Beginning in the 2021-2022 academic year, MSU will host a new traineeship in the development of high-energy physics instrumentation, including coursework, a certificate program, and student support for instrumentation development work at MSU and at a DOE national-lab or other facility. Students enrolled in the program, available to MSU PhD students, will work with MSU faculty on topics including the ATLAS detector on the LHC, CMB-S4, DUNE, and at FRIB. The program includes dedicated mentoring and career opportunities, to help all students succeed in this exciting new frontier.

Michigan State University is hosting a major research conference—the 7th Conference on Photoinduced Phase Transitions and Cooperative Phenomena (PIPT7) this month. The conference is an international meeting bringing together leading experimentalists and theorists in the field of photoinduced phase transitions of quantum materials mediated by ultrashort laser pulses.

The Division of Nuclear Physics (DNP) of the American Physical Society (APS) has chosen Prof. Filomena Nunes for their Distinguished Service Award, citing “her exceptional and rich contributions toward making the DNP a place where all members can thrive, especially those from traditionally underrepresented groups, including service as the inaugural chair of the Subcommittee on Harassment Prevention and the creation of the DNP Allies program”. Professor Nunes has appointments at the Department of Physics and Astronomy and the Facility for Rare Isotope Beams (FRIB), and is the Managing Director of the FRIB Theory Alliance.    

Congratulations to Professor Paul Guèye for being selected as the 2022 Edward A. Bouchet Award winner by the American Physical Society in recognition of his “many seminal experimental contributions to understanding the structure of nuclear particles and decades of service to physics outreach, diversity and inclusion”. Paul Guèye holds appointments at the Facility for Rare Isotope Beams and the Department of Physics & Astronomy. Prof. Guèye has a distinguished career in forefront research and research leadership in nuclear physics. He is currently both PI on a National Science Foundation group grant focused on isotope discovery science and PI of a Department of Energy funded institute called INSIGHT (Institute for Nuclear Science to Inspire the Next Generation of a Highly Trained Workforce), which serves to coordinate nationwide training for undergraduates in nuclear science, with a special focus on close collaborations with minority serving institutions.

Congratulations to Prof. Artemis Spyrou on her election as an APS Fellow. Professor Spyrou, who holds appointments both in the Department of Physics and Astronomy and at FRIB, received this recognition for her groundbreaking studies in experimental nuclear astrophysics. Her leadership in nuclear science and her efforts to inform the public has helped maintain the top ranking of our nuclear physics graduate program.

The new STEM teaching building was dedicated recently with many dignitaries and much emphasis on the critical role of STEM education for the future of the state and country. As the speeches and ribbon cutting were going on outside, Physics faculty were teaching introductory physics using new curricula that take full advantage of the new classrooms in the building. These innovative new curricula were developed using evidenced-based practices to better serve the students in these courses as part of the department's longstanding commitment to MSU's mission of excellence in both teaching and research.

Congratulations to Physics Ph.D. student Justin Lane who has been awarded the 2021 Mossman Prize Postdoctoral Fellowship from the Yale University Physics Department. Justin works in the area of quantum information systems (QIS) with this Ph.D. advisor Johannes Pollanen, the Jerry Cowen Chair of Experimental Physics, and other collaborators at the MSU Laboratory for Hybrid Quantum Systems. They are investigating a wide variety of QIS and condensed matter systems ranging from atomically thin layers of carbon (graphene) to trapped electrons systems floating above the surface of superfluid helium to color-center qubits in diamond with the goal of revealing fundamentally new physical phenomena and developing next generation technologies for QIS.

MSU astronomy PhD student Carl Fields was recently recognized as one of Forbes' "30 under 30" in Science for 2021. Carl is a theoretical and computational astrophysicist specializing in the evolution of massive stars and how they explode as supernovae at the end of their lives. He has published a number of papers on these and related topics.