John Hall, a University of Colorado Nobel Prize laureate and member of the Joint Institute for Laboratory Astrophysics, has won a 2010 Governor’s Award for High-Impact Research. <Read More in the Colorado Arts & Sciences Magazine>
Welcome to the Department of Physics
Latest News:
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 19th 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.
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
Physics Professor Ivan Smalyukh Invited to NAS Symposium
Congratulations to Physics Professor Ivan Smalyukh, who has been invited to attend the National Academy of Sciences' twenty-third annual Kavli Frontiers of Science symposium on November 17-19, 2011 in Irvine, CA.
Symposium attendees are selected by a committee of Academy members based on their recognized contributions to science. Recently, Smalyukh has garnered several awards, including the Presidential Early Career Award for Scientists and Engineers (PECASE) Award, and an NSF Career Award.
According to the NAS, "This symposium series is the Academy’s premiere activity for distinguished young scientists. Unlike meetings that focus on a narrow area of science, these meetings allow participants to explore innovative research ideas across a wide variety of fields and to develop new networks that will serve them as they progress in their careers."
"This is a strong encouragement for me and my research group and will help us to purse ambitious research goals in the field of soft condensed matter physics," Smalyukh said. "I look forward to sharing our recent studies of molecular and colloidal self-assembly in liquid crystals with other Kavli Frontiers of Science Symposium participants."
For more information on the symposium, please visit the NAS Web page.
For more information on Smalyukh’s research, please visit his research group Web site.
