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University of Colorado Boulder Department of Physics Ranked Number 1 by U.S. News

The University of Colorado Department of Physics has been ranked as the number one school in the nation for atomic, molecular and optical physics, according to U.S. News and World Report's graduate school report. This ties CU Boulder's AMO program with that of MIT for the best graduate school program in the nation. Quantum physics was ranked as fifth, according to the report.

Overall, the Department of Physics is 19^th out of 145 ranked schools.

According to their Web site, U.S. News ranks graduate programs in the sciences according to the results of surveys sent to academics in various scientific fields. Those surveyed were ask to rate the quality of graduate programs of their peers.

View the Daily Camera Article

Cindy Regal Wins Packard Fellowship

Cindy Regal, a University of Colorado assistant professor of physics and associate fellow of JILA, has been awarded the prestigious David and Lucile Packard Fellowship for Science and Engineering. The David and Lucile Packard Foundation established the fellowship “to allow the nation’s most promising professors to pursue science and engineering research early in their careers with few funding restrictions and limited paperwork requirements.” This year, sixteen fellows were selected from 100 applicants across leading 50 universities.

The five-year, $875,000 fellowship will fund Regal’s work in experimental atomic physics. She is interested in developing techniques to control single neutral atoms with lasers and create small quantum gases that can be manipulated at the single-atom level, for applications in quantum information science and in modeling physics of complex materials.

“I am delighted to receive this award and am very grateful to the David and Lucile Packard Foundation. My research group looks forward to having flexible resources to attack a challenging problem,” Regal says.

Regal joins CU physics professors Michael Hermele, Shijie Zhong, Leo Radzihovsky, and John Price who were awarded Packard Fellowships in previous years.

Only Princeton leads CU in the number of physics faculty members who have been awarded Packard Fellowships.

Other Packard Fellows at CU-Boulder are Pieter Johnson in ecology, evolutionary biology, Alexis S.Templeton in geological sciences, Kristi S. Anseth in chemical and biological engineering, David Jonas in chemistry and biochemistry, Elizabeth Bradley in computer science, and Barbara Demmig-Adams, in ecology, evolutionary biology.

Regal is also the first professor at the University of Colorado Boulder to earn the prestigious Clare Boothe Luce Professorship Award. The award is designed to, "encourage women to enter, study, graduate and teach in science, mathematics and engineering."

For more information about the Packard Foundation and the 2011 fellowship awards, see the foundation’s web site at www.packard.org.

Contacts: Cindy Regal

Alysia Marino Wins PECASE Award

Congratulations to Assistant Professor Alysia Marino for being named by President Obama as a recipient of the Presidential Early Career Award for Scientists and Engineers (PECASE). The announcement was delivered on Monday, September 27th.

Marino was honored for her accomplishments in the study of neutrino properties and the development of diagnostic tools that may be used to help design future neutrino beam facilities, as well as for her outstanding mentoring of graduate students. The PECASE award is the highest honor bestowed by the U.S. government on scientists and engineers who are early in their independent research careers.

PhET Selected as Tech Award Laureate by The Tech Museum

Congratulations to CU's PhET program, which has been selected as a 2011 Tech Award Laureate. PhET is one of three laureates for the Microsoft Education Award.

The Tech Awards, a signature program of The Tech Museum, and presented by Applied Materials, Inc., selected PhET from among hundreds of nominations representing 54 countries.

PhET is a prestigious program designed to provide fun, interactive, research-based simulations of physical phenomena for free. Simulations are available online, or via CD-Rom.

According to PhET's News Release, "Since 2002, PhET has created over 100 simulations for teaching and learning science and math. Going beyond traditional educational resources, PhET simulations offer an intuitive, game-like environment where students can learn through scientist-like exploration, where dynamic visual representations make the invisible visible, and where science ideas are connected to real-world phenomena. These simulations are widely used by K12 and university students and instructors worldwide. With an easy translation process, PhET simulations have been translated into 64 languages by volunteer teachers and scientists throughout the world, allowing students to access these high-quality science teaching and learning tools in their own language. In 2011, the simulations will be used more than 22 million times, reaching over 200 countries and territories around the world."

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