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Accolades
Student News

Illinois Physics grad student Angela Barragan wins Biophysical Society's 'best image'

Research
Condensed Matter Physics

New chiral crystalline material exhibits new quasiparticles

In the Media
Outreach

In The News-Gazette: "On the town: Quantum Rhapsodies"

In the Media
Outreach
Quantum Information Science

In The NY Times: "You've Conquered the Escape Room. But Can You Escape the Lab?"

Accolades

Merissa Jones receives Engineering Council Outstanding Advising Award

In the Media
Outreach
Quantum Information Science

Kwiat Q&A on LabEscape in Science News: "A science-themed escape room gives the brain a workout"

News

Events

May 1st Jeremiah Sullivan Memorial Lecture: "The Strategies of Terrorism"

The Program in Arms Control & International and Domestic Security (ACDIS) and the Department of Physics is hosting the second Jeremiah Sullivan Memorial Lecture, with speaker John Lynn presenting "The Strategies of Terrorism."

The talk is scheduled for Wednesday, May 1, from 5 p.m. to 6 p.m. in 144 Loomis Laboratory at 1110 West Green St Urbana, IL 61801.

Lynn is a core faculty member of ACDIS and a professor emeritus in the Department of History at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. He is the recipient of the 2017 Samuel Eliot Morison Prize and the author of Another Kind of War: The Nature and History of Terrorism, coming out in July 2019. In it, Lynn argues that radical sub-state terrorism should be considered as a kind of war.

In his lecture, Lynn will examine four strategies pursued by terrorist groups: intimidation, initiation, attrition, and evolution. Lynn argues that because radical terrorism attempts to exert a large psychological impact through the commission of relatively small-scale physical violence, terrorism is fundamentally psychological warfare, a weaponizing of the emotions, that is best countered through knowledge, understanding, and perspective.

Accolades

Dashawnique Long selected for Chancellor's Distinguished Staff Award

Dashawnique Long, office manager for the Illinois Physics Undergraduate Office, has been selected for the 2019 Chancellor’s Distinguished Staff Award. The Award recognized exceptional accomplishments and service to the university. Long shares this honor with only seven other 2019 recipients across campus. The award will be presented at a special ceremony taking place on May 1, 2019.

There is a saying among the Undergraduate Office staff: “All roads lead back to the Undergraduate Office.” As office manager, Long is often the first point of contact for students and teaching assistants needing information or having special requests. She helps students switch courses, provides materials and information, and when appropriate, coordinates with the campus’s Disability Resources & Educational Services, assisting students with letters of accommodation.

Long also handles about 15,000 undergraduate physics exams per semester and recently implemented a new procedure that shrank final-exam processing time from one week to 24 hours. Additionally, she created and manages a pool of physics-exam proctors. She also helps with room reservations for the department, including for special events and office hours, working as a liaison to Facility Management and Scheduling in the Office of the Registrar.

Partnerships
Quantum Information Science

Chicago Quantum Exchange, IBM Q Network partner to advance quantum computing

The Chicago Quantum Exchange, a growing intellectual hub for the research and development of quantum technology, will join forces with the IBM Q Network to provide leaps forward in electronics, computers, sensors and “unhackable” networks.

CQE member institutions will work with IBM Q scientists and engineers through IBM Q’s academic partner program to explore the field of quantum computing, including investigations into materials, fabrication techniques, algorithms, and software and hardware development. A critical component of the partnership will be to enhance efforts to train tomorrow’s quantum workforce; the IBM Q Network will fund up to five positions for postdoctoral researchers to work closely with scientists across the CQE to advance quantum computing.

The Chicago Quantum Exchange is anchored at the University of Chicago. Member institutions include the U.S. Department of Energy’s Argonne National Laboratory and Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory, the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, and the University of Wisconsin-Madison. The combined resources of the member institutions create a powerful hub of more than 100 scientists and engineers—among the world’s largest collaborative teams for quantum research.

Student Spotlight

Illinois Physics undergraduate Sarah Habib, in NCSA Student Spotlight

Sarah Habib, a junior studying engineering physics at the University of Illinois, joined the INCLUSION (Incubating a New Community of Leaders Using Software, Inclusion, Innovation, Interdisciplinary and OpeN-Science) Research Experience for Undergraduates (REU) program and Gravity Group at the National Center for Supercomputing Applications (NCSA) in Summer 2018, a decision that led to her publishing her work in three academic papers.

"Working with the REU-INCLUSION program led to being accepted to work with the Gravity Group," said Habib. "It was the research experience that I've learned the most from. With REU, it was the first time I was expected to tackle a problem with no clear answer, which carried over to my work with the Gravity Group, so I got to see what research was like with both programs."

Alumni News
In the Media
Atomic, Molecular, and Optical Physics

Alumna Rebecca Holmes on 'seeing the quantum' in aeon

Rebecca Holmes is a physicist and staff scientist at Los Alamos National Laboratory in New Mexico. Her work has been published in Physics World and Applied Optics, among others. She is an alumna of Illinois Physics and a former research-group member of the Kwiat lab.

More news

donor stories

Alumnus gift continues legacy of excellence at Illinois Physics

“We deeply appreciate Gary Kelly’s generosity and his investment in our department’s core missions of research, teaching, and outreach,” comments Head of Department and Professor Matthias Grosse Perdekamp. “Unrestricted funds such as these are applied where they will make the greatest impact. Through his generosity, Gary Kelly’s legacy at Illinois will include his support of important new opportunities directly in line with our core missions. A large portion of Gary’s gift will support the research of exceptional women faculty early in their careers, enabling Illinois Physics to attract and retain promising women physicists.”

Engineering Visionary Scholarships

$25 Million
Matching
Challenge

Now through the end of 2019, The Grainger Foundation will match all donations made to the College's Engineering Visionary Scholarship Initiative.

Learn more

Watch the Center for the Physics of Living Cells video

The Center for the Physics of Living Cells is an NSF Physics Frontiers Center. In true "Urbana style," theoretical and experimental scientists collaborating at the CPLC are elucidating the fundamental processes at the core of life in quantitative physical detail. The CPLC Summer School is world renowned for its training of young scientists in leading-edge research methods, advancing this interdisciplinary physics frontier.

Why choose Illinois Physics? Here's a video!

Are you ready to study the glow of black holes? Or how superconductors can carry electricity without resistance? Physics opens the secrets of the universe. Illinois has a long tradition of excellence in physics, and we continue to advance the frontiers of science every day. Watch the video!