Category: Research

Great Lakes Climate Modeling in the News

image98360-persPengfei Xue (CEE) and his modeling work through the Great Lakes Research Center, which led to a more comprehensive climate and hydrodynamics model for the whole Great Lakes region, has been featured in several science media outlets including Science Daily, Phys.org, Terra Daily and Supercomputing Online News. The story was shared numerous times by collaborators and the science community on Twitter.

Weather the Storm: Improving Great Lakes Modeling

The collaborative work brought together researchers from Michigan Technological University, Loyola Marymount University, LimnoTech and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s Great Lakes Environmental Research Laboratory. Pengfei Xue, an assistant professor of civil and environmental engineering at Michigan Tech, led the study through his work at the Great Lakes Research Center on campus.

One of the important concepts in climate change, in addition to knowing the warming trend, is understanding that extreme events become more severe. That is both a challenge and an important focus in regional climate modeling. —Pengfei Xue

Read more at Michigan Tech News, by Allison Mills.

Jaszczak discovery is spreading across the world

image144299-persDozens of news outlets and science blogs have covered research by John Jaszczak (Physics) and his team that led to the discovery of the new mineral merelaniite.

Several of the outlets include United Press International, Australian Mining, Phys.org, the German blog Scinexx, several geology blogs like Geology In and Science Explorer. Local coverage in Tanzania has also been extensive including stories by the BBC and The Guardian in Swahili.

New Funding

Raymond Shaw

Raymond Shaw (Physics/EPSSI) is the principal investigator on a research and development project that has received a $150,931 grant from the U.S. Department of Defense, Air Force Research Laboratory (AFRL).

 

 


Will Cantrellimage64675-pers

Will Cantrell (Physics) and Claudio Mazzoleni (Physics) are Co-PIs on the project, “An Investigation of the Suitability of a Laboratory Cloud Chamber for Optical Radiative Transfer Measurements.”

 

This is the first year of a two-year project potentially totaling $316,374.

Jaszczak presented at Denver Mineral and Gem Show

image144299-persJohn Jaszczak (Physics and adjunct curator of the A. E. Seaman Mineral Museum) presented an invited lecture at the Denver Mineral and Gem Show (Sept. 16-18).

Jaszczak presented “Mineralogical Miracles From Merelani, Tanzania,” and brought an exhibit of faceted fluorite gemstones from the museum’s collection that were donated to the museum by the late Harold Dibble.

Read more at Tech Today.

New Funding in Physics

Claudio Mazzoleni (Physics/EPSSI) is the principal investigator on a research and development project that has received $400,321 from the National Science Foundation.

Jacek Borysow (Physics), Raymond Shaw (Physics), Will Cantrell (Physics) and David Ciochetto (Physics) are co-PIs of the project, “MRI: Development of a Water Vapor and Temperature Mapping System to Study Cloud-Turbulence Interactions in the MTU PI-Chamber.”
This is the first year of a three-year project.

Master Student Andrea Baccarini describes his research work in the Azores

AndreaAndrea Baccarini is an Italian master student who graduated in Physics at the University of Trento in 2016. Andrea performed field research at the Pico Mountain Observatory in the Azores in collaboration with MTU faculty members. Recently, he described his field experience in the MTU “Unscripted: Science and Research” blog as a guest writer with an entry titled “On Top of the World“.

 

Probing Quantum Phenomena in Tiny Transistors

Nearly a thousand times thinner than a human hair, nanowires can only be understood with quantum mechanics. Using quantum models, physicists from Michigan Tech have figured out what drives the efficiency of a silicon-germanium (Si-Ge) core-shell nanowire transistor.

The study, published last week in Nano Letters, focuses on the quantum tunneling in a core-shell nanowire structure. Ranjit Pati (Physics) led the work along with his graduate students Kamal Dhungana and Meghnath Jaishi.

From Michigan Tech News, by Allison Mills