The Spectrometer has been operating from the Oort cloud for the past few months, hence some delays in the signal reaching you.
A big event Spring quarter was Janet Tate’s masterful Gilfillan Lecture, “It’s a Materials World” on May 9th.
If you ever wanted to know what goes on in her lab, this is the lecture to watch.
You can find photos at:
and a video, featuring some great superconducting material at:
Prof. Yun-Shik Lee’s group has their most recent paper featured as an editor’s pick in Applied Physics Letters. Link to Paper Link to the Editors Picks
Congratulations to a physics major Alexander Quinn who received an Undergraduate Research, Innovation, Scholarship and Creativity (URISC) Award for Fall/Winter 2016-2017 sponsored by the OSU Research Office. Alex (pictured while performing experiments) will work with Prof. Oksana Ostroverkhova on a project titled “Investigating Xylindein, a Fungus-Derived Pigment, as a Candidate for use in Sustainable Optoelectronic Devices”. Alex is planning to graduate in the Spring of 2017 and continue his education as a graduate student in physics. His longer-term plan is to work in the area of sustainable materials and renewable energy.
Hiral Patel and Kyle Vogt are Physics Ph.D. students in the Graham Lab. Both contributed to a major conference called CLEO in San Jose (4,600 attendees) that is sponsored by APS, OSA and IEEE. Kyle presented his paper as a talk. Hiral’s poster received the highest traffic and the most votes, and the Optical Society of America awarded her the “Outstanding Student Poster Presentation Award” from the OSA Optical Material Studies Technical Group.
Congratulations to a physics major Graham Founds who received an Undergraduate Research, Innovation, Scholarship and Creativity (URISC) Award for Summer 2016 for his project titled “Optical Tweezers-Based Probing of Charge Transfer in Organic Semiconductors at Microscopic Scales” ! The URISC program is a university-wide competition of undergraduate proposals sponsored by the OSU Research Office. Graham’s proposal was among 8 compelling undergraduate proposals that were selected for funding. Graham (pictured below) has been a member of Organic Photonics and Optoelectronics Group led by Prof. Oksana Ostroverkhova at OSU Physics department since September 2015. With the URISC funding, he will continue working with Prof. Ostroverkhova over the summer towards demonstrating a new experimental technique for measuring charge transfer between molecules with elementary charge resolution. Graham is planning to graduate in the Spring of 2017 and to continue his education as a graduate student in physics. His longer-term plan is to join the US Air Force laboratories as a research scientist.
The Department of Physics is proud to announce that four undergraduate students are recipients of the Summer Undergraduate Research Experience in Science (SURE Science) Scholarships. Jeremy Meinke will be working in Prof. Weihong Qiu’s Lab to determine how OsKCH2 –a nanometer-sized biological motor protein– moves on the filamentous microtubule track using high precision single-molecule microscopy. Mirek Brandt and Ikaika Mckeague-McFadden will be working in Prof. Matt Graham’s Lab on the novel electronic and optical properties of two-dimensional and organic materials. Katelyn Chase will be working in Prof. Bo Sun’s lab to develop microfludics endothelium-on-chips devices for studying the collective endothelium shear stress sensing during embryo development. Many thanks to the College of Science and to the scholarship donors that made theses full-time summer-Science research scholarships possible.
On April 12, Physics cohosted the Science Pub at the Old World Deli.
Shane Larson of Northwestern University/Adler planetarium ( BS Physics 1991) presented the latest news on gravitational waves from the LIGO experiment to over 170 enthusiastic attendees after a pub quiz that no-one, including Shane and Physics Chair Heidi Schellman got 100%. VP for Research Cindy Sagers won a prize for being one of 3 people to get 8/10!
Shane’s talk is posted at This location.
Shane Larson, who got his BS degree from Oregon State in 1991 is giving a Science Pub about the LIGO discovery of gravitational waves at Old World Deli 6-8PM on April 12. People interested in slides from his talk can find them at:
After more than a year at Oregon State, married couple Davide Lazzati (Physics) and Catalina Segura (Forest Engineering, Resources and Management) still look back on their story and agree that it sounds like a fairy tale.
The two met in Colorado where Lazzati worked as a post-doc in Physics; Segura studied geography.
The academics were in different stages of their careers and in completely different departments, but they bonded over a love of the outdoors: skiing, hiking and cycling. After Segura finished her Ph.D. the couple had a baby and moved from their first home together in Colorado to North Carolina. Lazzati was offered a tenure-track job there while Segura accepted a postdoctoral research position. Both of them knew the opportunities for her there were slim, and the possibility of ending up at the same institution was next to impossible.
“Family is the most important thing to us,” Segura says. “But you also have to be happy with your own accomplishments.”
If one of them weren’t able to work for an extended period of time, or if the family found themselves split while each of them pursued separate opportunities, Segura says, “It would be a disaster!”
In North Carolina, the family longed for better opportunities out West, closer to where they’d met and closer to the outdoor settings they loved.
After dozens of applications, Segura was thrilled to interview for an assistant professor position at Oregon State in Forest Engineering, Resources and Management. She says she received help from a member of the search committee to know when in the interview process to bring up her partner. Once the University knew about Lazzati and his accomplishments in the fields of astronomy and physics, they began the process of hiring him through the Dual Career Hiring Initiative. This DCHI is funded by dollars allocated for tenure-track hires. When a tenure-line faculty member recruited for a position has partner who is eligible for a tenure-line position at Oregon State University, the Provost will support the partner hire as part of a collaboration with academic units. After completing an interview process, Lazzati was offered an associate professor position.
“It was amazing how fast the process worked,” Segura remembers. “It was so efficient to be able to get two deans, two heads and a provost all on the same page.”
Lazzati has been able to forge new ground in the College of Science as an astronomer studying gamma-ray bursts and the formation of cosmic dust.
“There wasn’t much astronomy going on before I got here,” Lazzati admits. “But everyone in the physics department was so welcoming. They go the extra mile to make space and to understand my needs.”
The couple has two children and love to spend time together outside as often as possible hiking, camping and riding bikes.
“We are very happy,” Lazzati says. “We feel lucky to be here.”
Congratulations to physics majors Ryan Bailey-Crandell and Jeremy Meinke who were chosen to receive Undergraduate Research, Innovation, Scholarship and Creativity (URISC) Awards for Winter/Spring 2016. The awards are sponsored by the OSU Research Office. A total of $18,000 was awarded to 15 undergraduate students whose proposals for independent research were clear and compelling.
Ryan Bailey-Crandell (pictured on left) will work with Prof. Ethan Minot (Physics) on a project titled “Graphene Biosensors made from h-BN Heterostructures”.
Jeremy Meinke (pictured on right) will work with Prof. Weihong Qiu, (Physics) on a project titled “Molecular Mechanism of the Processive Movement and Directionality of FRA1”