UNH Physics Department - News

November 2012: Professor Nathan Schwadron has been named fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) for his "outstanding contributions to NASA missions and to the theoretical and observational understanding of the space radiation environment, solar wind, and interstellar interactions'', according to AAAS. For more information, see here. 

August 2012: Undergraduate Jesse T. Coburn published his first scientific paper "The Turbulent Cascade and Proton Heating in the Solar Wind During Solar Minimum" by Coburn, Smith, Vasquez, Stawarz, and Forman [Astrophysical Journal, 754, 93, 2012].  He also presented the work at this summer's Solar Wind 13 and SHINE meetings.

March 2012: Graduate students Jishnu Bhattacharyya (who works with Per Berglund) and Jun Wang (who works with Karsten Pohl), were both selected to receive a Dissertation Year Fellowship award from the UNH Graduate School for the academic year 2012/13. The purpose of these fellowships is to recognize and support outstanding UNH doctoral students in the final year of their Ph.D. programs.

Dec 2011:  In memory of Prof. Jim Harper, who lost his longtime stuggle against illness in September, the Harper family has established the James M. E. Harper Fellowhip.  More details on the fellowhip web page:

http://www.physics.unh.edu/harper-fellowship

May 2011: Isabel Dregely, who completed her PhD in Physics in December, was selected last week by the International Society of Magnetic Resonance in Medicine as the recipient of their W.S.Moore Young Investigator Award. Three finalists competed by presenting talks in a plenary session and by defending a poster on their work to the awards committee. The selection process was completed on Thursday May 12 at this year’s annual meeting in Montreal, Canada, and the award was presented by Dr. Li Debiao, President of the Society.

April 2011: Several members of the Department of Physics appear in the latest issue of the UNH undergraduate research Inquiry Journal. Joshua French is describing his work on the star sensor which will be flown on a NASA rocket. Dan Foley discusses his research with the scanning tunneling microscope. Two former physics undergraduates, Morgan O'Neill and George Clark, comment on their past work with the IBEX satellite. Finally, there is an article about Professor Eberhard Möbius and his mentoring of many undergraduates in space science research projects. For more information, see www.unh.edu/inquiryjournal/

Below are further links to research articles and commentaries by former physics undergraduates in earlier editions of the Inquiry Journal,

April 2011:Graduating senior Joshua Stawarz won an NSF Graduate Research Fellowship worth $90k to help fund his graduate education. He will take this with him to whatever graduate school he chooses for the next phase of his physics education

November 2010: Undergraduate Colin Joyce published his first journal article titled: "Excitation of Low-Frequency Waves in the Solar Wind by Newborn Interstellar Pickup Ions H⁺ and He⁺ as Seen by Voyager at 4.5 AU" by Joyce, Smith, Isenberg, Murphy, and Schwadron, in The Astrophysical Journal, 724, 1256-1261, 2010.

September 2010: Student Andrea Bedell coauthored a paper "Synergistic Ag (111) and Cu (111) Texture Evolution in Phase Segregated Cu1-x Agx Magnetron Sputtered Composite Thin Films," by D.I. Filoti, A.R. Bedell, J.M.E. Harper, J. Vac. Sci. Technol. A 28, 838 (2010).

September 2010: Undergraduate John Donaghy was awarded a competitive Dept. of Energy SULI internship at Jefferson Lab for the past summer, where he worked on optimizing the NMR polarimetry system of the Hall A He-3 target. He wrote a technical report on his results and presented his work at the end of the summer in a poster session.

July 2010: Undergraduates Colin Joyce and Joshua Stawarz presented papers at the annual SHINE meeting in Santa Fe, NM. Titles of the papers were "Excitation of Low-Frequency Waves by Newborn Interstellar Pickup Ions H⁺ and He⁺ at 4.5 AU" by Joyce et al. and "The Turbulent Cascade for High Cross-Helicity States at 1 AU" by Stawarz et al.

May 2010: Recent graduate Procheta Mallik writes back to describe his experience at UNH and within the Physics Department. See the online Inquiry Journal. Other Physics students recently featured in the journal are Sam Meehan and Austin Purves.

April 2010: Every year UNH holds an Undergraduate Research Conference and this year fourteen of our physics students participated. They present posters describing their scientific research in a program that closely follows the standards of international meetings. Congratulations to Andrea R. Bedell, Brian T. Collins, Dana I. Filoti, Katelyn M. Giles, Colin J. Joyce, Kyle J. Kalutkiewicz, Lauren Lazarus, Richard L. Messeder, Lee W. Peterson, Joshua E. Stawarz, Kyle J. Snavely, James A. Tinsley, Matthew A. Young, and Joshua R. Wood. Special congratulations go to Lee Peterson who won "Best Poster" for the Physics, Math and Statistics section.

April 2010: Physics major Joshua Stawarz, presently a junior, was awarded a prestigious Barry M. Goldwater Scholarship for the 2010-11 academic year. A physics major, Stawarz was one of 278 students selected on the basis of academic merit from among more than 1000 math, science and engineering students nominated nationwide. He is one of only two students from New Hampshire universities to receive the scholarship. At the same time Josh published his latest research paper in The Astrophysical Journal titled "The Turbulent Cascade for High Cross Helicity States at 1 AU" by Stawarz, Smith, Vasquez, Forman, and MacBride.

Summer 2009: Profs. Lynn Kistler and Joachim Raeder were promoted to full professor, and Prof. Silas Beane was awarded tenure with promotion to associate professor. Prof. Roy Torbert has been selected to serve on NASA's top level Advisory Committee. Prof. Kai Germaschewski successfully led a 4-department effort to acquire an IBM cell cluster computer while forging a strategic computing alliance with IBM. In addition, 8 more grants from NASA, NSF, and NIH were awarded to Physics faculty over the past two months totaling $2.1 million. Graduate student Hyun-Ju Kim, who is working with Prof. Joachim Raeder on the solar wind magnetosphere interaction, received a "Best Poster" award at the 9th International School for Space Simulation.

August 2009: Cambridge University Press has published the first of a three volume set titled Heliosphysics: Plasma Physics of the Local Cosmos. The book is written for advanced undergraduate and graduate students interested in this evolving field. Two UNH professors are coauthors of the book. The author of Chapter 5 "Magnetic Reconnection" is Prof. Terry Forbes. The author of Chapter 7 "Turbulence" is Prof. Charles Smith.

August 2009: Undergraduates Colin Joyce and Joshua Stawarz joined recent graduate Jeffrey Tessein in attending the 2009 SHINE conference held in Wolfville, Nova Scotia. Together they authored (either as first author or co-author) nine papers presented on topics ranging from the characteristics of solar wind turbulence and heating of the solar wind to the generation of waves by newborn interstellar pickup ions. They were joined by David Connick, a recent graduate of Colby College who is currently working in the Space Science Center, who presented his work on the current state of the solar minimum. The students were joined by Professors Bhattacharjee, Chandran, Forbes, Isenberg, Lee, Ryan, Smith, and Vasquez and Research Scientist Simunac.

July 2009: This month the Space Science Center hosted one of the modules in 2009 Project SMART - a program designed to offer high school students a very real and very advanced look at how science is done while it introduces them to the cutting edge of space science. Nine students participated in research projects ranging from the analysis of CLUSTER data to study both Crater FTEs and Magnetic Reconnection, the examination of the IBEX star tracker made by UNH and now in flight on the IBEX spacecraft, and the construction of a Faraday cup sensor of the type flown in many space missions. The students also built the payload for a high-altitude balloon that flew a video camera to 96,000 feet! Look here to see the view from 96,000 feet.Thank you to teachers Lou Broad and Scott Goelzer for their invaluable efforts and the many faculty and researchers of the UNH Physics Department who contributed their talents and made the program possible.

July 2009: The Interstellar Boundary Explorer (IBEX) completed its first full-sky map of the heliospheric boundary and has returned unexpected neutral atom observations from the Moon.

June 2009: NASA gave the go-ahead for its Magnetospheric Multi-Scale Mission (MMS) with a large instrument contribution from the group of Prof. Roy Torbert.

May 2009: Congratulations to graduate student Richard Woolf who won 3rd place for student presentations at this month's IEEE conference on Homeland Security in Waltham, MA.

May 2009: Congratulations to undergraduate Joshua Stawarz who published his first research paper this month: "The Turbulent Cascade and Proton Heating in the Solar Wind at 1 AU" by Stawarz, Smith, Vasquez, Forman, and MacBride [The Astrophysical Journal, 696, 1119-1127, 2009].

May 2009: Congratulations to undergraduate Physics majors who won university scholarships this month: Richard Messeder who won the Cutts Scholarship; Kyle Kalutkiewicz and Joshua Stawarz who both won Dalton Scholarships; Lee Peterson and Katelyn Giles who both won Dearborn Scholarships; Lauren Lazarus who won the Fearer Scholarship; Joshua Wood who won the Houston Scholarship; Kyle Snavely, Tuyen Nguyen, and Brian Collins who all won St. Onge Scholarships; and Joshua French who won the Zoochi Scholarship.

April 2009: As Program Director of the Hyperpolarized Media Magnetic Resonance Study Group of the International Society of Magnetic Resonance in Medicine, Prof. Bill Hersman organized the group's international meeting this past April. Next year he will serve as the group's president.

April 2009: Congratulations to the 14 Physics undergraduates who participated in this year's UNH Undergraduate Research Conference Interdisciplinary Science & Engineering Research Conference. Specifically, congratulations to George Clark, Travis Glines, Kyle Kalutkiewicz, Lauren Lazarus, Daniel Mannarino, Kyle Snavely, Samuel Meehan, Tuyen Nguyen, Morgan O'Neill, Brian Patenaude, Lee Peterson, Austin Purvis, Joshua Stararz, and Jeffrey Tessein. Everyone with experience at national and international scientific meetings continues to marvel at the quality of the research presented at this conference. Special congratulations go to Morgan O'Neill for winning two of only seven awards given and to George Clark who received a "Best Poster" award.

April 2009: Congratulations to undergraduate Joshua Woods on being awarded a Goldwater Fellowship! The Goldwater Fellowship is a highly competitive, academics-based national award given to only a select few students each year from across the country.

April 2009: Colby undergraduate David Connick visited the Space Science Center during the summer of 2008 to work on a project in collaboration with UNH professor Charles Smith and Boston University professor Nathan Schwadron involving the variation of toroidal solar flux with the solar cycle. His paper was published this month titled "The Flux of Open and Toroidal Interplanetary Magnetic Field as a Function of Heliolatitude and Solar Cycle,'' by Connick, Smith and Schwadron, The Astrophysical Journal, 695, 357--362, 2009.

March 2009: Two professors from the UNH Physics Department have been honored by the university for their contributions. Prof. Eberhard Moebius was named the recipient of this year's Distinguished Professor Award. At the same time Prof. Terry Forbes was awarded this year's Excellence in Research Award. The awards are given to one person each year in recognition of their scholarly activity. Congratulations to both.

March 2009: Profs. Connell, Lopate and McKibben, working in collaboration with Aurora Flight Sciences, were awarded a NASA contract to develop a compact charged particle spectrometer for use in manned space vehicles. The intent is to improve crew safety with enhanced radiation monitoring. The design is based on ADIS technology and instruments now in development for NOAA flights.

February 2009: Undergraduate Jeffrey Tessein published a paper in The Astrophysical Journal titled "Spectral Indices for Multi-Dimensional Interplanetary Turbulence at 1 AU" by Tessein, Smith, MacBride, Matthaeus, Forman, and Borovsky, 692, 684-693, 2009.

Winter 2008: Prof. Mark McConnell is serving as Davis Fellow, under the auspices of the Discovery Program. Alongside other faculty, he is developing an Inquiry course for Spring 2010. Prof. James Ryan was elected Fellow of the American Physical Society. Both have received NASA grants for the development of high altitude balloon payloads to study celestial gamma-rays. Peter Bochsler, emeritus from the University of Bern, is collaborating with colleagues in the Space Science Center on STEREO and IBEX. Graduate student Rebecca Barlow was selected one of 50 student ambassadors for 2009 International Year of Astronomy activities by NASA. For his PhD thesis under Prof. Karsten Pohl, on the driving forces behind the heterogeneity of ultrathin films, Jiebing Sun received this year's Morton M. Traum Award at the 55th International Symposium of the American Vacuum Society. Derya Deniz completed his PhD under Prof. James Harper on texture evolution in metal nitride thin films, and is now pursuing research on solid state gas sensors at the University of Maine.

October 2008: The Interstellar Boundary Explorer (IBEX) is launched. IBEX is now collecting the first all-sky map of energetic neutral atoms from the solar system boundary. Together with students, UNH investigators Eberhard Moebius, Harald Kucharek, and Martin Lee sift the data for clues on the surrounding interstellar medium.

June 2008: UNH Researchers Joachim Raeder, Kai Germaschewski, Doug Larson and Andrew Foulks put together 40 PlayStations to carry out numerical simulations of the earth's magnetosphere. For details see UNH Press Release

May 2008: Prof. Martin Lee received one of the prestigious UNH Presidential Professorships for 10 years for his outstanding research contributions. Prof. Eberhard Moebius was awarded the Class of 1940 Professorship for 3 years for excellence in research and interdisciplinary involvement.

May 2008: Bogdan Diaconescu won the Graduate School best Ph.D. thesis award for work on self-assembly of nano-structures on metallic surfaces under Karsten Pohl.

May 2008: An impressive number of our undergraduate students are involved in research. Many of them presented posters at the UNH Undergraduate Research Conference (URC) this April. Special congratulations go to undergraduate George Clark who won the award for the best poster in Physics with his presentation on the calibration of the Star Sensor on the IBEX satellite.

April 2008: Junior Morgan O'Neill will present a poster on her research in Warsaw last year at the Legislative Breakfast in Concord on April 9. Morgan has implemented a challenging software module to include the Moon as objects to use with our star sensor on IBEX (Interstellar Boundary Explorer).

March 2008: Graduate student Derya Deniz has had a manuscript accepted by the Journal of Applied Physics: "Competitive Growth Mechanisms of Aluminum Nitride Thin Films Deposited by Off-Normal Reactive Magnetron Sputtering," by D. Deniz, T. Karabacak and J.M.E. Harper, to be published 2008.

March 2008: Undergraduate Vasiliy Vorotnikov published his first scientific paper in the AGU journal Space Weather entitled "Automated Shock Detection and Analysis Algorithm for Space Weather Application" by Vorotnikov, Smith, Hu, Szabo, Skoug, and Cohen.

January 2008: Prof. Li-Jen Chen published a paper in Nature Physics. The paper is entitled "Observation of energetic electrons within magnetic islands". UNH collaborators on the paper include Amitava Bhattacharjee, Pamela Puhl-Quinn, Hong-ang Yang, and Naoki Bessho. For details, see the UNH news release

January 2008: Graduate student Kathleen Hamilton published a paper in the Journal of Geophysical Research called "Anisotropies and Helicities in the Solar Wind Inertial and Dissipation Ranges at 1 AU," by Hamilton, Smith, Vasquez, and Leamon.