Congratulations to our newly promoted professors!

Peter Abbamonte works at the convergence of theoretical and experimental condensed matter physics. His research is focused on electron self-organization in condensed matter, stripe phases, topological order; edge and interface effects in oxide devices; quantum phase transitions; and collective excitations in interacting electron systems. Abbamonte is one of the originators of the technique of resonant soft x-ray scattering, which he has used, among other things, to discover a Wigner crystal in doped spin ladders, and to show that stripes in copper-oxide superconductors are charged. This technique is now in use at every major synchrotron facility in the world. He is also known for his solution to the phase problem for inelastic x-ray scattering, permitting real-time imaging of electron motion in condensed matter with attosecond time resolution. He has recently used this approach, for example, to image the formation of excitons in insulators, and to measure the effective fine structure constant of graphene.

 

Abbamonte received his doctoral degree from the U. of I. in 1999, having conducted his research in the then thriving Materials Physics Department at Bell Laboratories. He then went to the University of Groningen in The Netherlands on an IRFAP Fellowship from the National Science Foundation. Starting in 2001, he worked as a postdoc in biophysics at Cornell University, studying photosynthesis in Rhodobacter sphaeroides. He joined the scientific staff at Brookhaven National Laboratory in 2003, before being recruited to join the faculty at Physics Illinois in 2005. He was the recipient of the Xerox Award for Faculty Research in 2010 and was selected as an Arnold O. Beckman Fellow at the U. of I.’s Center for Advanced Study in 2008/09.

 

Karin Dahmen works in theoretical condensed matter physics and mathematical physics, and applies the methods of these areas of research to questions in biophysics and geophysics. She is broadly interested in non-equilibrium dynamical systems, including pattern formations in homogeneous systems and inhomogeneous systems with quenched disorder. She uses statistical physics to model collective behavior and disorder-induced critical behavior in systems ranging from advancing domain boundaries in magnets to event-size distributions in earthquakes, as well as hysteresis, and population biology. She has also applied her computational and statistical methods to analyze and interpret data from single-molecule fluorescence energy transfer experiments in biological physics. Most recently, her work has focused on developing a unifying theory of universal “quake” statistics in plasticity at any scale, from nanocrystals to earthquakes.

 

Dahmen received her Vordiplom in physics from the University of Bonn, Germany, in 1989 and her doctoral degree in physics from Cornell in 1995. She was a Junior Fellow at Harvard University, before joining the faculty at Physics Illinois in 1999. She was selected as a Beckman Fellow at the U. of I.’s Center for Advanced Study in 2001/02, and was the same year an Alfred P. Sloan Research Fellow. In 2011, she was the recipient of the Xerox Senior Faculty Research Award. She is a member of the Institute for Condensed Matter Theory and of the Center for the Physics of Living Cells at Illinois.

 

Matthias Grosse Perdekamp works in experimental high-energy nuclear physics. He is a member of the PHENIX experiment at the Relativistic Heavy Ion Collider (RHIC) at Brookhaven National Laboratory. The PHENIX collaboration, which includes 498 physicists and engineers from 70 institutions in 14 countries, engages in a broad program of studying QCD phenomena, including the physics of heavy-ion collisions, the spin-dependent structure of the proton in polarized proton-proton collisions, and nucleon structure in a nuclear environment in proton- or deuteron-ion collisions. Gross Perdekamp has taken a leadership role in PHENIX's spin-physics program, which will employ the polarization of the proton beams at the RHIC collider to perform spin-dependent measurements at the highest energy scales yet explored.

 

Grosse Perdekamp received his diplom in physics from Freiburg University in 1990, and his doctoral degree in physics from the University of California, Los Angeles, in 1995. He was an associate research scientist at Yale University from 1995 to 1998, and a research scientist at Johannes Gutenberg University in Mainz, Germany, from 1998 to 1999. In 2002, he was selected as a RIKEN Fellow at Brookhaven National Laboratory's Relativistic Heavy Ion Collider (RHIC) facility. He joined the faculty at Physics Illinois as an assistant professor in 2002, remaining a Fellow at RIKEN through 2007. He was the recipient of the Xerox Research Award in 2008 and was named a Willett Faculty Scholar in 2010.

 

Yann Chemla is an experimental physicist working at the juncture of physics, biology and chemistry. His research focuses on single-molecule biomechanical processes and specifically the mechano-chemical conversion in processes ranging from how proteins interact with DNA—bending, wrapping, or translocating along the molecule—to how cells swim and process information from the environment. His lab group employs state-of-the-art biophysical techniques such as optical tweezers and fluorescence, designing and constructing cutting-edge instrumentation and developing biological systems for single-molecule manipulation. Data collected through these techniques is then subject to quantitative analysis and modeling. His most recent research explores the molecular "nanomachines" involved in genome maintenance.  

 

Chemla received his doctoral degree in physics from the University of California, Berkeley, in 2001. As an experimentalist in applied superconductivity, he developed an interest in biology through his study of magnetotactic bacteria with a superconducting magnetometer and the development of a biosensor based on functionalized magnetic nanoparticles. He worked as a postdoctoral fellow at UCB, before joining the faculty at Physics Illinois in 2007. He was selected for a Career Award at the Scientific Interface from the Burroughs-Wellcome Fund in 2005, was selected for a Sloan Foundation Fellowship in 2010, and was named a Beckman Fellow at the U. of I.’s Center for Advanced Study in 2012/13.

 

Neubauer is an experimental high-energy physicist whose research spans diverse topics in the study of elementary particles and their interactions, with his primary focus centered on the search for the Higgs boson. As a member of the ATLAS collaboration at LHC, Neubauer played a leadership role in the design and implementation of a fast track-finder upgrade of the ATLAS trigger, the instrument that detects and records events of physics interest within the project’s multi-petabyte data stream. Through his collaboration with colleagues at the National Center for Supercomputing Applications (NCSA), Neubauer was also instrumental in establishing data acquisition systems within the project’s distributed computing environment and was a major player in the University of Illinois’ becoming the first US university to become a Tier-3 data analysis center for ATLAS. Recently, Neubauer built the first prototype of a fully grid-capable computing cluster, a powerful tool for big-data high-energy physics nationally and internationally. Last year, in collaboration with colleagues at the University of Chicago and Indiana University, Neubauer helped to create a Tier-2 Midwest Center for ATLAS.

 

Neubauer received his doctoral degree from the University of Pennsylvania in 2001. He worked as a postdoctoral research associate at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology from 2001 to 2004 and at the the University of California, San Diego, from 2004 to 2007, before joining the faculty at Physics Illinois in 2007. He is the recipient of several honors, including an Arnold O. Beckman Research Award in 2007, an appointment as an NCSA Faculty Fellow in 2008/09, a National Science Foundation CAREER Award in 2011, an appointment as a Beckman Fellow at the U. of I.’s Center for Advanced Study in 2012/13 and a U. of I. College of Engineering Dean’s Award for Excellence in Research in 2013.