PHHighlights SICS 2018
Alumni News
Zach Walters ’02 received his PhD from the University of Colorado at Boulder in 2009. He now works as a design physicist at the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory. Zach has authored and co-authored quite a few publications, including “High Harmonic Spectroscopy of Multichannel Dynamics in Strong-Field Ionization” and “Quantum Dynamics of the Avian Compass.”
Physics graduates, class of 2018
Update from the Department Chair, Theresa Lynn It has been an exciting and change-filled year for the physics program at Harvey Mudd. The 24 physics majors in the graduating class of 2018 stayed true to department tradition by going on to wonderful opportunities in graduate school and the workforce. Our newest alumni can now be found in PhD programs at Harvard, Stanford, Cornell, Columbia, University of Colorado Boulder and numerous other places. They work at a range of companies, from industry giants like Hitachi to small ventures like a Bay-area green battery technology startup. Meanwhile, this year marked retirement from classroom teaching for Patti Sparks, who is conducting research with students and serving as chair of the APS Far West Region, and partial retirement for longtime faculty member and former department chair John Townsend, who will teach his last classes here this fall and next spring. Both Patti and John will move into full retirement in July 2019. It was wonderful to see both recognized as honorary alumni during Alumni Weekend (see page 3). We have been delighted to welcome two new faculty members this fall: Mark Ilton, a tenuretrack hire in experimental polymer physics and biophysics, and Jessica Arlett, who joins us for two years from a research scientist position role at Caltech. You’ll find more details on both of our newest faculty members, along with selected other research and professional updates from department members, inside this newsletter. As I reflect on the accomplishments of our alumni, the legacies of recent and upcoming retirees and the ambitions of our new faculty members, I am inspired by the close facultystudent collaboration that is a signature of the physics program at Harvey Mudd. The physics hallways are alive not only with office hours and homework groups, but with research group meetings, one-on-one independent study sessions, and hands-on building and experimentation. Students publish their findings and share their work at conferences around the world; along the way, they discover, reaffirm or redefine their career pathways as they gain confidence and experience to become leaders in their chosen fields. (continued on next page)
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David Liao ’05 received a PhD in physics (2010) from Bob Austin’s lab at Princeton University and was a postdoc in Thea Tlsty’s lab at the University of California, San Francisco (2010–2012). David remains an associate researcher at UCSF and is a full-time, private tutor in New Jersey focusing on physics, calculus and linear algebra. He’s looking for ways to apply physics education research to the teaching of AP Physics 1. He created video tutorials for http://quant.bio, where you can find lessons on applying mathematics to biology. http://davidliao.com/tutoring.php Andrew Wetzel ’05 is an assistant professor of physics at UC Davis, where the focus of his research is theoretical astrophysics and cosmology. He received a PhD in astrophysics from UC Berkeley (2010), was a postdoctoral associate at Yale (2010–2013) and a Caltech-Carnegie Postdoctoral Fellow (2013–2017). He was selected as a 2018 Scialog Fellow for Time Domain Astrophysics and has more than 60 publications. We were pleased to host Andrew on campus when he gave a physics colloquium in December 2015. http://wetzel.ucdavis.edu
(Department Chair Update continued from previous page)
For the 2018–2019 year, the physics faculty has identified summer research as a key department priority. The department regularly hosts 12 to 20 current students for research internships each summer. As energizing as the summer months already are with these budding researchers on campus, the numbers are often limited not by faculty capacity or student interest, but by funding alone. Faculty research grants are the primary mechanism for summer student funding, but these are often restricted and unstable from year to year. To ensure that students have access to research experiences at key times in their education and development as scholars, additional private support is critical. In the coming months, please look for information about a fundraising initiative to cover student stipends as well as help offset supplies, travel and/ or faculty support necessary to enhance faculty research and our students’ summer learning experiences. I look forward to sharing details about how alumni and parents can support our students and this department priority. To learn more about this in the meantime, please feel free to contact me or Nicole Ouellette (nouellette@hmc.edu) in the advancement office. I invite you to read on for more details about our past year, including the Conference for Undergraduate Women in Physics hosted on campus in January 2018, NSF Graduate Fellowship results, our latest Astronaut Scholar award winner, a Harvey Mudd class organized around the 2018 APS March Meeting, and much more. We’re also happy to include updates from several alumni who have written to share their news. We look forward to sending updates annually and welcome your input, especially news about what you are doing. Building a strong physics network is important for all of us. Please send your news or remarks to the department administrator Alison Rauchfuss (arauchfuss@hmc.edu) or to me. We look forward to hearing from you. Theresa Lynn lynn@hmc.edu Chair, Department of Physics
Alumni News (continued)
After HMC, Brendan Folie ’11 joined the Peace Corps and worked for two years as a high school physics teacher in rural Ghana. After returning to the states, he began a PhD in physics at UC Berkeley, where he’s been for five years, studying the electronic structure and dynamics of disordered semiconductors. He focuses on those that are potentially applicable for plastic electronics (especially solar cells). He expects to work in industry on problems related to renewable energy. An NSF graduate research fellowship winner, Brendan has been published in the Journal of Physical Chemistry Letters and the Journal of the American Chemical Society. Xinyue (Amber) Cai ’16 is pursuing a physics PhD at University of Santa Barbara. She attended the 2018 APS March Meeting (see photo page 7). Tell Us About This Phase in Your Life We’d like to help build the Harvey Mudd physics alumni network. Write to us and tell us how you’re doing. We look forward to pub lishing your updates on the department web site, in our next newsletter and in the Harvey Mudd College Magazine. Send items to Alison Rauchfuss at arauchfuss@hmc.edu.
Physics E-book In his new book, Physics on the Edge, physics professor Vatche Sahakian shares modern physics topics with a general audience using novel e-book technology. In April 2018, he celebrated the book’s release with a series of lectures on campus called “Physics on the Edge of Sanity: From Quantum Mechanics to Black Holes to the Big Bang.” Since fall 2017, Vatche has taught a first-year elective course based on the book. Physics on the Edge is available from iTunes.
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New to the Physics Faculty
interdisciplinary team that recently had their work published in the journal Science and featured in Wired magazine. Prior to joining the department, Mark was a postdoctoral fellow in the Polymer Science and Engineering Department at the University of Massachusetts at Amherst, where he taught several courses including a seminar course he developed on bioinspired materials science. He received his PhD in physics from McMaster University, where he studied thin film fluid mechanics. Visiting physics professor Jessica Arlett is an experimental physicist with research interests in biochemical sensors, particularly the development of novel approaches to neurochemical detection that can aid in our understanding of neural activity, neurodegenerative diseases and, ultimately, the development of advanced neurological treatments. Jessica comes from Caltech, where she received her PhD and served as a senior research associate. Jessica supervised a Harvey Mudd student in summer research at Caltech before joining us this fall.
This fall, we welcomed two new faculty members to our department. Joining the department as a full-time, tenure-track faculty member is Mark Ilton. He and his students are developing a research program in the physics of soft matter, with a focus on polymer physics and bioinspired materials. The students will join a collaborative,
Kavli Institute Scholar a High-Energy Department Member As a 2018 Kavli Institute for Theoretical Physics Scholar, Brian Shuve will strengthen his connection with the physics community while advancing his research. The Kavli Institute for Theoretical Physics (KITP) at the University of California, Santa Barbara is a scientific research facility where physicists from around the world work together on a variety of topics. The scholarship supports faculty at undergraduate institutions by funding six weeks at the institute, usually spent in two-week increments over three years. Brian develops and studies new theories to explain mysteries of the universe, such as the nature of dark matter and why matter dominates antimatter in the universe. He also devises new experimental tests to learn more about the fundamental constituents and forces of matter. For example, Brian researches how the discovery of new particles at
AABOG Awards
Honorary Alumni are chosen for being longstanding friends of the College, its students and alumni and for having contributed sig nificantly to their betterment. This year, the award went to two physics faculty members. Patricia Sparks, professor of physics, is interested in the design, making and study of magnetic device structures. She and her fellow researchers are helping lead the worldwide charge in an exciting area of
high-energy colliders, such as CERN’s Large Hadron Collider, could shed light on the physical processes taking place in the early universe that shape the world as we see it today. Brian says that both the “creative and imaginative phase” of his work, as well the rigorous testing of his theories from many angles, benefit from interacting with colleagues in overlapping fields. Brian already has a wealth of connections with colleagues in the high-energy physics community and beyond. He established many of these professional relationships during his graduate studies at Harvard and as a postdoctoral scholar at SLAC. Earlier this year, he became a full member of SLAC’s BaBar collaboration, and his Harvey Mudd research students have given presentations at collaboration meetings. Brian recently co-authored the “High-Energy Physics Community Statement” against sexism and racism in high-energy physics written in response to a recent controversial talk at CERN. The statement, which can be found at particlesforjustice.org, was signed by more than 1,500 scientists from high-energy theory and beyond.
research that involves a new class of devices based upon the property of giant magnetoresistance (GMR), increasingly important in sensor and data storage technology. She collaborates with groups at Oxford and York Universities in England, with the magnetic microscopy group at the University of Minnesota and with the GMR group at IBM Almaden. Patti, a faculty member since 1989, is a staunch supporter and mentor of students, and is well known—and appreciated—for her course handouts (Sparks’ Notes) that summarize material. A faculty member since 1975, John Townsend, Susan and Bruce Worster Professor of Physics, studies particle physics and has done work in nuclear arms control. A master teacher, John is the author of two widely used textbooks, Quantum Physics: A Fundamental Approach to Modern Physics and A Modern Approach to Quantum Mechanics. As a member of various college committees, including the Department Chairs Committee and a supporter of Admission Office efforts, he has worked to help shape the educational future of students and has pioneered new ways to teach some of the most central elements of his discipline.
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Having a(n Optical) Blast with Crystal Structure Studies
Sharon explains. “So instead of trapping the particle and pulling it into the focus of the laser beam, the light repels particles and pushes them away from the laser region.” Optical blasting was born. The second discovery, realizing optical blasting’s ability to sculpt grain boundaries within a colloid, was also an accident. Jeremy decided to play with optical blasting and discovered that it attracted grain boundaries, which are the interfaces between the colloid particle beads. “Seeing that this wasn’t just a small way to create tiny bumps in grain boundaries but rather a way to sculpt new crystallites and create them in whatever shape you want was a very exciting discovery,” Sharon says. Sharon and her students, with Caitlin taking the lead, worked diligently to study why this sculpting phenomenon worked and how to quantify it. Their paper details why optical blasting attracts grain boundaries. “What’s so cool about our technology,” Sharon says, “is that the physics behind it is quite universal. Now that we have this tool to draw grains, it opens up a whole new direction for experiments in colloidal physics. For example, something no one’s ever been able to do before is create two grains within another crystal and watch how they interact. Do they coalesce? What are the dynamics? Can you pull grains apart? There are theories that no one’s ever been able to test experimentally.”
Harvey Mudd physicists discovered “optical blasting,” which allows researchers to internally sculpt colloidal crystals and could lead to new ways of modifying material properties. Physics professor Sharon Gerbode and her students, Caitlin Cash ’18, Jeremy Wang ’17, Maya Martirossyan ’17, Kemper Ludlow ’18, Alejandro Baptista ’18, Nina Brown ’19, Eli Weissler ’19 and Jatin Abacousnac ’19, shared their findings in “Local melting attracts grain boundaries in colloidal polycrystals” published in Physical Review Letters. The first discovery happened two years ago, when Jeremy and Maya were using an existing method of creating disorder inside a colloidal crystal: optical tweezers, one subject of this year’s Nobel Prize in Physics. Had everything gone as planned, the students would have created a colloid, a mixture of fluids and particles, which they would have been able to manipulate with a laser beam, grabbing the particles and moving them around inside the colloid. “When they were creating the colloid, mixing together the fluids and the particles, they accidentally made the wrong mixture of fluids,”
Quantum Quasars In a recent experiment, Harvey Mudd College researchers and their international collaborators used photons from two distant quasars as the ultimate random number generators. Because the quasar light originated at least 7.8 billion years ago, the random numbers generated by measuring their color fluctuations avoid a host of correlation and conspiracy loopholes in more usual laboratory and numerical techniques. The collaborators used the random numbers in a test of a quantum physics prediction known as Bell’s inequality violation; their results provide a spectacular confirmation of the ‘spooky correlations’ that have astonished researchers since Einstein.
Harvey Mudd physics professor Jason Gallicchio, Calvin Leung ’17 and Beili (Nora) Hu ’19 published a paper describing a new test of quantum entanglement using photons from distant astronomical objects. Working as part of quantum physicist Anton Zeilinger’s group at the Austrian Academy of Sciences and the University of Vienna, Jason, Calvin and Nora ran their successful experiment using two of the world’s largest telescopes, on the Canary Island of La Palma. The
scientists report the experiment and their results in “Cosmic Bell test using random measurement settings from high-redshift quasars,” published in Physical Review Letters. It’s the first time light traveling to Earth from nearly the edge of the known universe has been used in a quantum experiment. Anton, president of the Austrian Academy of Sciences, says, “The results on the entangled photons confirmed the predictions of quantum mechanics. This is also very important for quantum technologies, because uninfluenced measurements on entangled states are important for a definitive proof of the security of various quantum procedures.” Harvey Mudd students played key roles in the successful findings. “Calvin’s part of the contribution was to construct an instrument that would be the source of entangled photons at the heart of the experiment,” says Jason. Calvin Leung (mathematics and physics) is a former Astronaut Scholar and 2017 American Physical Society LeRoy Apker Award recipient. “He and several other experts on entangled photon sources carefully tuned the instrument by adjusting mirrors and polarizers inside it until everything was aligned. They were able to produce quite pure entangled photons, which made the experimental results quite powerful.” Nora, a Harvey Mudd physics major and Jason’s thesis student, helped Jason search through databases of millions of quasars—trillions of possible pairs—to find those with the right combination of distance, brightness and alignment with each other and with the telescopes during a two-hour window. “When I proposed this experiment in 2013, I didn’t know if we’d ever be able to convince two different groups to let us use their large telescopes at the same time,” Jason says. “This worked better than expected. If there is some purely local explanation behind the quantum weirdness, we now confined its origin to a small corner of the early universe—to only 4 percent of the available space and time.”
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Department Awards Thomas B. Brown Memorial Award Tom Brown taught physics at HMC from 1958 until his death in 1962. The Brown Award was established after his death by his friends and colleagues in the department. It is awarded for senior research in physics: for research results, originality in conception or in execution of research, diligence and clarity of oral and written reports. Adam Shaw ’18 conducted several distinct research projects during his senior year. In addition to some very impressive senior thesis work, he conducted research during summer 2017 at Los Alamos and did a side project during the academic year on low-temperature conductivity in metals. Meanwhile, he obtained impressive results and wrote a clear and comprehensive thesis on his main project, structural stability computations for Magnesium–rare earth alloys. Many supercomputer core hours, but also, clearly, many hours of thought and study, went into his work. Faculty members particularly enjoyed reading about it in a thesis subtitled “How I learned to stop worrying and love the BCC,” with section titles like “Resources of Unusual Size” and “Please won’t you be my (nearest) neighbor.” Adam is pursuing a PhD in applied physics at Caltech. Alfred B. Focke Award Al Focke was the first chair of the physics department, joining the College in 1959. The Focke Award celebrates excellence in experimental physics research and is given to the graduating senior who, in the opinion of the physics faculty, has done the most noteworthy piece of experimental research as a senior project. Caitlin Cash ’18, made an impressively longterm commitment to their research project and saw it pay off spectacularly. The resulting first-author paper in Physical Review Letters was a triumph of collaborative work by many people. Caitlin’s senior thesis lays out a wealth of experimental detail and nuanced analysis on the topic of grain boundary motion in colloidal crystals. It’s packed with both hard-core Langevin theory and chatty experimental details, so that it almost makes readers feel that they would be able to go to the lab and put together a ramp cell themselves. Caitlin also shared the College’s Mindlin Prize for an innovative paper in the sciences for this work. Caitlin is taking a year off before enrolling in a PhD program at the University of Colorado at Boulder. John and Ellen Townsend Award This award is given to the outstanding physics major in Physics 116, in honor of John’s service to the department and his dedication to the teaching of quantum mechanics. Beili (Nora) Hu ’19 (also a recipient of the Graydon and Louise Bell Prize and pictured at right) was recognized for her outstanding written work and for her insightful questions and comments in class.
Jon A. Wunderlich (’67) Prize This prize was established in 1994 with gifts from the class of 1967 and Jon’s widow. It is awarded to a physics major who has demonstrated remarkable creativity. Andrew Bishop ’18 demonstrated creativity through a variety of experiences at the College. In Clinic last year, he often posed the questions that helped his team get around roadblocks and develop new approaches. He learned new experimental techniques to move the project forward and tracked down information in references or by contacting the sponsors. His work in Advanced Lab in fall 2017 also stood out for its creativity; he consistently took experiments in novel directions with the introduction of new equipment and/or new scientific questions. His involvement in HMC’s makerspace championed opportunities for creative invention among all Mudd students. Andrew is pursuing a PhD in applied physics and applied math at Columbia University. Graydon and Louise Bell Prize Created in 1999, this prize honors the first member of the HMC physics department and his wife. It is awarded at the start of the fall semester to a senior physics major for outstanding scholarship, creativity and service. Eli Weissler ’19 and Beili (Nora) Hu ’19, exemplify the values that Gray and Louise espoused. In addition to outstanding academic performance and class participation, Eli and Nora have excelled in research and in service. Nora has been a longtime AE tutor and grader for the department and has been important to the cohesion of her class of physics majors. Eli is the author of unusually creative final projects in several classes and is an important presence in the department as an AE tutor, grader and Honor Board member. Rojansky Writing Award This award is named for Vladimir (Ro) Rojansky, who came to the College as an emeritus professor after retiring from Union College. Following his death, his wife, Milla, helped create the Rojansky Award to recognize his work in quantum mechanics and his clear and concise writing. The award recognizes the outstanding term paper in the sophomore quantum mechanics course, Physics 52. Matthew Fox ’20 wrote the paper “Probing Extra Dimensions: Exploring the Higher Dimensional Universe.” It includes simple thought experiments reminiscent of the classic book Flatland, but this time illuminating the possibility of multiple “curled-up” dimensions in string theory and other particle theories.
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Open-Ended Exploration in New Core Lab Beginning with the class of 2021, students in the Harvey Mudd Core now take one physics lab in their sophomore year. The new lab, (Physics 50) rolled out for the first time this fall. Students in the course design their own experiments to measure the speed of sound with acoustic levitators, build and race solar-powered DC motors for the coveted “Photon Spinner” award, and measure the pixel spacing and polarization properties of their cell-phone screens.
Simpson Named Outstanding Alumna “Physics graduate Amanda Simpson ’83 received the Harvey Mudd College Outstanding Alumni Award in May. Given from alumni to alumni, the award recognizes individuals who have made a sustained and effective commitment to improving society and whose lives best exemplify the mission of the College. Amanda served under President Barack Obama as deputy assistant secretary of defense, responsible for worldwide U.S. military use of energy, and was America’s first openly transgender presidential appointee. She also served as the executive director of the U.S. Army Office of Energy Initiatives, where she oversaw the Army’s efforts to implement cost-effective, large-scale renewable energy projects. Prior to government service she was a program manager, test pilot and the director of flight operations at Raytheon Missile Systems. In June, Airbus Americas appointed Amanda as vice president, research and technology, responsible for establishing the strategic direction and funding opportunities for partnerships with scientific and research communities in North America.
Amanda Simpson ’83
Amanda has received numerous awards, including the 2017 Secretary of Defense Medal for Outstanding Public Service, and is a nationally renowned speaker addressing gender and diversity. To learn more about Amanda’s career, read her 2015 interview with HMC Magazine at http://bit.ly/ASimpsonMag15.
25th HMC Astronaut Scholar Physics major Nina Brown ’19 was named an Astronaut Scholar for the 2018–2019 academic year by the Astronaut Scholarship Foundation (ASF). She is the 25th Harvey Mudd student to receive the honor. In August, Nina attended the ASF Innovators Gala in Washington D.C., where she received her award and spent time getting to know foundation members. The scholarship includes a mentoring program intended to help scholars explore their career options. “I’ve been assigned a mentor who works as a systems engineer with the federal government,” says Nina, who is interested in condensed matter and materials physics. “I’m excited to learn about that path and to be a part of a network of thoughtful, successful people who care about science and improving the world around them.” After graduation, Nina plans to work in industry, then pursue a PhD in condensed matter physics. “I’d ultimately like to work in a field that has a clear, positive impact on people’s lives, such as developing clean energy technology or working in science outreach,” she says. The Astronaut Scholarship provides up to $10,000 each, making it the nation’s largest, merit-based monetary award for science and engineering undergraduate students.
National Science Foundation Graduate Fellowship Awards Physics major Kemper Ludlow ’18 was one of two Harvey Mudd students who received a 2018 National Science Foundation Graduate Research Fellowship. Kemper attends Cornell University and conducts research in experimental soft matter physics combined with biophysics. Upon receiving the award, Kemper stated, “Broadly, my goal is to find innovative solutions to problems in physics by studying biological systems. I’ll most likely start out working on Professor Itai Cohen’s project studying flight stability in fruit flies.” Before starting graduate school, Kemper took a father-student cross-country trip from Harvey Mudd to Pennsylvania and did summer volunteer work. Two physics graduates received NSF Graduate Fellowship Honorable Mentions: Adam Shaw ’18 (atomic, molecular and optical physics) and Sarah Hale ’18 (astronomy and astrophysics). The NSF Graduate Research Fellowship Program helps ensure the vitality and diversity of the nation’s base of science and engineering candidates. Fellows are seen as crucial to maintaining and advancing the nation’s technological infrastructure and national security as well as contributing to the economic well-being of society. Program participants are expected to become experts who contribute significantly to research, education and innovation in the STEM fields.
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CUWiP Comes to Claremont In January 2018, Harvey Mudd hosted an American Physical Society Conference for Undergraduate Women in Physics, in collaboration with Pomona College and Cal Poly Pomona. The goal of APS CUWiP is to provide a professional conference for undergraduate women and underrepresented genders to explore opportunities in graduate schools, careers, research and community building in physics. CUWiP is a unique networking opportunity for students to share meaningful experiences and have important conversations about the space we navigate as physicists. Student members of the HMC women in physics club, along with professors Sharon Gerbode and Theresa Lynn, were involved in organizing the Claremont conference. CUWiP events take place at 10 to 12 sites nationwide every January. Due to unusually high application numbers, the Claremont site hosted an extra-large conference, with 215 registered students rather than the standard 150. At Harvey Mudd, conference attendees toured research labs, attended talks and workshops, and enjoyed an opening dinner with evening remarks from PBS’s “Physics Girl” Diana Cowern. Our
conference site was also proud to host a slate of remarkable speakers, including network-wide keynote speaker Patricia Burchat from Stanford, whose talk was broadcast live from Edmunds Ballroom at Pomona College to the other CUWiP sites. The three-day conference concluded with an action-packed physics demo show at Cal Poly Pomona, featuring HMC physics lab manager B.J. Haddad and his colleagues from Pomona and Cal Poly.
Seminar Course Culminates in the APS March Meeting When designing his solid state physics course for the 2018 spring semester, Professor Nicholas Breznay ’02 had an ultimate goal in mind: Get as many students as he could to attend the American Physical Society March Meeting, held in Los Angeles. “Some small conferences are self-explanatory, but the March Meeting is the largest in the world—more than 11,000 attendees this year—and it can be opaque and intimidating,” Nicholas says. “I wanted to open as many doors for engagement as I could for the students and to share my sense of the opportunities.” Physics professors Jason Gallicchio and Peter Saeta also attended, as did Sharon Gerbode, who brought students from her lab. Because the conference was so close to campus, Nicholas sought to make a Harvey Mudd event out of it, including alumni and current and retired faculty, who met the students for lunch. “We had great turnout of students, alumni and faculty,” Nicholas says, noting that Mudders from each academic year—first — years through seniors—attended the conference.
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1 1) Mudd physics students, faculty and alumni gathered at the APS March Meeting. 2) (Back) Jim Wu ’16, Professor Gallicchio, Professor Saeta; (front) Xinyue (Amber) Cai ’16 and Sophie Blee-Goldman ’16. 3) In addition to reuniting with alumni, attending talks and eating lunch, Mudders learned about instrumentation for sale at the tradeshow and viewed student poster presentations. Carla Becker ’18, Colin Adams ’19 and Vivian Phun ’19 attend a poster presentation by Adam Shaw ’18. 4) Mudd physicists reconnected during lunch.
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2017–2018 Physics Senior Research and Clinic Projects Senior Theses Evan Atchison: Demonstration of Einstein-Podolsky-Rosen Steering with Applications Towards Asymmetric Entanglement Advisor: Theresa W. Lynn
Jacob Roth: Springs with Bones: Several new discoveries in the creation and use of nonlinear springs Advisor: Sharon Gerbode
Caitlin E. Cash: Characterizing Grain Migration in Colloidal Polycrystals Advisor: Sharon J. Gerbode
Hana Schiff: Characterizing Chitosan Nanoparticles & Their Antibacterial Effectiveness: A Pre-Requisite Analysis for Incorporation into Tissue-Engineered Brain Patch Advisors: Elizabeth Orwin (engineering), Tom Donnelly
Brian Chaucer Cheng: Superconductive and Magnetic Properties of Cr/Ru alloys Advisors: James C. Eckert, Patricia D. Sparks
Adam Shaw: Phase Stability in Rare-Earth Magnesium Alloys or How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love The BCC Advisors: Lori Bassman (engineering), Gregory Pomrehn ’04, Aurora Pribram-Jones ’09
Connor Colombe: A Study On the Sizing and Antibacterial Effectiveness of Chitosan Nanoparticles Advisor: Tom Donnelly
Mackenzie Vignoul: Making Calibration Maps for SPT3G Advisor: Jason Gallicchio
Philip DiGiacomo: Aerosol Droplet Sizing using Mie Scattering towards Improved Gas-Phase Graphene Synthesis Advisor: Tom Donnelly
Chen Jie Xin: One-way Einstein-Podolsky-Rosen (EPR) Steering: The Asymmetrical Entanglements of Alice and Bob Advisor: Theresa W. Lynn
Sophie Graf: Map Making Using SPTpol Software Advisor: Jason Gallicchio
Daipeng Yang: Data Quality Monitoring for South Pole Telescope Advisor: Jason Gallicchio
Sarah Hale: Deep Learning for Gravitational-Wave Searches Advisors: Jason Gallicchio, Rory Smith (Caltech) Kemper Ludlow: Dissolution of Custom Grains in Colloidal Polycrystals Advisor: Sharon Gerbode Katherine Inhe Reed: Density Functional Theory Calculations of Magnetic and Electronic Properties in Compositionally Complex Quaternary Alloys Advisors: Lori Bassman (engineering), Aurora Pribram-Jones ’09, Gregory Pomrehn ’04
Senior Clinic Projects Engineering/Physics Claremont Locally Grown Power: Investigating Hot Spots in Photovoltaic Panels through IdealPV’s Patented Controller Team: Jonathan Kupfer (engineering), Florence Walsh (engineering), Dallon Asnes (engineering), William Lamb (engineering), Quentin Barth (physics) Advisors: Qimin Yang (engineering), Tom Donnelly (physics), Peter Saeta (physics), Dick Haskell (physics) Liaisons: Kent Kernahan, Devon Hartman
Clinic Projects from Other Departments with Team Members from Physics City of Hope: Raman Spectrometry and Laser Ablation as a Minimally Invasive, Molecularly Guided Therapy for Cancer Students: Ragini Kothari (engineering), Viviana Bermúdez Reyes (engineering), Jenny Smith (physics), Youkang Shon (engineering), Dominique Mena (engineering) Advisors: Phil Cha (engineering), Michael Storrie-Lombardi (physics) Liaisons: Drs. Yuman Fong, Veronica Jones, Lily Lai, Dan Schmolze Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory: Data Fusion for Ubiquitous Nuclear Threat Detection Students: Sarah Wang (engineering), Yashas Hegde (engineering), Emily Lane (physics), Arch Robison (physics), Jordan Abrahams (engineering) Advisor: David Harris (engineering) Liaisons: Simon Labov, Brandon Seilhan
Sandia National Laboratories: Measuring the Permittivity of Ferroelectric Nanoparticles in an Epoxy Composite Students: Andrew Bishop (physics), Richard Liu (engineering), Alejandro Baptista (physics), Lupe MacIntosh (physics), Charles Dawson (engineering), Benjamin Lehman (engineering) Advisors: Albert Dato (engineering), Peter Saeta (physics) Liaison: Dr. Todd Monson
Harvey Mudd College | 301 Platt Boulevard | Claremont, CA 91711 | hmc.edu
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