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Category: News

Non-Technical Audience – Physics Example

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Research Magazine 2013
Research Magazine 2013

Jennifer Donovan teaches the workshop “Writing for a Non-Technical Audience” at Kasetsart University in Thailand. She uses examples from Michigan Tech, such as the news site, Michigan Tech Magazine, and Michigan Tech Research Magazine. Donovan writes:

I pass around copies of both magazines. Professor Bob Nemiroff on the cover of the Michigan Tech Research magazineThe 2013 research magazine cover–showing Physics Professor Bob Nemiroff in a bar, holding up a cognac bottle labeled “space time” and a brandy snifter–particularly intrigues them. “It’s about astrophysics,” I say. ”Professor Nemiroff is an astrophysicist who has done research showing that space time is smooth like cognac rather than frothy and bubbly like beer (the popularly held belief). You see, that’s how to make hard science interesting. Who could resist reading that story?”

Read more at Tech Goes to Thailand: The Write Way by Jennifer Donovan.

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Alumni Reunite at New Faculty Workshop

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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.

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Microcavity Exciton-Polariton Condensates Physics and Applications

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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

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

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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.

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New Physics Faculty Ramy El Ganainy

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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.

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Matt Beals is an Outstanding Scholarship Award Recipient

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Matthew BealsMatthew Beals, who is a PhD candidate in Atmospheric Sciences, is a Fall 2013 recipient of the Outstanding Scholarship Award. Matt was nominated by the Department of Physics and recognized for his accomplishments by the Graduate School at Michigan Tech.

A certificate of recognition for this award will be presented at the Graduate Research Colloquium Banquet that is held in the spring.

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Hugo Ayala Research

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HAWC Detector
Fig 1. HAWC detector. Brighter tanks are already constructed. Darker tanks show how the final detector will look.

Research with the HAWC Gamma-Ray Observatory

The High Altitude Water Cherenkov detector, or HAWC detector, is a high-energy gamma-ray observatory. It is currently under construction in Mexico at 4,100 m (13,450 feet) altitude. Gamma rays are part of the electromagnetic spectrum, like radio waves or x-rays. The main difference is that gamma rays are the most energetic photons that we know so far.

The HAWC detector is already measuring the secondary particles produced by the electromagnetic interactions of gamma rays with the particles that make up the atmosphere. The detection of the secondary particles with 300 water Cherenkov detectors, or WCDs, provides information about the direction of the primary gamma-ray photon and its energy.

I am doing my research with Dr. Petra Hüntemeyer. Part of my research is focused on the calibration system of the detector. I maintain the software to control a laser that is used to calibrate the timing and the charge of the WCDs. A view of the HAWC detector is shown in Figure 1.

The second part and main goal of my research is the study of the Galactic Diffuse Emission (GDE) at TeV energies. This emission is formed mostly of photons that were produced by the interaction of cosmic ray particles with gas and radiation fields in the Milky Way Galaxy. Since the gamma-ray photons are a product of the high-energy cosmic rays, studying the GDE will help us understand how cosmic rays propagate and distribute in the galaxy. Currently, I am analyzing data from the Fermi Space Telescope to study GDE in different regions of the sky, like the Cygnus arm of our galaxy. I am also doing simulations to understand how well HAWC will detect the GDE. Figure 2 shows the result of one of these simulations with statistical excesses of gamma rays along regions of the Galactic Plane.

by Hugo Ayala

GDE
Fig 2. Simulation of the GDE as seen by HAWC. White spots are regions where HAWC cannot see.
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