The Spectrum - Summer 2021

University of Utah Department of Physics & Astronomy

Summer 2021 | Volume 9, Issue 2

Celebrating IceCube’s First Decade of Discovery Page 2

In this issue Message from the Chair. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1 Celebrating IceCube’s first decade of discovery . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2 New perovskite LED emits a circularly polarized glow . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6

Perseverance Rover’s journey to Mars. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 9 Ramón Barthelemy honored for physics, scholarship, advocacy. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 14 Gail Zasowski named a Cottrell Scholar. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 16 $1.1 million to research STEM-positive identities of refugee teens . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 17 Cyri Dixon named Outstanding New Advisor of the Year. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 20 SPS chapter receives Blake Lilly Prize . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 21 Isaac Martin brings home the U’s sixth straight Churchill Scholarship. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 22 Alumnus Profile: Perry Hacking. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 24 Alumnus Profile: Mike McCleery . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 26 Overview of Physics & Astronomy Graduates. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 28 Physics & Astronomy Student Awards in 2021 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 29

Message from the Chair Due to the pandemic, the 2020-2021 academic year has been difficult and challenging for our students, faculty, and staff; however, we believe we have risen to these challenges with creativity, determination, and, perhaps, a bit of luck.

With the success of the COVID vaccination program at the university and in Utah, faculty and students were able to meet in person for convocation and the hooding ceremonies for our Ph.D. candidates. It was great to see our students—even with masks and social distancing—after being apart for so many months.

Our undergraduate and graduate students have worked very hard to complete their degree requirements, and we want to recognize their achievements under such extraordinary circumstances. We have enjoyed teaching and working with them, and we wish them the best as they move forward in their lives and professions.

We anticipate a full return to campus—with in-person teaching and on-campus events—in the fall. We look forward to returning to a greater sense of normalcy and the more customary routines of academic life.

Our faculty has been honored to receive a number of awards, as noted beginning on page 14 in this issue. We are fortunate to have such dedicated and talented faculty, who serve as teachers, researchers, and mentors to our students. I hope you’ll read about their interesting research and successes in the magazine.

Christoph Boehme

We appreciate your support and generosity. Your ongoing interest is tremendously valuable in advancing our mission to achieve excellence in teaching, mentoring, and research in a diverse and inclusive environment.

Sincerely,

Christoph Boehme Professor and Chair Department of Physics & Astronomy

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Celebrating IceCube’s first decade of discovery

By IceCube Collaboration

A light detector is lowered into the IceCube Neutrino Observatory near the South Pole, which acts as a neutrino detector in search of the elusive subatomic particle. NSF/B. Gudbjartsson, IceCube Collaboration

It was the beginning of a grand experiment unlike anything the world had ever seen. Ten years ago, the IceCube Neutrino Observatory fully opened its eyes for the first time.

Over the course of the previous seven years, dozens of intrepid technicians, engineers, and scientists had traveled to the South Pole—one of the coldest, driest, and most isolated places on Earth—to build the biggest, strangest telescope in the world. Crews drilled 86 holes nearly two-and-a-half kilometers deep and lowered a cable strung with 60 basketballsized light detectors (called Digital Optical Modules or DOMs) into each hole. The result was a hexagonal grid of sensors embedded in a cubic kilometer of ice about a mile below the surface of the Antarctic ice sheet. On December 18, 2010, the 5,160th DOM

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was deployed in the ice, completing the construction of the IceCube Neutrino Observatory.

The purpose of the unconventional telescope was to detect signals from passing astrophysical neutrinos: mysterious, tiny, extremely lightweight particles created by some of the most energetic and distant phenomena in the cosmos. IceCube’s founders believed that studying these astrophysical neutrinos would reveal hidden parts of the universe. Over the course of the next decade, they would be proven right.

The University of Utah joined the IceCube Collaboration in 2020 as a full institutional member.

The IceCube science program at the U is led by Professor Carsten Rott from the Department of Physics & Astronomy, who was recently appointed to the Jack W. Keuffel Memorial Chair. Rott has

Credit: University of Wisconsin-Madison

been a member of the IceCube Collaboration since the start of the construction of the detector in Antarctica.

“IceCube has completely transformed the way we observe and think about the energetic universe,” said Rott. “When we built the IceCube Neutrino Observatory, few of us imagined the tremendous impact our science program would have. Besides the breakthrough discoveries associated with the observations of high-energy neutrinos of astrophysical origin, we have produced a large number of very highimpact results in particle physics, cosmic ray physics, and earth science.

We have achieved some of the most stringent bounds on theories predicting new phenomena beyond those described by the standard model of particle physics, and we accomplished some of the world’s best measurements of the properties of neutrinos.”

Professor Carsten Rott

Rott works with other members of the department, including Professors Douglas Bergman, Charles Jui, and John Matthews.

Together, they are working towards the next generation neutrino and cosmic ray observatory at the South Pole.

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Credit: University of Wisconsin-Madison

IceCube began full operations on May 13, 2011 when the detector took its first set of data as a completed instrument. Since then, IceCube has been watching the cosmos and collecting data continuously for a decade.

During its first few years of operation, IceCube accumulated vast amounts of data, but it wasn’t until 2013 that the observatory yielded its first major results. That year, the collaboration announced the first evidence for neutrinos from outside our galaxy with the detection of two very energetic neutrino events and, soon after, the observation of 26

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additional very high energy events. Since then, the collaboration has seen more astrophysical neutrinos and has made strides in the fields of neutrino physics, astrophysics, and multimessenger astronomy. From pinpointing potential neutrino sources to the recent detection of a Glashow resonance event, IceCube has proven again and again the value of capturing perhaps the most elusive particles in the universe.

“The National Science Foundation took a dual gamble on IceCube related to the performance of the technology and the sensitivity of the instrument as a neutrino telescope,” said Francis Halzen, principal

investigator of IceCube and professor at the University of Wisconsin–Madison, home of the Wisconsin IceCube Particle Astrophysics Center (WIPAC) where IceCube is headquartered. “The IceCube Collaboration has delivered a decade of data that continues to validate the high risk and high reward approach.”

This success has led to a growing cohort of scientists using state-of-the-art techniques to analyze IceCube data. What started with a couple dozen dreamers is now the international IceCube Collaboration: a diverse group of over 350 scientists from 53 institutions in 12 countries across five continents.

And the collaboration is actively working to inspire the next generation of physicists by bringing education and outreach activities to people of all ages and backgrounds. In the last decade, they have produced a web comic and translated it into 10 languages, created IceCube-themed arts and crafts, hosted countless South Pole webinars, supported multiple art installations, brought educators to the South Pole, and much more.

The IceCube Neutrino Observatory is funded primarily by the National Science Foundation (OPP-1600823 and PHY-1913607) and is headquartered at the Wisconsin IceCube Particle Astrophysics Center, a research center of UW–Madison in the United States. IceCube’s research efforts, including critical contributions to the detector operation, are funded by agencies in Australia, Belgium, Canada, Denmark, Germany, Japan, New Zealand, Republic of Korea, Sweden, Switzerland, the United Kingdom, and the United States. The IceCube EPSCoR Initiative (IEI) also receives additional support through NSFEPSCoR-2019597. IceCube construction was also funded with significant contributions from the National Fund for Scientific Research (FNRS & FWO) in Belgium; the Federal Ministry of Education and Research (BMBF) and the German Research Foundation (DFG) in Germany; the Knut and Alice Wallenberg Foundation, the Swedish Polar Research Secretariat, and the Swedish Research Council in Sweden; and the University of Wisconsin–Madison Research Fund in the U.S.

To celebrate this milestone, IceCube will share highlights from the past decade—and earlier— through website and social media profiles. IceCube is on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and YouTube—and the hashtag #IceCube10.

There is also much to look forward to in IceCube’s bright future. The unusual instrument continues to expand its science reach, with leading results on neutrino properties, dark matter, cosmic rays, and fundamental physics. Though the pandemic has slightly altered the timeline, the National Science Foundation has provided funding for the next stage of its South Pole detector, the IceCube Upgrade, which will pave the way to the proposed larger, highenergy extension, IceCube-Gen2.

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New perovskite LED emits a circularly polarized glow

By Lisa Potter, research communications specialist, University of Utah Communications

Light-emitting diodes (LEDs) have revolutionized the displays industry.

LEDs use electric current to produce visible light without the excess heat found in traditional light bulbs, a glow called electroluminescence. This breakthrough led to the eye-popping, high-definition viewing experience we’ve come to expect from our screens. Now, a group of physicists and chemists have developed a new type of LED that utilizes spintronics without needing a magnetic field, magnetic materials, or cryogenic temperatures: a “quantum leap” that could take displays to the next level.

“The companies that make LEDs or TV and computer displays don’t want to deal with magnetic fields and magnetic materials. It’s heavy and expensive to do it,” said Valy Vardeny, Distinguished Professor of physics and astronomy at the University of Utah. “Here, chiral molecules are self-assembled into standing arrays,

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like soldiers, that actively spin-polarize the injected electrons, which subsequently lead to circularly polarized light emission. With no magnetic field, expensive ferromagnets, and with no need for extremely low temperatures. Those are no-nos for the industry.”

Most opto-electronic devices, such as LEDs, only control charge and light and not the spin of the electrons. The electrons possess tiny magnetic fields that, like the Earth, have magnetic poles on opposite sides. Its spin may be viewed as the orientation of the poles and can be assigned binary information: an “up” spin is a “1,” a “down” is a “0.” In contrast, conventional electronics only transmit information through bursts of electrons along a conductive wire to convey messages in “1s” and “0s.” Spintronic devices, however, could utilize both methods, promising to process exponentially more information than traditional electronics.

From bottom to top. The first layer is a semitransparent anode, such as ITO, that injects unpolarized “holes,” a quantum feature of electrons, with a certain spin. The second layer is the two-dimensional chiral hybrid perovskite that is an active spin filter, allowing only holes with specific spin to pass by, depending on the helicity of the chiral molecules. The third layer is the emitter film, composed of a non-chiral inorganic perovskite such as CsPbBr3. The fourth and fifth layers are the cathode that injects spin up and spin down electrons. Only the spin down electrons recombine with the spin up injected holes to produce circularly polarized light with helicity that depends on the chiral molecules helicity in the two-dimensional organic-inorganic layer.

PHOTO CREDIT: Adapted from: Kim, Y.H. et al., Science (2021)

One barrier to commercial spintronics is setting the electron spin. Presently, one needs to produce a magnetic field to orient the electron spin direction.

Researchers from the University of Utah and the National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL) developed technology that acts as an active spin filter made of two layers of material called chiral twodimension metal-halide perovskites. The first layer blocks electrons having spin in the wrong direction, a layer that the authors call a chiral-induced spin filter.

Then when the remaining electrons pass through the second light-emitting perovskite layer, they cause the layer to produce photons that move in unison along a spiral path, rather than a conventional wave pattern, to produce circular polarized electroluminescence.

The study was published in the journal Science on March 12, 2021.

Left-handed, right-handed molecules The scientists exploited a property called chirality that describes a particular type of geometry. Human hands are a classic example; the right and left hands are arranged as mirrors of one another, but they will never perfectly align, no matter the orientation. Some compounds, such as DNA, sugar, and chiral metalhalide perovskites, have their atoms arranged in a chiral symmetry. A “left-handed” oriented chiral system may allow transport of electrons with “up” spins but block electrons with “down” spins, and vice versa.

“If you try to transport electrons through these compounds, then the electron spin becomes aligned with the chirality of the material,” Vardeny said.

Other spin filters do exist, but they either require some kind of magnetic field, or they can only manipulate electrons in a small area. “The beauty of the perovskite

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A schematic of circularly polarized light.

Photons that move in unison along a spiral path, rather than a conventional wave pattern, produce circular polarized light. The light-emitting perovskite layer of the spin-LED device produces either left-handed or right-handed polarized light, depending the spin of the electrons that made it past the perovskite filter PHOTO CREDIT: Dave3457 via Wikicommons

material that we used is that it’s two-dimensional— you can prepare many planes of 1 cm2 area that contain one million of a billion standing molecules with the same chirality.”

Metal-halide perovskite semiconductors are mostly used for solar cells these days, as they are highly efficient at converting sunlight to electricity. Since a solar cell is one of the most demanding applications of any semiconductor, scientists are discovering other uses exist as well, including spin-LEDs. “We are exploring the fundamental properties of metal-halide perovskites, which has allowed us to discover new applications beyond photovoltaics,” said Joseph Luther, a co-author of the new paper and NREL scientist. “Because metal-halide perovskites and other related metal halide organic hybrids are some of the most fascinating semiconductors, they exhibit a host of novel phenomena that can be utilized in transforming energy.”

Although metal-halide perovskites are the first to prove the chiral-hybrid devices are feasible, they are not the only candidates for spin-LEDs. The general formula for the active spin filter is one layer of an organic, chiral material, another layer of an inorganic metal halide, such as lead iodine, another organic layer, inorganic layer, and so on.

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“That’s beautiful,” Vardeny said. “I’d love that someone will come out with another 2-D organic/ inorganic layer material that may do a similar thing.

At this stage, it’s very general. I’m sure that with time, someone will find a different two-dimensional chiral material that will be even more efficient.”

The concept proves that using these two dimensional chiral-hybrid systems gain control over spin without magnets and has “broad implications for applications such as quantum-based optical computing, bioencoding, and tomography,” according to Matthew Beard, a senior research fellow and director of the Center for Hybrid Organic Inorganic Semiconductors for Energy (CHOISE).

Vardeny and Xin Pan from the Department of Physics & Astronomy at the University of Utah co-authored the study. The other co-authors from NREL are Beard, Young-Hoon Kim, Yaxin Zhai, Haipeng Lu, Chuanxiao Xiao, E. Ashley Gaulding, Steven Harvey, and Joseph Berry. All are part of the CHOISE collaboration, an Energy Frontier Research Center (EFRC) funded by the Office of Science within the Department of Energy (DOE). Funding for the research came from CHOISE.

Perseverance Rover ’s Journey to Mars

By Lisa Potter, research communications specialist, University of Utah Communications

On Feb. 18, the world held its breath as NASA’s multibillion-dollar Perseverance Rover landed successfully on Mars to look for signs of life—and to prepare for future human explorers. The robotic rover traveled 300 million miles in six months, a massive effort that all came down to “seven minutes of terror,” named for the hair-raising descent that happens too quickly for radio

signals to transmit from Mars to Mission Control—in other words, the rover is on its own. The car-sized craft crashed through the Martian atmosphere at 1,000 mph enduring temperatures as high as 3,800°F. Its heat shield dropped, plunging the rover into a free fall before a “sky crane” lowered Perseverance into the 28-mile-wide Jezero Crater on Mars.

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Thomas Stucky poses with a NASA Ames Research Center-developed robotic rover in the Atacama Deseret where he tested drilling arms that help inform drilling on other planets for future space missions.

PHOTO CREDIT: Arno Rogg

U alum Thomas Stucky (B.S. ’15) was one of the millions of people glued to NASA’s live stream of the harrowing landing. Stucky is a KBRwyle engineer at NASA’s Ames Research Center, where he wrote software for robotic drill arms similar to the ones on Perseverance, then tested them on extreme Earth locations that resemble the Martian landscape.

KBRwyle is the global government services business of KBR, Inc., which provides scientific, technology, and engineering solutions to governments and commercial customers worldwide.

dead silence that fell over an entire auditorium of people in wait of the heartbeat signal that indicated a safe landing. A silence that was punctuated with a ruckus of celebration moments later when Mission Control received the signal and confirmed Curiosity was safely on the ground. To see a room full of strangers all uniting and cheering for the accomplishments of a robotic explorer, and therefore the accomplishments of those who worked on it, was moving. It opened my eyes to the impact that space exploration can have on everyone.

What was going through your mind as you watched Perseverance Rover’s entry into Mars?

Nearly a decade later, and several years of firsthand NASA experience under my belt, I watched this familiar sequence of events, but now with a new appreciation for the blood, sweat, and tears that thousands of individuals from all around the globe had to contribute to make a mission like Perseverance a reality. Blood, sweat, and tears that could all go poof at the slightest miscalculation.

What went through my mind was my experience of the last time a rover landed on Mars: the Curiosity Rover in 2012. I was here at the University of Utah as an undergraduate, volunteering at a public watch party in the College of Science. I remember the

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What is Perseverance Rover’s mission on Mars?

Perseverance’s primary mission is to search for signs of ancient life that may once have thrived on a warmer Mars billions of years in the past. This is why it’s landing in the Jezero Crater at the site of an ancient river delta, which scientists think may have once flowed with liquid water. Due to the harsh radiation environment on the surface, it is unlikely that we’ll find current life without digging more than a meter underground. This ancient river delta may have deposited and preserved biosignatures in the form of organic molecules that we know are synthesized by life here on Earth. The landing site is also home to a number of steep cliffs, sand dunes, and boulder fields that will teach us more about Mars’ geological past.

In astrobiology, biosignatures alone are not enough to prove life existed—the geological context that they are found in is needed to make conclusive statements about what sort of life may have once thrived there.

For that reason, Perseverance is also equipped with a suite of scientific instruments to learn about Mars’ past climate and geologic history.

As if searching for ancient traces of Martian life and characterizing the geologic history of a planet wasn’t enough, Perseverance has a third objective as well: to conduct studies that will prepare for human exploration of Mars. There is an experiment on board that sounds right out of the movie, The Martian. It’s called MOXIE, or Mars Oxygen In-Situ Resource Utilization Experiment. It’s a device that absorbs carbon dioxide from the Martian atmosphere and synthesizes it into oxygen, which is a crucial technology for future Mars explorers to produce both breathable air and rocket fuel. Perseverance also carries the Mars Environmental Dynamics Analyzer to characterize Mars weather and gain a better understanding of the dangers that will face future human and robotic explorers alike.

Inside Mission Control at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Southern California, Mars 2020 Perseverance team members eagerly watched and waited while the spacecraft performed a complex series of steps before the rover safely landed on the Martian surface PHOTO CREDIT: NASA/Bill Ingalls

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This image shows with a green dot where NASA’s Perseverance Rover landed in Jezero Crater on Mars on Feb. 18, 2021. The base image was taken by the HiRISE camera aboard NASA’s Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter.

PHOTO CREDIT: NASA/JPL-Caltech/University of Arizona

The rover will drill into Mars’ surface to collect and store soil and rock samples. What can these tell us about life on Mars?

Lots of things! Rocks contain within them the chemical history of a world. They hold the key to understanding Mars’ past. Perseverance is equipped with a suite of instruments that will measure both the organic and geological chemical makeup of Mars rocks and their morphologies to answer questions like: “How warm was Mars?” “How wet was Mars?”; “How briny were its ancient rivers?” and the big one, “Did Mars’ ever harbor life?”

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The instrument that may shed the most light on the question of life on Mars is SHERLOC, or Scanning Habitable Environments with Raman & Luminescence for Organics & Chemicals. SHERLOC is designed to tell us what minerals and organic molecules are present in a drilled sample of rock. Not all organic molecules are considered biosignatures, but SHERLOC is able to show us the distribution of different molecules within a sample. For instance, a high concentration of organics in a particular region of a sample might suggest that an ancient microbial community once thrived there. Further analysis will have to be done to confirm definitively if SHERLOC detects biosignatures, which is why Perseverance’s robotic arm will be capable of caching promising

This is the first 360-degree panorama taken by Mastcam-Z, a zoomable pair of cameras aboard NASA’s Perseverance Mars rover. A key objective for Perseverance’s mission on Mars is astrobiology, including the search for signs of ancient microbial life. The rover will characterize the planet’s geology and past climate, paving the way for human exploration of the Red Planet. It will be the first mission to collect and cache Martian rock and regolith (broken rock and dust).

PHOTO CREDIT: NASA/JPL-Caltech/ASU/MSSS

samples for retrieval by another NASA mission down the line. These candidate samples that Perseverance will collect and store on board may very well contain conclusive evidence of life on Mars, but we will still have to wait to find out.

Drilling is all about paying attention to how the material affects the drill and adjusting accordingly. If you’ve ever used a hand drill on a piece of lumber, you know that you could encounter a change in the wood grain that jams the drill bit. If you get your drill bit stuck in a piece of wood here on Earth, no big deal.

Just walk to the local hardware store and buy another, or pry it out of the wood. If the drill bit attached to your rover gets stuck while on Mars, then the whole mission is a bust.

The drill assembly on the end of Perseverance’s robotic arm holds nine drill bits, and among them is a coring bit that can extract half-inch diameter cylinders of Martian rock up to 2.4 inches deep. By acquiring a sample at this depth, Perseverance will be able to assess it for biosignatures of extinct life; however, future missions might need to dig even deeper into Mars in order to find life that may presently thrive meters under the surface protected from harmful radiation.

The difficulty of drilling exponentially increases with drilling depth, which means tackling these problems is crucial to finding extant life on Mars.

How does testing technology on Earth help identify and address these issues?

It’s important that the rover’s own systems are able to monitor the drilling telemetry and make decisions in real-time on its own. A human operator on Earth could control the drill through sensors that read the motor torque and weight, but Mars is so far away that even light-speed communication is too slow for realtime control. Any drill telemetry data that the operator sees are already 20 minutes old, and any fault they attempt to avoid has likely already caused damage to the system or resulted in a stuck bit. A stuck bit… on another planet… with no hardware stores… it’s every DIYer’s worst nightmare.

That is what my work at NASA has been about. I worked on a one-meter-long robotic drill, which we tested on a variety of rocks at locales all around the globe that have landscapes similar to Mars. I learn about all the possible ways that a drill can fail, and how to teach the rover to recover any drill failure by using only the feedback and controls that a robotic explorer would have access to.

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FACULTY DISTINCTIONS

Ramón Barthelemy honored for physics scholarship, advocacy

By Lisa Potter, research communications specialist, University of Utah Communications

The American Association of Physics Teachers (AAPT) has awarded

Ramón S. Barthelemy the Doc Brown Futures Award, an honor that recognizes early-career members who demonstrate excellence in their contributions to physics education and exhibit excellent leadership.

Barthelemy, an assistant professor in the Department of Physics & Astronomy at the University of Utah, is an early-career physicist with a record of groundbreaking scholarship and advocacy that has advanced the field of physics education research as it pertains to gender issues and lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender (LGBT)+ physicists.

Ramón Barthelemy

“AAPT has been a critical part of my physics education research journey, and I am honored to have been nominated by my peers for this award. This community is full of amazing people who do forward thinking work to support people of color, LGBT+, and other underrepresented physicists,” said Barthelemy, who has been a member of AAPT since 2011.

The organization will present the award during its 2021 summer meeting.

The field of physics struggles to support students and faculty from historically excluded groups. Barthelemy has long worked to make the field more inclusive—he has served on AAPT’s Committee on Women in Physics and on the Committee on Diversity, and was an early advocate for LGBT+ voices in the AAPT. He co-authored LGBT Climate in Physics: Building an Inclusive Community,, an influential report for the Community American Physical Society, and the first edition of the LGBT+ Inclusivity in Physics and Astronomy Best Practices Guide, Guide, which offers actionable strategies for physicists to

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improve their departments and workplaces for LGBT+ colleagues and students. He recently published research on the topic in the European Journal of Physics.

Physics.

“Barthelemy is a valued collaborator and can be relied on to challenge biases and inequities.

He has been a leader in pushing forward physics education researchers’ understanding of gender and LGBT issues in physics,” said the AAPT in a statement.

In 2019, Barthelemy joined the U’s College of Science as its first tenure-track faculty member focusing on physics education research (PER), a field that explores how people learn the content and culture of physics. Since arriving, he has built a new program that gives students rigorous training in physics concepts and in education research, qualities that prepare students for jobs in academia, education policy, or general science policy.

He founded the Physics Education Research Group at the University of Utah (PERU), where he and a team of postdoctoral scholars and graduate and undergraduate students explore how graduate program policies impact the student experience, long-term studies of the experience of women in physics and astronomy, and of students of color in STEM programs, and understanding the impacts of a sense of belonging on students’ performance in introductory STEM courses.

“We talk about inclusivity and diversity in the classroom, but there needs to be more research about what that means. We look at various aspects of an interactive classroom and how it impacts their content learning outcomes,” said Barthelemy. “If you feel like you belong in the classroom, if you feel comfortable raising

your hand, you can participate in groups, teaching and learning from peers—that’s an example of inclusivity, looking at people’s sense of belonging.”

The research has implications beyond the classroom.

Barthelemy uses the findings to inform and develop policies and best practices to support people from historically excluded groups in physics. “It helps us teach better, but also understanding the culture of physics has implications in the quality of research done in national labs, for example, which inevitably impacts people across the country,” he said.

Barthelemy has had an untraditional journey to academia. He earned his Bachelor of Science degree in astrophysics at Michigan State University and received his Master of Science and doctorate degrees in PER at Western Michigan University. “Originally I went to graduate school for nuclear physics, but I discovered I was more interested in diversity, equity, and inclusion in physics and astronomy. Unfortunately, there were very few women, people of color, LGBT, or first generation physicists in my program,” said Barthelemy, who looked outside of physics to understand why.

“This was curious to me.”

In 2014, he completed a Fulbright Fellowship at the University of Jyväskylä in Finland where he completed research looking at student motivations to study physics in Finland. In 2015 he received an American Association for the Advancement of Science Policy Fellowship in the United States Department of Education and worked on science education initiatives in the Obama administration. After acting as a consultant for university administrations and research offices, he began to miss doing his own research. To the U’s great fortune, he brought his talents to Utah.

“There’s so much opportunity for growth there, and we’re already doing so much good to address these issues in physics. We actually have one of the most progressive set of graduate policies in how we interview and emphasize mentorship,” said Barthelemy. “I always had an interest in social justice and physics, and now I’m able to combine them.”

Barthelemy’s work has also been recognized with external funding to complete his projects. In January 2020 he and his U colleagues Jordan Gerton and Pearl Sandick were awarded $200,000 from the National Science Foundation to complete a case study exploring the graduate program changes in the Department of

Physics & Astronomy. This research is supported by PERU post-doctoral scholar MacKenzie Lenz, who is the lead researcher in this effort. In August 2020, Barthelemy received a $350,000 Building Capacity in Science Education Research award to continue his longitudinal study on women in physics and astronomy and created a new study on people of color in U.S. graduate STEM programs. This work has been supported by PERU post-doctoral scholar Miguel Rodriguez and master’s student Mirna Mohammed, who are taking lead on data collection and analysis.

Lastly, Barthelemy was selected to conduct a literature review on LGBT+ scientists as a virtual visiting scholar by the ARC Network, an organization dedicated to improving STEM equity in academia.

ABOUT THE AWARD Robert William Brown, Distinguished University and Institute Professor in the physics department at Case Western Reserve University, had a rewarding five-decade career in teaching, research, and entrepreneurship. An Inaugural Fellow of the AAPT, Doc Brown contributed to educational innovations, including an early use of a fiberoptics electronic educational environment (1980s), an early use of undergraduate teaching assistants (1990s), published PER work on both “post-exam syndrome” and its treatment, and structured revisiting of classroom material. His teaching led to the writing of a thousandpage MRI textbook, which has been called the “daily companion of the MRI scientist.” Doc Brown has received five regional national teaching honors on his innovations in undergraduate and graduate teaching, and in 2004 received the AAPT Excellence in Undergraduate Physics Teaching National Award. A partnership with his wife, Janet Gans Brown, has taken them to highlight the importance of AAPT in a shared life and their gratitude by this endowment.

ABOUT AAPT AAPT is the premier international organization for physics educators, physicists, and industrial scientists—with members worldwide. Dedicated to enhancing the understanding and appreciation of physics through teaching, AAPT provides awards, publications, and programs that encourage practical application of physics principles, support continuing professional development, and reward excellence in physics education. AAPT was founded in 1930 and is headquartered in the American Center for Physics in College Park, Maryland.

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FACULTY DISTINCTIONS

Gail Zasowski named a Cottrell Scholar Gail Zasowski, assistant professor of the Department of Physics &

Astronomy, has been named a 2021 Cottrell Scholar. The Cottrell Scholar program, run by the Research Corporation for Science Advancement, honors early-career faculty members for the quality and innovation of not only their research programs but also their educational activities and their academic leadership. Each year, scholars are selected from a pool of candidates based on their research, education, leadership accomplishments, and proposed future work, as evaluated by panels of external experts.

“I’m honored to be on this list of amazing researchers,” said Zasowski. “This award will allow my group and me to try out a lot of very cool ideas, and I’m excited to be part of the really unique Cottrell Scholar community!”

Jordan Gerton, director of the Center for Science and Mathematics Education at the U and associate professor in the Physics Department, is a 2007 Cottrell Scholar. He was the keynote speaker at last year’s online annual Cottrell Scholar Conference, where he urged the “vibrant collaborative community of Cottrell Scholars to embrace their role as agents of change at their institutions.”

Gail Zasowski

Zasowski, who joined the university in 2017, is an astronomer whose research focuses on understanding how galaxies produce and redistribute the heavy elements that shape the Universe and enable life in it. The 99.5% of Earth’s mass that is not made of hydrogen was actually forged in generations of stars over billions of years. This same “stardust” is responsible for most of what we observe in the Universe: from super-clusters of galaxies to stars and planets in our own galaxy. In order to understand the evolution of the Universe, we have to understand just how it has been enriched in the heavier elements (like carbon, nitrogen, and oxygen) by the stars and gas that reside inside galaxies.

“My research,” said Zasowski, “takes advantage of our unique position within our own Milky Way galaxy to use the chemistry and ages of its stars, and of galaxies whose stars and gas share a similar history, to study galaxy evolution on scales that are too small to resolve throughout most of the Universe.” Using a wide range of datasets, she and her group explore how and when the Milky Way’s own stars enriched its interstellar gas, and how to best use the Milky Way to understand other similar galaxies.

Dr. Zasowski also serves as the spokesperson for the Sloan Digital Sky Survey’s (SDSS) current generation, where she works to ensure a smooth, transparent, and inclusive functioning of the massive international collaboration of astronomers and engineers. Within the Physics Department, she is currently Chair of the Ombuds Committee and is looking forward to working with students, staff, and faculty on a student-

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Tino Nyawelo helps students in the REFUGES Summer Bridge Program cohort of 2018 PHOTO CREDIT: Dave Titensor/University of Utah

$1.1M to research STEM-positive identities of refugee teens

By Lisa Potter, research communications specialist, University of Utah Communications

Refugee youth are particularly vulnerable to being disenfranchised from science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM). The National Science Foundation has awarded University of Utah and Utah State University researchers $1.1 million over three years to study how refugee teenagers construct self-identities related to STEM across settings, such as physics research and creating digital stories, across relationships, such as peer, parent, and teacher, and across the languages they speak. The first-of-its-kind project is titled “Investigating the development of STEM-positive identities of refugee teens in a physics out-of-school time experience.”

“Refugee youth often encounter many challenges related to STEM including restricted exposure to STEM education, language barriers, cultural adjustments, and a history of interrupted schooling, resulting in a low rate of high school completion and college matriculation among refugee students,” said

Tino Nyawelo, associate professor of physics and astronomy and director of diversity and recruitment at the Center for Science and Mathematics Education (CSME) at the U. “The project will conduct research to better understand these challenges and how to best broaden access to and engagement of STEM for refugee youth and other historically disenfranchised populations.”

A cohort of nearly 30 teens will learn the principles of physics and computer programming by building detectors for cosmic rays, which are extremely energetic particles that are constantly bombarding the Earth and creating showers of secondary particles when they collide with the atmosphere. The project is embedded within Refugees Exploring the Foundations of Undergraduate Education in Science (REFUGES), an after-school program that Nyawelo founded in 2009 to help refugee students in middle and high school thrive in STEM subjects. The U’s

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Jordan Gerton, associate professor of physics and director of the Center for Science and Mathematics Education (CSME) PHOTO CREDIT: Dave Titensor/University of Utah

CSME has housed REFUGES since 2012 where it has expanded to include a summer bridge program for incoming first-year students at the U, and nonrefugee students who are underrepresented in STEM fields.

“With REFUGES, we provide services to get students engaged with STEM. Now, we’re entering the next big phase of the program to research how to make engagement better,” Nyawelo said.

The co-principal investigators—U physicists Nyawelo, Jordan Gerton, and John Matthews and USU linguist Sarah Braden—are developing a curriculum that builds from the students’ home languages and cultures. Throughout the three-year program, the researchers will document individual students’ pathways of identification (identity development) with

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STEM as it unfolds in real-time, through students’ in-the-moment conversations while conducting cosmic ray research, during self-reflective tasks, and with their families during community STEM events.

This moment-to-moment data will be examined with personal narratives that students craft through auto ethnography culminating in digital stories.

“We know it’s not a lack of skill or interest that keeps historically underrepresented students from pursuing STEM fields. Inequity is the result of an accumulation of small moments that makes that student feel excluded from identifying with STEM,” said Braden, assistant professor of Language Education & Cultural Studies at USU. “By understanding how these inequities unfold, the goal is to then feed that information back into designing a learning environment that produces an equitable outcome.”

Sarah Braden, assistant professor of Language Education & Cultural Studies at USU

John Matthews runs the U’s Telescope Array cosmic array project in Delta, Utah

PHOTO CREDIT: Utah State University

PHOTO CREDIT: University of Utah

Building detectors and evidence-based curriculum Cosmic ray particles hit the Earth’s surface so frequently that two rays pass through your head every second. As they zoom through the atmosphere, they crash into nuclei, creating a shower of secondary particles that cosmic ray devices can detect. The students will run their detectors from a state-owned building in Salt Lake City to collect data for research.

The detector technology is adapted from HiSPARC (High School Project on Astrophysics Research with Cosmics), a collaboration between science institutions that started in the Netherlands, aimed at improving Dutch high schoolers’ interest in particle physics. Now there are more than 140 student-built detectors on buildings in the Netherlands, Namibia, and the United Kingdom that upload their data 24/7 to a publicly-available database at the Nikhef Institute in Amsterdam. The U’s detectors will be the newest addition to the HiSPARC project.

“Once you run these detectors, you’ll be able to figure out where the showers came from, or do atmospheric studies like how pressure impacts the rates of cosmic rays arriving to the surface,” said Matthews, who runs the U’s Telescope Array cosmic array project in Delta,

Utah. “Hopefully, they’ll learn something about equipment and the scientific process, and have fun at the same time.”

The researchers have spent months developing the deliberative, evidence-based curriculum that they will adapt as they get feedback from the students.

Each scientist brings their expertise in physics, astronomical computing, and applied linguistics to build the unique program that will reverberate well past Utah.

“We’re trying to understand how to best serve students that have been historically excluded from higher ed and from STEM,” said Gerton, associate professor of physics and astronomy and director of CSME. “What can universities do to engage those students, prepare them, motivate them, make them feel welcome, help them envision themselves as scientists before they get there?”

“This exceptional research project is a great example of our goal to broaden and strengthen equity, diversity, and inclusion research efforts at the U,” said Andy Weyrich, vice president for research at the U. “We’re very excited to receive this NSF grant and look forward to the positive impact it will have in our underrepresented communities and beyond.”

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STAFF DISTINCTIONS

Cyri Dixon named Outstanding New Advisor of the Year In recognition of her ability to “create, navigate, and graduate” physics students, the University of Utah Academic Advising Community has named Cyri Dixon, undergraduate advisor for the Physics and Astronomy Department, as the Outstanding New Academic Advisor for 2021.

Dixon has proven to be a valuable resource to undergraduate students in all areas of academic advising. As the only undergraduate advisor for the department, she meets with each and every physics major. She has 236 physics major students and prides herself on knowing each student by name. She helps each develop a course plan that fits their interests as we’ll as connecting them to research and internship opportunities, campus resources, and the department community as a whole.

Cyri Dixon

She is pleased to be involved with the changes made to the Physics & Astronomy Department’s curriculum to make things more flexible and inclusive for students, including the department’s new computational emphasis and adjustments to honors requirements, as well as new reform to be implemented next year.

Here are comments from students and faculty about Dixon and her work: “Cyri is an incredible advocate for students. She is kind and thoughtful and makes you feel comfortable expressing your feelings about things. She is the best physics advisor I have had.” ~student comment

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“Thanks for everything you do. People like you make the world turn. ~Dr. Rich Ingebretsen, faculty

“Whenever I am worried about a student, Cyri knows what is going on or knows what to do to address the problem. Thank you, Cyri, for your help, patience, and for caring about all our students.” ~Dr. Tugdual Stephan Lebohec, faculty “Cyri has been a terrific advisor for me. She has always been available for chats or emails and been quick to respond to all of my questions, even unusual or specific ones that are only tangentially related to completing a physics degree. After every meeting I’ve had with her I tell my wife, ‘she’s a great advisor.’ I think Cyri absolutely deserves this award.” ~student comment “Cyri is one of the nicest people I have ever met. She is very quick to respond to any questions; she’s always willing to help no matter what. She has always been able to help me with whatever I have needed. She’s very easy to talk to, and she makes you feel like you can do just about anything.” ~student comment A graduate of Utah State University with a degree in Physical Sciences Education, Dixon also has minor degrees in physics and chemistry teaching. She is currently working on a Masters of Public Administration degree at the U. Originally from Idaho, she returned to Utah after living in the Midwest and teaching middle school science and engineering in Arizona. She loves camping, sports, Wonder Woman, and her dog, Roka.

Boy Scout troop observing an experiment

STUDENT DISTINCTIONS

SPS chapter receives Blake Lilly Prize The U’s chapter of the Society of Physics Students (SPS) has been awarded the

physics to them in a fun and engaging way.

Unfortunately, COVID changed our ability to do inperson events, but I’m proud of the flexibility of our leadership in using an online approach in order to continue engaging with students and teachers. We’re thrilled to see our efforts recognized by the national SPS organization.”

The U’s chapter was recognized for its outreach events targeted to high school and middle school students. Each month, SPS chapter volunteers planned instruction around a theme that was coordinated with the ongoing science curriculum of students in the Salt Lake City School District. Events consisted of one or two large science demonstrations and break-out sessions to encourage hands-on activities.

The following individuals participated in the chapter’s outreach efforts and activities in 2020:

Blake Lilly Prize by the national Society of Physics Students organization. The prize recognizes SPS chapters and individuals who make a genuine effort to positively influence attitudes about physics among school children and the general public.

Unfortunately, the pandemic shut down area schools last spring, so the chapter immediately moved to online instruction, with recorded science demonstrations, videos, explanations of the science behind the demos, and materials distributed to science teachers.

“It was an expansive undertaking that took the coordination and hard work of all the SPS chapter leaders to execute,” said Kameron Goold, last year’s chapter president. “We had a great time encouraging young students to pursue STEM by introducing

Kameron Goold – President Galen Bergsten – Vice President Vivek Vankayalapati – Treasurer Mario Homer – Secretary Chandler Bass – Historian Chandler Merrill – Outreach Estephani Torres – Outreach Jonah Barber – Outreach Tobin Wainer – Communication Cyri Dixon – Chapter Advisor Jared Coles – Associate Zone Councilor The Blake Lilly Prize is named after and given in honor of the late Blake Lilly, a physics student at Georgia Tech in the late 1980s. Chapter recipients are selected each year by the national council of the Society of Physics Students, which considers public service, community engagement, outreach efforts, and audience interaction in making award decisions.

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CHURCHILL SCHOLARSHIP

Isaac Martin brings home the U’s sixth straight Churchill Scholarship

By Paul Gabrielsen, senior science writer, University of Utah Communications

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For the sixth consecutive year, a College

of Science student has received the prestigious Churchill Scholarship to study at the University of Cambridge in the United Kingdom. Isaac Martin, a senior honors student, who majored in mathematics and physics, is one of only 17 students nationally to receive the award this year.

Martin’s designation ties with Harvard’s six-year run of consecutive Churchill Scholars (1987-1992) and is second only to Princeton’s seven-year streak (1994-2000).

“Isaac’s recognition as a Churchill Scholar is the result of years of remarkable discipline and dedication to a field of study that he loves,” said Dan Reed, senior vice president for Academic Affairs.

Martin decided to apply for a Churchill Scholarship as a freshman after meeting for lunch with Michael Zhao, a 2017 Churchill Scholar, who unexpectedly passed away in 2018.

“I am positively delighted and quite flabbergasted to receive the scholarship,” Martin said, “but I wish I could phone Michael to thank him for making the opportunity known to me. His legacy lives on in the undergraduate program of the Math Department here at the U, where many others like me have greatly benefited from the example he set.”

Martin, a recipient of an Eccles Scholarship and a 2020 Barry Goldwater Scholarship, remembers as a kindergartener trying to write down the biggest number in existence and, as an eighth grader, suddenly understanding trigonometry after hours of reading on Wikipedia.

“That sensation of understanding, the feeling that some tiny secret of the universe was suddenly laid bare before me—that’s something I’ve only felt while studying math and physics, and it’s a high I will continue to chase for the rest of my life,” he said.

Books by Carl Sagan and Jim Baggott also kindled his love of math and physics, and after several years of self-directed study in middle and high school and a year at Salt Lake Community College, Martin enrolled at the U as a mathematics and physics double major.

After early undergraduate experiences in the research labs of physics professors Vikram Deshpande and Yue Zhao, Martin found himself gravitating more toward mathematics. He completed a Research Experience for Undergraduates (REU) at UC Santa Barbara studying almost Abelian Lie groups, which have applications in cosmology and crystallography, under Zhirayr Avetisyan. This experience resulted in Martin’s first research paper. He later completed another REU at the University of Chicago.

“This research was incredibly rewarding because while it applied to physics, the work itself was firmly rooted in the realm of pure math,” said Martin.

Returning to Utah, Martin worked with professors Karl Schwede and Thomas Polstra to study F-singularities and developed this work into a singleauthor paper and his honors thesis with Professor Anurag Singh.

“I would not be where I am today without the incredible faculty at the U and their willingness to devote time to undergraduates,” he said.

At Cambridge, Martin hopes to study algebraic geometry, number theory, and representation theory (“in that order,” he says) in pursuit of a master’s degree in pure mathematics.

“I’m particularly interested in learning as much as I can about mirror symmetry, which I intend to make my essay topic,” he adds. “I also plan to drink a lot of tea and to buy one of those Sherlock Holmes coats. I will also begrudgingly begin using the term ‘maths,’ but I promise to stop the instant I board a plane back to the U.S. in 2022.”

After he returns from Cambridge, Martin plans to earn a doctoral degree in pure mathematics and enter academia, using his experiences in many different educational systems including U.S. and British public schools, homeschooling, and online learning, to broaden opportunities for students from a diversity of backgrounds.

“My past has molded me into who I am today,” he said, “and I hope I can use my experiences to create programs in STEM for opportunity-starved students, whether they are held back due to non-traditional schooling or to socio-economic factors.”

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ALUMNUS PROFILE

Perry Hacking Perry Hacking has always loved astronomy, so

there was nothing for him to do but pursue and follow that passion throughout his life. “I had a one-track mind, and learning about astronomy drove most of my thoughts during my little free time and all of my energy behind my academic and professional life,” he said. “I never wanted some position or title—I just wanted to learn more about astronomy or contribute to the world learning more about it. I’m grateful I’ve been able to devote my life to something I love.”

Projects at JPL and Caltech Hacking received bachelor’s degrees in chemistry and physics from the U in 1981 and then moved on to graduate work in astronomy at Cornell University.

He was the only student member of the science team of NASA’s Infrared Astronomical Satellite (IRAS) mission, which was the first mission to put a telescope in space to survey the sky in infrared. IRAS made a number of unexpected discoveries, including: six new comets, the core of our galaxy, and evidence of solid material around the stars Vega and Fomalhaut, which strongly suggested the existence of planetary systems around other stars. The telescope was a joint project of NASA, the Netherlands Agency for Aerospace Programmes, and the United Kingdom’s Science and Engineering Research Council. Hacking’s Ph.D. thesis centered on observations of galaxy evolution, using the most sensitive infrared data from IRAS. He spent much of his career at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) at the California Institute of Technology (Caltech) as an instrument scientist and principal investigator. He was involved in several space missions, including the Spitzer Space Telescope, designed to study the early universe in infrared light. The Spitzer Telescope was the first telescope to see light from a planet outside our solar system.

In addition, Spitzer also made important discoveries about comets, stars, exoplanets, and distant galaxies.

Hacking’s analysis prompted engineers at JPL to develop a better orbit for Spitzer that dropped mission costs significantly and helped NASA select the mission for flight.

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Hacking in his airplane Hacking served as principal investigator on the Wide-Field Infrared Explorer (WIRE) mission.

He originally sketched out the infrared telescope and its mission on a napkin with Paul Graf, a friend from graduate school in April 1991. Designed as a four-month mission to study starburst galaxies, the WIRE, unfortunately, failed soon after launch in 1999 due to a malfunction that caused the space telescope’s coolant to rapidly deplete. The WIRE mission did prove important technologies that had never been built or put into space—technologies that Hacking had proposed in 1998 for a more capable version of WIRE. One of the most important of these was a two-staged hydrogen cryostat that Hacking conceived of during the proposal phase of WIRE; this was built at Utah State University’s Space Dynamics Laboratory. Leading engineers were highly skeptical this cryostat could achieve the cold temperatures the new generation of infrared detectors on WIRE required for optimal performance. The cryostat not only worked—it delivered temperatures below those required.

His final project at JPL was the Wide-field Infrared Survey Explorer (WISE) mission, used to scan the entire sky twice in infrared light, snapping pictures of three-quarters of a billion objects, including remote galaxies, stars, and asteroids. After completing its surveys in 2011, WISE was put to sleep but reactivated in 2013 as NEOWISE, with the primary goal of scanning for near-Earth objects, or NEOs. Once WISE had been approved for proposal development in 1998, and after WIRE in 1999, Hacking decided to leave JPL and focus solely on teaching at a community college. “It was a really

to improve it.’ It took a long time for that lesson to finally sink in. Professor Thorne’s passion at lunch that day helped me when I conceived and worked on my own ideas about 15 years later,” said Hacking.

Hacking with his kids difficult decision to abandon cutting-edge research in favor of teaching at a community college that some people had not heard of,” said Hacking. “Some of my colleagues thought I was crazy for leaving the WISE mission behind—even I knew it was an unusual decision, but I also knew it was the right thing to do. Sometimes instead of getting back on the horse, you have to decide to stay off and take a different, but better path. Fortunately, life’s experiences and a sense of humor have helped me through challenging times. WISE went on to be an incredible success without me. I know that I have made a greater contribution by changing paths.”

Today, Hacking is semi-retired and lives in Cedar City, Utah, but flies his private plane to teach physics and astronomy at El Camino College in Torrance, Calif.

Favorite U professors and research During his undergraduate years, Hacking worked with several influential and respected professors, including Dr. William Schwalm, currently professor of physics and astrophysics at the University of North Dakota. “Dr. Schwalm was the best instructor I ever had,” said Hacking. “He taught physics as someone who loved the material and pushed his students well beyond just the textbook.”

Emeritus Professor Richard Price was another favorite, who taught at the U from 1971 to 2004 and was instrumental in encouraging Hacking to attend a lunch with Kip Thorne, a well-respected physicist from Caltech. The lunch was important in Hacking’s development as scientist. “I was pretty clueless sitting down to lunch. I remember asking Professor Thorne why he wanted to build his first gravity wave detector, especially when he knew it would never detect anything,” he said. “Professor Thorne responded by saying, ‘Well, we have to start somewhere, and we’ll learn from building it how

Hacking also worked with Professor William Guillory, chair of the Chemistry Department, on laser photolysis and matrix isolation of radical species. “He showed more confidence in me than I had in myself, and it was a wonderful experience to work in his lab,” said Hacking. “His advice helped shape my career in astronomy, too. In my spare time, I would often go up to Little Mountain to observe the night sky with my telescope.”

Hacking also attended fossil hunting trips with the paleontology class, which sparked a lifelong hobby as an amateur geologist—a passion he has passed on to his family. Hacking was, and still is, a huge Ute fan and still follows (and occasionally attends) Ute football, basketball, gymnastics, baseball, and ski team events.

Advice to students The best career advice Hacking ever received (and he admits he has required a large amount over the years) came during his undergrad years at the U. In the beginning, he received useful career and academic advice from almost every faculty member in the Chemistry Dept. Later, when he was considering graduate school programs in physical chemistry or physics—both seemed like better job markets than astronomy—a postdoc who was working with Dr. Price met with Hacking one day. “I was a mountaineer who loved and devoured science and was just generally drifting in the right direction, thanks to the U,” said Hacking. “The postdoc told me I was an idiot for not pursuing astronomy—something I truly loved. He was right, of course. You don’t need a job market—you need a job. If you’re passionate about something, then you’re going to be very good at it, even if you lack talent initially. Drive beats talent every time. Follow your dreams. If you haven’t found your passions yet, be patient. You will. Everyone has them.”

When Hacking isn’t teaching or thinking about astronomy and physics, he spends time with family and pursues hobbies, including flying, fishing, skiing, boating, high-power rocketry, board games, and gardening.

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ALUMNUS PROFILE

Mike McCleery Mike McCleery met his wife, Jan McClure, at the U in

Professor Emeritus Irvin Swigart’s sophomore physics lecture class.

They were seated alphabetically, and there were only four women in a class of 200. “I got really lucky,” said Mike.

Before he began studying at the U, Mike was a senior at Highland High School in Salt Lake City, where he had been awarded a D.C. Jackling Scholarship in Metallurgical Engineering. High school physics was his favorite class. By the end of his sophomore year at the U, Mike realized he wouldn’t enjoy a career in metallurgy, so he changed his major to physics. Unfortunately, that meant losing his scholarship, so he worked as a pizza cook at night. At the time, he was very interested in pursuing a master’s degree in architecture, with several structural classes to take, so a background in physics seemed practical.

After Mike and Jan completed their Bachelor of Science degrees in 1971—Mike’s was in physics and Jan’s was in mathematics, with a minor in physics—they married. In June, the couple will celebrate their 50th wedding anniversary. Jan began teaching, and Mike began working on an MBA at the U. One year later, Jan returned to get a master’s degree in math, and Mike completed his MBA. They relocated to Silicon Valley, where they spent most of their careers.

Mike and Jan McCleery

“Jan, and I were both recruited by Ford Aerospace,” said Mike. “At the time, Ford didn’t realize they’d hired a married couple until they received one relocation expense! Ford Aerospace was looking for MBA graduates with technical undergraduate backgrounds.”

Mike started at Ford Aerospace as a financial analyst, supporting the Material and Manufacturing operations group involved with building geostationary satellites for NATO. Two years into his career, he was transferred into corporate finance, supporting business planning and reporting and forecasting key metrics like individual contract profitability, cash flow, and capital expenditures.

Most satellite contracts at the Space Systems/Loral division of the company were set at a firm, fixed price, so it became challenging for the division to remain competitive while pushing the boundaries for state-of-the-art large geostationary communications satellites.

Following his years in corporate finance, he and Jan were asked to help establish a facility in Charlotte, N.C. to develop and sell laser scanner machines to automate scanning cloth in textile mills to detect flaws and to develop software to optimize cutting around those flaws.

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“We liked Charlotte, but before we were able to fully enjoy living there, an urgent need for my skills brought us back to Palo Alto,” said Mike.

As he progressed with the company, he was given supervisory and management roles that included responsibility for contracts administration, corporate finance, accounting, and internal audit, which led to his final position as controller. After 35 years, he and Jan retired to Discovery Bay, Calif. As a retirement gift, the company treated Mike and Jan to a trip to Cape Canaveral to witness the launch of the latest satellite. “It was an amazing experience,” said Mike.

The value of physics “My background in physics was enormously helpful in my career at Ford Aerospace because I was able to communicate effectively with the engineering management responsible for satellite manufacturing and U.S. government programs,” he said. “The engineering managers loved someone who could speak their language and assist in developing milestones and quantified schedules to achieve profitability and cash flow objectives. I functioned as a bridge between engineers responsible for R&D, design and construction, and the business of maintaining a profitable company.”

Memories of the U Mike’s favorite teacher at the U was Professor Emeritus Irvin Swigart, who made understanding principles of physics fun and easy to comprehend.

“I’ve always had a need to physically understand concepts and not just the mathematical equations, so attending his lectures helped confirm my choice of undergraduate majors,” he said. Dr. Swigart’s lectures were very popular with engineering undergraduates, often with standing room only when word got around campus that he was giving the “Monkey on a Trapeze” lecture or when Swigart would bring in the Van de Graff generator. With one hand Dr. Swigart held a wand in the arcing field—with the other he held a fluorescent light, which lit up. At that point, he would dance around the ring of fire to explain principles of classical physics.

Mike didn’t participate in any research as an undergraduate and admits he came out of high school a bit of a nerd. He was recruited by the Sigma Phi Epsilon fraternity when the frat

house was on scholastic probation—his pledge class singlehandedly brought the fraternity off probation. “My fraternity experience improved my communication and social skills significantly, and I had a fraternity brother majoring in engineering to hang out with for all-nighters and before midterms,” he said. “We also did volunteer work in the community, collecting donations of clothing to distribute, and of course, we arranged our classes to allow for half-day skiing.” Mike often brought Jan to the fraternity house for lunch and social events. Mike and Jan are still close to that fraternity brother and his wife, as well as many other fraternity brothers, and they have reunion get-togethers whenever the McCleerys return to Salt Lake City.

Math classes and the value of a liberal arts education If Mike could go back and revisit his college self, he would urge him to take more math classes!

He considers not taking more advanced math classes a gap in his education since he only took the minimum required and says he struggled in quantum mechanics. Socially, the fraternity helped him, but he wishes he had been more active in campus organizations, such as the physics club.

“I think many of us coming out of high school don’t know what we want to do when we grow up,” he said.

“That’s why I think a liberal arts college education is very important in this global environment. It helps us become better global citizens and solidify, especially during our first two years of college, what we want to major in and what kind of career we want. Studying abroad is an important learning experience—it will broaden you as a person—and learning about different cultures can help break down barriers and reduce divisiveness, which unfortunately, seems to be flourishing in our society today.”

Mike still enjoys skiing and water skiing, and he and Jan play a lot of golf. They love traveling and visiting their daughters and grandchildren, but the pandemic has made it difficult to travel to Europe to visit them.

“We still do a lot of boating, but it’s just the two of us this year instead of doing group cruises on our boats to San Francisco, Napa, and other marinas,” he said.

To satisfy his architectural interests, he has remodeled three homes (some rentals) and designed the house where they live on the water in Discovery Bay.

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Overview of Physics & Astronomy Graduates Students who will obtain a master’s or Ph.D. in the spring or summer of 2021 are: Rohit Kumar (Ph.D.) Ryan Levon (master’s) Kevin McCarthy (Ph.D.) Mirna Mohamed (master’s) David Morison (Ph.D.) Henna Popli (Ph.D.) Ipsita Saha (Ph.D.) Abhimanyu Sharma (Ph.D.) Michael Talbot (Ph.D.)

University of Utah Academic Advising Community Outstanding New Academic Advisor Cyri Dixon, Physics & Astronomy Department

College of Science Distinctions Sandra Bromley Scholarship Topher Eyre Joseph T. Crockett M.D. Memorial Scholarship Brian Hassard Anna Stephens College of Science Dean’s Scholarship Brian Hassard Ben Preece Crocker Science House Scholars Keegan Benfield Beth Cahoon Grant Daniels Nash Ward

Other Distinctions Churchill Scholarship Isaac Martin Blake Lilly Prize SPS Chapter

Faculty Distinctions Cottrell Scholar Gail Zasowski Doc Brown Futures Award Ramón Barthelemy

Department Award Teaching Excellence Gail Zasowski

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Physics & Astronomy Student Awards in 2021

UNDERGRADUATE AWARDS

GRADUATE AWARDS

Department Scholarships

University Graduate Research Fellowship Antoine Dumont

Outstanding Continuing Undergraduate Award Tessa McNamme Kieran Smout Outstanding Undergraduate Senior Award Estephani Torres Villanueva Outstanding Undergraduate Research Award Christopher Ausbeck Outstanding Undergraduate Teaching Assistant Andrew Erickson Paul Gilbert Outstanding Research in Astronomy & Astrophysics Kameron Goold Tobin Wainer Thomas J. Parmley Scholarship for an outstanding student in physics and astronomy Brian Hassard Walter W. Wada Endowed Scholarship for physics majors Joshua Marchant Joshua Miraglia Preston J. and Phyllis R. Taylor Undergraduate Award for overcoming obstacles on the way to strong academic achievements Anna Stephens Tyler Soelberg Memorial Award for exceptional performance in science coursework and creative ventures Brian Hassard

J. Irvin and Norma K. Swigart Endowed Graduate Scholarship (for first-year graduate students to partially fund summer research) Paul Bailey Rikard Bodin Joshua Bartoske Jamie Berg Zachary Carter Zane Gerber Sean Johnson Ron Putnam Ankita Singla Brianna Thorpe Fengwei Yang Outstanding Graduate Students in coursework and research Jackson Remington Distinguished Graduate Student Researcher in condensed matter physics Tushar Bhowmick Xin Pan Outstanding Teaching Assistant for exceptional fulfillment of teaching duties Heshan Hewa Walpitage Outstanding Postdoc Research for important contributions to the department’s research Nick Boardman Distinguished Postdoc Research in condensed matter physics Uyen Huyhn

David and Karen Imig Undergraduate Scholarship Kloey Lonnecker

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DEPARTMENT OF PHYSICS & ASTRONOMY 115 South 1400 East, JFB 201 Salt Lake City, UT 84112 Social @uofu.Physics.Astronomy @uofuPhysAstro Online physics.utah.edu Phone 801-581-6901

Crimson Laureate Society Join the Crimson Laureate Society at the College of Science! Society members advocate for science, gain exclusive benefits, and drive the future of research and education at the University of Utah. Your annual membership will start today with any gift of $100 or more to any department or program in the College.

For more information, contact the College of Science at 801-581-6958, or visit www.science.utah.edu/giving.