SWGO to measure cosmic rays up to the PeV scale. Image credit Richard White, MPIK via swgo.org

Read more about the SWGO project at Michigan Tech News.

About the Physics Department

Physicists at Michigan Technological University help students apply academic concepts to real-world issues. Our physicists take on the big questions to discover how the universe works—from the smallest particles to the largest galaxies. The Physics Department offers three undergraduate degrees and three graduate degrees. Supercharge your physics skills to meet the demands of a technology-driven society at a flagship public research university powered by science, technology, engineering, and math. Graduate with the theoretical knowledge and practical experience needed to solve real-world problems and succeed in academia, research, and tomorrow’s high-tech business landscape.

Questions? Contact us at physics@mtu.edu. Follow us on Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube for the latest happenings. Or read more at the Physics Newsblog.

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Volcano Research Expert Simon Carn Wins 2024 MTU Award

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Simon Carn - Volcano Research
Simon Carn
Distinguished Professor, Geological and Mining Engineering and Sciences

Simon Carn is an expert in volcano research. He won the 2024 Michigan Tech Research Award for using satellites to study volcanic activity around the world. Carn has received about $15 million in research grants from top agencies like NASA, the NSF, and the USGS.

He is known globally for studying volcanoes with satellite data. His work is helping to advance volcano research.

Read more on Michigan Tech News

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Best Wishes to Prof. Ramy El-Ganainy

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We say goodbye this month to Professor Ramy El-Ganainy, and wish him the very best as he takes a new position with the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering at St. Louis University. Ramy joined our department in 2013. His contributions to teaching, research, and service have been significant. His research work has brought national and international visibility to Michigan Tech, and helped grow the department’s program in photonics and quantum optics.

We will miss Ramy and wish him great success in the next step of his academic career

Department faculty and staff with Professor El-Ganainy
Best Wishes Ramy!

About Ramy El-Ganainy

El-Ganainy is a professor of physics. Recently, he joined the Max Planck Institute for the Physics of Complex Systems as a guest scientist for one year. He was elected by the Board of Directors of Optica (formerly OSA), Advancing Optics and Photonics Worldwide, to the Society’s 2023 Fellow Class for seminal contributions in the fields of non-Hermitian photonics, parity-time symmetry, and optical supersymmetry. His research interests span a wide spectrum of topics, ranging from classical optics to computational techniques for radiation-matter interactions. He has published 175+ papers and given more than 10 conference presentations.

About the Physics Department

Physicists at Michigan Technological University help students apply academic concepts to real-world issues. Our physicists take on the big questions to discover how the universe works—from the smallest particles to the largest galaxies. The Physics Department offers three undergraduate degrees and three graduate degrees. Supercharge your physics skills to meet the demands of a technology-driven society at a flagship public research university powered by science, technology, engineering, and math. Graduate with the theoretical knowledge and practical experience needed to solve real-world problems and succeed in academia, research, and tomorrow’s high-tech business landscape.

Questions? Contact us at physics@mtu.edu. Follow us on Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube for the latest happenings. Or read more at the Physics Newsblog.

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