Undergraduates
I am a sceptic of relativity theory and am trying to become a believer. As far as I know (about this theory), time slows down when some one travels at the speed of light. What about blind people ? Will this effect happen for them as well ?.. I am curious because blind people have nothing to do with light.
Professor Brian DeMarco received his B.A. in physics, with a mathematics minor, from the State University of New York at Geneseo in 1996, graduating summa cum laude. As an undergraduate researcher, he worked on calibrating and developing neutron detectors for laser driven inertial confinement fusion experiments.
He earned a Ph.D. in physics from the University of Colorado at Boulder (2001), where he extended magnetic trapping and evaporative cooling techniques to create the first quantum degenerate Fermi gas of atoms. This achievement merited Science magazine's imprimatur as one of the top ten scientific discoveries of 1999 and earned DeMarco the first JILA Scientific Achievement Award. In 2002, he received the American Physical Society's Division of Atomic, Molecular, and Optical Physics Thesis Award.
From 2001-2003, he was a National Research Council postdoctoral research fellow, working with David Wineland at the National Institute of Standards and Technology (Boulder) on quantum computing experiments with trapped atomic ions. DeMarco's work with the Ion Storage Group focused on developing improved quantum logic elements and "scaling-up" the complexity of quantum information processing tasks with trapped ions.
Professor DeMarco joined the Department of Physics at Illinois in August 2003. In October 2005, he was among 18 young physics researchers selected as finalists in a global competition to participate in Amazing Light: Visions for Discovery, an international symposium focused on exploring and advancing innovative research in physics and astronomy inspired by, and honoring the leadership and vision of, Charles Townes, winner of the 1964 Nobel Prize in physics. The symposium brought together renowned scholars and researchers, including 20 Nobel laureates, to explore the extraordinary challenges of 21st Century physics and cosmology. DeMarco won first place in the Quantum Physics category for his research aimed at realizing quantum simulation using atoms trapped in an optical lattice.
Prof. DeMarco is the recipient of an NSF CAREER award, ONR Young Investigator award, and a Sloan Foundation Fellowship.
Prof. DeMarco currently serves on the DAMOP Executive Committee, the review panel for NRC postdoctoral fellowships, and the National Academy of Science's Committee on Atomic, Molecular, and Optical Physics (CAMOS).
Prof. DeMarco's research program at the University of Illinois focuses on solving outstanding problems in condensed matter physics using ultra-cold atoms trapped in an optical lattice. This approach, of using one quantum system to emaluate another, is known as quantum simulation and was first proposed as a potentially revolutionary technique by Richard Feynmann. Current research problems being tackled by his team include the properties of the disordered Bose-Hubbard model, thermometry in strongly correlated lattice systems, and thermopower in the Hubbard model. DeMarco's group was the first identify the cross-over between quantum tunneling and thermal activation of phase slips in an optical lattice (published in Nature) and the first to realize 3D Anderson localization of matter (published in Science). His group was also the first to trap atoms in a disordered optical lattice in a regime described by the disordered Bose-Hubbard model.
DeMarco's research has been highlighted on the NSF LiveScience and Discoveries websites. One of his students also has a blog with Discover magazine.