John 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.
Images from “Interfacial Mode Interactions of Surface Plasmon Polaritons on Gold Nanodome Films” co-authored by Jae Yong Suh (Physics) appeared on the August cover of Applied Materials and Interfaces.
The article describes a method to create centimeter-scale lattices of gold nanodomes in order to study their optical properties.
Petra Huentemeyer (Physics/EPPSI) received a $170,000 research and development grant from the National Science Foundation (NSF).
Huentemeyer is the principal investigator for “Investigating Large Scale Structures and Galactic Plane Morphologies at TeV Energies with the HAWC Observatory.”
This is the first year of a three-year project potentially totalling $510,000.
From Tech Today
Andrea 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“.
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.
The Vice President for Research Office announces the 2016 REF awards and thanks the review committees, the deans and department chairs for their time spent on this important internal research award process. Among the recipients are:
Infrastructure Enhancement (IE) Grants
Will Cantrell, Physics/EPSSI – Refrigerated Water Re-Circulating System
Research Seed (RS) Grants
Jae Yong Suh, Physics
Congratulations to Raymond Shaw (Atmospheric Sciences, Physics) for winning the 2016 Research Award.
In the words of Ravi Pandey, chair of the Department of Physics, Shaw is “widely recognized in the national and international community of atmospheric scientists investigating cloud microphysical processes.”
His research is both detailed and big—from the minutiae of raindrops to understanding the patterns of cloud formation. As part of this research, he collaborates with the National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCAR) to lead a team of scientists to conduct holographic imaging of cloud droplets from an airplane laboratory. The research was published in Science last fall and was the subject of a Michigan Tech Research Magazine story.
“The unifying aspect of my research is the atmosphere,” Shaw says, adding that the process of research inspires him. “It’s like working on an incredibly diverse set of intertwined and nested puzzles. Every now and then a burst of insight allows us to solve a part of one of them.”
Shaw is also recognized for his teaching and says that teaching is another aspect of research. “Students learn at a deeper level when they dig into a research problem,” he explains.
“The advisor-grad student relationship is the closest thing I know to an apprenticeship, where the grad student masters a craft by working side by side with a mentor.”
He considers Alex Kostinski (Physics) his own mentor who has helped him on Michigan Tech’s campus from day one. Along with Pandey’s support and the insight from his students, Shaw says, “Perhaps it sounds quaint, but I do feel like being recognized with the MTU research award is a larger recognition of the colleagues and students with whom I have worked.”
Raymond Shaw (Physics/EPSSI) is the principal investigator on a project that has received $120,339 research and development grant from the National Science Foundation.
Will Cantrell (EPSSI) is the Co-PI on the project “EAGER: Exploring Aerosol Indirect Effects in a Laboratory Cloud Chamber.”
This is the first year of a potential two-year project totaling $243,869.
