News and Events

Reem-Kayden Center Laszlo Z. Bito '60 Auditorium  1:30 pm EST/GMT-5
Majoring (or interested) in math or physics but unsure about whether grad school is right for you?

The Distinguished Visiting Professorship of Mathematics and Physics is sponsoring a panel discussion, Q&A, and networking event with recent alums, admissions administrators, and faculty. We’ll talk about what MA and PhD programs are out there, what they are like, and how to optimize the rest of your time spent at Bard.

Open to all Bard students, especially those moderated in mathematics or physics.

Panelists:

Chuck Doran
Distinguished Visiting Professor of Mathematics and Physics, Bard College

Hal Haggard
Associate Professor of Physics, Bard College

Andrew Harder
Director of Graduate Admissions, Mathematics Department, Lehigh University

Stefan Mendez-Diez
Assistant Professor of Mathematics, Bard College

Clara Sousa-Silva
Assistant Professor of Physics, Bard College

Santanu Antu
Graduate Researcher, Yale Quantum Institute

Hannah Park-Kaufmann
Knight-Hennessy Scholar, Stanford University

A talk by Jan-Willem Romeijn, University of Groningen
Hegeman 107  12:00 pm EST/GMT-5
In the talk we investigate so-called enantiomorphs, objects whose mirror image is intrinsically different. We start with the analyses provided by the philosopher Kant, culminating in his eventual vindication of a Newtonian idea of space. We then trace the phenomenon of enantiomorphy though the history of geometry in the nineteenth century, constructing a model of the aforementioned fancy fair attraction with paper and tape, and we find out how the phenomenon sheds light on the development of Einstein's relativity theories. Zooming out, we see that the puzzle of enantiomorphs crisply illustrates a philosophical insight that has arguably had huge significance beyond the philosophy of physics, all the way into the economic theory and political philosophy of Marx.

Reem-Kayden Center  4:00 pm EDT/GMT-4
Join our summer research students as they present their work!

Clara Sousa-Silva, Physics Program
Reem-Kayden Center Laszlo Z. Bito '60 Auditorium  12:10 pm EDT/GMT-4
A seminar from Professor Clara Sousa-Silva.

Ruth Angus, American Musuem of Natural History
Hegeman 107  12:00 pm EDT/GMT-4
Our star has provided the perfect conditions for life over the 4.5 billion year lifetime of Earth. Now that the hunt for life outside the solar system is underway, we have to ask the question: is the sun just one example of an ideal host, or is it the only type of viable life-hosting star in the galaxy? The search for new planets outside our solar system has been wildly successful over the last 30 years, and now the hunt for biosignature molecules in the atmospheres of rocky, habitable-zone planets is beginning. To maximize its chances of detecting biosignatures, JWST is targeting small planets around small stars. Do we have any hope of finding life around these small stars, or do their violent magnetic storms make it impossible for life to get started? In this talk, Ruth Angus explores exactly how perfect the sun is for life, and whether we have any hope of finding life on planets orbiting other stars.

Hal Haggard, Physics Program
Hegeman 107  12:00 pm EDT/GMT-4
This year's Nobel Prize in Physics has been awarded to John J. Hopfield and Geoffery E. Hinton “for foundational discoveries and inventions that enable machine learning with artificial neural networks.” Professors Sven Anderson and Hal Haggard will introduce the basics of machine learning and some of the tools from physics that helped to turn this approach into a practical technology. We will touch on the promise and limitations of machine learning emerging today.

Selman Ipek, Bilkent University
Hegeman 107  12:00 pm EDT/GMT-4
In the past couple of decades there has been a concerted effort to investigate and develop technologies using quintessentially quantum effects to gain an advantage in a variety of information processing tasks. This has spurred a renewed interest in precisely what is meant by the notion "quantum", in the first place. In the literature three often discussed notions of nonclassicality are negativity of a quasiprobability representation, contextuality, and inefficiency of classical simulation, coming from the fields of optics, foundations, and computer science, respectively. Of these, the phenomenon of contextuality, which encompasses the 'no-go' theorems of Kochen and Specker, as well as Bell, can be studied rigorously using tools from topology. In this talk we will discuss the topological approach to contextuality, which includes the study of Bell inequalities. We also make connections to a family of geometric objects, known as Lambda polytopes, that can be used to classically simulate universal quantum computation in which some nonclassical signatures, such as negativity, are entirely absent. Time permitting, we go on to describe some properties of these objects and address some of the open problems.

Sylvester James Gates, Jr.
Clark Leadership Chair in Science, Distinguished University Professor, and Regents Professor at the University of Maryland
Blithewood  5:00 pm – 6:00 pm EDT/GMT-4
In 1995 Edward Witten, described by Brian Greene as “a million times smarter than we are,” proposed a solution to the “quantum gravity problem” that evaded Stephen Hawking. Until 2020, no solution consistent with Richard Feynman’s view of quantum theory had been found. Einstein believed “...science and art tend to coalesce,” and following this connection the speaker and two PhD students found the first such solution. This talk describes how artwork solved a mathematics problem. Reception to follow

The inaugural MathScape combines an international workshop on cutting-edge research in mathematics with a public lecture linking to the arts and humanities.  MathScape 2024 features the mathematics used by the physicists in their quest to create a “theory of everything”.  

MathScape 2024 is supported by Chuck Doran, Distinguished Visiting Professor of Mathematics and Physics

Reem-Kayden Center  5:00 pm – 6:30 pm EDT/GMT-4

Download: Senior Project Poster session booklet S24-FINAL CO

  Hegeman 107  12:00 pm – 1:00 pm EDT/GMT-4
Jacinta Creel: P.U.S.H. For Life Among The Stars: A Scientific and Philosophical Quest for Conceptualizing Uncertainty

Chris Hallman: Pumping a Transition

Eric Peterson, Programmer and Video Game Developer
Hegeman 107  12:00 pm – 1:00 pm EDT/GMT-4
Very few games are so lifelike that we think of them as literal simulations of the world, but all games are even less like a real world than people think.

In this talk I want to show people a bit behind the curtain of what is lurking just out of frame of their favorite game, how game developers use smoke and mirrors, and why that's actually a good thing.

We'll even get a few minutes to look at how one might build a game using the free and open-source engine Godot! 

David Grier, New York University
Hegeman 107  11:45 am – 12:45 pm EDT/GMT-4
Waves exert forces and torques on illuminated objects. The structure of a wave-mediated force landscape
can be controlled by shaping the wavefronts with computer-generated holograms. Holographically imprinting
topological defects into the wavefronts of a classical wave can endow it with remarkable properties including
quantized angular momentum, diffraction-free propagation, and force-free acceleration. After reviewing the theory
of wave-matter interactions, we will use wavefront topology to transform optical traps into real-world tractor beams
that transport illuminated objects upstream. Applying the same principles to acoustic traps reveals a class of
dynamical states that we call "wave-matter composites" whose emergent properties hint at the existence of
new states of active matter.
 

  Daniel Yahalomi, Columbia University
Hegeman 107  12:00 pm – 1:00 pm EDT/GMT-4
We think that there are more planets than stars in our galaxy and yet we have confirmed the existence of only thousands of planets outside our solar system. We thus expect that the majority of these worlds successfully hide from current state of the art telescopes. In this talk, I will present a new framework for detecting unseen worlds by studying the tiny wobbles that exist in time-series datasets due to their gravitational influence. I will also discuss my experience working with, and the importance of developing, research, and mentorship programs for high school students from underserved communities in pursuit of increasing the diversity in astronomy.

 

Eve Armstrong, New York Institute of Technology
Hegeman 107  12:00 pm – 1:00 pm EDT/GMT-4
Inference is a term that encompasses many techniques including machine learning and statistical data assimilation (SDA). Unlike machine learning, which harnesses predictive power from extremely large data sets, SDA is designed for sparsely sampled systems. This is the realm of study of any realistic system in nature. SDA was invented for numerical weather prediction, an inherently nonlinear – and chaotic – problem. My collaborators and I have taken SDA into new fields, to inform the role of neutrinos in astrophysics, biological neuronal networks, and an epidemiological population model tailored to the coronavirus SARS-CoV-2. We use SDA to seek solutions that are consistent with both sparse measurements and a partially-known dynamical model of the system from which those measurements arose. The versatility of SDA across vast disciplines (and vast temporal and spatial scales) shows how these “distinct” environments possess commonalities that can inform one another. In addition to pure science, I work on science communication. To that end, I will share some relevant techniques from comedy and theatrical improvisation.

Eve Armstrong is an assistant professor in the Department of Physics at the New York Institute of Technology and a research associate in the Department of Astrophysics at the American Museum of Natural History. She studies information flow in nonlinear dynamical systems, by means of inference (an umbrella term for machine learning and the “data-driven” paradigm.) Her work spans astrophysics, neuroscience, and epidemiology, and her current focus is neutrino flavor physics in dense astrophysical environments. Also a comedy writer and theatre producer, Eve runs workshops in improvisation, storytelling, and standup comedy for young scientists in the NYC area who seek to develop their communication skills. Both her pure-science research and performance outreach are funded by the National Science Foundation.

Paul Cadden-Zimansky, Physics Program
Hegeman 107  12:00 pm – 1:00 pm EDT/GMT-4
On the afternoon of Monday, April 8, the first total solar eclipse to pass over New York State in 99 years will occur. Come join the Physics Program for an overview of what to expect; why eclipses are emotionally, historically, and scientifically important events; and your options for how to view it.

Mara Freilich, Brown University
Hegeman 107  12:00 pm – 1:00 pm EDT/GMT-4
Ocean currents shape the distribution and magnitude of ocean carbon and nutrient fluxes with cascading influences on the global carbon cycle. In this talk, I will use ship-board observations and numerical models to examine the interaction between ocean eddy processes and microbial communities revealing how ocean currents impact microbial diversity and the global importance of eddies in the distribution of ocean carbon. The talk will conclude with a discussion of community science work that addresses the impact of high nutrient loads on shoreline communities.
 

Geillan Aly, Compassionate Math
Reem-Kayden Center Laszlo Z. Bito '60 Auditorium  1:30 pm – 3:00 pm EDT/GMT-4
The field of STEM offers many personal and professional rewards. However, emotions may stand in the way of such rewards. In this workshop, we will explore imposter syndrome and other socioemotional phenomena which may affect one’s ability to engage with and succeed in a field as competitive and demanding as those in STEM. Participants will have an opportunity to explore and reflect on their feelings towards studying STEM. Participants begin by reflecting on and sharing their previous learning experiences to place these experiences in context, learning that: (1) they are not alone; (2) their experiences are likely not tied to them as an individual, but are a result of sociohistorical forces. This allows students to think deeply and critically about how they approach their studies. Participants then reorient themselves based on these new realizations and their motivation to succeed. This reorientation includes strategies and tips for studying, focusing on learning mathematics in particular. Finally the workshop gives participants an opportunity to work on a mathematical problem, setting the stage for a positive opportunity to engage with mathematics and their other studies. All participants are encouraged to participate in small-group and whole session discussions throughout the program, reducing the “I’m alone” stigma and forming bonds with others in the group. They are also encouraged to continue working and studying together after the workshop is completed.

Dr. Geillan Aly, the Founder of Compassionate Math, is a math educator who centers the socioemotional factors that contribute to success in mathematics. She holds the fundamental assumption that learning math is both an emotional and cognitive endeavor. A former award-winning Assistant Professor who has taught for over fifteen years, Dr. Aly transforms math classrooms through engaging professional development and student-focused workshops that center emotions while establishing a culture of engaging with rigorous mathematics. She received her PhD in Teaching and Teacher Education and Master’s in Mathematics from the University of Arizona. Underlying Dr. Aly’s work is a dedication to equity and social justice. She enjoys traveling and seeing live music and is an avid chef, wife, and mother to a beautiful boy.

Emily Rice, CUNY
Hegeman 107  1:00 pm – 1:00 pm EDT/GMT-4
The landscape of academic science has changed significantly in recent decades and is poised to change even more in the future. We can leverage these cultural changes to create an environment that is both inclusive to more people and more effective in preparing students (science majors and non-majors alike) for a wider variety of careers and more broadly defined success. I’ll share my own path to science and a variety of science projects I have been involved in along the way to becoming tenured faculty at the City University of New York, including: planetarium shows, parody music videos, media appearances, an concept-oriented lab manual, Astronomy on Tap public outreach events, STARtorialist science fashion blog and shop, the AstroCom NYC research mentorship program, and last but certainly not least, the BDNYC brown dwarf research group. The implicit mission that connects these eclectic projects is to expand support for, participation in, and even the definition of science.
 

  Hegeman 106  6:00 pm – 9:00 pm EDT/GMT-4
Come celebrate Pi Day with us by enjoying pizza, pie, and games!

Sophia Stone, Lynn University
Hegeman 204A  12:00 pm – 1:00 pm EST/GMT-5
Plato reserved high esteem for mathematics, even saying in the Laws that learning mathematics was a necessity, that without the use or knowledge of mathematics, ‘a man cannot become a God to the world, nor a spirit, nor yet a hero, nor able earnestly to think and care for man.’ Bertrand Russell remarks on this passage in The Study of Mathematics, “Such was Plato’s judgment of mathematics; but the mathematicians do not read Plato, while those who read him know no mathematics, and regard his opinion upon this question as merely a curious aberration,” (Russell 1963, p. 85). 

Reflecting on Bertrand Russell’s ruminations about Plato, it is well known, though we no longer have direct evidence, that before the entrance to Plato’s Academy was the inscription, “no one should enter here unless he is a geometer.” Sprinkled throughout Plato’s dialogues are geometry problems (Meno), statements about the Odd and the Even (Phaedo, Euthyphro, Parmenides), and of course, that well known claim in his Republic VII, 526g-527c that while there are two kinds of numbers, those used in practical endeavors like star gazing and military soldier formation on the one hand, and those that can only be grasped in the mind on the other, that even those who are slow at calculation or reasoning, if they are educated in it, even if they gain nothing else, improve and generally become sharper in thinking than they were. So if mathematics, and especially the study of geometry, improves the quality of the soul and makes it easier to see the form of the Good (526e-527b6-8), then could Plato’s treatment of mathematics in his dialogues tell us something about his theory of forms?

In this talk, I’ll lay out some of the problems of understanding Plato’s theory of forms and why we have yet to solve these problems. While Plato saw the form-sensible relation as essentially a non-expressible mathematical relation, contemporary scholars commonly think of the form-sensible relation in terms of sets and its members. My own view is that we are unable to solve the problems of understanding Plato’s theory of forms because of our own advances in mathematics.

James Hedberg, CCNY
Hegeman 107  12:00 pm – 1:00 pm EST/GMT-5
Planetariums have long been referred to as virtual spaceships, capable of whisking their passengers to far off stars or distant galaxies. Through a carefully crafted union of scientific data visualization and cinematic techniques, we can watch the sun set on Mars or eat lunch at the center of the Milky Way. Another use of these immersive theaters is to serve as virtual time machines, enabling scientifically accurate visualizations of night skies and other astronomical objects as they were observed and recorded centuries, even millennia ago. This talk will explore immersive experiences we've created that port ancient data sets to a decidedly modern venue. 

Jack Forman, MIT
Hegeman 107  12:00 pm – 1:00 pm EST/GMT-5
Textiles are vital to our survival across different scales, from medical textiles that repair our most vital organs to blankets
that provide warmth and protection. Even as the fibers and textiles we produce become more advanced, we still only view textiles as static and disposable goods. In this talk, Forman will discuss his recent work, FibeRobo, which subverts this understanding through the invention of shape-shifting fabrics. This talk will span scales and disciplines from the chemistry of liquid crystal elastomer synthesis to the interaction design of dynamic compression garments for human-dog interaction. By blending textiles' softness and flexibility with actuators' morphing capabilities, these interfaces offer a novel approach to designing interactive wearable systems that can seamlessly integrate into our daily lives. Jack Forman is a Ph.D. Student at the MIT Media Lab and Center for Bits & Atoms where he also received his M.S. Before coming to MIT, Jack received his B.S. in Materials Science & Biomedical Engineering at Carnegie Mellon University. 

Joshua Eisenthal, California Institute of Technology
Hegeman 107  12:00 pm – 1:00 pm EST/GMT-5
How is mathematical geometry related to real, physical space? With the proliferation of non-Euclidean geometries in the nineteenth century, this question became known as the “problem of space”. By around 1900, a consensus formed around the following purported solution. The possibility of measuring spatial magnitudes depends on the possibility of moving rigid bodies (such as rulers and compasses) without changing their dimensions. As only the constant curvature geometries could represent this kind of rigid transport, only these geometries were candidate physical geometries — or so they thought. However, it was only after the development of general relativity in 1915 that the physical significance of transport along affine geodesics (“straightest” lines) was understood. When an object is not affected by external forces and moves inertially it moves along an affine geodesic, but if this takes place in a curved space, those geodesics do not stay a fixed distance apart. Thus an extended object will experience elastic tension when it moves in a curved space, even when there are no forces acting on it. In this talk I will explore what impact this insight might have had for the nineteenth century problem of space. In particular, I will outline the consequences for the two main positions in the philosophy of geometry that are still with us today: geometrical empiricism (the view that experiments determine which geometry is “true”) and geometrical conventionalism (the view that we ourselves must decide, based on simplicity and convenience, which geometry is best to use).

Joshua Eisenthal is a Research Assistant Professor of Philosophy at the California Institute of Technology and an Editor at the Einstein Papers Project. His research focuses on the history and philosophy of physics, particularly in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, and early analytic philosophy, particularly the philosophy of Ludwig Wittgenstein. 
 

Paul Cadden-Zimansky, Physics Program
Hegeman 107  12:00 pm – 1:00 pm EST/GMT-5
Almost every physical interaction we observe or experience is presently viewed as being governed by the rules of electricity and magnetism, and the understanding of these rules underlies the development of most modern technologies.  Despite their pervasive nature, electric and magnetic phenomena were for millennia obscure, occult topics and investigations into them took a number of surprising, unorthodox, and occasionally tragic turns before their ubiquity was understood and the rules governing them codified. In this talk, intended for a general audience, I'll review some of the key experiments and insights of past centuries that led to our present understanding electricity and magnetism.

Reem-Kayden Center Lobby  5:00 pm – 6:30 pm EST/GMT-5
Join us in celebrating our December graduating seniors as their present their work!

  Hegeman 105  4:00 pm – 6:00 pm EST/GMT-5
The Physics Study Room is a great place to study, meet with your study group, or consult a Physics tutor.

Delilah Gates, Princeton University
Brody Lab-Hegeman 107  12:00 pm – 1:00 pm EST/GMT-5
Black holes are remarkable objects predicted by Einstein's theory of gravity, General Relativity. Despite their mysterious nature observational evidence suggests that black holes are abundant in our universe. The defining feature of a black hole is the event horizon, a region from which nothing can escape. Evidence of black holes thus relies on observing the effects black holes have on their surroundings. Black holes can be observed and studied using wave-related phenomena: frequency shifting of light emitted near them, reverberation of sounds through their surrounding medium, and even ripples throughout the fabric of space and time.

  Hegeman 105  4:00 pm – 6:00 pm EST/GMT-5
The Physics Study Room is a great place to study, meet with your study group, or consult a Physics tutor.

Thorsten Schimannek, LPTHE-Sorbonne Universite
Hegeman 107  12:00 pm – 1:00 pm EST/GMT-5
String theory originated as an attempt to understand the nature of strong interactions but has subsequently transformed into a candidate for a "theory of everything."

Nowadays, the idea that our universe is fundamentally described by a theory of strings is still facing both technical and philosophical problems.

However, independent of its status as a theory of nature, it has been remarkably successful as a "physical theory of mathematics."

Much of this success is related to the idea of compactification of extra dimensions, leading to a dictionary between geometry and physics, and the phenomenon of duality, meaning that strings propagating on a given geometry can be physically indistinguishable from other types of strings propagating on a different geometry.

In this talk I will give a (non-technical) introduction to these concepts and illustrate the beautiful interplay between physics and mathematics at the example of counting curves in higher dimensional spaces.

  Hegeman 105  4:00 pm – 6:00 pm EST/GMT-5
The Physics Study Room is a great place to study, meet with your study group, or consult a Physics tutor.

Ben Holtzman, Columbia University
Hegeman 107  12:00 pm – 1:00 pm EST/GMT-5

Munazza Alam, Space Telescope Science Institute
Hegeman 107  12:00 pm – 1:00 pm EDT/GMT-4
In the past two decades, we have discovered thousands of planets outside of the Solar System, many of which are nothing like our own. We can learn a great deal about the properties of these planets if we observe them when they pass in front of (transit) their host stars. During transit, a small fraction of starlight filters through the planet's atmosphere. By precisely measuring the spectrum of this filtered starlight, we can learn about the makeup of the planet's atmosphere. Observing planets with this technique allows us to understand the composition of their atmospheres as well as how they formed and evolved. In this talk, I will discuss how I use data from Hubble, JWST, and large ground-based telescopes to detect and characterize the atmospheres of Jupiters to super-Earths.

Munazza Alam is an astronomer, National Geographic Young Explorer, and staff scientist at the Space Telescope Science Institute in Baltimore, MD. She earned her Bachelor's degree in physics and astronomy from CUNY Hunter College in New York City, and received her PhD in astronomy and astrophysics from Harvard University in 2021. Munazza uses data from the Hubble and James Webb Space Telescopes for her research, as well as world-class ground-based facilities at the Mauna Kea Observatories in Hilo, Hawai’i and the Las Campanas Observatory in La Serena, Chile. In her free time, she enjoys oil pastels and watercolors.

Reem-Kayden Center  4:00 pm – 6:00 pm EDT/GMT-4

Corey Allard, Harvard University
Hegeman 107  12:00 pm – 1:00 pm EDT/GMT-4

Reem-Kayden Center Laszlo Z. Bito '60 Auditorium  5:00 pm – 7:00 pm EDT/GMT-4
Majoring (or interested) in science or math but unsure about whether grad school is right for you?  

The Bard Interdisciplinary Science Research Accelerator is sponsoring a panel discussion, Q&A, and networking event with admissions administrators and faculty from across the region.  

We’ll talk about what master’s and PhD programs are out there, what they are like, and how to optimize the rest of your time spent at Bard.  

Panelists:

Delilah Gates
Gravity Initiative Postdoctoral Associate Research Scholar, Princeton University

Andrew Harder
Director of Graduate Admissions, Mathematics Department, Lehigh University

Emily Harms
Senior Associate Dean, The Rockefeller University

Felicia Keesing
David and Rosalie Rose Distinguished Professor of Science, Mathematics, and Computing, Bard College

Chris Lafratta
Professor of Chemistry, Bard College

Chuck Doran
Distinguished Visiting Professor of Mathematics and Physics, Bard College

Open to all Bard students, especially those moderated in mathematics or the sciences.

Artemis Spyrou, Michigan State University
Hegeman 107  12:00 pm – 1:00 pm EDT/GMT-4
Since its birth roughly 60 years ago, the field of Nuclear Astrophysics strives to provide a comprehensive description of element synthesis in the Universe. While parts of stellar nucleosynthesis are well understood, others remain elusive to this day. Especially, the production of elements heavier than iron has been one of the major open questions in the field. Multiple processes and stellar sites contribute to the complex puzzle of heavy element production. Interpreting the astronomical observations requires the understanding of the nuclear processes that drive stellar explosions. This colloquium will focus on the critical nuclear properties needed to explain heavy element nucleosynthesis. I will discuss recent experimental results, as well as new initiatives and future plans at the next generation rare isotope facility, the Facility for Rare Isotope Beams (FRIB) at Michigan State University.

Paul Cadden-Zimansky, associate professor of physics, and Christopher LaFratta, professor of chemistry
Hegeman 107  12:00 pm – 1:00 pm EDT/GMT-4
This year's Nobel Prize in physics recognized pioneering work in the creation of flashes of light that last less than a quadrillionth of a second. In this talk, aimed at a general audience, we'll explain how the cause of a mysterious set of "overtones" in the interaction of lasers and atoms was unraveled, how solving this mystery set off a race to break an unbreakable time-barrier, and how breaking this time-barrier has allowed scientists to take the highest of high-speed photographs, glimpsing the previously unobservable world of electron motions at the subatomic scale.

Ligia Coelho, Cornell University
Hegeman 107  12:00 pm – 1:00 pm EDT/GMT-4
Biopigments are colorful molecules found in all branches of life and are responsible for coloring Earth's landscapes. These molecules provide organisms with various benefits, such as protection against radiation, temperature changes, lack of resources, and dryness - conditions that are common on Earth and beyond. If life exists elsewhere, it will need to find analogous mechanisms to cope with these conditions. Biopigments have unique reflectance spectral features and are potential pervasive signatures of life. The potential colors of extraterrestrial surfaces can be studied using future large space-based telescopes such as the Large Ultraviolet Optical Infrared Surveyor (LUVOIR) and the Habitable Exoplanet Observatory (HabEx). To aid in the search for life on terrestrial planets, we are developing a comprehensive spectra catalog of the colors of life linked to specific ecosystems – since different biopigments (with different spectral features) will be part of the response against different environmental conditions. This free spectra library covers the visible to near-infrared and provides a guide for the search for surface life on planets like ours or other habitable planets that may be colder, drier, or just different than Earth.
 

Yeonsu Jung, Harvard University
 
Hegeman 107  12:00 pm – 1:00 pm EDT/GMT-4
Exploring the design principles of biological soft matter is a complex task due to disorder, nonlinearity, and interactions, among other factors. In this presentation, I will discuss my research on several biological and bio-inspired soft matter systems, including water uptake by plant roots in soil, animal architecture built based on granular jamming and entanglement principles, and stingray-inspired wearable proximity sensor.

To tackle the complexity of biological soft matter, I use a combined experimental and theoretical approach. Image-based visualization techniques, including Particle Image Velocimetry, Interferometry, and X-ray Tomography, are essential for accurately describing complex systems. With proper image analysis, these methods yield microscopic-scale quantitative data.

The explanatory power of theoretical modeling and computation complements the limitations of experimental approaches. Additionally, understanding the design principles of biological systems can inspire the development of bio-inspired inventions. My research aims to not only understand biological phenomena but also develop complex systems inspired by living organisms through collaboration with material scientists and roboticists.

During the presentation, I will discuss how combining experimental and theoretical techniques can provide a fundamental understanding of biological systems. Furthermore, I will explore how studying the design principles of biological systems can lead to the development of artificial systems beneficial for environment and human society.

 

Jennifer Winters, Harvard University
Hegeman 107  12:00 pm – 1:00 pm EDT/GMT-4
Small, low-mass stars are the most numerous types of stars in the Galaxy, with 75% of all stars expected to be of spectral class M (and thus known as M dwarfs), corresponding to masses roughly 10–60% that of our Sun. However, due to their low luminosities, studying this population has been particularly challenging, and many of their properties—such as their ages, activities, multiplicity—remain unconstrained. With numerous on-going surveys searching for planets around these low-mass systems, it is critical that the stars themselves be thoroughly understood. In this talk, I will present the results of my survey to identify and discover the very closest companions to the nearest M dwarfs. I will then highlight LTT 1445, a triple M dwarf system at 7 parsecs that hosts two transiting rocky planets, to illustrate why it is so critical that we understand exoplanets' host stars.

Victoria Xu, Massachusetts Institute of Technology
Hegeman 107  12:00 pm – 1:00 pm EDT/GMT-4
From atom interferometry to laser interferometry, experiments are leveraging quantum mechanics to expand our gravitational view of the Universe. In atom interferometry, we have realized ultra-long coherence times for atoms in spatially-separated superpositions, which can be used for precision table-top tests of exotic physics and gravity. In laser interferometry, as one of the most sensitive instruments ever built, the Advanced Laser Interferometer Gravitational-wave Observatory (Advanced LIGO) operates at the limit of quantum noise to detect gravitational waves (GWs) from cataclysmic cosmic events, such as the mergers of black hole and neutron star binaries. Already, the detectors inject quantum light (“squeezed” vacuum) to reduce the high-frequency quantum noise from shot noise. Major upgrades have now been commissioned to additionally reduce the excess low-frequency quantum noise from opto-mechanical backaction. This involves coupling our squeezed light source to a 300-m long, narrow-band, optical “filter” cavity, which rotates the squeezing quadrature below 100 Hz to evade low-frequency quantum noise in the astrophysically-critical band. This low-frequency squeeze rotation will at last configure the LIGO interferometers for optimal sensing, capable of exceeding the standard quantum limit to our measurement sensitivity. In the next observing run of Advanced LIGO, our quantum-enhanced sensitivity will expand the observable horizon of GW astronomy by 70%, expected to bring GW detection from a near-weekly to near-daily occurrence just 9 years after the dawn of GW astronomy.

Mary Knapp, Massachusetts Institute of Technology
Hegeman 107  12:00 pm – 1:00 pm EDT/GMT-4
We have maps of the sky across the electromagnetic spectrum - from high energy gamma rays through UV, optical, and infrared to radio frequencies.  One part of the spectrum is yet unexplored, however - very low frequency radio (< 10 MHz / 30 m).  This part of the spectrum is blocked by the Earth's ionosphere and is challenging to observe due to its very long wavelengths.  If we could access the low frequency radio sky, we could look back in time to the cosmological Dark Ages, study the plasma and magnetic fields that fill the spaces between stars, track solar storms as they barrel toward Earth, and listen for the radio signatures of exoplanetary magnetic fields. In this talk, I'll discuss low frequency radio science and past, present, and future efforts to build telescopes that can observe the low frequency sky.  I will describe the AERO-VISTA mission, which will map Earth's auroral radio environment.  I will also discuss future telescope concepts on the Moon and in space that seek to unveil this hidden part of the EM spectrum.

Ajit Subramaniam, Columbia University
Hegeman 107  12:00 pm – 1:00 pm EST/GMT-5
The Tropical and Equatorial Atlantic Ocean has been well studied by physical oceanographers and meteorologists because of its importance to ocean circulation, deoxygenation, and rainfall in the Sahel but less is known about how the physics of this region controls biological processes.  The Tropical Atlantic is thought to have enhanced biological productivity and play an important role in global carbon flux - Longhurst (1993) estimated that the tropical Atlantic Ocean (10N – 10S) contributed more to global carbon fixation than the entire North Atlantic open ocean including the well-studied Spring Bloom.  The Equatorial upwelling process is widely accepted as being seasonal and is evident in satellite observations as lower monthly sea surface temperature and concomitant higher monthly chlorophyll concentrations between June and September of each year.  We will discuss the role of physical forcing factors such as the Amazon River outflow, the position of the Inter-Tropical Convergence Zone, and Tropical Instability Wave activity in controlling the availability of nutrients and consequently, the phytoplankton community structure from cruises we participated in this region.
 

Mary Knapp, Massachusetts Institute of Technology
Hegeman 107  12:00 pm – 1:00 pm EST/GMT-5
We have maps of the sky across the electromagnetic spectrum - from high energy gamma rays through UV, optical, and infrared to radio frequencies.  One part of the spectrum is yet unexplored, however - very low frequency radio (< 10 MHz / 30 m).  This part of the spectrum is blocked by the Earth's ionosphere and is challenging to observe due to its very long wavelengths.  If we could access the low frequency radio sky, we could look back in time to the cosmological Dark Ages, study the plasma and magnetic fields that fill the spaces between stars, track solar storms as they barrel toward Earth, and listen for the radio signatures of exoplanetary magnetic fields. In this talk, I'll discuss low frequency radio science and past, present, and future efforts to build telescopes that can observe the low frequency sky.  I will describe the AERO-VISTA mission, which will map Earth's auroral radio environment.  I will also discuss future telescope concepts on the Moon and in space that seek to unveil this hidden part of the EM spectrum.

Luchang Jin, University of Connecticut
Hegeman 107  12:00 pm – 1:00 pm EST/GMT-5
Quantum field theory is the foundation of current high-energy physics. Quantum field theory can be properly formulated on a grid or lattice of points in space and time, which provides a non-perturbative definition of the quantum field theory and a way to perform numerical simulations. Lattice is a powerful tool to study quantum field theories, especially in the presence of strong interactions. In this talk, we will introduce the lattice approach to quantum field theory and its application to simulating quantum chromodynamics and electrodynamics, using path integral and Monte Carlo methods. In particular, we will report the results of one of our recent calculations, the electromagnetic correction to the mass of the lightest meson—subatomic particles formed by a quark and anti-quark pair, bound together by the strong interaction.

Tajana Marie Schneiderman, Cornell University
Hegeman 107  12:00 pm – 1:00 pm EST/GMT-5
Circumstellar disks of gas and dust are integral parts of planetary systems from formation to maturation. Protoplanetary disks, the name for circumstellar material at the earliest stages of a stellar lifetime, provide key information about the formation processes of planets, and therefore of the initial conditions that set system evolution in motion. Debris disks, the name for circumstellar material after the protoplanetary disk dissipates, are remnants of earlier processes and carry clues to the formation conditions and evolutionary pathways of mature systems. In this talk, I will demonstrate that understanding circumstellar material is key to interpreting planetary histories by examining two case studies.

First, I will present my laboratory work seeking to understand the behavior of noble gases in disk ice analogs. These experiments help explain the extent to which each gas traces different sources of volatiles within the protoplanetary disk. They also present initial clues as to the source of Jovian noble gas abundances. Second, I will discuss observations of the circumstellar material in the HD 172555 system. Here, gas and dust analysis indicates the first evidence for a planetary atmosphere stripped in the aftermath of a giant impact. 

Reem-Kayden Center  4:00 pm – 5:30 pm EST/GMT-5
Join our December graduating seniors as the present their work!

Johannes Pollanen, Michigan State University
Hegeman 107  12:00 pm – 1:00 pm EST/GMT-5
Our research group at MSU, the Laboratory for Hybrid Quantum Systems, works on wide variety of experiments at the boundary of condensed matter physics (CMP) and quantum information science (QIS) to create hybrid/synthetic quantum systems with novel properties and/or functionality. The ability to imagine and create these types of quantum systems, which bring together seemingly disparate (but interacting) degrees of freedom, brings the exciting possibility of unexpected discoveries and new directions in fundamental and applied quantum research in systems ranging from many-electron fluids & solids to tailor-made artificial atoms based on superconducting circuits. In this talk I will describe our work on creating novel hybrid quantum systems that integrate superconducting qubits + superfluids, electrons trapped on the surface of liquid helium, and surface acoustic wave (SAW) devices. By leveraging the precision experimental techniques of QIS our experiments reveal insights into the coherence properties of established superconducting qubit systems & single electron devices and potential methods for improving their coherence. Our experiments also open the door to developing altogether new qubits and high-frequency SAW devices based on electrons trapped on the surface of superfluid helium as well as new regimes of circuit quantum optics using piezo-phonons.

Maëlle Kapfer, Columbia University
Hegeman 107  12:00 pm – 1:00 pm EST/GMT-5
The possibility to isolate atom-thick layer of material from a bulk crystal allows the design of structures with a wide range of properties. In particular, by twisting those single layer sheets, a periodic potential, called moiré potential, is superimposed over the lattice modifying the properties of the parent material. Twisted two-dimensional materials have generated tremendous excitement as a platform for achieving quantum properties on demand. However, the moiré pattern is highly sensitive to the interlayer atomic registry, and current assembly techniques suffer from imprecise control of the average twist angle, spatial inhomogeneity in the local twist angle, and distortions due to random strain. Here, we demonstrate a new way to manipulate the moiré patterns in hetero- and homo-bilayers through in-plane bending of monolayer ribbons, using the tip of an atomic force microscope. This technique achieves continuous variation of twist angles with improved twist-angle homogeneity and reduced random strain, resulting in moiré patterns with highly tunable wavelength and ultra-low disorder. Our results pave the way for detailed studies of ultra-low disorder moiré systems and the realization of precise strain-engineered devices.
 

Kaća Bradonjić, Hampshire College
Hegeman 107  12:00 pm – 1:00 pm EST/GMT-5
Physicists use abstract mathematics to describe, and advanced technologies to probe, the physical world on spatial, temporal, and complexity scales unperceivable by the human body through ordinary perception. How, then, does a physicist – a living, breathing organism whose primary knowledge is rooted in the physical interaction of their body with the physical world – work with abstract objects and ground their understanding in the sensory impressions and emotional states that their body makes possible? In this talk, I will sketch out a research program that integrates artistic and intellectual practice to guide our approach to this question. My work is informed by the history and philosophy of science, theories of embodied and situated cognition, and Maurice Merleau-Ponty’s philosophy of phenomenology. My aim is to gain a more intimate understanding of the individual experiences of scientific inquiry and to explore their impact on collective research efforts in physics. 

Andrew Chael, Princeton University
Hegeman 107  12:00 pm – 1:00 pm EDT/GMT-4
The Event Horizon Telescope (EHT) is a network of eleven millimeter-wavelength radio telescopes that spans the globe from Greenland to the South Pole. Using the technique of Very Long Baseline Interferometry (VLBI), the EHT combines data from these telescopes to produce images with resolution comparable to that of a single telescope with the Earth’s diameter. The EHT has imaged both the supermassive black hole in the giant elliptical galaxy M87 and Sagittarius A*, the black hole in our Galactic Center. These images show rings of light produced by extremely hot, magnetized plasma with sizes very similar to that of the black hole's theoretical ‘shadow.’ Producing these images required years of painstaking calibration, validation, and imaging of EHT data, as well as new advances in numerical simulations required to model the turbulent plasma inflows and outflows around black holes. In this talk, I will discuss how the EHT obtained its images and how we use them to understand the extreme environments around supermassive black holes. I will also discuss how future advances in both EHT observations and theoretical simulations will both reveal the connection between supermassive black holes and extragalactic jets and enable more precise tests of General Relativity near the black hole boundary.

Kaya Mori, Columbia University
Hegeman 107  12:00 pm – 1:00 pm EDT/GMT-4
The Galactic Center (GC) is a unique environment with the highest concentration of stars, gas and compact objects (black holes, neutron stars and white dwarfs) in our galaxy. The central parsec region contains about 10 million stars, while the closest star to Earth is located at about 1 parsec away. Due to the long distance (8 kiloparsecs) and a large amount of gas and dust in between, the GC region is invisible in the optical band and its true nature remained elusive for many years. Over the last two decades, a new generation of radio, infrared and X-ray telescopes has revolutionized our understanding of the GC region, as manifested by the 2020 Nobel Prize in Physics awarded for the discovery of a 4 million solar mass black hole at Sagittarius A*. In the X-ray band, NASA’s Chandra telescope detected over 10,000 X-ray emitting sources in the GC region. I will present our recent investigations on the X-ray sources, most of which contain compact objects, in the central parsec to over 100 parsecs away from Sagittarius A*. I will highlight several exciting discoveries and discuss some implications on how the formation, dynamics and evolution of compact objects are controlled by immense gravity from the supermassive black hole and interactions with stars.

  Reem-Kayden Center  4:00 pm – 6:00 pm EDT/GMT-4
Join our summer research students as they present their work!


Download: BSRI abstract booklet F22-3.pdf

Clara Sousa-Silva, Physics Program
Hegeman 107  12:00 pm – 1:00 pm EDT/GMT-4
Over the last few decades, scientists have found thousands of planets beyond our own. Some of those planets might be habitable, and perhaps even inhabited already; but how can we tell? Clara Sousa-Silva looks for signs of life on other planets using astronomical tools to detect faint signals emitted by potential alien biospheres. In this presentation, Clara draws on her experience investigating strange molecules on strange planets, and her efforts to answer the question: "Would we know life if we saw it?"

The work presented in this talk combines organic chemistry and quantum mechanics as tools for the interpretation of astrophysical spectra and, ultimately, the detection of life on an exoplanet. Whether alien life will produce familiar gases (e.g., oxygen) or exotic biosignatures (e.g., phosphine), painting a confident picture of a potential biosphere will require a holistic interpretation of an atmosphere and its molecules. In this talk Clara will describe ongoing efforts to train the next generation of scientists to decipher exoplanet atmospheres, and ultimately to detect a biosphere through the identification of atmospheric molecules, in particular those that might be produced by non-Earth-like life.
Professor Sousa-Silva is is a quantum astrochemist and molecular astrophysicist. She investigates how molecules interact with light so that they can be detected on faraway worlds. Clara spends most of her time studying molecules that life can produce so that, one day, she can detect an alien biosphere. Her favorite molecular biosignature is phosphine: a terrifying gas associated with mostly unpleasant life. When she is not deciphering exoplanet atmospheres, Clara works hard to persuade the next generation of scientists to become an active part of the astronomical community.

Clara holds a doctoral degree in quantum chemistry from the University College London, and a masters degree in physics and astronomy from the University of Edinburgh in Scotland. Among her many achievements, Clara is the recipient of the prestigious 51 b Pegasi Fellowship from the Heising Simons Foundation. The fellowship supports the growing field of planetary astronomy and exceptional postdoctoral scientists who make unique contributions to the field of astronomy. Prior to joining Bard College, Clara was at the Center for Astrophysics | Harvard & Smithsonian from 2020 - 2022, and MIT from 2016 - 2020.

Clara’s work and commentary has been featured in the BBC, WIRED, and the New York Times, among many others, and is the focus of her TED talk.

Paul Cadden-Zimansky, Associate Professor of Physics
Hegeman 107  12:00 pm – 1:00 pm EDT/GMT-4
This year's Nobel Prize in physics was awarded jointly to John Clauser, Alain Aspect, and Anton Zeilinger for their pioneering work testing some of the more surprising predictions of quantum mechanics and helping to establish the burgeoning field of quantum information. In this talk, aimed at a general audience, I'll discuss the 100-year history of a philosophical conundrum about the nature of reality, debated by Niels Bohr and Albert Einstein, that the laureates resolved experimentally. Along the way, we'll see how political exiles, social outcasts, bankrupt science journals, and scavenged lab equipment all contributed to laying the groundwork for a "second quantum revolution" that's currently underway.

Andrew Poverman ’21
Hegeman 107  12:00 pm – 1:00 pm EDT/GMT-4
Using optically levitated nano-spheres, the Geraci group at Northwestern University's Center for Fundamental Physics (CFP) makes precision measurements with the scientific goal of investigating fundamental aspects of gravity and quantum foundations.  To search for effects of gravity at short ranges, we employ a dual beam optical trap to confine 300nm fused silica spheres in an optical potential.  The sphere is then brought within microns of a driven oscillating mass with a periodic density structure.  This oscillating mass causes the motion of the trapped nano-sphere to change as a result of gravitational interaction, and the gravitational force exerted on the nano-sphere is then measured by using imaging techniques to track its motion in the optical trap.  This type of system has already shown zepto-newton force sensitivity, and is currently being updated to have even higher sensitivity as well as the capability to search for Casimir-Polder forces. Additionally, I will describe an experiment which plans to investigate quantum properties of these nano-spheres by using matter-wave interferometry. To do so, we must first cool the center of motion of the bead to its motional ground state using parametric feedback cooling.  Successfully observing quantum properties of these nano-spheres will potentially open the door to a regime of physics where macroscopic objects can be put into quantum superpositions, allowing for tests of quantum foundations and the quantum to classical transition. 

Reem-Kayden Center  5:00 pm – 6:30 pm EDT/GMT-4
Abstract booklet below!


Download: Senior Project Poster session booklet S22-1.pdf

Joshua Smith, California State University-Fullerton
Hegeman 107  12:00 pm – 1:00 pm EDT/GMT-4
Albert Einstein predicted gravitational waves in 1916, as a consequence of his general relativity theory. A century later, the Laser Interferometer Gravitational-Wave Observatory (LIGO) began observing these waves from merging systems of black holes and neutron stars. These observations cemented relativity theory and inaugurated an era of gravitational-wave multi-messenger astronomy. 

LIGO and its partners are just sensitive enough to measure the strongest gravitational waves. Cosmic Explorer (CE) is a next-generation ground-based gravitational-wave observatory envisioned to begin operations in the 2030s. With its spectacular sensitivity, CE will peer deeply into the universe’s dark side — observing gravitational waves from remnants of the first stars — and open a wide discovery aperture to the novel and unknown.
 

Jeyhan Kartaltepe, RIT
Hegeman 107  12:00 pm – 1:00 pm EDT/GMT-4
Galaxy mergers and interactions are thought to play a key role in the evolution of galaxies. These collisions can affect many important galaxy properties, such as their physical structure, their star formation rates, and the growth of their central black holes. However, the details of this role, and how it has changed over the age of the Universe, is still a matter of much debate. Both theoretical models and some recent observations have suggested that mergers do not play a dominant role in the early Universe, but that instead much of the mass growth of galaxies and their black holes can be attributed to secular processes such as disk instabilities. I will present the results of a detailed, multiwavelength analysis of galaxy mergers and interactions and their impact on star formation and black hole growth via AGN. I will also discuss plans for future work using the James Webb Space Telescope.

  Beate G Liepert, EUS Program
Hegeman 107  12:00 pm – 1:00 pm EDT/GMT-4
Air pollution is well known as a public health problem, but not so such as a climate change driver. Only recently has the term “aerosols” entered public consciousness as a pathway with which the corona virus spreads. For atmospheric scientists however, aerosols (i.e., particulate matter) have been well known as one of the key uncertainties in climate change, due to their direct effect of reflecting solar energy back to space, and aerosol-cloud interactions. The presentation provides an overview of the role of aerosols in climate from an observational and a modelling point of view. The wickedness of the problem will become clear, when air pollution is reduced and as a consequence, global warming unmasked.
 

Gavin A. Schmidt, NASA Goddard Institute for Space Studies
 
Hegeman 107  12:00 pm – 1:00 pm EDT/GMT-4
Our ability to successfully forecast changes in climate relies on fundamental physical concepts – including radiative transfer, conservation laws, chemistry, and fluid dynamics – but much of the structural uncertainty in climate model projections relates to more empirical aspects of parameterizations of unresolved processes, such as cloud nucleation, ocean eddy mixing, and convection. There is an apparent tension between the confidence we have basic physics and the specifics of projected changes using these models. Other uncertainties relate to scenarios for important emissions (such as carbon dioxide, methane, and ozone and aerosol precursors), and the fundamentally chaotic nature of the weather (though not the climate). I will discuss the ways in which we can build confidence for the use of these models in assessing climate risk though the use of out-of-sample test case, hindcasts, multi-variate assessments and success in real forecasts.  

Nathalie Jones ’21
Hegeman 107  12:00 pm – 1:00 pm EDT/GMT-4
X-ray emission has long been observed from giant molecular clouds located in the galactic center region of our Milky Way. These molecular clouds are thought to be reprocessing past X-ray outbursts from supermassive black hole Sgr A*. By studying the clouds’ flux over time, we are able to reveal the past outburst activities of Sgr A* hundreds of years ago. I have been utilizing newly received NuSTAR and archival XMM-Newton observations of the “Bridge” molecular cloud in order to present a 20-year-long light curve of the cloud’s flux. This data reveals that the X-ray luminosity of the “Bridge” cloud has been monotonically increasing since ~2007, almost doubling in the last decade, and provides strong evidence of an outburst light front from Sgr A*. In this seminar, I will discuss aspects of the data analysis process, present results, and touch on my post-Bard experiences.

Fernando Montes, Michigan State University
Hegeman 107  12:00 pm – 1:00 pm EDT/GMT-4
Stellar explosions and colliding neutron stars are important sources of the chemical elements in nature. While some of the astrophysical processes responsible for element creation are well understood, others have remained elusive for decades. Processes creating elements often involve short lived radioactive isotopes that can be produced at accelerator facilities. Studies with these isotopes allow us to constrain the relevant nuclear reaction rates and nuclear properties so one can understand in the laboratory how elements are created. Recent progress in astronomical observations, such as the observation and verification that the merging of two neutron stars is as a source of heavy element production in the Universe, need to be accompanied with similar progress in understanding the relevant properties of rare isotopes through nuclear physics experiments. I will review the important role that rare isotopes play in understanding stellar explosions, show some examples of recent nuclear physics measurements and give a (very abbreviated) outlook of future nuclear astrophysics studies.

Valerie Rapson, SUNY Oneonta
 
Hegeman 107  12:00 pm – 1:00 pm EST/GMT-5
These days it seems like everyone has an interest in astronomy. Young kids are watching YouTube videos about black holes, adults are participating in astronomy-themed lifelong learning courses, and thousands of people across the globe watched James Webb launch on Christmas morning. It’s important for educators and professionals to nurture this passion for astronomy in our community, in hopes of encouraging more people to pursue a career in the sciences. In this talk, I’ll share some of my research efforts in the area of star and planet formation and discuss how my initial career in science communication inspired me to develop an observational astronomy research program at SUNY Oneonta. I will also talk about my current outreach efforts throughout New York state, and my upcoming series with The Great Courses that’s designed to teach amateur astronomers how to get involved in Citizen Science. By providing students, amateur astronomers, and the general public with the skills and cosmic knowledge they yearn to acquire, we can set them on a path towards tackling some of the big unanswered questions about our Universe.

  Ivy Li, Rice University
Hegeman 107  12:00 pm – 1:00 pm EST/GMT-5
The Universe contains vastly more dark matter than baryonic matter, and yet dark matter's particle nature remains elusive. The challenge of discovering dark matter's particle nature has spurred a technological race around the world. Scientists build experiments to hedge their bets on measuring dark matter, all while developing computational methods to face ongoing Big Data challenges. One such dark matter experiment is XENONnT, a xenon time projection chamber located underground at the Laboratori Nazionali del Gran Sasso in Italy. XENONnT has already collected petabytes of data and will continue to do so; in the upcoming years, storing, processing, and analyzing such data has become both a physics and a computational problem. In this talk, I will discuss our current understanding of dark matter, introduce the XENONnT experiment and its dark matter search, and explore two computational aspects of its setup: data processing on Open Science Grid and data compression for managing petabytes of data. Finally, I will highlight ongoing work from our interdisciplinary group at Rice, particularly machine-learning applications for astroparticle physics, and share a bit about my pathway into physics.

  Andrew Harder, Lehigh University
Hegeman 107  12:00 pm – 1:00 pm EST/GMT-5
An elliptic Lefschetz fibration is a smooth 4-manifold M (possibly with boundary) which admits a map to a surface S (possibly with boundary), and so that all but a finite number of fibers are diffeomorphic to a 2-torus, and the rest are homeomorphic to a “pinched” 2-torus. The classification of elliptic Lefschetz fibrations can be reduced to a (hard) problem in linear algebra whose solution is known in several cases — for instance, a theorem of Moishezon and Livné says that if S is just the 2-sphere then it is known that any elliptic Lefschetz fibration has 12n fibres which are pinched 2-tori for some integer n, and that the topology of M is completely determined by n.

Surprisingly, the situation where S is a 2-dimensional disc, despite being well studied, is not completely understood. In this talk, I will discuss an answer to this problem under certain conditions on the boundary of M and on the number of fibres which are singular. We reduce this problem to a question about linear algebraic objects called pseudo-lattices and apply a theorem of Kuznetsov to give a concrete description of a class of elliptic Lefschetz fibrations. Finally I will discuss my motivation for considering this problem and how this classification theorem reflects the numerical classification of weak del Pezzo surfaces in algebraic geometry. This is based on joint work with Alan Thompson.

Reem-Kayden Center  4:00 pm – 5:30 pm EST/GMT-5

  Improving the Semi-classical Approximation of the Volume Eigenvalues and Eigenfunctions of Tetrahedral Grains of Space
Santanu Antu, '23
Hegeman 107  12:00 pm – 1:00 pm EST/GMT-5
Semiclassical theory is a powerful tool to analyze quantum phenomena even without invoking the full edged quantum mechanics. One of the most pivotal approximation schemes int he semiclassical theory is the WKB approximation (named after physicists Gregor Wentzel,Hendrik Anthony Kramers, and L eon Brillouin). The WKB approximation has been used to understand various quantum mechanical systems, including, but not limited to, infinite square well, harmonic oscillator, quartic oscillator etc. Even though most of the quantum mechanical problems mentioned here have been solved exactly, the WKB analysis provides a very intuitive insight to the inherently mysterious quantum theory. Our usage of WKB theory was devoted to understand a very central aspect of quantum gravity- the quantization of space. The eigenvalues of the tetrahedral grains of space using the rst order WKB approximation has already been studied in the literature of loop quantum gravity. In this project, we derived the eigenfunctions using WKB theory, and compared them with the exact wavefunctions. Aside from that, we also obtained a better approximation for the eigenvalues. Even though the previous first order approximations agree with the exact quantization nicely, there were cases where it lacked accuracy (as much as 16%). In our project for the summer, we tried to attain better approximation of the eigenvalues using higher order terms in the WKB approximation. Our approximation method is facilitated by a special differential equation, called the Picard-Fuchs differential equation. In our case, it is a third order differential equation with a constant solution. Since the differential equation that governs our system has only three independent solution (including the constant solution), it is apparent that the higher order action integrals can be represented as a combination of the lower order action integrals. The project demonstrates the underlying Picard-Fuchs equation for the system and a method of getting higher order approximation of the eigenvalues of the tetrahedral grains of space.
 

Lía Racquel Corrales, University of Michigan
Hegeman 107  12:00 pm – 1:00 pm EST/GMT-5
Short wavelengths of light, from the X-ray to the UV, can be used to probe the abundance and phase (solid versus gas) of the most prevalent metals in the Universe. I will discuss two science frontiers: astromineralogy of the ISM with high resolution X-ray spectroscopy and short wavelength transmission spectroscopy of exoplanet atmospheres. The X-ray energy band is sensitive to absorption and emission by all abundant metals in the interstellar medium (ISM), both in gas and dust form, enabling us to answer key questions in dust grain growth and processing. X-ray photoabsorption features observed in high resolution spectra of Galactic X-ray binaries directly reveal the mineral composition of interstellar dust. I will describe the latest breakthroughs in this area and explain how XRISM, the next space based observatory to deploy an X-ray microcalorimeter, will contribute to the field. On the exoplanet frontier, the high energy environment in which planets evolve is believed to play an important role in the observed demographics of exoplanet populations. I will highlight the work being done in my research group, including work to detect NUV exoplanet transits with the Neil Gehrels Swift Observatory.

Helene Tieger, '85, Bard College Library Archivist
Hegeman 107  12:00 pm – 1:00 pm EST/GMT-5
Using archival documents and from conversations with former faculty and students, the college archivist will share physics stories from Professor Stryker's Recitation room to Zog 4. (And beyond.)

Maica Clavel, Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique
Hegeman 107  12:00 pm – 1:00 pm EST/GMT-5
The supermassive black hole at the Galactic center, Sagittarius A*, is the least luminous known supermassive black hole, but relics in its surroundings show that it has not always been so quiet. X-ray observations of the diffuse emission at the Galactic center performed over the last two decades have revealed an intense and highly variable nonthermal component, spatially correlated with dense molecular clouds present in the central three hundred parsecs. This reflection signal has been identified as echoes created by the past activity of Sagittarius A*. However, using these reflection features to reconstruct its precise history over the last centuries has been challenging. Through dedicated X-ray variability and spectral analyses, we are now able to derive an increasing number of constraints on two past outbursts from Sagittarius A* that occurred in the last centuries. However, what caused these events is still an open question. I will review how and what we have learned about Sagittarius A*'s past activity.

Nancy Aggarwal, Northwestern University
Hegeman 107  12:00 pm – 1:00 pm EDT/GMT-4
According to the standard model of physics, the neutron which is made up of quarks should have a finite  electric dipole moment (edm). However, precision measurements of the neutron's edm place a vanishingly small upper bound on it. This is referred to as the strong CP problem. The axion is a new particle that was proposed to solve the strong CP problem. The possible mass range for the axion spans about 20 orders of magnitude. In certain circumstances, the axion can also explain dark matter.

In my talk, I will describe a new experiment under development to look for the axion in the 10^-5 - 10^-2 eV mass range. This experiment, ARIADNE, will look for a spin-dependent force between an unpolarized source mass and a highly polarized ^3He gas mediated by the axion. The effect is equivalent to a fictitious magnetic field applied to the ^3He gas. In order to make this measurement, we need to be able to measure magnetic fields as small as 10^-21 T. This experiment requires bringing together multiple cutting-edge technologies into one system. I will describe the challenges in integrating these technologies towards achieving the required precision as well as our progress towards mitigating them.

  Surabhi Sachdev, University of Milwaukee
Hegeman 107  12:00 pm – 1:00 pm EDT/GMT-4
We are in the era of gravitational-wave and multi-messenger astronomy, kick-started by the Advanced LIGO and Advanced Virgo detectors. The Advanced detectors concluded their third observing run (O3) in March 2020. The latest catalog of compact binary coalescences which analyzed data up until the first half of O3 contains 55 events consistent with binary black holes and binary neutron stars.  In addition, two events consistent with neutron star black hole binaries were reported in the data from the second half of O3. I will provide a summary of the gravitational-wave data observations and describe what we can learn from these. I will conclude by discussing what we can expect from the upcoming observing runs.

Join our students in presenting their summer research!
Reem-Kayden Center  4:00 pm – 6:00 pm EDT/GMT-4

  Dani Schultz
Merck Pharmaceuticals
Reem-Kayden Center Laszlo Z. Bito '60 Auditorium  12:10 pm – 1:10 pm EDT/GMT-4
Aspects of this session will highlight my journey from a small town in northern Wisconsin to the bustling east coast where leaning into discomfort has been critical in driving my career at Merck and the chemistry that I have pursued. Throughout my career, I have tapped into my ability to forge meaningful collaborations, internally and externally, to challenge the status quo and drive disruptive thinking – both in chemistry but also in improving STEM culture. I’ll briefly touch upon some recently completed academic-industrial research collaborations that aimed to empower early-career female professors and provide a platform to mentor and train female professors and students in pharmaceutical research. Throughout all of this, I have a passion for diversity, equity and inclusion and will share how I’ve navigated raising important, and at times difficult, topics and how to influence workplace culture. I’ve learned a lot through failed experiments along the way and I am looking forward to an active discussion with fellow changemakers!

Dani Schultz received her PhD from the University of Michigan working with Professor John Wolfe and was an NIH postdoctoral fellow at the University of Wisconsin-Madison with Professor Tehshik Yoon. Since joining Merck in 2014, Dani has been a member of Process Chemistry and Enabling Technologies in Rahway, NJ and as of 2021 became the Director of the Discovery Process Chemistry group in Kenilworth, NJ. Throughout her time at Merck, Dani has been involved in the development of synthetic routes for drug candidates spanning HIV and oncology – forging meaningful collaborations, both internally and externally, to address the synthetic challenges that occur during pharmaceutical development. Most recently, she has served as co-host to the Pharm to Table podcast that aims to elevate the people and stories behind #MerckChemistry.

Field Rogers, MIT
Hegeman 107  12:00 pm – 1:00 pm EDT/GMT-4
Dark matter is a mysterious substance that composes ~85% of the total mass of the Universe and is responsible for the formation of galaxies in the early Universe and for the motion of stars in our Milky Way Galaxy today. Evidence for the existence of dark matter comes from astrophysical observations of its gravitational effects across a range of time and distance scales. However, despite its ubiquity and abundance, dark matter is difficult to detect because it barely interacts with other particles. Understanding the particle nature of dark matter remains one of the largest open questions in particle and astrophysics.  

In this seminar, I will present diverse pieces of evidence for the existence of dark matter and discuss the current knowledge of its properties. I will then introduce the General AntiParticle Spectrometer (GAPS) Experiment, an upcoming NASA Antarctic balloon mission to detect cosmic particles as possible signatures of dark matter interactions in our Galaxy. I will highlight some of the detector development work at the heart of the GAPS mission, including contributions from undergraduate researchers. I will conclude by looking forward to the scientific results you can expect from GAPS over the next few years.

Victoria Grinberg, European Space Agency
Hegeman 107  12:00 pm – 1:00 pm EDT/GMT-4
Black holes are perhaps the most mind-boggling object ever conceived by physicists. At the same time, they are real astrophysical objects created at the end of the life of massive stars. And astronomers can observe them - or rather their influence on their interaction with their environment. Some of the best objects to do so are X-ray binaries, systems that consist of a black hole and a normal star. As some of the stellar material is accreted onto the black hole, an accretion disk forms and X-ray emission is produced. In this talk, I will first discuss how observing this emission using space-based X-ray telescopes allows us to learn more about black holes and in particular measure their spin and then focus on a recent discovery of so-called returning radiation from black hole accretion disks.

Paul Cadden-Zimansky & Hal Haggard,  Associate Professors of Physics at Bard College
Hegeman 107  12:00 pm – 1:00 pm EDT/GMT-4
This year's Nobel Prize in physics, awarded to Giorgio Parisi, Syukuro Manabe, and Klaus Hasselmann, was bestowed for finding order in what appear to be hopelessly complex systems.  This general audience talk will explain how the laureates started from simple physical principles, braved a thicket of noise and intricate interactions, and emerged from the other side with new tools that deepen our understanding of systems ranging from the material to the biological, from machine learning to meteorology.  Along the way they found answers to some scholarly questions and some with global climate implications.

Pizza to be served after the talk!

Hegeman 107  12:00 pm – 1:00 pm EDT/GMT-4
The new semester has started and we would like to invite you to our traditional meet-and-greet Physics Phriday this Friday from noon to 1pm. We hope you will join us for some socializing, pizza and fun. It will be a chance for the new to get to meet with us and their fellow students, and the old to reunite. It is also a good opportunity to ask more about physics jobs and other program-related activities. 

Join our graduating seniors in presenting their research!
Main Commencement Tent  5:30 pm – 7:00 pm EDT/GMT-4
Please see the abstract booklet below for full descriptions of students' research.


Download: Senior Project Poster session booklet S21.pdf

  Evan Telford, Columbia University
Online Event  12:00 pm – 1:00 pm EDT/GMT-4
The study of two-dimensional (2D) materials is one of the fastest growing fields in condensed matter physics. These materials promise to revolutionize nanotechnology due to the ability to easily isolate clean atomically-thin sheets of conducting material for use in atomic-scale circuits. Since the initial demonstration of the electric-field effect in devices fabricated from mechanically exfoliated graphene, the number of available 2D compounds that can be integrated into nanocircuits has grown exponentially to encompass diverse electronic properties such as semiconductors, superconductors, and magnets. A significant engineering challenge within the 2D community is the fabrication of devices from air-sensitive 2D crystals for electrical transport measurements. We have successfully addressed this challenge by developing a technique for embedding metal electrodes within atomically-thin insulating flakes used to simultaneously contact and preserve a wide array of air-sensitive 2D materials. Using this technique, we fabricated electrical transport devices from few-layer CrSBr, a new magnetic 2D semiconductor. We found CrSBr adopts a unique spin configuration in which individual layers ferromagnetically order internally, while adjacent layers couple antiferromagnetically. Through electrical transport measurements on CrSBr down to the single-layer limit, we observed strong coupling between magnetic order and electronic properties, leading to a resistivity that is reversibly controlled through external magnetic and electric fields.
Zoom link for the event:https://bard.zoom.us/j/6121711443?pwd=d2k5NnNvWncwSEhNY1ovTTdUSHY1Zz09
 
Meeting ID: 612 171 1443
Passcode: 431280

  Ke Fang, University of Wisconsin–Madison
Online Event  12:00 pm – 1:00 pm EDT/GMT-4
The study of compact objects such as black holes and neutron stars is an important component of modern astrophysics. Recent detections of astrophysical neutrinos, gamma rays, ultra-high-energy cosmic rays, and gravitational waves open up opportunities to study compact objects with multimessengers. In this talk, we first review the latest progress in astroparticle physics, including some surprising puzzles revealed by new observations. We demonstrate that the key to multimessenger astrophysics is to understand and establish the link between the messengers. We then illustrate how to reach this goal from both theoretical and observational perspectives. From the theoretical side, we show that high-energy particle propagation in the vicinity of compact objects may play an important role in connecting multiwavelength observation and source physics. From the observational side, we investigate analysis frameworks aiming to exploit data across multiple wavelengths and messengers.Zoom link:https://bard.zoom.us/j/6121711443?pwd=d2k5NnNvWncwSEhNY1ovTTdUSHY1Zz09
 
Meeting ID: 612 171 1443
Passcode: 431280

  Andrea Richard, Michigan State University
Online Event  12:00 pm – 1:00 pm EDT/GMT-4
The fundamental challenges in nuclear science have been summarized in the 2015 Long Range Plan for Nuclear Science, which outlines four important questions, (1) How did visible matter come into being and how does it evolve? (2) How does subatomic matter organize itself and what phenomena emerge? (3) Are the fundamental interactions that are basic to the structure of matter fully understood? (4) How can the knowledge and technical progress provided by nuclear physics best be used to benefit society? The study of rare isotopes provides a means to investigate all of the questions posed in the Long Range Plan. The National Superconducting Cyclotron Laboratory (NSCL) at Michigan State University is a rare isotope facility that provides access to exotic, short-lived isotopes for experimental studies. Nuclear decays are simple probes that can be applied to rare isotopes at the limits of the production capabilities of the experimental facility and provide a variety of information including nuclear half-lives, decay branching ratios, and the energies of populated excited states.   Beta-decay, in particular, plays an important role in nuclear science both for basic research and astrophysics due to its dominance across the nuclear landscape. However, many decay properties are not well known, especially for the more exotic isotopes. At the NSCL, we have developed a program to ascertain b-decay information, and in some cases neutron-capture cross sections, for nuclei involved in astrophysical processes. In this presentation, I will discuss b-decay measurements performed at the NSCL and their importance for basic nuclear science, nuclear astrophysics, and applications. I will also discuss the future Facility for Rare Isotope Beams (FRIB) and how it will provide a wealth of additional nuclei for study and enable experimental programs that are not feasible today.
Join Zoom Meeting here:
https://bard.zoom.us/j/6121711443?pwd=d2k5NnNvWncwSEhNY1ovTTdUSHY1Zz09
 
Meeting ID: 612 171 1443
Passcode: 431280

  Haocun Yu, MIT
Online Event  12:00 pm – 1:00 pm EDT/GMT-4
The Laser Interferometer Gravitational-wave Observatory (LIGO) detected gravitational waves for the first time in 2015. Since then dozens more events have been confirmed by the third observing run (O3). To detect these spacetime ripples requires the precision of the interferometric GW detectors to reach sub-attometer level, and we are always pursuing higher sensitivities. I will describe the main quantum technologies -- squeezing-- that make such precision possible and enable present and future discoveries. This talk will also give a clue to a more fundamental question: when using light as a probe to measure the position of a particle, what is the limit to the precision? 


Join the event either in-person at the Brody lab or via Zoom here:
https://bard.zoom.us/j/6121711443?pwd=d2k5NnNvWncwSEhNY1ovTTdUSHY1Zz09

Meeting ID: 612 171 1443

Passcode: 431280
 

  Colette Salyk, Vassar College
Online Event  12:00 pm – 1:00 pm EST/GMT-5
In this talk, I’ll present to you the standard fairy tale story for how planets form.  Then, I’ll tell you (at least some of the reasons) why this story is incomplete and why it’s essential to make real measurements of planet formation processes.  I’ll describe how my favorite technique, molecular spectroscopy, can be used to make ground-truth measurements of where, how, and under what conditions, planets form.  I’ll also tell you about the soon-to-be-launched James Webb Space Telescope, and how this revolutionary telescope is going to radically improve our ability to understand the chemistry of planet formation.Zoom link:Join Zoom Meeting here:
https://bard.zoom.us/j/6121711443?pwd=d2k5NnNvWncwSEhNY1ovTTdUSHY1Zz09
 
Meeting ID: 612 171 1443
Passcode: 431280
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  Melissa Eblen-Zayas, Carleton College
Online Event  12:00 pm – 1:00 pm EST/GMT-5
Condensed matter physicists begin by developing simple models that capture the key properties of materials, but correlated electron materials are a class of materials where our simple models break down, giving rise to unusual electronic or magnetic properties. In this talk, I will share our research on one correlated electron material, EuO1-x, which is of interest for its possible spintronics applications. Because the transport and magnetic properties of EuO1-x are similar to another correlated electron material, the perovskite manganites, and phase inhomogeneity is important for describing the properties of the manganites, an interesting question is whether phase inhomogeneity is also relevant for describing EuO1-x. I will explore what phase inhomogeneity is, the evidence for phase inhomogeneity in the manganites, and our current understanding of the nature of phase inhomogeneity in EuO1-x, and I will share a bit about my journey as a physicist.

https://bard.zoom.us/j/6121711443?pwd=d2k5NnNvWncwSEhNY1ovTTdUSHY1Zz09
 
Meeting ID: 612 171 1443
Passcode: 431280
 

José Perillan, Vassar College
Online Event  12:00 pm – 1:00 pm EST/GMT-5
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1uamMAWNnXTm0-1qyiPhnCatX58lrquWx/view?usp=sharing

The stories scientists tell are not just mythologies or poorly researched histories to be judged inferior by historians of science and brushed aside as Whiggish accounts of the scientific past. These myth-histories are a unique species of narrative, fundamentally different from scholarly historical accounts. In the concept of myth-history, the hyphen is critical, for it bridges narrative modes. In communicating their science, scientists tend to use these hybrid narratives for important rhetorical purposes. Myth-histories, like those you might find in textbooks and popularizations of science, employ history as a rough scaffolding. They also filter out unwanted historical details, emphasize mythological tropes, and perpetuate essentialist images of ideal science built upon the shoulders of scientific heroes. The stories scientists tell undoubtedly deliver value, coherence, and inspiration to scientific communities but they also bear unintended consequences that must be brought to light.

 

  Elizabeth Mills, University of Kansas
Online Event  12:00 pm – 1:00 pm EST/GMT-5
Centers of galaxies are some of the most extreme objects in our universe: hosting starbursts and active supermassive black holes that can launch jets and winds far outside the compact galaxy nucleus. The effects of the unique interactions between stars, gas, and black holes that occur here don’t just stay confined to these small regions: they have an outsized influence on the overall evolution of galaxies as a whole. At just 26,000 light years away, the center of the Milky way is unparalleled in its proximity, making it the best laboratory for detailed studies of the processes that govern and define galaxy nuclei. However, the Galactic center also presents a big challenge for these studies: it is a relatively quiet environment. Few stars are forming in this region, and the black hole is not active. Clearly, it hasn’t always been this way: from the Fermi Bubbles to hundred-year old echoes of X-ray bursts there are many relics of an active past in the center of our own Milky Way. We also know our Galaxy center likely won’t stay quiet for long: it contains a sizable reservoir of molecular gas that is the fuel for future star formation and black hole accretion. In this talk I will present the results of research following the gas and its properties from kiloparsec to sub-parsec scales to understand why the Galactic center is so quiet right now and what the future holds. Finally, I will discuss ongoing work to double and triple the sample size of galaxy nuclei with sub-parsec scale gas measurements, and what this means for putting the Galactic center in context with its more active neighbors.  

Matt Deady, Bard College
Online Event  12:00 pm – 1:00 pm EST/GMT-5
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1mRRx5C38Kp5wssT0zosni6dTcDj4brl5/view?usp=sharing

When I was in 4th grade and we started to do word problems, I discovered that (1) I was really good at them, (2) I could explain to my friends how to do them, and (3) doing this gave me a lot of pleasure.  From that moment on, being a science teacher was the central focus of my life.  That has shaped how I look at the physical world (I need to understand this phenomenon well enough to explain it clearly), my professional life (almost everything I work on or read will eventually end up in a classroom), and how I have lived my life (seeking out other curious and engaged people).  As this chapter in my life closes, I want to take my listeners through a couple of big ideas as illustrations of how I do physics, teach it, and how this reflects my approach to life.

  Lorenzo Gavassino, Nicolaus Copernicus Astronomical Center, Polish Academy of Sciences
Online Event  12:00 pm – 1:00 pm EST/GMT-5
The zeroth law of thermodynamics defines the notion of temperature and, historically, played a central role in the logical foundations of thermodynamics. On the other hand, nowadays the concept of temperature is so well established in the community that the zeroth law is usually reinterpreted as a mere consequence of the first and the second law, deserving no particular attention. Although it is true that the zeroth law is formally redundant once the other laws are given (and therefore removing it from the set of first principles does not reduce the predictive power of physics) it is a fundamental guideline for us, to understand what temperature really is. Underestimating its philosophical importance has generated confusion and misunderstandings, including the famous controversy on the relativistic transformation of temperature, commonly known as Planck-Ott imbroglio. In this talk, which is based on arXiv:2005.06396, I will try to clarify the subject.

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1YSqKU8aT28cjuK6ZSH-b3TPbpcRENFJ4/view?usp=sharing

  Jonathan Cripe, National Institute of Standards and Technology
Online Event  12:00 pm – 1:00 pm EST/GMT-5
How can something as small and massless as a photon push a human-scale object and limit our ability to detect gravitational waves from colliding black holes? How can we use the same photons to prevent accidents in laser-based medical and industrial applications? The answer: radiation pressure, which can be either a pesky noise source or a useful tool depending on the scenario. In this talk, we will explore how radiation pressure can on one hand place a limit on extremely sensitive experiments like LIGO's gravitational wave detectors while on the other hand be a useful tool in calibrations and metrology.
In gravitational wave (GW) detectors such as Advanced LIGO, the displacement caused by radiation
pressure is an unwanted noise called quantum radiation pressure noise (QRPN). QRPN limits the sensitivity of the detectors and their ability to extract astrophysical information from passing GWs. It is therefore imperative to study and reduce QRPN in order to improve current and future GW detectors. I will describe a set of tabletop experiments in which we measured and successfully reduced QRPN in a frequency band relevant to GW detectors.

On the other hand, radiation pressure can be a useful tool in metrology. In particular, modern lasers and micro-fabricated devices allow radiation pressure to be used in a wide variety of applications. I will discuss ongoing projects at the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) in which we are harnessing classical radiation pressure to create a laser power meter and a nanonewton force sensor.

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1aqmX_CARZ0saIOeyZ0Ly5MpD4pv5F1xl/view?usp=sharing

  Joe Martin, Durham University
Online Event  12:00 pm – 1:00 pm EDT/GMT-4
This talk examines a series of historical episodes in the perennial debate about the goals of physics pedagogy. To what extent should physics students at the undergraduate and graduate levels be provided with strong conceptual foundations in the field, and to what extent should they be trained to develop those skills that contemporary industries find useful? I address this debate particularly as it relates to the emergence and development of solid state physics in the years and decades after World War II. Through this example, we gain insight into the institutional development of American physics in one of its most critical phases, into the deep historical roots of evergreen pedagogical challenges, and into the critical role of solid state physics in shaping the postwar identity of American physics as a whole.

https://drive.google.com/file/d/15ovd5V901LEYCQE5rGV-VBLVoecqxrrX/view?usp=sharing

  Chuck Hailey, Columbia University
Online Event  12:00 pm – 1:00 pm EDT/GMT-4
What the universe is made of  - the stuff – is a fundamental question. And yet the origin of dark matter, which makes up > 80% of the matter in the universe, is of unknown nature. One approach to identifying dark matter is to search for cosmic antiparticles produced when dark matter annihilates or decays. But a “smoking gun” signature would be nice, so that the cosmic debris of dark matter is not confused with conventional cosmic rays. Low-energy antideuterons have long been known to represent such a “smoking gun”. The General Antiparticle Spectrometer (GAPS) is the only experiment optimized specifically to search for low-energy (< 0.25 GeV/n) cosmic antiprotons, antideuterons, and antihelium.  Its goals are (i) to deliver a first-time detection of cosmic antideuterons, an unambiguous signal of new physics that probes a wide array of dark matter models, or to improve upon previous antideuteron limits by two orders of magnitude,  (ii) to provide a precision antiproton spectrum in a previously unexplored energy region, permitting leading constraints on light dark matter, the best limits on primordial black hole evaporation on Galactic length scales and novel constraints on cosmic-ray propagation models, and (iii) to investigate recent AMS claims of evidence for cosmic antihelium. GAPS is a 5-year program to build the experiment and execute two ultra-long duration balloon flights from Antarctica. I will review the current status of antimatter searches for dark matter, and discuss progress on building the GAPS experiment.

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1RPd7jR897O6FfZ98BrHFNSpLulRAvoOh/view?usp=sharing

  Emmet Golden-Marx, Boston University
Online Event  12:00 pm – 1:00 pm EDT/GMT-4
Galaxy clusters are the largest gravitationally-bound structures in the universe.  These cosmic megacities are made up of hundreds of galaxies, hot X-ray emitting gas, and dark matter.  Although there are large populations of well-studied, relatively nearby clusters, as we probe earlier in the universe, galaxy clusters change and evolve.  As such, understanding how these massive structures and the galaxies within them change over time is essential to understanding the evolution of the universe.  To identify distant clusters, we take advantage of energetic supermassive black holes (called Radio Active Galactic Nuclei – Radio AGNs), which are an excellent tracer of large structures in the local and early universe.  Specifically, we use a particular type of radio AGN--a bent, double lobed radio source--to identify galaxy clusters because of the link between the radio source’s appearance and the cluster’s gas.  In this talk, I will present recent findings from the COBRA survey (Clusters Occupied by Bent Radio AGN).  Specifically, I will show how we identify galaxy clusters by their populations of red elliptical galaxies and how the radio sources that we use to identify our clusters might be interacting with their host clusters to characterize the cluster’s evolutionary state.
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1HdQbiK1dLwFlqQ9YSClfZZRvKPtWxAly/view?usp=sharing
 

Online Event  12:00 pm – 1:00 pm EDT/GMT-4
The 2020 Nobel prize in physics has been awarded to three physicists, Roger Penrose, Andrea Ghez and Reinhard Genzel, for their discoveries of "the darkest secrets of the universe," - namely, the birth of black holes and the presence of a supermassive black hole in the center of our Milky Way galaxy. Bard physicists, Hal Haggard and Shuo Zhang, will present the stories behind this year's physics prize.  In the first half of the discussion, Hal Haggard will introduce Roger Penrose's theoretical work on black hole formation as a robust prediction of General Relativity. In the second half, Shuo Zhang will introduce Andrea Ghez and Reinhard Genzel's observational work on the discovery of a supermassive black hole at the center of our galaxy.

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1U0My8E3b0lpueJlepEqDaszuOx8DS-Pg/view?usp=sharing

Tim Andeen, University of Texas, Austin
Hegeman 107-Brody Labs  12:00 pm – 1:00 pm EDT/GMT-4
In December 2018, the Large Hadron Collider completed a three-year data collection run. Since then, particle physicists on the ATLAS and CMS experiments have been analyzing the largest ever dataset of 13 TeV proton-proton collisions. What will this new dataset reveal? In this talk, we will look beyond the current theory of the building blocks of the Standard Model and discuss what motivates our search for exotic new particles. Discovering these minuscule motes of matter could have a tremendous impact on our understanding of physics as a whole: from a better grasp of the Higgs boson and electroweak symmetry breaking, to unraveling the secrets of dark matter. The new dataset contains more than 20 times the number of top quarks seen before. We will highlight several searches and measurements that capitalize on this abundance. None of these investigations are possible without the particle detectors that make up the ATLAS experiment. We will conclude with remarks on the ongoing and upcoming detector upgrades and highlight our work improving these enormous experiments that observe the ephemeral particles of our universe.
 https://drive.google.com/file/d/1js93AixA5-i32TfLE4I8LMxLWs3VQqiB/view?usp=sharing

  Online Event  12:00 pm – 1:00 pm EDT/GMT-4
Zak Hait
Title: “Projective Differential Geometry” 

Antu Santanu
Title: “Modeling Grains of Space with Euclidean Tetrahedra and Semiclassical Theory” 

Julia Sheffler
Title: "Finding Exoplanet Orbit Parameters from a Single Image"

Henry Chang, Shea Roccaforte, and Rose Xu
Title: “Visualizing Qubits”

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1NcMSkYkApc1MCclLvz7t4R5GLlFe2WUZ/view?usp=sharing

Brian Bucher, Idaho National Laboratory
Hegeman 107-Brody Labs  12:00 pm – 1:00 pm EDT/GMT-4
Idaho National Laboratory (INL), among the 17 U.S. Department of Energy labs, is best known for its many contributions to nuclear energy research and development since its earliest days, established as the National Reactor Testing Station in 1949.  However, it also makes significant contributions through its various research efforts directed towards our nation's security.  This talk will highlight some of the applied nuclear physics research at INL aimed towards those security goals, particularly in the fields of nuclear forensics, nonproliferation, threat detection, and safeguards.
 Join us in Hegeman 107-Brody Labs (limited space available) or via Zoom:
https://bard.zoom.us/j/94181247545?pwd=YmpzREM5V2hweHk2Mlo0cUNGNCsyUT09

  Online Event  12:00 pm – 1:00 pm EDT/GMT-4
Research in Gravitational-Wave Optics: 
Andrew Poverman
Title: “Modeling Scattering from Super-polished mirrors”

Bobby King
Title: “Detecting Defects from Scattering Images” 

Spencer Checkoway
Title: “Image Matching Algorithm for Scattering Measurements” 

Research in Astronomy: 
Nathalie Jones, Yan Deng and Grace Sanger-Johnson
Title: "NuSTAR 2020 Observation of Galactic Center Non-thermal X-Ray Filament G0.11-0.13"

12:00 pm – 1:00 pm EDT/GMT-4
The new semester has started and we would like to invite you to our traditional meet-and-greet Physics Phriday this Friday from noon to 1pm. We hope you will join us for some physically distant socializing and fun. It will be a chance for the new to get to meet with us and their fellow students, and the old to reunite. It is also a good opportunity to ask more about physics jobs and other program-related activities. 

The event will have some limited in-person capacity in the Brody lab, with the potential to occupy other rooms if necessary. Remote participation is possible via Zoom: Zoom link here.

Enrique Galvez, Colgate University

 
https://bard.zoom.us/j/206020411  12:00 pm – 1:00 pm EDT/GMT-4
Superposition is one of the most intriguing aspects of quantum mechanics, and one of the most successful physical theories ever invented. Light has been the vehicle for many demonstrations of the mysteries of quantum mechanics, especially superposition. Yet that leaves photons a mystery in themselves: being here and there, particle and wave, extended in space, but when detected, whole. Experiments with light offer new ways to think about quantum mechanics but also new ways to think about photons, even if we end up more confused than when we started.

https://tinyurl.com/yaakp5fb

Please see the schedule of upcoming talks as well as previously recorded talks at https://physics.bard.edu/newsroom/.

Djordje Minic, Virginia Tech
https://bard.zoom.us/j/206020411  12:00 pm – 1:00 pm EDT/GMT-4
Starting from the well known facts about quantum mechanics I will introduce the concept of modular (quantum) spacetime that underlies general quantum non-locality that is consistent with causality.

Next, I will discuss a realization of quantum spacetime in quantum field theory via the new concept of ``metaparticles''.  Finally, I will discuss dynamical quantum spacetime in quantum gravity, and present a
new understanding of dark matter and dark energy in this new formulation of quantum gravity.


https://tinyurl.com/yat8hv7q

Todd Krause ‘97, University of Texas
https://bard.zoom.us/j/206020411  12:00 pm – 1:00 pm EDT/GMT-4
Matthew Deady, a disenchanted French-horn player moonlighting as a physicist, described the Copenhagen Interpretation of Quantum Mechanics (QM) as elevating epistemology to ontology. A schmancy way of saying there’s no fundamental thing being described by the measurements of… well… fundamental things. Einstein termed such notions poppycock (not actual quote) and suggested QM’s probabilistic description papered over underlying deterministic “hidden variables” that we haven’t figured out how to measure. Now when anybody mentions hidden variables in polite company, somebody murmurs, “John Bell said they don’t exist.” All chortle uncomfortably and the conversation is dropped.

Physicists are not the only ones who probe the fabric of reality. Papyrologists—readers of papyri—too find themselves charged with the task of constructing our shared reality. We will enter this parallel discussion through an interesting side-door presented by the Gothic language. (Yes, that’s a thing.)

Supposed chemist Hilton Weiss would urge you to avoid this talk, but seriously, who listens to that guy? Come join the discussion!

https://tinyurl.com/yaz77abu

Please see the schedule of upcoming talks as well as previously recorded talks at https://physics.bard.edu/newsroom/.

Daniel Newsome ’02
Mathematics Program
https://bard.zoom.us/j/206020411  12:00 pm – 1:00 pm EDT/GMT-4
The answers we find are directly related to the questions we ask and the world we live in.  This talk will explore just how wrong science has been in the past and how wrong it might be now. It will also address how science fits into a liberal arts education and how consequences matter.  References will be made to Plato, Aristotle, Oresme, Kepler, Hume, Einstein, Schrödinger, Bohm, Watson, and Doudna (among others). 

A recording of the talk can be found here: https://tinyurl.com/ycjscqee

For underrepresented students in STEM.
https://meet.google.com/azc-hvgc-cus  6:00 pm – 7:30 pm EDT/GMT-4
Join us for a conversation on virtual learning and internships in math and the sciences. 

Paul Cadden-Zimansky, Director, Physics Program
https://bard.zoom.us/j/206020411  12:00 pm – 1:00 pm EDT/GMT-4
With numbers dominating the headlines, our weekly physics seminar will look at some nuances of the data, projections, and visualizations that are being generated to inform scientists, the public, and policy makers about the current pandemic.  In addition to examining the challenging nature and inevitable uncertainties for those tracking, modeling, or acting during a fast-developing crisis, this talk will also touch on methods for making often unfathomable numbers in the news more intuitive.

Video of the talk

Additional Resources:

Numbers

John's Hopkins
https://coronavirus.jhu.edu/map.html
GitHub NYTimes Database
https://github.com/nytimes/covid-19-data
Buzzfeed on Death Underreporting
https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/nidhiprakash/coronavirus-update-dead-covid19-doctors-hospitals
Guardian on UK Death Count
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/mar/30/covid-19-deaths-outside-hospitals-to-be-included-in-uk-tally-for-first-time
Business Insider on North Korea Deaths
https://www.businessinsider.com/almost-200-north-korean-soldiers-died-coronavirus-2020-
Vox on Case Fatality Rate
https://www.vox.com/2020/4/1/21203198/coronavirus-deaths-us-italy-china-south-korea
Imperial College COVID-19 Estimates Paper
https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2020.03.09.20033357v1

Modeling

Dutchess County Cases
https://t.ly/2VjgR
SIR Model
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k6nLfCbAzgo
https://www.geogebra.org/m/nbjfjtpv
Imperial College COVID-19 Projection Paper
https://www.imperial.ac.uk/media/imperial-college/medicine/sph/ide/gida-fellowships/Imperial-College-COVID19-NPI-modelling-16-03-2020.pdf
FiveThirtyEight Expert Projections
https://fivethirtyeight.com/features/infectious-disease-experts-dont-know-how-bad-the-coronavirus-is-going-to-get-either/
https://fivethirtyeight.com/features/experts-say-the-coronavirus-outlook-has-worsened-but-the-trajectory-is-still-unclear/

Visualizing

NY Times Country & State Log Plots
https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2020/03/21/upshot/coronavirus-deaths-by-country.html
Gothamist NY County Plots
https://gothamist.com/news/coronavirus-statistics-tracking-epidemic-new-york
Case-Deaths Log-Log Plots
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=54XLXg4fYsc
https://observablehq.com/@yy/covid-19-confirmed-vs-new-cases?collection=@yy/covid-19
CDC COVID-19 Weekly Report
https://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/volumes/69/wr/pdfs/mm6912e2-H.pdf





 

  Jose Perillan, Vassar College
Hegeman 107  12:00 pm – 1:00 pm EDT/GMT-4
The stories scientists tell are not just mythologies or poorly researched histories to be judged inferior by historians of science and brushed aside as Whiggish accounts of the scientific past. These myth-histories are a unique species of narrative, fundamentally different from scholarly historical accounts. In the concept of myth-history, the hyphen is critical, for it bridges narrative modes. In communicating their science, scientists tend to use these hybrid narratives for important rhetorical purposes. Myth-histories, like those you might find in textbooks and popularizations of science, employ history as a rough scaffolding. They also filter out unwanted historical details, emphasize mythological tropes, and perpetuate essentialist images of ideal science built upon the shoulders of scientific heroes. The stories scientists tell undoubtedly deliver value, coherence, and inspiration to scientific communities but they also bear unintended consequences that must be brought to light.

Leila Makdisi ’09, Museum of Science and Industry, Chicago
Hegeman 107  12:00 pm – 1:00 pm EDT/GMT-4
Leila Makdisi ’09 will discuss how scientific practices and thought are applied in informal settings through her work as an educator at the Museum of Science and Industry, Chicago.

 

Nazmus Saquib ’11, MIT
Hegeman 107  12:00 pm – 1:00 pm EST/GMT-5
Mathematics as a discipline has relied on symbolic abstractions and symbol manipulations for the last few centuries, shaped by static surfaces (such as paper) as the dominant medium of communication. Algebra as a tool to manipulate symbols has been widely used to deal with mathematical abstractions so far. In this work, I demonstrate how the embodied, constructionist, and explainable elements of basic mathematics curricula (such as counting, grouping, sets, shapes etc.) can be combined with symbolic algebra and programming concepts to create a novel and powerful drawing language that leverages embodied interactions to do mathematics. Compared to symbolic abstractions, I will argue (via user studies with scientists and children) that this representation is more suitable for human perception and understanding of mathematics. I will describe three unique brushes (iconic element brush, list brush, function brush) and two key design ideas (fused representations and abstraction layers) that make up this embodied interaction framework.Moving beyond paper and 2D screens, I will demonstrate how other embodied mediums of communication such as human gestures and body postures can be used to define programmable actions, and drive interactions for storytelling, presentations, and information visualization. All of such design principles can be utilized to redesign the "front-end" of mathematics and programming, taking into account embodied cognition and how humans learn and think. The implications of these frameworks in the context of Artificial Intelligence, mixed reality devices, and next generation computing will be discussed. If time permits, I will also discuss how my liberal arts training at Bard prepared me to work in the uncomfortable zones of interdisciplinary research, combining a few seemingly disparate fields.
Nazmus Saquib designs interactive technology and wearable sensors, and is always looking for ways to merge powerful ideas from different fields. Significant projects include the invention of drawing-based mathematics, gesture-based storytelling in augmented reality, shoe-based sensor network helping social learning for children, and simulation software for particle accelerators. His works have been featured on NHK World TV and Edsurge and in the Boston Globe, and funded by the Chan-Zuckerberg Initiative and Omidyar Network, among others, for startup ventures. Saquib studied physics and liberal arts at Bard College, scientific computing and applied math (MS) at the University of Utah, and media arts and sciences (MS) at the MIT Media Lab, and is currently a PhD candidate at MIT.

Hal Haggard, Physics Program
Hegeman 107  12:00 pm – 1:00 pm EST/GMT-5
The way in which stars form nearly always leads them to spin. It is widely believed that all black holes form out of these stars, and hence should also be spinning. However, the incredible gravitational wave measurements of the last five years suggest that there could be many black holes that do not spin. How do you create such black holes? Where do they come from? Are they qualitatively different aside from their low spins? These and related questions make up the black hole spin puzzle. I will explain how the birth of black holes in the early universe may provide a resolution to the black hole spin puzzle. My collaborators and I recently won a Buchalter Cosmology Prize for this work. 

Pizza will be served!

Rachel Becker ’12
Hegeman 107  12:00 pm – 1:00 pm EST/GMT-5
Rachel Spitz-Becker ’12 is a maker and restorer of fine instruments in New York City. She will discuss her unusual career path after receiving degrees from Bard in cello performance and physics, and reflect on the influence of a Bard education on her training and work in this unconventional field. Other topics will include the current state of research in stringed instrument acoustics and the shifting attitudes in the violin-making world toward scientific inquiry. She will also show examples of her current work executing complex restorations of historical instruments, and in the construction of new violins, violas, and cellos.

Sarah Symons, Associate Professor in the School of Interdisciplinary Science, McMaster University, Ontario
Olin Humanities, Room 102  5:00 pm – 6:00 pm EST/GMT-5
This talk will describe some of the archeological evidence for astronomical knowledge in ancient Egypt and discuss the challenges of understanding (up to) 4,500-year-old texts, objects, and monuments. What did the ancient Egyptians know about astronomy? To what uses did they put this knowledge? And how much can we learn from a fragmentary archeological record?
 
Sarah Symons is an associate professor in the School of Interdisciplinary Science, McMaster University, Ontario. She studies the history of astronomy in ancient Egypt, with particular interests in timekeeping and astronomical maps, and is also director of the William J. McCallion Planetarium in Hamilton, Ontario. She is coeditor (with Bard’s Kassandra Miller) of Down to the Hour, a recently published book on ancient and classical timekeeping.


 

Physics Phriday Seminar
Speaker: Shuo Zhang, Bard College
Hegeman 107  12:00 pm – 1:00 pm EST/GMT-5
Pizza will be served!

Abstract
One of the most unique phenomena in the center of our Milky Way galaxy is the existence of numerous thin and long filaments that produce radio and X-ray emission. Recent observations suggest that these filamentary structures are connected to a past outburst from the galactic center, while others argue that powerful local celestial bodies like pulsar wind nebula can explain the origin of the filament. In this talk, I am going to review our current understanding of these mysterious galactic center sources, and introduce the future plan for revealing their source nature.

Hegeman 107  12:00 pm – 1:00 pm EST/GMT-5
The Physics Program invites physicists and physics enthusiasts to our Start-Of-The-Semester-Physics-Phriday-Meet-And-Greet event. This event kicks off our Spring semester Physics Phriday series with an informal gathering, pizza and a brief overview of future Physics Phriday events. 

Philip Kim, Harvard University
Hegeman 107  12:00 pm – 1:00 pm EST/GMT-5

Amanda Jones
University of Pennsylvania
Hegeman 107  12:00 pm – 1:00 pm EST/GMT-5

Megan Kerins, ’06, Rocky Mountain Institute
Hegeman 107  12:00 pm – 1:00 pm EST/GMT-5

Abigail Stevens ’11
Michigan State University
Hegeman 107  12:00 pm – 1:00 pm EST/GMT-5
One of the best laboratories to study strong-field gravity is the inner 100s of kilometers around black holes and neutron stars in binary systems with low-mass stars like our Sun. The X-ray light curves of these binary systems show variability on timescales from milliseconds to months — the shorter (sub-second) variability can appear as quasi-periodic oscillations (QPOs), which may be produced by general relativistic effects. My research looks at QPOs from black holes and neutron stars (as well as coherent X-ray pulsations from neutron stars) by fitting the phase-resolved energy spectra of these signals to constrain their physical origin and track their evolution in time. In this talk, I will introduce why black holes and neutron stars are interesting and discuss state-of-the-art “spectral-timing” analysis techniques for understanding more about them. I will also highlight open-source astronomy research software and the importance of mental wellbeing among students and early-career researchers.

Campus Walk Above Kline  9:30 am – 1:00 pm EST/GMT-5
In a rare occurrence, the planet Mercury will pass in front of the Sun on the morning of November 11. However, this is not a celestial event that one can view by looking to the heavens with an unaided eye, since

a) Mercury is very small compared with the Sun, and

b) You shouldn't look directly at the Sun.

In order to view the transit (clouds permitting) the Physics Program will have a telescope with a solar filter set up on Campus Walk, just up the hill from Kline. Drop by anytime from 9:30am until the transit ends at 1pm to check out this planetary alignment for yourself.

Note the next chance to view a Mercury transit from Bard will be on May 7, 2049.

Trevor LaMountain, Northwestern University
Hegeman 107  12:00 pm – 1:00 pm EST/GMT-5
Interactions between light and matter underlie a variety of everyday technologies. Typical examples include solar cells, where light is absorbed and converted to electronic energy, and LEDs, where the opposite occurs. By embedding semiconductors in between two mirrors, we can greatly enhance the light-matter interaction, giving rise to much more exotic effects than just absorption or emission. Under certain conditions these systems can form hybrid quantum states known as “polaritons,” which exhibit properties of both light and matter. In a different regime, off-resonant light can cause the electronic energy levels to shift with negligible absorption. Known as the optical Stark effect, this feature provides a way to precisely control the energy levels of semiconductors using only light. In this talk, I will introduce the closely-related physics that describes both polariton formation and the optical Stark effect. I will then discuss some interesting features of both of these phenomena in atomically-thin semiconductors. Finally, I will present resent results that combine both of these regimes by demonstrating the optical Stark shift of exciton-polaritons in atomically-thin semiconductors.

 

Ingrid Stolt
Bard class of 2015, Northwestern University
Hegeman 107  12:00 pm – 1:00 pm EDT/GMT-4

Aldo Riello • Perimeter Institute for Theoretical Physics
Hegeman 107  12:00 pm – 1:00 pm EDT/GMT-4
General relativity and quantum mechanics are at the foundations of our understanding of space, time, gravity, and matter. Yet, it is not clear how they can fit into a consistent, encompassing framework, generically named a theory of “quantum gravity.” In this talk, I will paint in broad strokes the fundamental ideas underlying general relativity and quantum mechanics as well as some of the issues that arise when trying to combine their precepts. I will then present a possible way forward in the form of a theory of quantum geometro-dynamics, of which I will discuss the main characteristics. Curiously, we find that the way quantum space is supposed to evolve in a fictitious two-dimensional world (where the geometro-dynamics is well understood and solvable) is closely related to certain models of surface growth, known as solid-on-solid models (SoS).

Bard Physics Program Faculty
Hegeman 107  12:00 pm – 1:00 pm EDT/GMT-4
The 2019 Nobel Prize in Physics was awarded to two separate discoveries that broadened our understanding of the Universe. One half of the prize was given to Jim Peebles “for contributions to our understanding of the evolution of the universe” and the other half to Michel Mayor and Didier Queloz “for the discover of an exoplanet orbiting a solar-type star.” Both of these works fundamentally changed our view of our universe and our place in it. Faculty of the Physics Program will expand on the ideas behind the discoveries and emphasize their significance.

Pizza will be provided.

Bruce Partridge, Haverford College
Hegeman 107  12:00 pm – 1:00 pm EDT/GMT-4
The cosmic microwave background (CMB) is the heat left over from the hot Big Bang of the early universe. Careful studies of the CMB have greatly enriched our understanding of the history and properties of the universe—and what it was like very early on. In this talk, I will focus on the basic science of the CMB, and how this intertwined with the “discovery” of the CMB. I'll start with this proposition: the very early universe was dense, hot, and very, very simple.

Jan Borchert, Current Hydro
Hegeman 107  12:00 pm – 1:00 pm EDT/GMT-4
Jan Borchert will be bringing the Annandale project design drawings, presenting a local site assessment, and talking about the Current Hydro 8-inch GV model that was developed over the last year with Bard students. 

A Film Screening and Discussion with Robert Stone and Michael Robinson
Olin Hall  8:00 pm – 9:30 pm EDT/GMT-4
Of this summer's many commemorations of the 50th anniversary of the first Moon landing, the Los Angeles Times deemed the Robert Stone's 6-hour PBS documentary Chasing the Moon to be the "most all-encompassing . . . deep and thorough, detailed but never dull." Chasing the Moon reveals the unknown stories of the fascinating individuals whose imaginative work across several decades culminated in America’s momentous achievement. More than a story of engineers and astronauts, the Moon landing grew out of the dreams of science fiction writers, filmmakers, military geniuses and rule-breaking scientists. After screening excerpts of the documentary, writer-producer-director Stone will be interviewed by historian of exploration and podcaster Michael Robinson, followed by a question and answer session with the audience. Weather permitting after the event, the Bard Physics Program and members of the Mid-Hudson Astronomical Association will have telescopes set up outside the auditorium to view the rising full moon and other celestial objects. The event is free and open to the public.

Note that the full documentary can currently be streamed here through the end of August.

Robert Stone is an Oscar and Emmy-nominated documentary filmmaker, who's works such as Radio Bikini, Guerrilla: The Taking of Patty Hearst, Oswald’s Ghost, and Pandora's Promise, have appeared in theatrical release, CNN, PBS, and the Sundance Film Festival.  He wrote, produced, and directed the 6-hour Chasing the Moon documentary, which premiered on PBS's American Experience this summer, and co-authored a companion book of the same title.

Michael Robinson is a professor of history at Hillyer College, University of Hartford who studies the role of exploration in science and culture, both through his award-winning academic books (The Coldest Crucible: Arctic Exploration and American Culture, The Lost White Tribe: Scientists, Explorers, and the Theory that Changed a Continent) and his popular weekly podcast Time to Eat the Dogs (named for certain eventualities in many Arctic expeditions).

  Carlo Rovelli, Centre de Physique Théorique de Aix-Marseille Université et Université de Toulon
Olin Hall  7:00 pm – 9:00 pm EDT/GMT-4
Time is a mystery that does not cease to puzzle us. Philosophers, artists, and poets have long explored its meaning while scientists have found that its structure is different from the simple intuition we have of it. From Boltzmann to quantum theory, from Einstein to loop quantum gravity, our understanding of time has been undergoing radical transformations. Time flows at a different speed in different places, the past and the future differ far less than we might think, and the very notion of the present evaporates in the vast universe.

The presentation is free and open to the public. However, we ask that attendees from outside the Bard community reserve a seat by emailing Hal Haggard ([email protected]). Doors open at 6:30 p.m.

Eduardo Rozo, University of Arizona
Hegeman 107  12:00 pm – 1:00 pm EDT/GMT-4
Cosmological parameter inferences based on Planck’s measurements of the cosmic microwave background are currently in tension with various measurements of the late-time universe. I will introduce the currently standard LCDM cosmological paradigm, and discuss the evidence against it, presenting my own take on how everything might fit together at the end of the day. Hopefully one thing will be clear by the end: we’re in the middle of one of the most interesting periods in cosmology of the past 15 years!

  Frank Stortini, ’13
Hegeman 107  12:00 pm – 1:00 pm EDT/GMT-4
Frank Stortini will report on his experience working as an engineer in industrial gas production.

Recent Results from the Event Horizon Telescope 
Hegeman 107  12:00 pm – 1:00 pm EDT/GMT-4
Since Einstein first explained that gravity could be thought of as the bending of space and time, this theory has been used to make numerous surprising  predictions. One of these is the existence of black holes, regions of space and time where mass has been so compacted that gravity’s pull has become inexorable. The evidence that black holes are part of nature has grown steadily over the last 45 years, but we have never been able to look at a black hole and its vicinity directly. Two years ago a team of astronomers and physicists took data on a networked collection of radio telescopes distributed over several continents and turned the entire earth into an interferometer. The resulting telescope is so sensitive that it could image an orange on the moon if it emitted radio waves. On Wednesday, April 10, at 9am EDT, the Event Horizon Telescope team will announce their results in a web conference. We will explain the history and setup of the measurement and discuss the recently reported results of this exciting experiment.

  Hegeman 107  9:00 am – 10:00 am EDT/GMT-4
We will be live streaming the following press conference tomorrow morning in Hegeman 107: On April 10th 2019, the Event Horizon Telescope (EHT) Collaboration will present its first results in multiple simultaneous press conferences around the world, and many satellite events organized by its stakeholder and affiliated institutions. 

These results may include the first direct images ever taken of a black hole. Even if they do not, this should be a fun and exciting time to gather and hear about what this collaboration has been doing. There will be a follow up seminar, that will discuss the results on Friday, April 12th at noon in Hegeman 107. 

A. Douglas Stone – Yale University
Hegeman 107  12:00 pm – 1:00 pm EDT/GMT-4
Einstein is well known for his rejection of quantum mechanics in the form it emerged from the work of Heisenberg, Born and Schrodinger in 1926.  Much less appreciated are the many seminal contributions he made to quantum theory prior to his final scientific verdict: that the theory was at best incomplete.  In this talk I present an overview of Einstein’s many conceptual breakthroughs and place them in historical context.  I argue that Einstein, much more than Planck, introduced the concept of quantization of energy in atomic mechanics. Einstein proposed the photon, the first force-carrying particle discovered for a fundamental interaction, and put forward the notion of wave-particle duality, based on sound statistical arguments 14 years before De Broglie’s work.  He was the first to recognize the intrinsic randomness in atomic processes, and introduced the notion of transition probabilities, embodied in the A and B coefficients for atomic emission and absorption. He also preceded Born in suggesting the interpretation of wave fields as probability densities for particles (photons), in the case of the electromagnetic field.  Finally, stimulated by Bose, he introduced the notion of indistinguishable particles in the quantum sense and derived the condensed phase of bosons, which is one of the fundamental states of matter at low temperatures.  His work on quantum statistics in turn directly stimulated Schrodinger towards his discovery of the wave equation of quantum mechanics.  It was only due to his rejection of the final theory that he is not generally recognized as the most central figure in this historic achievement of human civilization.
 

Chad Orzel
Union College
Hegeman 107  12:00 pm – 1:00 pm EDT/GMT-4
Modern social media technologies provide an unprecedented opportunity to engage and inform a broad audience about the practice and products of science. Such outreach efforts are critically important in an era of funding cuts and global crises that demand scientific solutions. In this talk I'll offer examples and advice on the use of social media for science communication, drawn from seventeen years of communicating science online.

Jonathan Zrake, Columbia University
Hegeman 107  12:00 pm – 1:00 pm EDT/GMT-4
Gamma-ray bursts are the most powerful explosions in the universe. We know today that many come from the violent deaths of massive stars, and others from the collision of two neutron stars. However, just five decades ago their origins were a confounding mystery. I will present an overview of how gamma-ray bursts, which began as a government secret, have evolved into one of our most valuable tools for studying the cosmos. This story is still unfolding, having in the past two years coalesced with another—that of the first detections of gravitational waves, made possible by the LIGO and Virgo facilities. These discoveries have initiated a shift to “multimessenger astronomy,” which means that astronomers are beginning to observe cosmic events like gamma-ray bursts with telescopes, while at the same time “listening” to their space-time vibrations.

A Hands-On Physics Buffet!
Outside Hegeman  9:30 am – 5:00 pm EDT/GMT-4
Come sample this buffet of HANDS-ON advanced laboratory experiments, including instruments that once led to Nobel Prizes!

Come aboard TeachSpin’s 44-foot trailer outfitted with a wide variety of advanced physics experiments, all powered up and ready to take measurements. Get a sense of the exciting opportunities available for students and faculty in a modern advanced experimental physics course.

Karen Dow, Laboratory for Nuclear Science, MIT
Hegeman 107  12:00 pm – 1:00 pm EST/GMT-5
What do you do with an undergraduate major in physics and mathematics from a liberal arts college? I’ll talk about my career path, from graduate school in physics, to staff scientist at a national user facility, to scientific administrator. I’ll also present some of the research I’ve been involved in, and the various research projects going on today at MIT’s Laboratory for Nuclear Science.

Sarah Ballard
Massachusetts Institute of Technology
Hegeman 107  12:00 pm – 1:00 pm EST/GMT-5
The Solar System furnishes our most familiar planetary architecture: many planets, orbiting nearly coplanar to one another. However, a typical system of planets in the Milky Way orbits a much smaller M dwarf star. Small stars present a very different blueprint in key ways, compared to the conditions that nourished evolution of life on Earth. My research program combines detailed individual planetary studies with ensemble studies of hundreds-to-thousands of exoplanets. Single planets provide crucial case studies, but understanding planet occurrence and formation requires a wider lens. I will describe ongoing efforts to understand the links between planet formation from disks, orbital dynamics of planets, and the content and observability of planetary atmospheres. Studies of exoplanets with the James Webb Space Telescope comprise the clear next step toward understanding the hospitability of the Milky Way to life. Our success hinges upon leveraging the many thousands of planet discoveries in hand to determine how to use this precious and limited resource.

  Dr. Kathryn E. Stein ’66
Reem-Kayden Center Laszlo Z. Bito '60 Auditorium  5:00 pm – 7:00 pm EDT/GMT-4
Kathryn Stein ’66, PhD, an immunologist with more than 30 years of experience, received the John and Samuel Bard Award in Medicine and Science from Bard College.

Alison Crocker, Reed College
Hegeman 107  12:00 pm – 1:00 pm EDT/GMT-4
Early-type galaxies (elliptical and lenticular galaxies) are high-entropy stellar systems, all galaxies will eventually tend toward such states (perhaps sped up by interactions with other galaxies). Many early-type galaxies are also high-entropy gaseous systems, essentially with hot gas atmospheres maintained by energy input from their central super-massive black hole, not entirely differently than how central nuclear reactions support stars. However, some early-type galaxies still contain low-entropy, cold gas. In these cases, the galaxies are not quite in an ``end state”. I will discuss possible evolutionary pathways and physical processes that explain how some early-type galaxies still have cold gas reservoirs.

  Hegeman 107  12:00 pm – 1:15 pm EDT/GMT-4
Room Acoustic Criteria and Theoretical Construction
Yu-Tien (James) Chou

What Makes Black Holes Spin?
Mac Selesnick

Building a Radio Interferometer
Isobel Curtin

Efficiency in Aviation: Gliders, Drones, and Bears, Oh My!
Rory Maglich

Drone Analysis
Kyle Zigner

Antonios Kontos, Physics Program, and Christopher LaFratta, Chemistry Program
Hegeman 107  12:00 pm – 1:00 pm EDT/GMT-4
The 2018 Nobel Prize in Physics was awarded to Arthur Ashkin “for the optical tweezers and their application to biological systems” and jointly to Gérard Mourou and Donna Strickland “for their method of generating high-intensity, ultra-short optical pulses.” In this talk, we will go through these groundbreaking laser developments and the impact they have had on precision measurements.

  Hegeman 107  12:00 pm – 1:00 pm EDT/GMT-4
Gold Microplating
Kyle Zigner
Bard College
Mentor: Christopher LaFratta

Building a Shot-Noise Limited Laser
Bruno Becher
Bard College GO lab
Mentor: Antonios Kontos

Simulating Frequency Eigenmodes of LIGO Mirrors
Isobel Curtin
Bard College GO lab
Mentor: Antonios Kontos

Multilayer Coating Calculations
Logan Kaelbling
Bard College GO lab
Mentor: Antonios Kontos

Optical Coherence Tomography Setup for the Study of LIGO Mirrors
Andrew Poverman
Bard College GO lab
Mentor: Antonios Kontos

Massimo Schuster
Olin Hall  7:00 pm – 9:00 pm EDT/GMT-4
Through various anecdotes, some true, some made up, but always plausible, I start with Thales, move on to Empedocles and Aristarchus, spend some time with Plato and Aristotle, then jump all the way to Einstein. All along, I use a simple language, understandable to everyone and hopefully entertaining. My goal is to explain how the world in which we live is at the same time simpler and more complex, but most of all more marvelous and fascinating, than most people think.

Without trying to sell myself as a specialist of scientific thinking, which I'm not, my goal is to explain why physics is for me a constant source of inspiration and wonder.

The show is free and open to the public. However, we ask that you reserve a seat by emailing Hal Haggard ([email protected])

Massimo Schuster
Hegeman 107  12:00 pm – 1:00 pm EDT/GMT-4
Doing science is one (great) thing; talking science is something else, especially if you talk to people who are not science-minded. It can also be great, but for some people it's harder than for others. As an actor and storyteller I think that there are a few tips that I can share and that will be helpful to you scientists and/or scientists-to-be, whenever you'll be talking to an audience. This will not be a lecture, nor a workshop, rather a freewheeling exchange.

 

  Hegeman 107  12:00 pm – 1:00 pm EDT/GMT-4
Underwater Laser Ablation of Graphene
Grey MacAlaine, Cameron Miller, and Ethan Richman
Bard College Nanolab and Columbia University
Mentor: Paul Cadden-Zimansky

Micro-Hydro Summer Internship
Eva Grunblatt
Bard College and Current Hydro
Mentors: Jan Borchert, Matthew Deady, Joel Herm, Laurie Husted and  Richard Murphy

The Development and Evaluation of the Ho'ouna Pono Drug Prevention Curriculum
Nathalie Jones
Hawaii Pacific University
Mentor: Scott Okamoto

Jennifer L. Carter, SUNY Albany
Reem-Kayden Center Laszlo Z. Bito '60 Auditorium  3:30 pm – 4:30 pm EDT/GMT-4
The idea that worlds exist beyond our solar system, exoplanets, dates back to the Greek times, but it was not until 1992 that the first exoplanet discovery was accepted by the scientific community. Detections of exoplanets continued at a crawl until the Kepler mission began in 2009. To date, over 3,700 exoplanets have been confirmed using a variety of techniques. The types of exoplanets detected range from incredibility hot, Jupiter-size exoplanets to Earth-like exoplanets that may be habitable for life.
                                                                                                         
First, we’ll discuss the motivation behind exoplanet science and explore the subject from a historical perspective. We will investigate how some of the detection methods work and discuss their relative successes. Finally, we will conclude by exploring the reflected light of exoplanets in more detail and will discuss two methods of modeling that light.
 

8:30 pm – 10:00 pm EDT/GMT-4
Buses leave from Kline South stop at 8:30 pm.

Join us at the Montgomery Place visitor center for a short talk by Prof. Antonios Kontos on the science of Jupiter—from the days of Galileo to the latest NASA missions—followed by telescope viewing of Jupiter and its moons, a guided tour of the night sky, and a round of ask-a-physicist-anything.

 

Xuemei May Cheng | Bryn Mawr College
Hegeman 107  12:00 pm – 1:00 pm EDT/GMT-4
Nanostructured materials are materials with one or more dimensions at the nanoscale (10-7-10-9 meters). Examples of nanostructured materials include 2-dimensional ultrathin films, 1-dimensional nanowires, 0-dimensional nanodots, and more complex structures that could have a combination of these characteristics. Nanostructured materials often exhibit new and enhanced properties over their bulk counterparts, so they not only offer ideal material systems for exploring fundamental physics, such as magnetic topological phases, but also hold promise for applications in data storage and biomedical engineering. In this talk, I will report our experimental work on 2D multilayers that host magnetic skyrmions, topologically protected spin textures that have promising applications in Spintronic data storage devices, as well as our work on magnetic disks that form the magnetic vortex state, useful for biomedical applications.

Paul H. Halpern, University of the Sciences
Hegeman 107  12:00 pm – 1:00 pm EDT/GMT-4
Richard Feynman, the Nobel Laureate whose centenary we are celebrating on May 11, was one of the most important American theoretical physicists of all time. His diagrams are used every day in characterizing particle interactions. In my talk, I'll explore how he was influenced by his PhD mentor at Princeton, another well-known physicist, John Wheeler. I'll discuss how the lifelong interplay between the two physicists helped shape Feynman’s key contributions to physics and physics pedagogy, despite clear differences in style and personality between the two.

Rose Finn, Siena College
Hegeman 107  12:00 pm – 1:00 pm EDT/GMT-4
A long-standing problem in extragalactic astronomy is to understand the correlation between a galaxy's environment and its ability to form new stars. The fraction of red galaxies is much higher in dense environments, whereas blue, star-forming galaxies are more prevalent in rural galactic environments. One could therefore infer that environment plays a role in removing gas from galaxies and may help drive a galaxy's transition from blue and star-forming to red and quiescent. However, many other galaxy properties correlate with environment, such as mass and morphology. I will present results from the Local Cluster Survey, a survey whose goal is to look for evidence of environmentally driven quenching among star-forming galaxies in nearby galaxy groups and clusters. We have studied 200 galaxies over a range of stellar mass, morphology, and environment in an effort to separate the influence of these factors. We find that galaxies in dense environments have more centrally concentrated star formation, and the presence of a bulge seems to enhance the effectiveness of environmental processing. Our results suggest that galaxies in dense environments experience outside-in quenching over a timescale of several gigayears. I will also discuss new work that probes galaxies in the filamentary structure around the Virgo cluster, and the possibility for completing observations of these filament galaxies using Siena College's new telescope.

Michel Janssen, University of Minnesota
Hegeman 107  12:00 pm EDT/GMT-4
There is a striking difference between the methodology of the young Einstein and that of the old. Starting in the late 1910s, Einstein went from putting empirical data and general physical principles first to putting mathematical elegance first. This switch was the result both of his scientific experience finishing the general theory of relativity and his crushing personal and political experiences during the war years in Berlin. In crisis situations like this, Einstein, invoking Schopenhauer, used science to escape from it all. Building mathematical castles in the sky was better for this purpose than trying to extract information about nature from empirical data. In his later years, Einstein worked mainly in this mathematical speculation mode. The older man accordingly left us with a misleading picture of how his younger self achieved most of the successes for which he is still celebrated today. This has had a harmful influence on theoretical physics. If the young Turk’s successes are any guide as to how successful theoretical physics is done, paying close attention to general features of the empirical data is much more important, and mathematical elegance much less important, than the old sage wanted us to believe.

 

Spencer Weart, former director of the American Institute of Physics Center for History of Physics
Hegeman 107  12:00 pm EST/GMT-5

The history of how we learned about climate change offers a deep look into the way scientists work and how that has changed. When 19th-century scientists discovered the Ice Ages they came up with various explanations, including a decrease of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere. Could humanity’s fossil fuel emissions bring a reverse effect, global warming? The idea found only a few supporters, curious scientists who stepped aside from their usual research to develop “greenhouse gas” calculations and measurements. By 1960 they proved that the idea merited serious research. An onslaught of droughts in the early 1970s brought public attention to climate and intensified research, typically by small teams, but scientists admitted they could not even predict whether the world would get warmer or colder. This was resolved at the end of the 1970s by computer models that found global warming would become obvious around 2000. The implication that the fossil fuel industries must be radically reduced brought political pushback and scientific controversy. Crucial confirmation of the models came from a totally independent direction: research on climates of the distant past (studies that were themselves confirmed through independent lines of attack). Large-scale teamwork was now necessary to advance, and almost no climate scientist worked alone. When the world’s governments devised a novel mechanism to get scientific advice, hundreds and then thousands of experts in diverse fields managed to cooperate. By 2001 they reached a nearly unanimous consensus: dangerous climate change is all but certain within our lifetime. The focus of research turned to the impacts.

Spencer Weart is a historian specializing in modern physics and geophysics. He received a B.A. in physics at Cornell University and a Ph.D. in physics and astrophysics at the University of Colorado, Boulder. He then worked on solar physics at the California Institute of Technology and the Mount Wilson and Palomar Observatories, publishing papers in leading scientific journals. In 1971 Dr. Weart changed fields, enrolling as a graduate student in the history department at the University of California, Berkeley. In 1974 he became director of the American Institute of Physics Center for History of Physics and its Niels Bohr Library, continuing until his retirement in 2009. Meanwhile, he taught undergraduate and graduate courses on history of science at the Johns Hopkins University, the Eugene Lang College of the New School in New York City, and Princeton University. He has published books and articles on a variety of subjects, mostly related to the history of physics. Best known are Nuclear Fear: A History of Images (1988; revised as The Rise of Nuclear Fear, 2012), and The Discovery of Global Warming (2003, rev. ed. 2008; translations in six languages), and maintains an extensive scholarly website on the history of climate change research, https://history.aip.org/climate/.

Kim K. McLeod, Wellesley College
Hegeman 107  12:00 pm EST/GMT-5
With over 3500 planets now detected around other stars, you might think that we’ve seen it all.  However, each new exoplanet survey turns up exotic worlds that challenge our notions of how solar systems form and evolve.  One such survey is the Kilodegree Extremely Little Telescope (KELT) survey, which has a knack for finding giant planets very close to their hot host stars.  I will describe recent KELT discoveries, including one giant planet that is hotter than most stars, and will explain how new kinds of analyses are uncovering a population of giant planets on highly-tilted orbits that suggest we have much yet to learn about the dynamical evolution of planetary systems.  I’ll also offer a glimpse into the workings of a modestly-sized telescope at a small college and will describe how my own crew of Wellesley undergraduates contributes to KELT discoveries.

Cecilia Levy, SUNY Albany

 
Hegeman 107  12:00 pm EST/GMT-5
The quest for dark matter is one of particle physics most active research areas today. Despite the overwhelming amount of evidence that it exists and makes up to 25% of the universe, a dark matter particle has yet to be detected. While over the years, many different experiments using many different technologies have emerged, liquid xenon detectors have now proven their superiority in leading the field of direct dark matter detection. However, as they need to become bigger and bigger to be more and more sensitive, the current detectors are reaching the limit of irreducible backgrounds, and thus are reaching the end of their detection ability. Therefore new, improved detectors must be invented which will not only address the background issues that current detectors face but also probe new, until now inaccessible, search areas, thus opening a new era for DM detection.

David Kagan, University of Massachusetts-Dartmouth
Hegeman 107  12:00 pm EST/GMT-5
String theory's roots date back to the 1960's in attempts to determine the nature of the strong interaction using S-matrix techniques. The goal was to "bootstrap" to a nearly unique theory using a small, simple set of physical principles, and avoiding the use of quantum fields entirely. Many beautiful results emerged, but the program ultimately fizzled with the success of quantum chromodynamics (QCD). String theory however, has always remained deeply connected to the S-matrix approach and recent developments have inspired a renewed interest in the S-matrix, particularly as a tool for constraining the possible quantum field theories that might be consistently completed into a theory of quantum gravity at high enough energies. In this talk, I will provide an overview of key developments early in the formulation of string theory and describe some exciting new no-go results that have emerged hinting that string theory may indeed be "the only game in town" (modulo important assumptions!).

Matthew Deady & Paul Cadden-Zimansky
Physics Program, Bard College
Hegeman 107  12:00 pm EST/GMT-5
Where does Bard get its energy from now, and where will it come from in the future?  This seminar features two short presentations examining both near-term, small-scale changes (microhydroelectric power from the Sawkill) and constraints on long-term planning (how could Bard become carbon neutral by 2035?).  An informal discussion over pizza of prospects and challenges concerning energy production follows the presentations.

David Helfand, Columbia University
Hegeman 107  12:00 pm EDT/GMT-4
Over the past ten years, my colleagues and I have been using the Very Large Array radio telescope to construct by the far highest resolution survey yet made of our Galaxy at centimeter wavelengths. The images reveal thousands of Galactic radio emitters which mark the places of stellar birth in cold clouds of  gas and dust, and stellar death in the violent explosions of supernove. Combining this survey with data from other wavelengths, particularly the Spitzer Space Observatory's Infrared survey of the Galaxy provides a spectacular new multi-colored view of the Milky Way and reveals a number of unexpected surprises.

 

Peter J. Collings
Department of Physics & Astronomy, Swarthmore College

 
Hegeman 107  12:00 pm EDT/GMT-4
The liquid crystals used in displays are oily fluids in which the molecules possess orientational order.  Another class of liquid crystals relies on the spontaneous formation of molecular assemblies when certain dyes and drugs are dissolved in water.  These aqueous systems are the subject of significant scientific research, due to the possibility of applications in biology and medicine.  This research reveals that water-based liquid crystals behave quite differently from their oily counterparts, thus creating the understanding necessary to develop new techniques and devices in an area where liquid crystals have had little impact.

 

Antonios Kontos
Physics Program
Hegeman 107  12:00 pm EDT/GMT-4
The 2017 Nobel Prize in Physics was awarded to Rainer Weiss, Kip Thorne and Barry Barish for the conception, construction and operation of the LIGO detector that detected Gravitational Waves for the first time. Considering the impossibly weak nature of gravitational waves, this was a monumental achievement of experimental ingenuity which has now opened a new type of window to the Universe (a microphone really). I will go through how the detectors work, what Gravitational Waves tell us about the universe and some personal experiences from being part of the collaboration.

  Gravitational lensing, hydroelectric generators, and better electric guitars. 
Hegeman 107  12:00 pm EDT/GMT-4
Come check out what physics senior projects are in the works for this year over a pizza lunch.

Hegeman 107  12:00 pm EDT/GMT-4
From gravitational microlensing of distant planets to microhydro power on the Sawkill, come enjoy pizza and students discussing their summer research.

  Come learn what's happening in the Physics Program this semester, welcome new students and faculty into the Program, and enjoy a pizza lunch.
Hegeman 107  12:00 pm EDT/GMT-4

  Ilya R. Fischhoff
Postdoctoral Associate
Cary Institute for Ecosystem Studies
Reem-Kayden Center Laszlo Z. Bito '60 Auditorium  3:00 pm EDT/GMT-4
Ilya Fischhoff is a postdoctoral fellow with The Tick Project (www.tickproject.org). The Tick Project is a 5-year study to determine whether controlling ticks at the neighborhood scale reduces tick-borne diseases in people. One of the tick control methods that The Tick Project is evaluating is Met52, a biopesticide containing spores of a tick-killing fungus. In assessing Met52, it is important to evaluate not only its efficacy in reducing tick-borne disease but also its impacts on non-target organisms. Ilya will present results from an experiment he conducted last summer to assess the effects of Met52 on non-target arthropods in lawn and forest habitats typical of residential yards. Ilya sampled arthropods on treatment and control plots, before and after spray with Met52 on the treatment plots or water on the control plots. Ilya used multivariate models to analyze the data on arthropod abundance in 25 taxonomic orders. There were significant effects of plot location, period (before vs. after spray) and habitat (lawn vs. forest), but no effect of treatment (Met52 vs. water). A retrospective power analysis showed that the study had an 80% chance of detecting a reduction in arthropod abundance of 55% or greater. Based on these results, Ilya and his collaborators concluded that the use of Met52 in suburban yards is unlikely to cause meaningful reductions in the abundance of non-target arthropods. Finally, Ilya will also talk briefly about a microcosm experiment he is setting up to examine interactions among Met52, ticks, and brush-legged wolf spiders, a natural enemy of ticks.
 

Jeremy R. Manning, Ph.D.
Assistant Professor of Psychological & Brain Sciences
Dartmouth College
Reem-Kayden Center Laszlo Z. Bito '60 Auditorium  3:00 pm EDT/GMT-4
Our memory systems leverage the statistical structure of the world around us (context) to organize and store incoming information and retrieve previously stored information.  This enables us to recognize the situations we are in and to adapt our behaviors accordingly.  For example, your might choose to behave differently on a road trip with close friends versus commuting into work with your boss, even though many aspects of your perceptual experience are preserved across those two scenarios.  You might also remember different aspects of conversations from those trips when asked about them later.

In my talk, I will explore the extent to which (and the circumstances under which) these sorts of processes may be manipulated to influence memory.  I’ll begin by exploring these processes using a simple word list learning paradigm.  I’ll show how we can influence memory performance (specifically, how many words people remember and the order people remember the words in).  Then I’ll talk about how these same ideas can be applied to “naturalistic” memories, such as memories for scenes in a movie or concepts learned in the classroom.

  Antonios Kontos, Physics program
Reem-Kayden Center Laszlo Z. Bito '60 Auditorium  3:00 pm EDT/GMT-4
With three detections and counting, the Advanced LIGO gravitational-wave observatories have opened a new window into the Universe. For now, all the detected gravitational-waves originated from collisions of two black holes. The effect that these gravitational-waves have as they pass through space is to stretch and compress space-time, much like sound waves stretch and compress the air. To understand the challenge of detecting this effect here on Earth, imagine (if you can) that a reasonably strong gravitational wave changes the length of one kilometer by one thousandth of a proton's diameter. At this level of sensitivity, quantum mechanics and the Heisenberg uncertainty principle start playing a significant role and if we want to listen further into the Universe, we need to manipulate the quantum nature of light to our advantage. In this talk I will give an overview of gravitational waves, how LIGO detects them, and why quantum mechanics matters when measuring distances with such precision.

  Michael Bergman
Emily H. Fisher Professor of Physics
Bard College at Simon's Rock
Reem-Kayden Center Laszlo Z. Bito '60 Auditorium  3:00 pm EDT/GMT-4
Earth's iron alloy inner core was not discovered until 1936-six years after the discovery of Pluto. For many years after that little was known about this most remote part of our planet, but in the last thirty years seismologists have been revealing it has some unusual properties. The cause of these seismic inferences remains uncertain, but they provide clues about the mineral physics and dynamics of the core. This talk will review the seismic observations of the inner core, and discuss their implications for its evolution.

Eleni-Alexandra Kontou
Physics Program
Hegeman 107  12:00 pm EDT/GMT-4
We can only perceive four dimensions, but several standard model extensions suggest the existence of more. If that’s true, why can't we see them? One possible explanation is that these extra dimensions are compactified, meaning they have a finite length compared to the infinite standard four. Cosmology offers a very interesting possibility of finding evidence for the existence of these extra dimensions in the Cosmic Microwave Background (CMB). The CMB is an echo from the Big Bang era, and can give us important insight to the past of our universe and whether it could have included compactified dimensions.

Montgomery Place, Mansion  8:30 pm – 10:00 pm EDT/GMT-4
Join us at the Montgomery Place visitor center for a short talk by Prof. Eleni Kontou on the the latest science from NASA’s Juno probe of Jupiter, followed by telescope viewing of Jupiter and its moons, a guided tour of the night sky, and a round of Ask-a-Physicist-Anything.

Buses to the event leave from the Kline South stop at 8:15 pm and 8:30 pm.

Clear weather permitting.

Daniel Marlow, Princeton University
Hegeman 107  12:00 pm EDT/GMT-4
Radio astronomy has greatly enhanced the range of observable astronomical phenomena.  Although a wide range of wavelengths are used in radio astronomy, one of the most important is 21 cm, which corresponds to the hyperfine transition in atomic hydrogen.   Although the 21 cm signal from a small collection of hydrogen atoms is exceedingly weak, and the density of hydrogen in the Milky Way is very low, the Galaxy is a big place and contains enough hydrogen to produce a signal that can be detected with a modest terrestrial apparatus.    In this talk, I will present results obtained at 21 cm with a recently refurbished cold-war-era 60-foot dish antenna.   Data from the dish will be used to measure the Sun's velocity with respect to the average velocity of nearby stars and to infer the existence of dark matter.    Time permitting, pulsar signals will be presented and schematic plans for a kit capable of detecting indirect evidence for dark matter for costing less than $1000 will be presented.

Edward Marti
Joint Institute for Laboratory Astrophysics
University of Colorado

 
Hegeman 107  12:00 pm EDT/GMT-4
The accuracy of atomic clocks has improved a thousandfold over the last 15 years. The latest generation of atomic clocks, called "optical lattice clocks", can detect changes in general relativity's gravitational redshift over a few centimers. These clocks use extremely stable lasers to count the "ticks" of an optical-frequency transition in atoms cooled to the nanokelvin regime, reaching 18 digits of accuracy in a few hours. In this talk, I will discuss how we achieve this accuracy through exquisite control of the quantum mechanical state of these ultracold atoms, and how we are using these clocks to search for dark matter and test relativity.

  Matthew Deady, Physics Program
Hegeman 107  12:00 pm EDT/GMT-4
In the summer of 2012, two teams of scientists working on the Large Hadron Collider in Switzerland announced that they had discovered the long-awaited Higgs Boson.  What is this particle?  Why do physicists think is it so important?  How was it predicted?  How was it discovered?  What are the implications to our understanding of matter, energy, and the universe?  These and other questions will be addressed as we investigate the fundamental particles and forces that underlie all physical phenomena, culminating in the Higgs discovery and consideration of what might be beyond.

Joshua Cooperman, Physics Program

 
Hegeman 107  12:00 pm EST/GMT-5
Quantum gravity is the much sought-after synthesis of quantum mechanics and general relativity, the two pillars of contemporary physics. I will deliver an accessible introduction to the promising approach to quantum gravity called causal dynamical triangulations. Founding my presentation on the quantum mechanics of a particle, I will build an intuitive conception of the quantum mechanics of spacetime. I will survey the key results deriving from causal dynamical triangulations and broach the key question facing causal dynamical triangulations.

 

Eric L. N. Jensen
Swarthmore College
Hegeman 107  12:00 pm EST/GMT-5
Since the discovery of the first extrasolar planet a little more than 20 years ago, the list of known planets orbiting other stars has grown to more than 3,000—but we are still in the early stages of understanding the diversity of other planetary systems.  A key part of this understanding has come from studies of planets that eclipse (or “transit”) their host stars as seen from Earth.   I will explain how studies of these planets allow us to determine their radii, masses, mean densities, atmospheric composition, and the angle at which they orbit relative to the parent star’s equator, all without being able to image the planets directly.  Small telescopes (with primary mirror diameters of 0.3–1 meter) play an important role in the larger “ecosystem” of telescopes that discover and characterize these planets, and such telescopes have been instrumental in the recent discoveries of planets around very bright stars that are much hotter than the Sun, and in the just-announced discovery of seven Earth-radius planets around the ultra-cool dwarf star Trappist-1.

James Lowenthal, Smith College
Hegeman 107  12:00 pm EST/GMT-5
I’ll give an overview of observing at the 50-m Large Millimeter Telescope and will focus on the latest results on distant, dusty, massive starburst galaxies in the early universe.  Studying distant galaxies lets us peer billions of years back in time, well over halfway back to the Big Bang, to learn how galaxies form and evolve.  New infra-red and millimeter-wave images and spectra from the Planck and Herschel satellites and from the LMT have helped identify the most luminous galaxies yet known, thousands of times brighter than our own Milky Way, and churning gas into new stars at a furious rate.  Many are also strongly gravitationally lensed, their images warped and amplified by intervening massive galaxies, which lets us see more detail on fainter galaxies than usual.  Hubble Space Telescope’s sharp vision further enhances our view and can finally reveal what triggers such spectacular starburst activity. 

Zammy Diaz
Columbia University Institute of Human Nutrition
Campus Center Lobby  11:00 am – 1:00 pm EST/GMT-5
Join Zammy Diaz, IHN Communications Center, to learn why the one-year MS Program in Nutrition Science may be a great gap or glide year for you.

Paul Cadden-Zimansky
Physics Program
Hegeman 102  12:00 pm EST/GMT-5
The development of almost all modern technology relies on a firm understanding of the concepts of electricity and magnetism, and these concepts are at the heart of fundamental explanations of most physical phenomena. The historical evolution of these concepts traces back thousands of years and took a number of surprising, unorthodox, and occasionally tragic turns before the rules governing electricity and magnetism were codified. In this talk, intended for a general audience, I'll review some of the key experiments and insights of past centuries that led to our present theories.

Physics Program Social and Lunch to Follow

  Reem-Kayden Center  6:30 pm EST/GMT-5

Daniel Godines Alcantara
"A detection algorithm for microlensing events in wide-field surveys"
Hegeman 107  4:00 pm EST/GMT-5

Isobel Curtin
"Detecting black holes"
Hegeman 107  3:00 pm EST/GMT-5

Daryl Haggard
McGill University
Hegeman 107  12:00 pm EST/GMT-5
Sagittarius A* is the closest example of a supermassive black hole (SMBH) buried within a dense, massive stellar cluster. Sgr A* is more than 100 times closer than any other SMBH, and our proximity allows us to detect emission from its accretion flow in the radio, submillimeter (submm), near infrared (NIR), and X-ray regimes. These rich multiwavelength, time-resolved data have the power to probe the physical processes that underlie rapid flares originating near the black hole's event horizon. During ambitious Chandra X-ray and VLA radio monitoring campaigns over the last several years, we have detected the brightest-ever X-ray flares from Sgr A*. However, despite years of observational and theoretical study, we do not have a complete, unique model to explain these high-energy flares, or their relationship to variability at other wavelengths. Viable models range from the tidal disruption of asteroids to gravitational lensing to magnetic reconnection, motivating observers to place tighter constraints on the timing and multiwavelength properties of these outbursts. X-ray flares may also help us relate Sgr A* to weakly accreting black holes across the mass spectrum. I will discuss the possible origins and continuing mysteries surrounding Sgr A*'s high-energy flares and give a brief update on the X-ray and radio view of the Sgr A*/G2 interaction.

  Hegeman 107  12:00 pm EST/GMT-5
12 p.m. - 1 p.m.
Eleanor Turrell
Loren Jackson
“Plasma Striations in Vacuum Tubes”
Nowell Stoddard
"Modeling the Nonlinear Cochlear”

3 p.m. - 4 p.m.
Victoria Chayes
“Kerr Black Holes and the Reflected Light Problem”
Max Meynig
“Complex Trajectories and Semiclassical Methods”

Jacob Barandes, Department of Physics, Harvard University
Hegeman 107  12:00 pm EST/GMT-5
The language of random variables makes possible a formal analogy between classical probability theory and quantum theory that better highlights their key similarities and differences. I'll use this formulation to clarify the underlying problems that have long obstructed the development of a satisfactory interpretation of quantum theory, suggest changes in how we teach students quantum theory, discuss important new requirements for future work on quantum foundations, provide a helpful classification scheme for the various prominent interpretations, and motivate a novel "minimal" modal interpretation. This new interpretation is minimal in the sense that its fundamental ingredients are only those that either have clear counterparts in classical physics or are familiar from the traditional formulation of quantum theory. The rules governing the underlying dynamics of this interpretation are based on a class of newly discovered quantum conditional probabilities whose detailed properties I will discuss in depth. I'll conclude with a summary of open questions and implications for issues of importance to the foundations of physics.

  by Paul Cadden-Zimansky
Olin Humanities, Room 102  7:00 pm EST/GMT-5
A tacit ideal of many a natural philosopher has been to find a perfect description – a complete, accurate reckoning – of part or all of the physical world. This ideal has led many scientists to search for the fundamental objects that make up reality and the rules that govern them. However, a gradual evolution in the understanding of the rules of quantum mechanics has fostered a rethinking of what it means to perfectly describe something, what it means to be fundamental, and even what it means to be an object. In this talk, Professor Cadden-Zimansky will discuss some key points of this evolution and describe how experimental research into states of matter in different dimensions has helped to illuminate the quest for perfect descriptions.

*Please join us for a reception prior to the event beginning at 6:30 p.m. in the Olin Atrium

Steven Carlip
University of California, Davis
Hegeman 107  12:00 pm EST/GMT-5
The general theory of relativity tells us that what we call gravity is really a manifestation of the geometry of space and time.  The 100-year-old unsolved problem of quantum gravity is to understand the structure of this spacetime at the smallest scales. Several recent lines of evidence hint that spacetime at very small distances may undergo “spontaneous dimensional reduction,” behaving as if it had only two dimensions rather than four.  I will summarize some of the evidence for this strange behavior, complete with a few pictures of quantum fluctuations of spacetime, and talk about what it means for “dimension” to be a physical observable.  Although the scales involved are tiny — a billionth of a billionth of the size of a proton — it is conceivable that this effect could be measurable; I’ll talk about that possibility, and what it would mean for physics.

Join us to observe the night sky and learn about the universe!
Stevenson Athletic Center, Soccer Field  8:00 pm EDT/GMT-4
We will observe the Moon, Venus, Mars and if we are lucky, the Orionid meteor shower. (In case the sky is not clear the event moves to the next Thursday, same time and place)
For more information contact Eleni Kontou at [email protected]

  Hegeman 204  2:00 pm EDT/GMT-4
Rebecca Schiavo, Senior Assistant Director from Columbia's Office of Undergraduate Admissions, will be coming to talk about the 3+2 and 4+2 BA/BS Combined Plans. This is an ideal opportunity to get definitive answers to your specific questions. She visits only once in two years, so don't miss her talk.  

 

Emlyn Hughes, Columbia University

 
Hegeman 107  12:00 pm EDT/GMT-4
In the 1940s and 1950s, the United States performed 67 nuclear weapons tests in the Marshall Islands, including the detonation of the largest hydrogen bomb (15 megatons), named Bravo. Seventy years later, the impact of these tests on the Marshallese people is still apparent. As an example, the more recent challenge of rising sea levels coupled with the remaining nuclear waste represents a particularly chilling problem. Here, we discuss our recent publication on this topic as well as future research plans.

 

Paul Cadden-Zimansky, Physics Program
Hegeman 107  12:00 pm EDT/GMT-4
This year's Nobel Prize in physics, awarded to David Thouless, Duncan Haldane, and Michael Kosterlitz, recognizes how simple, but often hidden, numbers, can underlie apparently complex phenomena. Touching on superconductivity, magnetism, physics in other dimensions, and the many ways to get lost in the woods, I'll give a general audience introduction to the theories of topological order that the laureates developed, and discuss how these theories both explained puzzles of the past and have helped predict new effects, materials, and devices that may form the foundation for tomorrow's technologies.
Pizza and refreshments will be provided!

  Reem-Kayden Center  6:00 pm EDT/GMT-4

  Hegeman 107  12:00 pm EDT/GMT-4
Testing the quantum hall effect in hybrid graphene
Nowell Stoddard and Kai Naor
Bard Nanolab
Mentor: Paul Cadden-Zimansky

Over the summer we worked in the Bard Nanolab to fabricate graphene samples and create devices capable of measuring hall resistance at low temperature and high magnetic field. The goal of these devices was to study the quantum hall effect, a unique property of two dimensional semiconductors at high magnetic field. This effect has been studied extensively in monolayer graphene but our aim was to study it in Hybrid graphene, that is, graphene that contains both a single and a double atom layer on the same piece. On the last week were able to go to down to the national magnet lab to test our devices.

Modelling Exoplanetary Microlensing
Eleanor Turrell
Quantum Gravity Group, Marseille France
Bard College & ISSI Bern Switzerland
Mentors: Eleni Kontou & Hal Haggard

Exoplanets act as gravitational lenses by bending light as it moves from a distant source star toward Earth. We created hypothetical light curves to characterize exoplanets if microlensing is observed. We looked at configurations including one lens, two lenses, and plan to examine three lens configurations next.

Pre-Processing and Classification of Hyperspectral Imagery Via Selective Inpainting
Victoria Chayes
University of California, Los Angeles
Mentors: Wei Zhu, Andrea Bertozzi, & Stan Osher

We devise a semi-supervised means to classify and sharpen a hyperspectral image. Hyperspectral imagery (HSI), wherein sensors capture data at hundreds of different wavelengths, has numerous applications in agriculture, environmental science, mineralogy, medical imaging, and surveillance, because of its fundamental ability to allow the identification of separate objects or materials that cannot be differentiated on sight. By discarding identified "noisy" pixels and applying an accelerated proximal gradient inpainting scheme, we are able to de-noise pixel signatures and sharpen bands, leaving a clear enough hyperspectral image that clusters can be identified purely by Euclidean distance from pre-known endmembers.

Pizza and refreshments will be provided!

David Hammer, Tufts University
Hegeman 107  12:00 pm EDT/GMT-4
The assumption remains pervasive that the core objective of science instruction is a body of canonical knowledge. It underlies instructional practices, assessments of learning, and even progressive “inquiry-based” curricula. Meanwhile, for many students, physics class is still disconnected from genuine pursuit of understanding.

The assumption, I suggest, is a “misconception” of the community as a system. If “physics is what physicists do,” then physics is a pursuit of understanding. But, like a student who keeps thinking force causes motion, the physics education community keeps thinking the goal is a particular set of concepts.   

I argue for concerted effort to address the misconception, of research as well as of design and politics. The point is not to eliminate the canon but genuinely to prioritize students’ learning physics as a pursuit. I will discuss challenges and possibilities for curriculum, assessment, and responsive teaching, with video examples from a college introductory courses.

Join us to observe the night sky and learn about the universe!
Lorenzo Ferrari Soccer Complex  9:00 pm EDT/GMT-4
We will observe the Moon, Saturn, Mars and more with the Physics Program’s telescope. (In case the sky is not clear the event moves to the next Thursday, same time and place)
For more information contact Eleni Kontou at [email protected]

  We want you to participate in trying out a new Science Literacy assessment developed here at Bard!

Assessment sessions are being held on Sunday, September 11 at 3 p.m. and on Monday, September 12 at 7 p.m.
RKC second floor pods  7:00 pm EDT/GMT-4
The assessment is done in pairs, takes a little more than 90 minutes to complete, is designed to see how you go about finding the answer to a science-related question, and is pretty fun to do! Treats provided for all who participate!

**science majors are always welcome!**

Bring a laptop for the assessment

  Hegeman 107  12:00 pm EDT/GMT-4
A Detection Algorithm for Microlensing Events in Wide-Field Surveys
Daniel Godines Alcantara
Las Cumbres Observatory in Santa Barbara, California
Mentors: Rachel Street and Etienne Bachelet


I used recently released data from the Palomar Transient Factory (PTF) to model microlensing events with the goal of ultimately creating an algorithm that could detect these events as they began to occur. Using statistics to differentitate between different object classes (ie supernova, galaxies, RR Lyrae, etc..) I wrote a program that compares lightcurve statistics to those known to be microlensing, and then decides whether it is a microlensing lightcurve or not. We hope to have the software running at high efficiency in 2017, as the next phase of the survey (ZTF) is released.


Complex Trajectories and Quantum Mechanics
Max Meynig
Quantum Gravity Group, Marseille France
Mentor: Hal Haggard


Feynman’s path integral provides a beautiful conceptual link between the quantum and classical realms. A particularly useful manifestation of this link is in the semiclassical approximation where certain classical trajectories can be used to approximate the path integral. Semiclassics breaks down when tunneling problems are treated as there are no classical trajectories connecting opposing sides of the barrier. To properly treat tunneling problems with semiclassical methods the classical dynamics must be extended to the complex plane.


Improving the performance of automated program repair using learned heuristics
Liam Schramm
University of Colorado, Colorado Springs
Mentor: Jugal Kalita

Pizza and refreshments will be provided!

Reem-Kayden Center  6:00 pm EDT/GMT-4

Valla Fatemi, Massachusetts Institute of Technology
Hegeman 107  12:00 pm EDT/GMT-4
The notion of symmetry-protected topological order in electronic systems has transformed our understanding of condensed matter systems. This notion led to the prediction and discovery of quantum spin Hall systems, 3D topological insulators, topological semimetals, and more. However, electronic transport measurements of such systems have been notoriously challenging due to the difficulty of synthesizing high purity crystals and fabricating devices without causing degradation. To surmount these challenges, we have developed techniques for fabrication of van der Waals heterostructure devices in a controlled environment. In our electronic transport measurements, conducted at cryogenic temperatures, we utilize electrostatic gates and large magnetic fields as powerful experimental knobs. First, I will present our work on the realization of independently accessible surface states on the 3D topological insulator Bi1.5Sb0.5Te1.7Se1.3. Second, I will discuss  our more recent experiments on WTe2, which is expected to be a quantum spin Hall system in the monolayer and has a large, non-saturating magnetoresistance in its 3D form. By thinning the crystal to a few atomic layers, the magnetoresistance can be turned on and off by changing the carrier density, which can be modeled as a transition from a semimetal to a simple metal. This is a promising step toward the realization of 2D van der Waals topological systems.

Gerald Dunne, University of Connecticut
Hegeman 107  12:00 pm EDT/GMT-4
The quantum vacuum is not empty: in fact it is inherently unstable, and the application of an external electric field can lead to the production of electron-positron pairs. This "Heisenberg-Schwinger effect" was one of the first non-trivial predictions of quantum electrodynamics (QED), but the effect is so weak that it has not yet been directly observed. However, new developments in ultra-high intensity lasers come tantalizingly close to opening a new window on this unexplored extreme ultra-relativistic regime. This has prompted a fresh look at both experimental and theoretical aspects of this and other nonlinear QED effects. I review the basic physics of the problem and describe some recent theoretical ideas aimed at making the elusive Heisenberg-Schwinger effect observable, by careful shaping of laser pulses. This is an example of an emerging new field using ultra-intense lasers to probe fundamental problems in particle physics, gravity and quantum field theory.

Carl M. Bender
Department of Physics
Washington University in St. Louis
Hegeman 107  12:00 pm EDT/GMT-4
Mathematicians have found it enlightening to extend the real number system to the complex number system. Complex numbers are fascinating in their own right and furthermore they help us to understand the nature of the real numbers. It has been my life's work as a theoretical physicist to examine what happens when we extend real physical theories to complex physical theories. This talk explains in simple terms some of the remarkable insights that we gain by doing so.

Nadir Jeevanjee, University of California-Berkeley
Hegeman 107  12:00 pm EDT/GMT-4
Computer simulations show that global average rainfall increases with surface warming at a rate of roughly 1-3% per Kelvin, but we lack the understanding to estimate this number without resorting to complicated numerical models. This talk will review the basic physics governing mean precipitation, as well as present a new theoretical framework which allows us to intuitively understand as well as quickly estimate this quantity.
 

  Please see the link below for information on applying for a Distinguished Scientist Scholar Award.
Application deadline is Friday, April 1


Download: DSS application memo 16-17.pdf

Hal Haggard, Physics Program
Hegeman 107  12:00 pm EST/GMT-5
The first ever direct detection of ripples in the fabric of spacetime was reported on February 11th, 2016. This thrilling measurement not only confirms Einstein's prediction of these ripples, but is the first observation of a pair of black holes that dance and merge in the sky. I will recall the surprising history of Einstein's prediction and explain the technological ingenuity and perseverance that the Laser Interferometer Gravitational-Wave Observatory (LIGO) team brought to the measurement of these waves. 

Mahdi Hosseini, 
Massachusetts Institute of Technology
Hegeman 107  4:45 pm EST/GMT-5

Philip Goyal, University at Albany
Hegeman 107  12:00 pm EST/GMT-5
A remarkable feature of quantum theory is that identical particles must be treated as indistinguishable if the theory is to give valid predictions. In the quantum formalism, indistinguishability is expressed via the symmetrization postulate, which restricts a system of identical particles to the set of symmetric states (`bosons') or the set of antisymmetric states (`fermions’).

However, the precise connection between particle indistinguishability and the symmetrization postulate has not been clearly established. For example, a widely influential topological approach to identical particles implies that their behavior depends on the dimensionality of space, and that they generically exhibit so-called anyonic behavior in two dimensions.  

In this talk, we show that the symmetrization postulate can be derived on the basis of a simple novel postulate. The key to the derivation is a strictly informational treatment of indistinguishability which prohibits the labeling of particles that cannot be experimentally distinguished from one another. The derivation implies that the symmetrization postulate admits no natural variants. In particular, the possibility that identical particles generically exhibit anyonic behaviour is excluded.

​Journal Reference: "Informational Approach to Identical Particles in Quantum Theory", New J. Phys. 17 (2015) 013043

  Reem-Kayden Center  6:30 pm EST/GMT-5

Professor Frank Scalzo
Health Professions Adviser
Reem-Kayden Center Laszlo Z. Bito '60 Auditorium  6:00 pm EST/GMT-5
Professor Frank Scalzo will introduce the pathways leading to post-baccalaureate degrees in the health professions including, traditional medicine, allopathic medicine, osteopathic medicine, veterinary medicine, dentistry, optometry, etc. etc. The discussion will be tailored to the interests of the audience. If you are interested in a health profession, you should attend this discussion.  
 
For more information, please contact Professor Frank Scalzo at [email protected].

  Gina Quan, University of Maryland
Hegeman 107  12:00 pm EST/GMT-5
Physics Education Research (PER) is a rich field which studies how students learn physics as well as how to support better teaching and learning. In my work, I develop innovative learning spaces that integrate authentic physics practices, student collaboration, and an inclusive community. Within these spaces, I qualitatively study identity, how students recognize themselves and are recognized by others as able to participate in physics.  In this talk, I will first present a brief overview of the field of Physics Education Research. I will then present research on an undergraduate freshman seminar that I have co-developed in which students worked with faculty and graduate student research mentors on research projects.  In videotaped classroom data and interviews, students described ways in which their research experiences were different from their expectations. Students tie an improved sense of competence in research to a better understanding of who does physics and how physics research works.  This work sheds light on mechanisms by which research experiences may positively impact students’ identity development in physics.
 

  Arendt Center  4:30 pm – 6:00 pm EST/GMT-5
Monthly meeting of faculty interested in the practice or critical analysis of sound, sound technologies, soundscapes, listening.

David Griffiths
Reed College
Hegeman 107  12:00 pm EST/GMT-5
Electromagnetic fields carry energy, momentum, and even angular momentum. The momentum density is ∊0 (E x B), and it accounts (among other things) for the pressure of light. But even static fields can harbor momentum, and this would appear to contradict a general theorem: if the center of energy of a closed system is at rest, then its total momentum must be zero. Evidently in such cases there lurks some other  momentum, not electromagnetic in nature, which cancels the field momentum. But finding  this “hidden momentum” can be surprisingly subtle. I’ll discuss a particularly nice example.

  Brian Anderson, University of Maryland
RKC 102  4:45 pm EST/GMT-5
Understanding of microscopic phenomena has progressed significantly since the dawn of quantum theory. Many scientists are engineering tools to design a quantum world that is more suitable to their interests, rather than work with what nature provides them. Engineering the quantum states of light and atoms allows scientists to probe issues of fundamental physics and develop useful technology. I will discuss my experience working in this field, often called quantum information science. I will cover the preparation and measurement of atomic states, as well as using a non-linear process called four-wave mixing to prepare interesting states of light and atoms.

  Yu Gu
St. Joseph’s University
Hegaman 107  12:00 pm EDT/GMT-4
In recent years, the integration of microfluidic and micro-optical elements onto monolithic platforms has led to the term “optofluidics”. In particular, the use of integrated waveguides for sensing in microfluidic devices miniaturizes light delivery and detection while reducing the need for bulky instrumentation, the complication of alignment errors and sensitivity to mechanical vibrations.  In addition, the exploitation of the optical properties of fluids has the potential to revolutionize sensing and telecommunications by enabling reconfigurable light sources, light delivery, controls and switches.  This talk will present the design, fabrication and characterization of two optofluidic devices. The first is a three-dimensional Mach-Zehnder interferometer providing label-free, spatially-resolved sensing in a microfluidic channel.  The second is a parallel-geometry reconfigurable optofluidic switch.  Low-cost fabrication methods, such as embedding of fiber inside a polymer, as well as the more advanced technique of femtosecond laser micromachining (FLM) will be discussed.  Finally, the direction of future research will be summarized.

Ken Olum, Research Professor, Tufts Institute of Cosmology
Hegeman 107  12:00 pm EDT/GMT-4
Cosmic strings are a common (though not universal) prediction of grand unified theories, and may also arise from inflation in superstring theory.  If they exist, they will provide a window into fundamental physics at otherwise unreachable scales. Cosmic strings form a "network" of infinite strings and loops of all sizes.  To understand the possibility for observable signals, we determine the properties of this network by extrapolating from Large-scale numerical simulations and analyzing the emission of gravitational waves (which are both the most important signal and the most important energy-loss mechanism).

David Brin National Endowment for the Humanities/Hannah Arendt Center Distinguished Visiting Fellow
Hegeman 107  12:00 pm EDT/GMT-4
For philosophical reasons, some scientists like Einstein preferred to picture a universe that's limitless in space and time. That view faded as evidence mounted for a titanic start—a Big Bang. Now, as we plumb the earliest picoseconds of that event, we are starting to realize—it may hint at a much, much bigger cosmic realm. 

Matthew Deady, Physics Program
Hegeman 107  12:00 pm EDT/GMT-4
First hypothesized by Pauli in 1930, the elusive neutrino only interacts with matter via the Weak Force, making them exceedingly difficult to detect.  Eventually, very clever experiments indicated that there are actually three distinct types of neutrinos, that they might have small masses, and that they might change from one type into another in mid-flight.  The 2015 Nobel Prize in Physics recognizes Takaaki Kajita and Arthur B. McDonald for their measurements of these neutrino oscillations at the Super-Kamiokande neutrino detector near Tokyo and the Sudbury Neutrino Observatory in Ontario.  These results solve some mysteries – primarily the “solar neutrino problem” – but open new questions about the need to modify the Standard Model of particles and interactions.  In this talk, I will trace the theoretical and experimental history of the neutrino, with a focus on the detector designs at Super-K and SNO that allowed the oscillations to be measured, and speculate on the consequences of these results.

  Hegeman 107  Max Schluter
"Microphone Fidelity due to Material Properties"

Jeremy Bannister
"Searching for Knotted Solutions of Maxwell's Equations:  
Is There a Figure Eight Field?"

Ryan O'Connell
"Chaos in Electrical Circuits"

Dan Gagne
"Clocks on a Plane"

  Hegeman 107  DJ Shoemaker
“Sensation and Perception”

Maya Weingrod Sandor
“The Poleward Shift of Mid-latitude Storms”

Henry Clark Travaglini
“Hybrid Graphene: Finishing the Fight”

Ferrari Field  Join with others to watch the last full lunar eclipse visible from Annandale until January, 2019, and the last eclipse of a near-to-earth supermoon until 2033. Learn about the physics of eclipses and the solar system, and see the craters of the moon magnified up to 400 times through a telescope as they dwell in the shadow of the Earth.

Weather Permitting.

  Reem-Kayden Center 

  Hegeman 107  Towards a semiclassical approximation of the Bell states

Quantum Gravity on the Mediterranean
Centre de Physique Theorique, Marseille
Liam Schramm
To date, very little work has been done on semiclassical approximations of entanglement. We apply the WKB approximation to the Bell states and interpret the result.

Study on the interaction between DNA and anticancer drugs by atomic force microscopy
Jain Lab
Bard College
Tamaki Chiba
Since the discovery of the anticancer activity of cisplatin, some platinum compounds have been clinically used as treatments for cancer. Cisplatin coordinates to DNA mainly through the N7 atoms of guanine or adenine because they do not form hydrogen bonds with any other DNA bases.  It is generally believed that when cisplatin interacts with DNA, it not only inhibits replication and transcription mechanism of DNA, but also leads to apoptosis.
    The structures of the DNA-cisplatin adducts have been studied by NMR and X-ray diffraction. However these methods focus on the average behavior of the investigated objects, but not at single molecular level. AH-197 is a potential chemotherapeutic agent modeled after cisplatin. There are a few studies that suggest AH-197 is a more efficient anticancer drug than cisplatin, however there are still many unknown aspects about high resolution structures of AH-197-DNA adducts. Atomic force microscopy(AFM) is a very useful technique to study biomolecules at the single molecule level. In this study, the interactions of tetrahymena DNA and metal compounds (cisplatin and AH-197) at different incubation time were investigated by AFM.

Total Variational Method for Analysis of Hyperspectral Imagery
Center for Photonics and Multiscale Nanomaterials
UCLA Applied Math Department
Victoria ChayesHyperspectral imagery is a burgeoning domain in the field of remote sensing; special sensors capture reflectance values for images at hundreds of different wavelengths per pixel. To analyze and classify this data, we pioneered a total variational method from image processing and adapted it for hyperspectral data. Initial results show extreme promise for increase in accuracy over existing methods.

Can you go through the wall with the help of complex numbers?
Quantum Gravity on the Mediterranean
Centre de Physique Theorique, Marseille
Zechen Zhang
Quantum Mechanics has shown many exotic phenomenon that cannot be demonstrated by classical physics and tunneling is one of them. It allows you to go through a wall or bounce back from a well with a certain probability if you are at a quantum scale (usually very small). But, is classical mechanics really dead when it comes to tunneling processes? In this talk I will demonstrate some progress in demonstrating tunneling phenomenon with complex numbers in classical mechanics. Furthermore, with the Feynman Path Integral, I will show another perspective of this relationship between complex classical mechanics and tunneling phenomenon.   

  Hegeman 107  Vanadium Dioxide Nanowire DevicesDong Yu GroupUniversity of California, DavisH. Clark Travaglini The recent development of nanowire devices as simple systems has reignited research in many difficult materials, including Vanadium Dioxide. In this talk, we will discuss the  justification and fabrication of these novel devices, as well as new measurement techniques that have pushed us into new regimes within condensed matter physics at large.

Quantum Hall Effect in Hybrid GrapheneBard Nano LabBard CollegeMax Meynig & Maya Weingrod SandorGraphene is a two-dimensional carbon allotrope where the classical Hall effect exhibits a quantization of available electronic states in the material, leading to ballistic, zero resistance, conduction. This phenomenon is known as the quantum Hall effect (QHE) and requires strong magnetic fields and very low temperatures for its observation. We constructed samples of graphene on boron nitrite and observed their Quantum Hall effect at the National High Magnetic Field Laboratory. 

  Olin 102  Interested in applying for a Fulbright Scholarship, a Watson fellowship, or another postgraduate scholarship or fellowship? This information session will cover application procedures, deadlines, and suggestions for crafting a successful application. Applications will be due later this month, so be sure to attend one of the  two information sessions!

  RKC 103  Interested in applying for a Fulbright Grant, a Watson Fellowship, or another postgraduate scholarship or fellowship? This information session will cover application procedures, deadlines, and suggestions for crafting a successful application. Applications will be due later this month, so be sure to attend one of these two sessions!

  an exhibition of digital prints by artist (and Bard alum) Steven Salzman
Reem-Kayden Center 
Download: SS_BARD_060215copy.pdf

Reem-Kayden Center  Join the graduating seniors in the Science, Mathematics and Computing Division in presenting and celebrating their senior project work

Hugh L. Crowl, Bennington College
Hegeman 107  Galaxies are large, self-gravitating collections of dark matter, gas, dust, and billions of stars. They are largely "islands," spending much of their time in relative isolation. When galaxies do interact with one another, they can be spectacularly transformed. In our galactic neighborhood, galaxies are fairly sparse and transformations are typically modest. However, in some special parts of the universe, galaxies are clustered much more closely. It is in these cluster environments where we can observe the evolution of galaxies most directly. The Virgo Cluster, being the nearest sizable cluster of galaxies to us, provides an ideal laboratory to study the effect of environment on galaxies. I will present results from several studies of galaxies in the Virgo cluster, showing both the immediate and long-term effect of environment on galaxy populations.

Williams Wootters, Williams College
Hegeman 107  Quantum mechanics is a probabilistic theory, but the way we compute probabilities in quantum mechanics is quite different from what one would expect from, say, rolling dice or tossing coins.  To get a quantum probability, we first compute a complex-valued probability amplitude and then square its magnitude.  I begin this talk by looking for a deeper explanation of the appearance of probability amplitudes, or “square roots of probability,” in the physical world.  It turns out that one can find a potential explanation—it is based on a principle of optimal information transfer—but the argument works only if the square roots are real rather than complex.  I then explore a particular theoretical model in which the probability amplitudes are taken to be real and the usual complex phase factor is replaced by a binary quantum variable.  One finds that the model leads to a one-parameter generalization of standard quantum theory.     

Eleni-Alexandra Kontou
Tufts Institute of Cosmology
RKC 115  Spacetimes with exotic phenomena such as wormholes, time machines and superluminal travel are possible in the context of Einstein’s general relativity. This possibility of their existence has puzzled physicists for a long time, since they violate causality and create paradoxes. The issue that their existence requires negative energy has been solved by quantum field theory which allows negative energies, as in the case of the Casimir effect. However in the context of quantum field theory there are also restrictions on how negative the energy can be. These restrictions, quantum inequalities and energy conditions, may be the key to rule out exotic spacetimes. Recently there has been progress in proving energy conditions in a variety of spacetimes but there are still some open possibilities.

A lecture by Kyle McCarthy, University of Kentucky
Hegeman 107  Nearby, young moving groups are ideal testbeds for studying stellar and planetary evolution. By definition, stars in a given moving group should not have significantly different ages or compositions, therefore one can see how the cluster evolves as a function of mass.  Currently, moving groups are largely characterized based on youth indicators (e.g. lithium absorption, X-ray emission) and space velocities. In this talk, I will discuss recent results which more fully characterize moving groups based on (1) Chemical homogeneity, (2) Origin, and (3) Isochronal Age. These traits have been tested on the well established AB Doradus moving group and show that these methods provide a detailed picture of the moving group as well as identify intruders. I will also discuss the future of this technique on low mass members using high resolution infrared spectroscopy.

Peter Pesic
St. John's College
Hegeman 107  Music has prepared and influenced developments in natural philosophy beginning with the Pythagoreans, who grouped arithmetic, geometry, music, and astronomy as sister sciences. This "four-fold way" (quadrivium) was for millenia the basis of higher education and deeply shaped the "new science." I will discuss three seminal figures whose scientific work, in different ways, was significantly affected by music. Johannes Kepler used new astronomical observations to find the song of the Earth; Isaac Newton tried to impose the musical octave on the spectrum; Max Planck spent a formative year experimenting with harmoniums and choruses before turning to the problem of black body radiation.

  Applications are due to Megan Karcher, [email protected], by Friday, April 3
Reem-Kayden Center  Distinguished Scientist Scholar (DSS) AwardGuidelines and Application Instructions All current students concentrating in biology, chemistry, computer science, mathematics or physics are eligible to apply for a Distinguished Scientist Scholar (DSS) Award. These awards are given to exceptional students who have distinguished themselves academically in one of the above-mentioned disciplines in the division of Science, Mathematics and Computing. The exact amount of each award is determined by the Financial Aid office, on average $5000 for each academic year, and includes the opportunity to apply for a summer research stipend to participate in NSF or NIH sponsored summer research programs at other institutions, if the student is not already eligible for federal funding. Like other science students at Bard, DSS recipients are also eligible for BSRI funding for summer research at Bard. Please note that this is a very competitive process and only a few awards will be given out each year. ·             Eligibility: To apply for a DSS award (commencing in the fall), a student must meet the following eligibility criteria:o   Concentrating in one of the following programs: Biology, Chemistry, Computer Science, Mathematics or Physics.o   Not currently receiving a DSS scholarship or award.o   Cumulative GPA of 3.0 overall in the college.o   Cumulative GPA of 3.5 in courses in the SM&C Division. ·             Application Procedure:o   Write a letter of request to the DSS Committee. The letter should discuss your plan of study in biology, chemistry, computer science, mathematics, and/or physics.o   Write an essay about an experience in science or math that you found particularly interesting.o   Ask two Bard faculty members to write you letters of recommendation. At least one of these faculty members must be in the SM&C Division. They should submit their letters directly to Megan Karcher.o   Submit this information as attachments via e-mail to the SM&C Division secretary, Megan Karcher ([email protected]) ·             Selection Criteria:  Awards will be granted to students showing exceptional qualifications in their areas of study and based upon the following:o   College academic records.o   Letters of recommendations from the faculty.o   A strong interest in working in biology, chemistry, computer science, mathematics, or physics.o   Availability of funds. ·             Deadline: Applications must be submitted no later than Friday, April 3rd, 2015. The DSS Committee will meet shortly after that, and will make recommendations to the Director of Financial Aid, who will determine the final awards. You should receive word of whether you have been selected to receive a DSS award by early May.  Questions?  Contact Robert McGrail, Chair of the Division of Science, Math and Computing, [email protected].



Download: DSS application memo 15-16.pdf

Matt Bellis, Assistant Professor of Physics, Siena College
Hegeman 107  Over the last 50+ years, we have definitively learned that the motions of galaxies and clusters and the curvature of light on cosmological scales cannot be explained solely by the gravitational attraction of the baryonic matter in the universe. The leading theory to explain this discrepancy proposes a particle that does not interact through the strong or electromagnetic interaction: dark matter. However, no definitive experimental evidence for this particle has been found. This talk will give an introductory overview of the experimental searches for dark matter with an emphasis on WIMP (Weakly Interacting Massive Particle) models.

  Reem-Kayden Center  Students presenting: 

Oliver Bruce, Michael DiRosa, Jacob Fauber, Andy Huynh, Caitlin Majewski, Henry Meyers, Cameron West, Clare Wheeler

Advisers:
Rebecca Thomas, Matthew Deady, Keith O’Hara, James Belk, Csilla Szabo, Sven Anderson, Sarah Dunphy-Lelii, Christopher LaFratta

Kater Murch
Washington University, St. Louis
Hegeman 107  Recent advances in superconducting quantum bits and quantum limited amplifiers have enabled a number of experiments that probe fundamental questions in quantum optics, open quantum systems, and continuous measurement. I will describe recent experiments where we use weak, continuous measurement to monitor the evolution of a superconducting qubit as it evolves in competition between driven evolution and the random evolution associated with measurement. By tracking individual quantum trajectories that evolve between an arbitrary choice of initial and final states we can deduce the most probable path through quantum state space. These results reveal the rich interplay between measurement dynamics, typically associated with wave function collapse, and unitary evolution of the quantum state as described by the Schrödinger equation.

Larry Hunter, Amherst College
Hegeman 107  Many extensions of the standard model of particle physics predict the existence of long-range spin-spin interactions. We have developed an approach which uses the Earth as a polarized spin source to investigate these interactions.  We combine recent deep-Earth geophysics and geochemistry results with precise tabulations of the geomagnetic field to create a comprehensive map of electron polarization within the Earth.  We examine possible long-range interactions between these spin-polarized geoelectrons and the spin-polarized electrons and nucleons in three laboratory experiments.  By combining our model and the results from these experiments we establish new stringent bounds on torsion gravity and possible long-range spin-spin forces associated with the virtual exchange of either spin-one axial bosons or unparticles.  The resulting bound on the spin-spin force between an electron and a neutron is one million times smaller than their gravitational attraction.

A lecture by Kathryn Schaffer, ’98, School of the Art Institute of Chicago, Kavli Institute of Cosmological Physics at the University of Chicago
Hegeman 107  Not long after the Big Bang (in cosmic time), the universe went through a transition from being filled with hot, glowing, opaque plasma to being a dark and transparent nursery for the formation of stars and galaxies. An afterglow of light from that early plasma epoch still lingers, giving us a glimpse of a very different universe more than thirteen billion years ago. Observations of this microwave-wavelength light (called the Cosmic Microwave Background, or CMB) have enabled profound insights into cosmic structure and history and helped to establish the current standard cosmological model.  

In recent years, some of the most important CMB discoveries have been made by ground-based telescopes, including the South Pole Telescope. Studying the CMB from the ground is exceptionally difficult because the earth's atmosphere glows in microwaves — ten million times brighter than the faint signals we hope to discern from deep space. In this talk I will describe some clever observing and data analysis tricks we use to disentangle CMB signal from atmospheric noise, and reveal what goes on behind the scenes to turn raw and messy South Pole Telescope data into something we "believe" — compelling new evidence to test and refine cosmological models.

Sujeev Wickramasekara
Department of Physics, Grinnell College

Hegeman 107  Among the key physical principles that underlie quantum mechanics are the principle of superposition (quantum states can be combined to produce other states) and the principle of relativity (all inertial reference frames are equivalent). These two principles are synthesized and implemented in quantum theory by means of unitary representations of the relevant spacetime symmetry group—Galilei group in the nonrelativistic case and the Poincare group in the relativistic case. In fact, much of the essential structure of quantum mechanics is determined by these group representations. They provide us with a means to derive and understand emblematic features of the theory, such as the Heisenberg commutation relations, Schrodinger equation and discrete values of angular momentum.  However, since the principle of relativity as encoded in Galilei and Poincare groups is a statement about inertial reference frames, a quantum theory based on these groups is also a theory, much like Newton's mechanics,  that holds in inertial reference frames. In this talk, I will present my recent attempts to expand the notion of relativity to include accelerating, noninertial reference frames and develop a quantum theory grounded on the unitary representations of the groups of transformations that tie together noninertial reference frames. I will discuss how the resulting formalism allows us to understand the nature and role of some signature features of noninertial reference frames, including fictitious forces and the equivalence principle,  in the quantum setting.

Paul Cadden-Zimansky, Physics Program
Hegeman 107  Fall in the Hudson Valley and the trees are displaying their full array of colors, but noticeably absent from this spectrum is blue. A similar absence had for many decades left a vacancy in the production of artificial light. While the semiconductor revolution brought with it computational advances in the form of transistors, energy advances in the form of photovoltaic solar panels, and illumination advances in the form of light emitting diodes, the creation of a solid state source of purely blue light remained elusive. In this talk I’ll give an overview of how Isamu Akasaki, Hiroshi Amano, and Shuji Nakamura, the 2014 Nobel Laureates in physics, overcame technical and non-technical barriers to create the first sources of blue light, and explain why this color holds the key to setting off a 21st century revolution in energy efficiency.

Lea Ferreira dos Santos
Yeshiva University, Department of Physics
Hegeman 107  We consider one-dimensional isolated interacting quantum systems that are taken out of equilibrium instantaneously. Three aspects are addressed: (i) the relaxation process, (ii) the size of the temporal fluctuations after relaxation, (iii) the conditions to reach thermal equilibrium. The relaxation process and the size of the fluctuations depend on the interplay between the initial state and the Hamiltonian after the perturbation, rather than on the regime of the system. They may be very similar for both chaotic and integrable systems. The general picture associating chaos with the onset of thermalization is also further elaborated. It is argued that thermalization may not occur in the chaotic regime if the energy of the initial state is close to the edges of the spectrum, and it may occur in integrable systems provided the initial state is sufficiently delocalized.

  Reem-Kayden Center  Join faculty and students who participated in this year's Bard Summer Research Institute in presenting their work!

The Science, Mathematics & Computing Division will be sending a bus down to the New York Hall of Science in Queens, NY on Saturday, September 20. Space on the bus is LIMITED. The bus will depart RKC promptly at 9 a.m. and return to campus at approximately 7 p.m.

Tickets to get into the Faire and a spot in the van are $30.00.  

CASH ONLY, EXACT CHANGE ONLY.
Reservations will be accepted until Friday, September 12

TO RESERVE YOUR TICKET AND A SPOT IN THE VAN, 
PLEASE SEE MEGAN KARCHER, RKC 219. Office hours are Monday-Friday, 8:00-4:00 p.m.

A lecture by Nicolas Cowan
Amherst College, Department of Physics and Astronomy
Hegeman 107  What started as a trickle in the mid 1990's is now a torrent, with over one thousand extrasolar planets currently known, and thousands of candidates awaiting confirmation. The study of exoplanets has already revolutionized our view of planet formation, and will soon do the same to our understanding of planetary atmospheres and interiors. The diversity of exoplanets gives us the leverage to crack hard problems in planetary science: cloud formation, atmospheric circulation, plate tectonics, etc. However, the characterization of exoplanets presents a challenge familiar to astronomers: our targets are so distant that we only see them as unresolved dots. I will describe how we can extract spatially-resolved snapshots of planets from such observations. These data are sufficient to constrain low-order climate models and therefore give us insight into the effects of clouds, heat transport, and geochemical cycling. Coarse measurements for a large number of planets are the perfect complement to detailed measurements of Solar System worlds. That is the exoplanet opportunity.

  Hegeman 107  Quantum and Fractional Quantum Hall Effects in Hybrid Graphene
Bard Nanolab,  Bard College
By: Andrés Martinez de Velasco, Daniel Waldo, Maya Weingrod Sandor
Graphene is a two-dimensional allotrope in which the classical Hall Effect exhibits a quantization of available electronic states in the material which produces ballistic--zero resistance--conduction. This can be seen in Hall voltage measurements at high magnetic fields where dips to zero in the transverse resistance and plateaus in the longitudinal resistance appear. This phenomenon is known as the Quantum Hall Effect and requires strong magnetic fields and very low temperatures for its observation. In order to study this phenomenon, samples of graphene on Boron Nitride were fabricated using a variety of techniques and procedures, ultimately yielding samples with various four terminal measurement options available.
Transportation of Ultra-Stable Light via Optical Fiber Laser Interferometer Gravitational-Wave Observatory (LIGO)
California Institute of Technology
By: Emily Conant
It has been demonstrated that polarization-maintaining single mode optical fiber can be used to transport frequency-stable light. It is desired to transport stable light to other labs in the building to serve as a frequency reference for various experiments investigating different sources of noise in gravitational-wave detectors. Stable light has been obtained from ultra-stable Fabry-P'{e}rot cavities by use of the Pound-Drever-Hall locking technique. We have mode matched stable light into the fiber and are using a double-pass acousto-optic modulator (AOM) configuration to cancel fiber phase noise. We use a beamsplitter to interfere the stable light and double passed light onto a photodiode as a homodyne detection, which is connected to a phase-locked loop (PLL) to measure the beat frequency. From there, we analyze the noise in the system by measuring the power spectral density of the PLL control signal with a spectrum analyzer. We have measured the expected dominant sources of noise in the system by using a similar PLL set-up and suppressed them.  We cancel the fiber phase noise by locking the optical beat to the signal generator in the PLL.  
Characterization of Nanowires for Red LASER on {001} Silicon
Center for Photonics and Multiscale Nanomaterials
University of Michigan
By: Trevor LaMountain
As technology decreases in size, electronic systems, like those found on a microchip, encounter a scaling problem.  The resistance of a current carrying wire is inversely proportional to its cross-sectional area.  This large resistance in microelectronic systems leads to slower, less efficient devices.  Fortunately, photonics systems, using photons to carry information instead of electrons, do not encounter such scaling problems.  It is therefore desirable to replace certain components of microelectronic systems with photonics.  However, in order to create such an integrated system, we require a coherent light source (LASER) that can be constructed on the same {001} silicon substrate that modern microchips use.  In this talk I discuss the novel methods used to create a red-emitting laser structure on {001} silicon, and in particular highlight the material characterization methods used to measure the composition of alloys used in this device.

  Hegeman 107  Single-molecule Conductance as a Tool for Understanding Solar Cell Efficiency
Columbia University with the Energy Frontier Research Center 
in the Applied Physics and Mathematics Division
By: Ingrid Stolt

In this project, Scanning Tunneling Microscope-Break Junction (STM-BJ) techniques were used to measure the single-molecule conductance of a group of compounds each containing a different central unit (a molecule sandwiched  between a distinct pair of atom chains). Many of these central units have been implemented in the design of organic semiconductors for Organic Photovoltaic (OPV) devices. The goal was to use these conductance measurements to gain an understanding of the structural and electronic properties of these compounds in order to further understand why the central units lead to high/low  efficiency when used in OPVs. The presentation will be a summary of the measurements done on one particular compound and how the results can be interpreted.


Electron spin resonance on-a-chip
National High Magnetic Field Laboratory
By: Henry Clark Travaligni

We discuss Electron Spin Resonance Spectroscopy (ESR), and develop a room temperature measurement set up for ESR measurements performed on a high dielectric substrate.

  RKC 101  Professor Frank Scalzo
Health Professions Adviser, Bard CollegeProfessor Scalzo will introduce the pathways leading to post-baccalaureate degrees in the health professions, including allopathic medicine, osteopathic medicine, veterinary medicine, dentistry, optometry, etc. etc. The discussion will be tailored to the interests of the audience.  If you are interested in a health profession, but have not attended a similar previous discussion, you should attend this one.

Reem-Kayden Center 

  A lecture by Nick Lanzillo
candidate for the visiting position in Physics
RKC 115  Density functional theory (DFT) is a powerful method used to obtain solutions to the many-electron Schr&#1255;dinger equation in condensed matter systems, and calculations using DFT are particularly well-suited for parallelization over as many as several thousand computer cores. DFT can be used to study the structural, electronic and vibrational properties of nano-structured materials from a first-principles perspective without the need for experimental parameterization. In this talk, I will discuss various DFT calculations and their applications to nano-materials of technological relevance, in particular materials for future device technology. Specific applications include mapping the free energy landscape for impurity diffusion across semiconductor interfaces, understanding the enhanced electrical conductance of ultra-small metallic  nanowires, and tuning the electronic properties of carbon nanotubes through the dielectric environment. These studies suggest new ways of manipulating quantum transport in atomic scale materials.

  A lecture by Joshua Jones, candidate for the visiting position in Physics
Hegeman 107  I will discuss our studies of inelastic collisions of gas phase NaK and NaCs molecules with various atomic perturbers (Ar, He, K, Cs) using the spectroscopic technique optical-optical double resonance. The experiment is conducted by means of laser induced fluorescence (LIF) and polarization labeling (PL) spectroscopy. From the combination of LIF and PL spectra, we can determine certain properties of the inelastic collision. Such properties include perturber dependent collision rate coefficients, observations of strong propensities for ΔJ=even transitions in some cases, fraction of orientation lost in rotationally inelastic collisions, rate coefficients for vibration changing collisions, and collision line-broadening rates.

Reem-Kayden Center  Students presenting:
Julia Les
Maxwell McKee
Lydia Meyer
Eric Reed

  Reem-Kayden Center Laszlo Z. Bito '60 Auditorium  A lecture by
Michael Durst
Candidate for the position in Physics

Biomedical optics uses lasers, fluorescence, and other clever tools to extract images from beneath the surface of biological tissue.  While MRI and ultrasound imaging are fully capable of providing images from deep within the body, light-based microscopy provides superior resolution, allowing one to see details on the cellular level.  This talk will describe efforts to use optics to look beneath the surface of the body without making an incision.  Nonlinear optical microscopy techniques such as two-photon absorption, temporal focusing, and photothermal imaging will be discussed.  With applications in cancer research, nanoparticle characterization, fiber optic endoscopes, and in vivo imaging, these efforts demonstrate the exciting ways in which optical physics can be employed to enhance biomedical imaging.

  Reem-Kayden Center Laszlo Z. Bito '60 Auditorium  A lecture by Joseph Kerckhoff, candidate for the position in Physics

Researchers are rapidly improving their abilities to manipulate electromagnetism and matter at the quantum level. Applications may exploit the extreme sensitivity, information capacity and/or low energies of quantum electromagnetic systems, but to be useful these technologies will also have to be robust and flexible. Moreover, in order to engineer quantum electromagnetic systems, we will need intuitive modeling techniques capable of describing these complex systems. In short, we need quantum generalizations of electrical engineering techniques.
I will describe some recent efforts that take a stab at developing an engineering perspective on quantum optics, both experimentally and theoretically. Questions at the center of this work include: can we design one quantum optical device to control another? And to what end? How might this approach be different from a classical system controlling a quantum one? Electrical circuits would be intractable without Kirchhoff's laws and can we analyze a quantum network in some analogous way?

  Reem-Kayden Center Laszlo Z. Bito '60 Auditorium  A lecture by
Kerstin Nordstrom
Candidate for the position in Physics

I will present recent work on two systems we have studied in our lab: granular materials and epithelial cell sheets. At first blush, these systems seem completely different. But blur your eyes a bit, and you start to see the similarities: They are both dense collections of particles. The systems' discreteness and density beget the emergence of the same cooperative and frustrated dynamics, even though the particles and interactions in each system are different. For both studies, we introduce novel experimental techniques and collective motion metrics. We also compare and contrast the collective behavior of inanimate and living systems.

  Hegeman 204  A lecture by
Hal Haggard
Candidate for the position in Physics

At the Planck scale (10^-33 cm), a quantum behavior of the geometry of space is expected. I will discuss new evidence for the idea that this can be achieved by directly quantizing space itself. In particular, we will consider the Bohr-Sommerfeld spectrum associated to the volume of a tetrahedron and compare it with the quantization of a grain of space found in loop gravity. One of the great challenges of the 21st century will be to understand how to empirically test for the quantization of space. I will conclude with some speculations about how to tackle this problem.

Hegeman 107  A lecture by
Dr. Paula Fekete, Assistant Professor
Department of Physics and Nuclear Engineering
US Military Academy at West Point, NY

Graphene is a single atomic layer of carbon atoms bound in a hexagonal lattice. It was first produced experimentally in 2004 by a team of researchers from Manchester, UK, and Chernogolovka, Russia, through mechanical exfoliation. This event started the “graphene revolution,” which spread quickly around the world attracting the attention of scientists and engineers alike. Graphene’s discovery was awarded the Physics Nobel Prize in 2010 and the number of publications and patents related to it is still sharply increasing. This talk will give an overview of some of graphene’s surprising electrical and transport properties that arise due to its two-dimensional structure. Namely, graphene’s electrons, moving in the periodic lattice potential of the two-dimensional crystal, form energy bands. These band energies can be described by a wave equation in which the mass of electrons is effectively changed. In a strong magnetic field, the cyclotron orbits of electrons are quantized and Landau levels form. In 1976, Hofstadter showed that, for a two-dimensional electron system, the interplay between these two quantum effects can lead to a fractal-type energy spectrum known as “Hofstadter’s Butterfly.” The talk presents results that indicate that the Hofstadter Butterfly appears in graphene’s energy spectrum as well.

  RKC 115  A lecture by
Jarrett Moyer
Candidate for the position in Physics

Transition-metal complex oxides are ideal systems for studying condensed matter physics due the wide variety of novel phenomena that they can display, such as high temperature superconductivity, colossal magnetoresistance, and multiferroicity.  Their magnetic properties can often be tuned through small variations in chemical doping, strain, or thickness.  This makes oxides promising for use in nextgeneration device applications, in which the magnetism will be controlled by external factors other than magnetic fields.  A relatively unexplored method to induce large changes in the magnetization is to control the degree of spin frustration within a frustrated magnetic oxide.  In this talk, I will discuss recent magnetic spectroscopy measurements on the magnetic structure of iron-doped cobalt ferrite (Co1xFe2+xO4).  We observed that as the degree of iron doping increases, there is a large, non-linear increase in the magnetization that is partially caused by a decrease in the spin frustration of the divalent cations.  This change in spin frustration is a direct result of the Co2+Fe3+ exchange interactions having different strengths than the corresponding Fe2+-Fe3+ exchange interaction.  I will propose a second, reversible method of controlling this spin frustration: the application of an electric field to the spinel ferrite.  Under an applied electric field, the mobile electrons within the ferrite will rearrange themselves to screen the field, and, in effect, this will change the ordering of the magnetic cations.  This will alter the frustration within the film, thus allowing the degree of frustration and the magnetization to be controlled with an electric field.  To make this device non-volatile, the electric field can be applied with an adjacent ferroelectric layer.  I will conclude this talk by discussing recent work on the integration of Fe3O4 with perovskites, which is the first step towards achieving non-volatile, electrically driven magnetic switching in a ferroelectric perovskite/spinel ferrite heterostructure.

  Reem-Kayden Center Laszlo Z. Bito '60 Auditorium  A lecture by
Nelia Mann
Candidate for the position in Physics

The standard model of quarks and leptons is an extremely powerful tool in particle physics.  However, it is not the only way of thinking about the particles we study.  In my talk I will discuss some interesting patterns in the spectra and behaviors of mesons (and baryons) which can be explained by thinking of these particles as strings rather than bound states of quarks.  I will show you how string theory can be used to produce concrete models for certain processes, such as proton/proton scattering, and how these models can be directly compared with the data.  This allows string theory to become useful in understanding current particle physics experiments.

  RKC 111  A lecture by
David Mattingly
Candidate for the position in Physics

Quantum gravity, a theory that consistently incorporates both quantum mechanics and general relativity, has been an outstanding problem in physics for almost 80 years.  Most of the progress on quantum gravity has been theoretical and, as a result, there are a number of different models for quantum gravity and the fundamental nature of space and time.  Only in the last decade have experimental advances made it possible to test some of these models and construct a phenomenology.  In this talk we will explain, in a fairly non-technical manner, what goes into a quantum theory of gravity, why models have traditionally been so difficult to test, and aspects of the now rich phenomenology.   As an example, we will concentrate on how new ultra-high energy cosmic ray data can differentiate between models of quantum gravity.

  Reem-Kayden Center  Students presenting:
Emin Atuk, Tedros Balema, Griffin Burke, Kathleen Burke, Desi-Rae Campbell, Kody Chen, Yan Chu, Matt Dalrymple, Tom Delaney, Georgia Doing, Leila Duman, Colyer Durovich, Matthew Greenberg, Sumedha Guha, Asad Hashmi, Emily Hoelzli, Nushrat Hoque, Seoyoung Kim, Muhsin King, Midred Kissai, Julia Les, Lei Lu, Yuexi Ma, Katherine Moccia, Gavin Myers, Van Mai Nguyen Thi, Matthew Norman, Molly North, Nathaniel Oh, Ian Pelse, Linh Pham, Christina Rapti, Joanna Regan, Diana Ruggiero, Iden Sapse, Clara Sekowski, Sabrina Shahid, Min Kyung Shinn, Anuska Shrestha, Eva Shrestha, Shailab Shrestha, Olja Simoska, Ingrid Stolt, Henry Travaglini, Shuyi Weng, Clare Wheeler, Noah Winslow

Advisers: Craig Anderson, Sven Anderson, Paul Cadden-Zimansky, John Cullinan, Olivier Giovannoni, Swapan Jain, Brooke Jude,  Christopher LaFratta, Robert McGrail, Emily McLaughlin, Keith O’Hara, Bruce Robertson, Lauren Rose, Rebecca Thomas

  Bard College Campus 

  Reem-Kayden Center  Students presenting:
Adenike Akapo, Raed, Al-Abbasee Ammar Al-Rubaiay, Perry Anderson, Michael Anzuoni, Jeremy Arnstein, Nina Bar-Giora, Ian Barnett, Brendan Beecher, Abhinanda Bhattarcharyya, Cara Black, Sheneil Black, Laura Bradford, Cameron Brenner, Ross Cameron, Emily Carlson, Matteo Chierchia, Diana Crow, Kierstin Daviau, Jonathan De Wolf, Ha Phuong Do Thi, Katharine Dooley, Alexia Downs, Kimara DuCasse, Amy Eisenmenger, Jose Falla, Margo Finn, Joseph Foy, Prabarna Ganguly, Nabil Hossain, Matthew Hughes, Linda Ibojie, Miles Ingram, Lena James, Blagoy Kaloferov, Sun Bin Kim, Thant Ko Ko, Ruth Lakew, Hsiao-Fang Lin, Sam Link, Amy List, Weiying Liu, Julia Lunsford, Iliana Maifeld-Carucci, Claire Martin, Andres Medina, Jose Mendez, Tiago Moura, Jonathan Naito, Anam Nasim, Rachit Neupane, Mark Neznansky, Jeffrey Pereira, Liana Perry, Anisha Ramnani, Lydia Rebehn, Nolan Reece, Jonah Richard, Loralee Ryan, Perry Scheetz, Joy Sebesta, Erin Smith, Will Smith, Frank Stortini, James Sunderland, Oliver Switzer, Jacqueline Villiers, Weiqing Wang, Jasper Weinrich-Burd, Michael Weinstein, Layla Wolfgang, Fanya Wyrick-Flax, Sara Yilmaz, Anis Zaman, Wancong Zhang, Feifan Zheng

  RKC 111  A lecture by
Andrew Skinner
Candidate for the position in Physics

In the transmon quantum bit, or qubit, current oscillates back and forth between two superconducting islands separated by a Josephson tunnel junction. One expects from conservation of momentum and energy that the switching of the current would cause the substrate to vibrate. These quantized lattice vibrations are known as phonons. For a representative model transmon we derive the phonon emission pattern and numerically integrate the device's corresponding decoherence and relaxation rates.

  Investigation of Coating Effects on Synthetic and Biological Ferrihydrite
RKC 115  A lecture by
Thelma Berquo
Candidate for the position in Physics
I will report on the investigation of interactions of the antiferromagnetic iron oxide ferrihydrite by comparing magnetic properties of synthetic uncoated and coated nanoparticles. Four different coating agents (sugar, alginate, lactate and ascorbate) were employed to prepare sub-samples from the same batch of ferrihydrite, and both magnetic and non-magnetic techniques were used to characterize the samples. I will present results showing that coating agent caused a dramatic change in the magnetic properties of these nanoparticles. In addition, I will show how the results obtained from studying synthetic ferrihydrite can help us to better understand the magnetic properties of Fe microbial mat deposited on hydrothermal vents at Loihi Seamount (Hawaii).

  Hegeman 308  A lecture by
Tristan Hübsch
Professor of Physics, Howard University
Symmetry is recognized throughout nature and our descriptions of it. Mathematically, it requires that varying some quantity results in no observable change: rotate a well-formed clover leaf by 120 degrees, and it looks the same. Supersymmetry is such a transformation, the only one known to guarantee our Universe from decaying into another, and then another, and again, and again. Yet, this transformation maps physical quantities measured in terms of ordinary numbers into quantities measured in numbers that square to zero. The study of this supersymmetry being underway for about half a century, it is surprising that a complete (so-called off-shell) representation theory is only now emerging---and it includes certain binary encryption codes, of the kind used by your browser to insure that the downloaded page is a faithful copy of the original on a web-site! This fascinating syzygy of diverse ideas opens doors to new discoveries in physics, mathematics and encryption alike.
This talk does not assume any advanced background in mathematics or physics.
Refreshments will be served afterwards in the Albee Math Lounge.

  EXTENDED DEADLINE
Applications due Tuesday, April 30

All current students concentrating in biology, chemistry, computer science, mathematics or physics are eligible to apply for a Distinguished Scientist Scholar (DSS) Award. These awards are given to exceptional students who have distinguished themselves academically in one of the above-mentioned disciplines in the division of Science, Mathematics and Computing. The exact amount of each award is determined by the Financial Aid office, on average $5000 for each academic year, and includes the opportunity to apply for a summer research stipend to participate in NSF or NIH sponsored summer research programs at other institutions, if the student is not already eligible for federal funding. Like other science students at Bard, DSS recipients are also eligible for BSRI funding for summer research at Bard. Please note that this is a very competitive process and only a few awards will be given out each year.Eligibility: To apply for a DSS award (commencing in the fall), a student must meet the following eligibility criteria:o   Concentrating in one of the following programs: Biology, Chemistry, Computer Science, Mathematics or Physics.o   Not currently receiving a DSS scholarship or award.o   Cumulative GPA of 3.0 overall in the college.o   Cumulative GPA of 3.5 in courses in the SM&C Division. Application Procedure:o   Write a letter of request to the DSS Committee. The letter should discuss your plan of study in biology, chemistry, computer science, mathematics, and/or physics.o   Write an essay about an experience in science or math that you found particularly interesting.o   Ask two Bard faculty members to write you letters of recommendation. At least one of these faculty members must be in the SM&C Division. They should submit their letters directly to Megan Karcher.o   Submit this information as attachments via e-mail to the SM&C Division secretary, Megan Karcher ([email protected])Selection Criteria:  Awards will be granted to students showing exceptional qualifications in their areas of study and based upon the following:o   College academic records.o   Letters of recommendations from the faculty.o   A strong interest in working in biology, chemistry, computer science, mathematics, or physics.o   Availability of funds.Deadline: Applications must be submitted no later than Friday, April 12th, 2013.The DSS Committee will meet shortly after that, and will make recommendations to the Director of Financial Aid, who will determine the final awards. You should receive word of whether you have been selected to receive a DSS award by early May. Questions?  Contact Sven Anderson, Chair of the Division of Science, Math and Computing, [email protected].

  Website  Anyone who is interested in submitting a scientific research paper or scientific review to be peer-reviewed should send in their submissions to [email protected] by March 1st.

For more details on our submission guidelines, check out our tumblr at bardsciencejournal.tumblr.com or email us and ask for a pdf copy.

Reem-Kayden Center Laszlo Z. Bito '60 Auditorium  A lecture by Paul Cadden-Zimansky, Physics Program

The development of almost all modern technology relies on a firm understanding of the concepts of electricity and magnetism, and these concepts are at the heart of fundamental explanations of most physical phenomena. The historical evolution of these concepts traces back thousands of years and took a number of surprising, unorthodox, and occasionally tragic turns before the rules governing electricity and magnetism were codified. In this talk, intended for a general audience, I'll review some of the key experiments and insights of past centuries that led to our present theories.

Reem-Kayden Center  Students Presenting:
Stephanie Dunn

Adviser: Felicia Keesing

Justin Gero

Adviser: Felicia Keesing

Liza Miller

Adviser: Brooke Jude

Keaton Morris-Stan

Adviser: Philip Johns

Megan Naidoo 

Adviser: Philip Johns

Jonah Peterschild 

Adviser: Felicia Keesing

Damianos Lazaridis Giannopoul

Adviser: John Cullinan

Reem-Kayden Center Laszlo Z. Bito '60 Auditorium  A lecture by
Lucas Illing
Candidate for the position in Physics
Time-delayed coupling and self-feedback occurs in many systems and is particularly important at high speeds, where the time it takes signals to propagate through device components is comparable to the time scale of the signal fluctuations. A fascinating feature of systems with delay is that even seemingly simple devices can show exceedingly complex dynamics such as chaos.  I will talk about the generation of high-speed chaos using optoelectronic time-delayed feedback oscillators and discuss a particularly intriguing form of collective behavior that arises when several such oscillators are coupled to form a network. Under certain conditions the entire network will oscillate in synchrony, in spite of the signal propagation delays in the coupling links.

Reem-Kayden Center Laszlo Z. Bito '60 Auditorium  A lecture by
Emily Gardel
Candidate for the position in Physics
The energy for all forms of life comes from the flow of electrons in energetically favorable pairings of oxidation and reduction reactions. While humans can only use oxygen as an electron acceptor, bacteria have the ability to use a variety of compounds, including solid materials, such as metal oxides. This metabolic diversity makes these micron-sized organisms dominant members of our biosphere and opens possibilities for biotechnological applications, including electricity production, bioremediation, and wastewater treatment. In my research, I focus on bacteria that are capable of transferring electrons outside the bacterial cell to a solid-phase electron acceptor. I will discuss how this phenomenon can be studied by separating the locations of the oxidation and reduction reactions while providing an electrode as an electron acceptor for the bacteria. These microbial fuel cells (MFCs) produce an electrical current and there is interest in understanding the limiting factors governing overall power performance in these systems. Using an environmental MFC, I have found that current production decreases when the system is mass-transfer limited. By allowing the electrode to rest disconnected from electron flow, any necessary nutrients or electron donors diffuse to the bacteria on the electrode and allow for increased current production upon reconnecting the electrode. These findings demonstrate a method for determining an optimal way for operating MFCs used for electricity generation as well as raise additional questions about bacteria-electrode electron transfer.

RKC 111  A lecture by
Neil Switz
Candidate for the position in Physics

  RKC 102  **This lecture has been canceled and will be rescheduled at a later date**

A lecture by
Dilip Asthagiri
Johns Hopkins University
 

Reem-Kayden Center  Students presenting:Michael Anzuoni, Tedros Balema, Amanda Benowitz, Cara Black, Sheneil Black, Max Brown, Celeste Cass, Matteo Chierchia, Nikesh Dahal, Francesca DiRienzo, Leila Duman, Jose Falla, David Goldberg, Sumedha Guha, Nabil Hossain, Linda Ibojie, Lena James, Seoyoung Kim, Thant Ko Ko, Lila Low-Beinart, Yuexi Ma, Keaton Morris-Stan, Mark Neznansky, Matthew Norman, Ian Pelse, Liana Perry, Min Kyung Shinn, Olja Simoska, William Smith, Nathan Steinauer, Xiaohan Sun, James Sunderland, Weiqing Wang, Michael Weinstein, Clare Wheeler, Sara YilmazAdvisers: Craig Anderson, Christian Bracher, John Cullinan, Swapan Jain, Philip Johns, Brooke Jude, Tanay Kesharwani, Christopher LaFratta, Barbara Luka, Emily McLaughlin, Keith O’Hara, Lauren Rose

Hegeman 102  Nicole Ross graduated from RPI in 2011 with a BS in chemical engineering. Her first job was with Schlumberger, “the world’s largest oilfield services company.” She’ll talk about the engineering curriculum and her work experience.

Her talk will be illuminating to students interested in pursuing a degree any field of engineering through the joint programs with Columbia University and Dartmouth College.

Reem-Kayden Center  Graduating Seniors:
Daniela Anderson, Lilah Anderson, Nadya Artiomenco, Conor Beath, Rachel Becker, Jeannette Benham, Matthew Boisvert, Samantha Brechlin, Ke Cai, Nicole Camasso, Curtis Carmony, Deven Connelly, Shellie Ann Dick, Sara Doble, Siyao Du, Madison Fletcher, Briana Franks, Abigail Fuchsman, Kira Gilman, Erin Hannigan, Lucas Henry, Andrew Hoffman-Patalona, Maxwell Howard, Yunxia Jia, Adriana Johnson, Axel Kammerer, Nicole Kfoury, Sankalpa Khadka, Youseung Kim, Sining Leng, Emily Mayer, Stergios Mentesidis, Mariya Mitkova, Samantha Monier, Jessica Philpott, Jega Jananie Ravi, Laura Schubert, Lindsey Scoppetta, Evan Seitchik, Hannah Shapero, Abhimanyu Sheshashayee, Eli Sidman, Gabriella Spitz, Veronica Steckler, Joshua Tanner, Emma Taylor-Salmon, Isabelle Taylor, Giang Tran, Will Wisseman, Kimberly Wood, Zhiwei Wu, Dimin Xu, Jing Yang, Yongqing Yuan, Changwei Zhou

Hegeman 308  Joshua Bowman
SUNY Stony Brook
Flat surfaces (such as a cube or tetrahedron with the vertices removed) show up in a variety of mathematical areas. Their structure can be studied using Delaunay triangles, which in most cases are uniquely determined by the surface. As a surface is deformed, its Delaunay triangles change, and the way in which they change can give us a surprising amount of information about the surface. The only prerequisites for this talk are knowing what a
2x2 matrix is, and a certain level of comfort with abstract constructions.

  Hegeman 308  A lecture by
Jan Cameron
Vassar College
Though the terminology may be unfamiliar, you have certainly seen a maximal abelian self-adjoint subalgebra (masa) of the complex matrices in your linear algebra course: the algebra of diagonal matrices. The notion of orthogonality for a pair of masas in M_n(C) is simple to describe, but surprisingly deep and relates to many areas of mathematics. In this talk, we'll consider the fascinating and important open problem of nding complete sets of pairwise orthogonal masas in the n x n complex matrices. We'll look at a few dierent ways to think about the problem, as well as why one might be interested in a solution, and an assortment of related questions. If time permits, I'll talk a bit about how orthogonal masas have come up in current research on structure theory of nite von Neumann algebras.This talk will be accessible to anyone who has had a course in linear algebra

  Hegeman 308  Kristin Camenga
Department of Mathematics
Houghton College
Most people remember working with polyhedra in elementary and high school: cubes, prisms, tetrahedra, pyramids, etc. Euler's formula states that if V is the number of vertices, E the number of edges and F the number of faces of a polyhedron, V + F = E + 2. This is a beautiful and useful formula - but can't we do more? Can we get a similar theorem if we change some of our hypotheses? How does Euler's formula change if we allow polyhedra to be in dimension 4 or 5 or n? What if we look at angles of polyhedra instead of the number of faces? We will look at a number of examples as we generalize Euler's formula in these directions and others. We will end with a glimpse of open questions about angles in polytopes. No specific math background will be assumed, but curiosity is expected!

  Hegeman 308  James Belk
Mathematics Program
Bard College
A fractal is a mathematical shape that exhibits the same structure at a range of different scales. Among the most famous fractals are the Julia sets, which arise in a simple way from polynomials and complex numbers. In this talk, I will introduce Julia sets and discuss some of their basic properties. I will then indicate a connection between Julia sets and certain groups of functions on the unit circle. This talk should be accessible to students who have taken Proofs and Fundamentals. Some familiarity with groups would be helpful, but is not necessary.

  Hegeman 308  A lecture by
John Cullinan
Mathematics Program

The Legendre Polynomials are orthogonal polynomials that have deep connections to mathematical physics. For example, they arise when solving the Laplace equation in spherical coordinates. It is also the case that the Legendre Polynomials are extensively studied for their number-theoretic properties. In this talk we will describe some of these properties as well as discuss some open questions surrounding the Legendre Polynomials. This talk should be accessible to students who are currently taking Proofs and Fundamentals (though some group theory will be used at the end).

**MATH TEA**The weekly Math Tea will immediately follow the seminar.  Join us for tea and refreshments at 4:30 in the Albee 3rd floor Math Lounge.

Hegeman 102  A lecture by
Pete Setaro
Morris Associates, Poughkeepsie, NY

Reem-Kayden Center  Students presenting:
Soloman Garber
Yulia Genkina
Nabil Hossain
Anirban Joy

Reem-Kayden Center Laszlo Z. Bito '60 Auditorium  A lecture by
David Coffey
Candidate for the position in Physics
Within the grand search for greener energy sources, several new classes of solar cells are being pursued. One particularly attractive candidate is the organic solar cell, which one day might be printed as easily and cheaply as newspapers are today. However, the same properties that give this promise of easy manufacturing lead to extreme material disorder in current devices. As a result, discovering the physics mechanisms operating in these solar cells remains an area of intense research. In this talk I will describe recent efforts to gain this fundamental understanding including, 1) building new microscopes that can map the efficiency of these solar cells with extremely high resolution, 2) determining surface engineering techniques to control nanoscale structuring, and 3) designing organic solar cells so simple that even physicists can understand them.

Reem-Kayden Center Laszlo Z. Bito '60 Auditorium  A lecture by
Soren Konecky
Candidate for the position in Physics
Optical methods involving light scattering, spectroscopy, and imaging are ubiquitous in the study of materials ranging from dilute samples of atoms or molecules, to condensed media such as metals, semiconductors, and complex fluids.   They are also integral tools in biology and medicine, as they allow us to study both the morphology and molecular composition of living organisms.  However, more than a few hundred microns beneath the surface, optical methods which rely on ballistic light transport cannot be used to examine biological tissues, because all of the light that interrogates tissues at these depths is scattered multiple times. Accordingly, my research involves the development of new instrumentation and analytical methods to quantitatively determine the spatially varying optical properties of highly scattering media from measurements of multiply scattered light. This branch of optics is often referred to as “diffuse optics,” due to the fact that under certain conditions multiply scattered light propagates in a manner analogous to diffusion. Almost all biological processes and disease occur beneath the surface, and optical techniques have the potential to study them non-invasively, quantitatively, with high temporal and/or spatial resolution, and at low cost. For this reason, the study of diffuse optics is not only of fundamental interest, but also of great practical importance.  In this seminar I will begin with a basic overview of diffuse optics.  I will go on to describe my work developing Fourier domain and hyperspectral methods for diffuse optics, and how I am applying these methods to image brain function and disease.

Reem-Kayden Center Laszlo Z. Bito '60 Auditorium  A lecture by
Peter Skiff
Physics Program
The discovery of an unexpected acceleration of the expansion of the cosmos led to the awarding of the 2011 Nobel Prize to Saul Perlmutter, Brian Schmidt, and Adam Reiss. While cosmic expansion (the continuous separation of galaxies and clusters) is neatly described by the use of Einstein’s General Theory of Relativity and Gravity, this acceleration is not (quite).  The most popular of the current speculations involves a mysterious “dark energy” that was somehow lurking undetected in the13.5 billion year old cosmos until about 7 billion years after the origin, inflation, and “big bang” events began the evolutionary track.  Apparently this dark energy comprises about 75% of the total matter and energy of the universe.  This talk will review the expansion models and the techniques used to measure the galactic motions that led to this discovery, including the theory and observation of type Ia Supernovae. It will be descriptive (no mathematics), in order to be accessible to a general audience.

Reem-Kayden Center Laszlo Z. Bito '60 Auditorium  **PLEASE NOTE ROOM CHANGE
LECTURE BEING HELD IN RKC AUDITORIUM**

A lecture by
Paul Cadden-Zimansky
Candidate for the position in Physics
From its isolation in 2004 to last year's Nobel Prize, the impressive material properties of graphene have been widely touted: it's a single atom thick, stronger than steel, a better conductor than copper, and more transparent than glass. But what has intrigued many condensed matter physicists is the unusual charge carriers that can exist in graphene, particularly when it is subjected to high magnetic fields. These "particles" that inhabit graphene's two-dimensional universe can be relativistic, have fractional charge or multiple spins, and may even obey new types of quantum statistics. This talk will present recent experiments demonstrating some of these properties, and explain why the topological nature of these high-field carriers make them a potential building block for quantum computation.

  RKC 111  4:45
Sankalpa Khadka 

5:00
Zhiwei Wu

5:15
Kimberly Wood 

5:30
Siyao Du

5:45
Joy Sebesta

RKC 111  **ROOM CHANGE
LECTURE BEING HELD IN RKC 111**

A lecture by
Nathan Ryan
Department of Mathematics
Bucknell University
The distribution of the primes among the positive integers has long fascinated mathematicians. In this talk I will discuss this distribution and describe some of its surprising characteristics.

  RKC 111  4:45
Dimin Xu 

5:00
Changwei Zhou 

5:15
Yunxia Jia 

5:30
Yongqing Yuan 

5:45
Youseung Kim

  RKC 101  4:45
Mariya Mitkova

5:00
Ke Cai 

5:15
Zana Tran 

5:30
Adriana Johnson 

5:45
Jeanette Benham

Hegeman 102  James Minter, from the Office of Undergraduate Admissions at Columbia, will speak about the different combined programs in engineering.

  RKC 111  4:45
Stergios Mentesidis

5:00
Lindsey Scoppetta

5:15
Evan Seitchik

5:30
Yuan Xu

RKC 111  A lecture by
Kerri-Ann Norton, '04
Department of BioMedical Engineering
Johns Hopkins School of Medicine
Breast cancer is one if the leading causes of cancer deaths in women. While breast cancer is a dynamic disease that may change morphology (shape) over time and depending on its placement within the tissue, diagnosis of the disease is usually accomplished by examining 2D slices of stained breast tissue and assigning the sample a grade and morphology. Unfortunately, the correlation between grade (a way of evaluating how irregular the nuclei look) and patient outcome is poor, depends on details of the classification method used, and is complicated by the frequent presence of multiple morphologies within a single sample. Here, I show two examples of how using mathematical biology provides insights into
the mechanisms that drive the disease and provides possible explanations for the difficulties in correlating morphology with patient outcome. Specifically, I use mathematical modeling techniques to study the progression of breast cancer over time under different cellular conditions and I use image processing to visualize the 3D morphology of breast cancer as compared to corresponding 2D slices. I find that differences in breast cancer morphology can result from different cancers with different cellular features or from cancers with the same cellular features at different time-points. I also find that early breast cancers with similar morphologies in 2D exhibit very different 3D morphologies. This work demonstrates the benefits of using mathematical and computational tools for studying cancer.

  RKC 101  Michael L. Frank
President & Actuary, Aquarius Capital

Michael Frank is the founder and president of Aquarius Capital.  He is a health and life actuary with twenty four (24) years of experience, including executive management experience with insurance, reinsurance, employee benefits consulting and managed care entities. His company provides financial and management consulting to a variety of organizations including insurance companies, investment bankers, reinsurers, HMOs, managed care organizations, hospitals, disease management, third-party administrators, accounting firms, private equity funds, Fortune 500 companies and other organizations servicing  the insurance/reinsurance industry in the US and internationally.

RKC lobby  Students participating:
Raed Al Abassee, Tedros Balema, Sheneil Black, Ke Cai, Nicole Camasso, Abhishek Dev, Erin Hannigan, Nabil Hossain, 
Matt Hughes, Nicole Kfoury, Youseung Kim, Thant Ko Ko, Brian Liu, Andres Medina, Jonathan Naito, Jessica Philpott, Eric Reed, Laura Schubert, Eva Shrestha, Nathaniel Steinaur, Joshua Tanner, Isabelle Taylor, Jasper Weinrich-Burd, Michael Weinstein, Will Wisseman, Dimin Xu, Yongqing Yuan, Feifan Zheng

RKC 111  A lecture by
Georgi Gospodinov
Bard College
Knot theory is central to low-­‐dimensional topology and has many applications to physics, chemistry, biology, etc. We study knots up to isotopies, i.e., deformations that do not tear the knot or pass it through itself. So isotopic knots are thought of as the same. The question arises, given two knots, how can we tell if they are isotopic or not? Knot invariants are functions that assign an object (usually an algebraic object such as a number, a polynomial or a more complicated structure) to a knot. We use knot invariants to detect knots that are different, by studying the algebraic objects associated with the knots.

RKC 111  A lecture by
Laurence A. Marschall
Professor of Physics, Gettysburg College

Until 1995, we knew of no solar systems like our own in the universe. Yet in the past few years nearly 500 planets have been discovered orbiting stars other than our Sun using telescopes here on Earth, and, in early 2011 NASA  announced the discovery of more than 1000 planets discovered from the orbiting  Kepler mission. In this presentation I'll describe how this sudden flood of discoveries came about, explore some of the oddest and most noteworthy new worlds that have been investigated so far, and review what we have learned about the structure and history of our own planetary system from observing these far more distant planets.

Hegeman 107 (main Physics Lab)  Physics Phriday (definition): A monthly gathering of Physics-interested people to eat snacks, talk Physics, and get to know each other.

Snacks will be provided

RKC lobby 

Reem-Kayden Center  Students presenting:
Thomas Anderson, Gregory Backus, Lionel Barrow, Julia Bennett, Alexandra Carver, Sebastien Cendron, Adam Chodoff, Sara Director, Elena Dragomir, Anastassia Etropolski, Margo Finn, Alexandros Fragkopoulos, Zoe Johnson-Ulrich, Melanie Kenney, Robert Kittler, Bella Manoim, Travis McGrath, Leandra Merola, Jules Moreau de Balasy, Olivia Nathanson, Angela Potenza, Nazmus Saquib, Madeline Schatzberg, Benjamin Selfridge, Erik Shagdar, Lisa Silber, Nathan Smith, Abigail Stevens, Adina-Raluca Stoica, Jacqueline Stone, Maksim Tsikhanovich, Zhexiu Tu, Regina Vaicekonyte, Stavros Velissaris, Michael Walker, Anshul Zota

  RKC 111  A lecture by
Jan Cameron
Vassar College
In this talk we will introduce the field of operator algebras, currently one of the most exciting and widely applicable areas of mathematics. Our main objects of study are collections of linear transformations on vector spaces with special properties. Operator algebras possess both a rich algebraic structure, and a meaningful notion of distance, and as such have seen many natural connections to fields as diverse as signal analysis, geometry, group theory, and dynamical systems. We won’t cover all this ground; but we will look at a few of the most important examples of operator algebras, and conclude, if time permits, with a glimpse at some current research problems.

  RKC 111  A lecture by
Japheth Wood
MAT program and Math Circle
Bard College
Nim is an impartial combinatorial game with a long history and a mathematical theory. Jim (short for Japheth's Nim) is also an impartial combinatorial game that was invented by the speaker in February 2011! In this interactive math circle talk, participants learn how to play both Nim and Jim, and develop strategies that lead to a full understanding of the mathematical theory of both games. This talk will assume no mathematical or scientific background, and is open to all Bard students.

  RKC 111  A lecture by
Marisa Hughes
Cornell University

A manifold is a space that locally "looks like" Rn.  The surface of the earth, for example, is a 2-manifold.  In times past, our civilization was unable to distinguish this surface from the side of a cube; sailors feared that they may sail off the edge of the earth.  In this talk, we will discuss what life would be like in other 2-manifolds and venture into higher dimensions.  We will then begin folding these manifolds along certain symmetries to get a new (and often stranger) spaces.  What do these spaces look like?  How can we, as mathematicians, quantify the properties of life in a quotient space?

RKC 111  A lecture by
Ethan Bloch
Mathematics Program
Morse theory is an important tool in the study of smooth manifolds, which are the higher-dimensional analogs of surfaces. For example, Morse Theory is used in the proof of the higher-dimensional Poincare Conjecture. The idea of Morse Theory is to analyze a manifold by looking at the critical points of smooth maps from the manifold to the real numbers. This talk will provide an elementary introduction to the basic idea of Morse theory, and will discuss some recent analogs of Morse theory in polyhedral and combinatorial settings.


This talk should be accessible to students who have taken Calculus III.

  All current students concentrating in biology, chemistry, computer science, mathematics or physics are eligible to apply for a Distinguished Scientist Scholar (DSS) Award. These awards are given to exceptional students who have distinguished themselves academically in one of the disciplines in the division of Science, Mathematics and Computing. Please note that this is a very competitive process and only a few awards will be given out each year.  To apply for a DSS award (commencing in the fall), a student must meet the following eligibility criteria:
o   Concentrating in one of the programs in the SM&C Division (Biology, Chemistry, Computer Science, Mathematics or Physics). o   Not currently receiving a DSS scholarship or award.o   Cumulative GPA of 3.0 overall in the college. o   Cumulative GPA of 3.5 in courses in the SM&C Division.

For complete application guidelines, please see the attached document.



Download: DSS application memo 11-12.pdf

  Reem-Kayden Center Laszlo Z. Bito '60 Auditorium  Chemistry
Making the Connections – The 2010 Nobel Prize in Chemistry Palladium Catalyzed Carbon-Carbon Coupling   The formation of carbon-carbon bonds has been a challenge that, for many years, only nature has been able to accomplish effectively. With the ability to assemble carbon-containing molecules into more complex structures, a multitude of new materials and biologically active compounds can be prepared.   This year’s Nobel Prize in Chemistry has been awarded to Richard F. Heck, Ei-ichi Negishi and Akira Suzuki for their development of and contributions toward the field of transition-metal promoted reactions to create new carbon-carbon bonds.Lecture  by Emily McLaughlin
Chemistry Program Physics
“for groundbreaking experiments regarding the
two-dimensional material graphene”
Awarded to Andre Geim and Konstantin Novoselov  
Andre Geim and Konstantin Novoselov were awarded the 2010 Nobel Prize in physics for “producing, identifying and characterizing graphene”, a sheet of carbon atoms arranged in hexagons. Since Geim and Novoselov revealed their absurdly simple method for making graphene in 2004, thousands of papers about this material have been published. Graphene’s two-dimensionality gives rise to unusual properties of fundamental and practical interest, including its electrical conductivity, strength and flexibility. In this talk, we’ll take a look at how graphene was made and characterized and some of its significant properties.Lecture by Simeen Sattar
Physics Program 

RKC 111  A lecture by
Sinan Gunturk
Courant Institute of Mathematical Sciences, New York UniversityA fair duel is a mathematical abstraction that seeks infinite binary sequences which are highly balanced in a certain universal sense. This talk will present the origin of this problem, how some classical sequences fare as attempts to solve it, and the current best solution that is inspired by a signal processing algorithm.

  RKC 111  Ben Selfridge
4:45

Lexi Carver
5:00

Nathan Smith
5:15

Zhexiu Tu
5:30

Diana Khaburzaniya
5:45

  RKC 111  Lionel Barrow
4:45

Alexandros Fragkopoulus
5:00

Jules Moreau
5:15

Greg Backus
5:30

Madeleine Schatzberg
5:45

  RKC 111  A lecture by
Ursula Whitcher
Harvey Mudd College
The mathematical field of mirror symmetry was inspired by an observation made by string theorists: different candidates for the shape of the extra dimensions of the universe yield the same observable physics.  We will describe pairs of "mirror" universes using geometric figures such as polygons, polyhedra, and their higher-dimensional analogues, polytopes.

Reem-Kayden Center Laszlo Z. Bito '60 Auditorium  A lecture by
Philip Johns
Biology ProgramOne of the most elegant ideas in evolution is the notion that organisms cooperate with relatives because relatives share genes. Mutations that lead to relatives cooperating can spread through populations even if the altruistic individuals do not themselves leave offspring. This process is called kin selection. It is difficult to overstate how influential this idea has been over the last half century.  But in the last 15 years modern genetics revealed that some of the most impressive examples of animal cooperation -- eusocial insects with sterile working castes -- involve animals that are not necessarily closely related. In fact, in some groups, cooperating animals may be unrelated.  In August, Martin Nowak, Corina Tarnita, and Edward Wilson published a model explaining how relatedness, per se, is not necessary for the evolution of eusociality.  This paper is enormously controversial.  Fifty prominent scientists have reportedly signed a letter protesting its publication in Nature.  In this talk, we discuss the elements of the model and why it is so controversial.  

  RKC 111  Julia Bennett
4:45

Jackie Stone
5:00

Travis McGrath
5:15

Adam Chodoff
5:30

Anastassia Etropolski
5:45

  RKC 111  A lecture by
John Cullinan
Mathematics Program
Given a polynomial in two variables F(x,t), if we substitute a constant for t then we are left with a one-variable polynomial. This is called a specialization of F(x,t). What algebraic or number-theoretic information about F(x,t) can be deduced from its specializations? Using simple examples as motivation, we'll discuss irreducibility and Galois properties of polynomials. These examples will allow us to state some of the deepest conjectures in number theory. Some exposure to abstract algebra will be helpful, but is not necessary.

  RKC 111  A lecture by
Sam Hsiao
Mathematics Program

The Catalan numbers, a famous sequence beginning with 1, 1, 2, 5, 14, 42, . . .
(can you guess the pattern?), appear as the solution to a dizzying array of counting problems. I will discuss a few of the many different interpretations and uses of the Catalan numbers, including their connections to ballot counts and the drunkard's walk. While this talk will be elementary, familiarity with Taylor series will be helpful.

RKC lobby 

RKC lobby  Come to the Science, Mathematics & Computing Division
ICE CREAM SOCIAL
Stop by to ask questions about courses being offered or find out more about majoring in the programs.  Faculty members from each program will be there to answer questions.

  Reem-Kayden Center  Students presenting:Erik Badger
Oni Banks
Jacqueline Bow
Alex Carlin
Aleksandar Chakarov
Cedric Cogell
Joseph Corey
Ivelina Darvenyashka
Jyoti Dev
Tessa Dowling
Jacob Ezerski
Sarah Farell
Jonathan Fivelsdal
Wui Ming Gan
Jun Harada
Xian He
Sam Israel
Nina Jankovic
Liz Jimenez-Martinez
Huaizhou Jin
Emanuel Krantz
Leah Ladner
Shun-Yang Lee
Hannah Liddy
Jason Mastbaum
Robert McNevin
Alison Mutter
David Polett
Hannah Quay-de la Vallee
Adrita Rahman
Viriya Ratansangpunth
Che Ruisi-Besares
Dale Simmons
Fang Song
Petar Stojanov
Corinna Troll
Alexandru Vladoi
Nicholas Wilton
Yu Wu
William Wylie
Xinyuan Xu

Campus Center, Multipurpose Room  A lecture by
Mark A. Cane
G. Unger Vetlesen Professor of Earth and Climate Sciences
Professor of Applied Mathematics and Applied Physics
Columbia University
In this talk, we will take a tour of some of the impacts of climate variations on human history, beginning with the origins of agriculture in the Middle East. We will consider historical droughts in North America, especially the Dustbowl drought of the 1930s, and then examine the analogous but more severe droughts some seven centuries earlier and their possible role in the demise of the Anasazi. Ideas about the physical climate mechanisms responsible for these droughts will be presented. We will consider the modern and ongoing drought in the Sahel region of northern Africa, and its impact on Darfur, before taking up the projections of drought in the warming world ahead of us. Mark Cane is the G. Unger Vetlesen Professor of Earth and Climate Sciences in Department of Earth and Environmental Sciences and Department of Applied Physics and Applied Mathematics at Columbia University, where he also holds joint appointment in the International Research Institute for Climate and Society (IRI) and serves as a member of the IRI's International Science and Technical Advisory Committee. With his colleague Dr. Stephen Zebiak, Mark devised the first numerical model able to simulate El Niño and the Southern Oscillation (ENSO), a pattern of interannual climate variability centered in the tropical Pacific but with global consequences. His current research is focused on the variations in the paleoclimate record, especially abrupt changes, and on the impact of climate variability on human activities, especially agriculture and health. 

  RKC 111  A lecture by
Bradley Forrest
Stockton College

We will explore Yes-No voting systems, systems where voters are choosing between only two options, for example when a bill or amendment is pitted against the status quo. Four specific real world Yes-No voting systems will be discussed: the UN Security Council, the European Economic Community (now the EU), the legislative branch of the U.S. Federal Government, and the procedure to amend the Canadian constitution. These voting systems highlight several interesting properties of Yes-No voting systems that we will investigate in detail.

  RKC 111  A lecture by
Matthew Deady
Physics Program
You hear an airplane passing overhead, you look for it and realize the sound is coming from a different place than where you see the plane. This is due to the fact that the speed of sound is much less than the speed of light. So, one could ask, when do you first hear a plane?

Answering this question using simple calculus gives insights into wave propagation and reception, and a different way to understand the phenomenon of sonic booms. The physics and mathematics of sonic booms and related phenomena will be presented, including applications to the detection of particles in particle physics experiments.

Reem-Kayden Center Laszlo Z. Bito '60 Auditorium  A Science on the Edge lecture by
Philip Johns
Biology program
The Y chromosome is the chromosome that determines the development of males in humans and most other mammals.  It is a small chromosome with very few genes. Evolutionary biologists have hypothesized the causes of its "degenerate" evolution.  One prediction of how Y chromosomes degenerate is that the genes on Y chromosomes should evolve slowly.  In a recent study titled, "Chimpanzee and human Y chromosomes are remarkably divergent in structure and gene content", Jennifer Hughes and her colleagues at MIT found that, contrary to expectations, genes on the Y chromosome have evolved incredibly quickly since humans and chimps diverged. We will discuss recent human evolution, how scientists have used the Y chromosome to make startling discoveries about humans in the past, and what the implications are that the Y chromosome is evolving as quickly as it is.

  RKC 111  A lecture by
Jim Pivarski
Texas A&M University
The Large Hadron Collider (LHC) is a 17-mile circumference circular accelerator, in which two beams of protons (which are “hadrons”) collide with each other at the highest energies ever achieved in a laboratory.  It has received more media attention than most physics projects -- why is this experiment important, and what is it for?  That question could be answered many different ways, but I will present it in the context of the central story of the quest to understand what matter is: from electromagnetism to quantum field theory, the Standard Model, the search for the Higgs boson, and super-symmetry (time permitting).  Equal weight will be given to theoretical motivations and experimental techniques.

Reem-Kayden Center Laszlo Z. Bito '60 Auditorium  A lecture by
Dr. Mukhles Sowwan
Al Quds University

In this talk I will speak about the international collaborative science project SESAME Synchrotron-light for Experimental Science and Applications in the Middle East. SESAME is being developed under the umbrella of UNESCO and is modeled closely on CERN. The first beam line will be operational in 2012. Several hundred scientists from the region and other parts of the world are expected to use this facility, which will cover disciplines ranging from archaeology to the medical sciences and nanotechnology. The members of SESAME are Bahrain, Cyprus, Egypt, Iran, Israel, Palestinian Authority, Jordan, Pakistan, and Turkey. This makes SESAME a unique multidisciplinary center in this part of the world. In addition, I will talk about the Nanotechnology Research at Al-Quds University, and my views on science and politics, and international collaboration, in a volatile environment like the Middle East.

Reem-Kayden Center Laszlo Z. Bito '60 Auditorium  THIS EVENT HAS BEEN CANCELED.
A re-schedule date will be announced 
A Science on the Edge lecture by
William Maple
Biology program
Charles Darwin, Thomas Huxley and hundreds of biologists, paleontologists and anthropologists throughout the 19th and 20th centuries confronted the question of human origins without adequate fossil evidence. The similarity of apes and humans was clear but the links were missing. Even as more fossil, anatomical and biochemical evidence illuminated ape-human relationships, the mystery remained of accounting for the evolution of typical hominid bipedal locomotion from the knuckle-walking and arboreal locomotion of the African apes. The last 100 years of hominid fossil discoveries gradually pushed the age of our ancestry back to as much as 3+ million years (Australopithecus), but all were terrestrial bipeds. The discovery in the Ethiopian Afar Rift region of fragments (including a partial female skeleton) of a hominid now known as Ardipithecus ramidus clearly (at least to some) suggests a species that moved with both ape-like climbing and human-like bipedality. Recovery of other fossil vertebrates, invertebrates and plants in the same site clarified the ecological habitat as patchy forest.

The elucidation of the place of Ardipithecus in hominid evolution was named breakthrough of the year by Science Magazine.

RKC lobby  Students presenting:
Denise Feng
Adviser: Michael Tibbetts

Genevieve Howell
Adviser: William Maple

Paul Jordan
Advisers: Craig Anderson and Michael Tibbetts

Paul McLaughlin
Adviser: James Belk

Sarah Mount
Adviser: Catherine O'Reilly

Jacob Pooler
Adviser: Peter Skiff

Wyatt Shell
Adviser: Philip Johns

Sarah Wegener
Adviser: William Maple

Yi Xiao
Adviser: Michael Tibbetts

Reem-Kayden Center Laszlo Z. Bito '60 Auditorium  2009 Nobel Prizes

Swapan Jain
lecturing on the Chemistry prize
Awarded to Venkatraman Ramakrishnan, Thomas A. Steitz, and Ada E. Yonath
"for studies of the structure and function of the ribosome"

Michael Tibbetts
lecturing on the Physiology or Medicine prize
Awarded to Elizabeth H. Blackburn, Carol W. Greider, and Jack W. Szostak
"for the discovery of how chromosomes are protected by telomeres and the enzyme telomerase"

Christian Bracher
lecturing on the Physics prize
Awarded to Willard S. Boyle and George E. Smith
"for the invention of an imaging semiconductor circuit - the CCD sensor"

Reem-Kayden Center Laszlo Z. Bito '60 Auditorium  Molecular Shapes and Molecular Interactions:
Insights from Infrared Spectroscopy

A lecture by
Timothy Vaden
Candidate for the position in Chemistry

Reem-Kayden Center Laszlo Z. Bito '60 Auditorium  Watching Rust Dissolve:
Ultrafast X-Ray Absorption Measurements of the Reductive Dissolution of Iron Oxide Nanoparticles

A lecture by
Jordan Katz
Candidate for the position in Chemistry
The reduction of Fe(III) is one of the most important chemical changes that takes place in the development of anaerobic soils and sediments, and the reductive dissolution of iron-bearing minerals by microbes plays a critical role in this process. Despite its importance in biogeochemistry, many questions remain about the mechanism of this electron transfer reaction, in part because the speed of the fundamental chemical steps renders them inaccessible to conventional study. Ultrafast time-resolved x-ray spectroscopy is a technique that can overcome this limitation and measure changes in oxidation state and structure occurring during chemical reactions that can be initiated by a fast laser pulse. We use this approach with ~100 ps resolution to monitor the speciation of Fe atoms in maghemite nanoparticles following photo-induced electron transfer from a surface-bound photoactive dye molecule.

Reem-Kayden Center Laszlo Z. Bito '60 Auditorium  Creating Devices and Performing Analyses at the Micro-Scale
A lecture by
Christopher LaFratta
Candidate for the position in Chemistry

RKC 111  A seminar by
Jenny Magnes
Vassar College
Physics department
We have shown that shapes representing functions can be opto-mechanically integrated and re-produced. This method involves linear opto-mechanical scanning. We show that angular opto-mechanical scanning can be used to classify shapes by symmetry groups. This information can then be used to identify objects mathematically based on their symmetries. Applications lie in the fields of psychology, quality control, and surveillance. 

Reem-Kayden Center 

RKC lobby  "Ice cream is happiness condensed"
-Jessi Lane Adams


Come to the Science, Mathematics & Computing Division
ICE CREAM SOCIAL

Stop by to ask questions about courses being offered or find out more about majoring in the programs.  Faculty members from each program will be there to answer questions.

Reem-Kayden Center, Room 101  A seminar by
John B. Ferguson
Health Professions Advisor

Reem-Kayden Center Laszlo Z. Bito '60 Auditorium  A lecture by
Sandy Simon
Laboratory of Cellular Biophysics
Rockefeller University
Most studies in biology focus on the "averaged" behavior. Either the average behavior of a molecule (which we study by its biochemical activity), the average behavior of a cell (which we study by its physiology) or the average behavior of an individual (which we study by population dynamics). However, important lessons can be learned from studying single events. Examples will be given from our work on a number of projects ranging from studying single HIV viruses as they assemble, single vesicles as they are release by a cell to signal or internalized into a cell, single cells as they die and single tumor cells as they metastasize through the body. 

  RKC pod 222  A chance to do homework, get help with your classes, eat pizza and socialize with your professors & fellow biology students!TuesdaysRKC POD 2227 p.m. 

RKC lobby  Join us in celebrating our graduating seniors as they present posters outlining their work.

RKC lobby  Join us in celebrating our graduating seniors as they present posters outlining their work.

RKC lobby  Students presenting:

Algebraic & Symbolic Computation Laboratory
Adviser: Robert McGrail
Jacqueline Bow
Aleksandar Chakarov
Bella Manoim
Georgi Smilyanov
Adina-Raluca Stoica
Petar Stojanov

Biology Independent Research Students
Advisers: Ken Howard, Philip Johns & Michael Tibbetts
Elena Dragomir
Rosa Levin
Jessica Philpott
Jega Jananie Ravi
Hannagh Shapero
Ilya Smirnoff
Rachel Steinhorn

Math Independent Research Students
Advisers: James Belk, Maria Belk & Lauren Rose
Julia Bennett
Adam Chodoff
Liz Jimenez-Martinez

Tropical Ecology class
Adviser: Catherine O'Reilly
Erik Badger
Tessa Dowling
Genevieve Howell
Allison James
Hannah Liddy
Chantal Ludder
Elizabeth Lund
Sarah Mount
Loralee Ryan
Wyatt Shell
Marta Shocket

  RKC 111  Serena Randolph
4:15 p.m.

Tina Zhang
4:40 p.m.

Scott McMillen
5:05 p.m.

  RKC 111  Nicholas Michaud
4:15 p.m.

Sylvia Naples
4:40 p.m.

Tomasz Przytycki
5:05 p.m.

Zhechao Zhou
5:30 p.m.

Reem-Kayden Center Laszlo Z. Bito '60 Auditorium  Young Eun Choi
"Developing a reversible and cell-specific system for inhibiting
protein synthesis in C. elegans"

Trillian Gregg
"Development of a Novel Method of Macromolecule Delivery into Cells"

  RKC pod 222  A chance to do homework, get help with your classes, eat pizza and socialize with your professors & fellow biology students!TuesdaysRKC POD 2227 p.m. 

  RKC 111  Mona Merling
4:15 p.m.

Ezra Winston
4:40 p.m.

Dexin Zhou
5:05 p.m.

RKC 111  A lecture by
Megumi Harada
McMaster UniversityThe motivation for symplectic geometry comes from classical physics, but the modern theory is related to many other areas of mathematics (not just physics) such as combinatorics, representation theory, topology, algebraic geometry, and many others. I will give a "mosaic" glimpse of this exciting field of research by briefly discussing the following inter-related topics, all of which appear (in one way or another) in my current work: 1) From classical physics to symplectic geometry: the magic of Hamiltonians;2) Horn's problem: how linear algebra and symplectic geometry yield polytopes and combinatorics;3) Getting topology out of a function: a bit of Morse theory;and finally, time permitting, I will say a few words about how the themes (1)--(3) come together  in my current work on the study of the topology of hyperKahler Hamiltonian quotients. 

  RKC pod 222  A chance to do homework, get help with your classes, eat pizza and socialize with your professors & fellow biology students!TuesdaysRKC POD 2227 p.m. 

Laszlo Z. Bito Auditorium-RKC  A lecture by
Kathy Corrado
Director, Onondaga County Crime Lab
Forensic DNA analysis is used extensively in criminal investigations to either associate or exonerate individuals from leaving their DNA at crime scenes. The Director of the Onondaga County Crime Lab in Syracuse NY will provide insight into the real life workings of a forensic DNA lab including the types of evidence typically encountered, current technologies being utilized in the field, the significance of DNA matches, and examples of interesting cases. The benefits and concerns of the use and expansion of forensic DNA databases will also be discussed. 

  RKC pod 222  A chance to do homework, get help with your classes, eat pizza and socialize with your professors & fellow biology students!TuesdaysRKC POD 2227 p.m. 

RKC 111  A lecture by
Catherine O'Reilly
Biology program
and
Simeen Sattar
Chemistry program
In February, NASA launched a rocket on a mission to deploy a new satellite. The rocket malfunctioned, sending the satellite, in development for the past 9 years and part of $273 million dollar system, into the ocean. The rocket was carrying the NASA's new Orbiting Carbon Observatory, a satellite intended to assess carbon dioxide concentrations in the atmosphere. The information from this satellite would have helped researchers understand the distribution of this greenhouse gas, providing data to improve climate models and insights into the 'missing carbon sink'.

RKC 111  A lecture by
Gidon Eshel
Physics program
I will first review the concept of stability in the context of variance maintenance by dynamical systems, starting in 1-D and working our way to N-D. I will provide numerous examples, both analytic (i.e., with no physical relevance) and  from physically realizable system such as the jet stream or Spotted Owl survival in response to conservation efforts. I will discuss two methods of obtaining dynamical system's governing linear operator: (1) using analytic linearization of non-linear operators (with the examples of mid-latitude perturbations on the jet, and the Lotka-Volterra equations of population dynamics; and (2) data-based (empirical) derivation using covariance of strobed states. I will then introduce normality (self-adjointness), discuss time-scales, and emphasize the distinction between asymptotic and transient stability. I will conclude with the complete solution of the stability problem, a solution comprising both eigen analysis (and thus asymptotic stability) and Singular value Decomposition of finite time propagators (addressing transient stability).

  RKC 111  A lecture by
Harry Mairson
Brandeis University

 Static program analysis is a form of predicting the future: it's what a compiler does to predict the behavior of your program, so that at run-time, the compiled version of your code runs faster or better.

Control flow analysis (CFA) is a canonical form of static program analysis performed by compilers, where the answers to questions like "can call site X ever call procedure P?" or "can procedure P ever be called with argument A?" are used to optimize procedure calls. In the interest of compile-time tractability, these questions are answered approximately, possibly including false positives. Much experimental work has been done on flow analysis. Here we describe, instead, some analytic characterizations of how hard CFA is.

Different versions of CFA are parameterized by their sensitivity to calling contexts. We show that the simplest version of CFA, called 0CFA, is complete for PTIME. In other words, it is as difficult to solve as any problem requiring polynomial time. A family of generalizations of 0CFA providing better analyses, called kCFA (k a positive integer), has never been implemented efficiently. We prove that this is necessary: the problem solved by kCFA is complete for EXPTIME---it is as difficult to solve as any problem requiring exponential time.

Each proof depends on fundamental insights about the linearity of programs, appealing to ideas from linear logic and the geometry of interaction---a linear logic semantics that is effectively an exact form of control-flow analysis.

This is joint work with David Van Horn (Brandeis University), presented at the 2008 ACM International Conference on Functional Programming.

Laszlo Z. Bito Auditorium-RKC  A lecture by
David Sloan Wilson
Director, EvoS program
Binghamton University
For complex reasons, evolutionary theory was restricted to the biological sciences and avoided for most human-related subjects for most of the 20th century. That is now rapidly changing. The 21st century will witness an integration for the study of humanity comparable to the integration of the biological sciences that took place during the 20th century (and continuing). I will review current trends and how they are embodied in EvoS, a campus-wide evolutionary studies program at Binghamton University that has received NSF funding to expand into a nationwide consortium.  

  RKC pod 222  A chance to do homework, get help with your classes, eat pizza and socialize with your professors & fellow biology students!TuesdaysRKC POD 2227 p.m. 

RKC 111  A lecture by
Kristin Lane
Psychology program
Many mental activities occur automatically or unconsciously, including thoughts that are relevant to social perception, judgment, and action. This talk will present interactive illustrations of mental events that exist outside of conscious awareness or control; I will then show evidence that suggests that these ordinary processes can give rise to systematic social biases, which in turn can influence participation, interest, and performance in science and math domains.  In particular, the talk will consider the gender disparity in science and mathematics in light of these findings from the mind sciences.

Laszlo Z. Bito Auditorium - RKC  A lecture by
Georgia E. Hodes
University of Pennsylvania
Women are twice as likely as men to suffer an episode of depression, but only between puberty and menopause. This suggests a relationship between reproductive hormones and depression in females. However, most theories on the etiology of depression are based on research done solely in males. This talk will focus on current research examining sex differences in the effects of antidepressants on neurogenesis and depression associated behaviors using a rodent model. Additionally, this talk will examine how reproductive hormones influence cognitive function and the response to stress across the lifespan. The understanding of how males and females differ may lead to better treatments for depression in both sexes.    

  RKC pod 222  A chance to do homework, get help with your classes, eat pizza and socialize with your professors & fellow biology students!TuesdaysRKC POD 2227 p.m. 

RKC 111  A lecture by
Robert McGrail
Laboratory for Algebraic and Symbolic Computation
Bard College
The speaker introduces the notion of a quandle, an algebra that arises in knot theory and group theory, as well as the concept of connectedness in algebras. In particular, every finite, connected quandle has an unambiguous permutation cycle structure associated to it. This cycle-structure can be simply and efficiently computed from an operation table for the quandle, and so serves as a useful combinatorial invariant for the classification of finite, connected quandles. The speaker will introduce an improvement to the isofilter program of the Prover9/Mace4 automated deduction suite based upon this invariant. Moreover, he will discuss the implications of this work to the goal of completing a computational classification of the variety of finite quandles. This is joint work with Aleksandar Chakarov (Bard '10).

Laszlo Z. Bito Auditorium - RKC  A lecture by
Michele Caggana, Sc.D, FACMG
Director, New York State Department of Health, Newborn Screening ProgramNewborn screening began in New York State in 1965 with the addition of a single metabolic disorder called phenylketonuria (PKU). If you drink diet soda, you may see the bottle warning phenylketonurics not to drink these beverages. That's because prior to 1965, people who had PKU became mentally retarded and often were institutionalized because their disease was caught too late. With the advent of newborn screening, the Wadsworth Center, New York State's Public Health Laboratory could identify those affected babies at birth, before they suffered significant cognitive impairment by sampling a few drops of blood from a newborn's heel. By limiting intake of phenylalanine and protein in general, affected infants could live and function normally. Newborn   screening has changed a lot over the years. The Program in New York is the largest, most comprehensive free program in the United States. We now screen for 45 disorders and use sophisticated equipment. This discussion will start in the early 60's, bring us to current activities in Albany, and we will glimpse into the future as well. In addition, factors that have impacted newborn screening in recent years will be discussed.  

  RKC pod 222  A chance to do homework, get help with your classes, eat pizza and socialize with your professors & fellow biology students!TuesdaysRKC POD 2227 p.m. 

  RKC pod 222  A chance to do homework, get help with your classes, eat pizza and socialize with your professors & fellow biology students!TuesdaysRKC POD 2227 p.m. 

Laszlo Z. Bito Auditorium-RKC  A lecture by
Cathy Gibson
Skidmore College
As integrators of the landscape, streams are heavily impacted by land-use change such as urbanization.  Changes in ecosystem structure associated with urbanization are well known, but how ecosystem function changes as a result of these structural changes is not well understood.  This talk will examine how urbanization affects nutrient cycling and whole system metabolism in both small headwater streams and large rivers.   Maintenance of downstream water quality depends on the ability of stream to retain and process nutrients.  This talk will examine what drives nutrient uptake in urban streams, how it differs from forested counterparts, and discuss implications for downstream water quality.  In addition, we will look at the impact of hydrological modifications via dams affects these functions, as well.

RKC 102  A lecture by
Jeff Suzuki
Brooklyn College

What do a musical scale, a calendar, and the U.S. flag have in common? They are all solutions to the problem of finding a set of whole numbers that match a particular property. The solutions rely on the use of Diophantine equations and continued fractions, which offer the best rational approximation to a given real number.

  RKC pod 222  A chance to do homework, get help with your classes, eat pizza and socialize with your professors & fellow biology students!TuesdaysRKC POD 2227 p.m. 

Laszlo Z. Bito Auditiorium-RKC  A lecture by
S. James Gates, Jr.
John S. Toll Professor of Mathematics
Director, Center for String and Particle Theory
University of Maryland
Gauge theories seem to describe all of the known forces in Nature...except gravity as it is normally viewed. However, using the Cartan approach to the geometry of curved manifolds, even gravitation is seen to be almost identical to other gauge theories. This talk will be accessible to math and physics majors.

Laszlo Z. Bito Auditorium-RKC  A lecture by
Richard S. Ostfeld
Senior Scientist, Cary Institute of Ecosystem Studies
The rate of species extinctions, both globally and from local communities, continues to accelerate. In recent years, ecologists have asked, to what degree will ecological communities lose their ability to provide “ecosystem services” as biodiversity is lost? This talk will describe how biodiversity loss affects the risk and incidence of zoonotic diseases (diseases transmitted from non-human vertebrates to humans). Zoonotic diseases, including avian influenza, Ebola, SARS, and plague, comprise the majority of so-called emerging infectious diseases. Most zoonotic pathogens can infect several wildlife host species. However, hosts differ strongly in their capacity to support population growth of the pathogen. Some hosts act as reservoirs that amplify pathogens, whereas others act as “dilution hosts” that can absorb but do not contribute pathogens. Therefore, the diversity and species composition of the host community is fundamentally important in determining pathogen transmission and disease dynamics. Reservoir hosts tend to be abundant, widespread species that are resilient to human-caused environmental degradation. In contrast, dilution hosts are often sensitive to environmental degradation, disappearing when biodiversity is lost. This presentation will describe three case studies of diseases – Hantavirus Pulmonary Syndrome, West Nile virus encephalitis, and Lyme disease – that are exacerbated when biodiversity is reduced. Explorations of the mechanisms that underlie the increase in disease risk with reduced biodiversity suggest that other zoonotic diseases will behave similarly. These case studies show that the current biodiversity crisis is likely to increase human exposure to many infectious diseases. 

  RKC pod 222  A chance to do homework, get help with your classes, eat pizza and socialize with your professors & fellow biology students!TuesdaysRKC POD 2227 p.m. 

RKC 111  A lecture by
Peter Golbus, class of 2009
ASC Lab, Bard College
This work presents a method for associating a class of constraint satisfaction problems to a three-dimensional knot. Given a knot, one can build a knot quandle, which is generally an infinite free algebra. The desired collection of problems is derived from the set of invariant relations over the knot quandle, applying theory that relates finite algebras to constraint satisfaction problems. This allows us to develop notions of tractable and NP-complete quandles and knots. In particular, we show that all tricolorable torus knots and all but at most 2 non-trivial knots with 10 or fewer crossings are NP-complete.

Laszlo Z. Bito Auditorium - RKC  A lecture by
Jason Schwarz
Laboratory of Sensory Neuroscience, Rockefeller University
The teleost fish Aplocheilus can locate and capture its insect prey on the surface of the water without any visual input.  An array of mechanosensory organs on the crown of the fish's head, the neuromasts, detect water surface waves in a manner analogous to the detection of sounds by tetrapods.  The fish compares the intensities and latencies of stimuli at various neuromasts to determine the direction of the wave source and analyzes the wave spectrum to determine how far the wave has propagated.  In view of the robustness of the behavior and the accessibility of the nervous system, prey localization by Aplocheilus offers us an experimental system useful in the study of fast neural signal processing.

  RKC pod 222  A chance to do homework, get help with your classes, eat pizza and socialize with your professors & fellow biology students!TuesdaysRKC POD 2227 p.m. 

RKC 111  A lecture by
Rebecca Ryan
MAT Program in Mathematics
Bard College
In 1973 Fischer Black and Myron Scholes settled a longstanding problem in economics: how to determine the fair value of a stock option. They realized that holding specific positions in stocks and in an option could render a portfolio instantaneously risk-free. Having eliminated the risk, solving for the value of an option became a feasible mathematical procedure. This revolutionary insight sparked the explosion of the now multi-trillion dollar derivatives market.

In this presentation, I will reconstruct the Black-Scholes portfolio from the ground up, assuming basic economic or mathematical knowledge from the audience. First, learn how investors use options, stocks, short positions, and long positions to speculate and to hedge. Then, explore how casinos hedge games to cover payouts. Finally, see how the Black-Scholes portfolio is analagous to a casino's hedging strategy.

  Reem-Kayden Center Laszlo Z. Bito '60 Auditorium  A lecture by
Steven Gavlik
Siena College
Most vertebrates pass through two or more distinct life stages. Examples include hatching or birth (larval to juvenile transitions) and puberty (a juvenile to adult transition). Hormones of the endocrine system are primary controllers of the anatomical and physiological changes occurring during these life stage transitions. Fish undergo these transitions as free-living organisms, which allows for interactions between the hormonal control systems and the environment. This talk will present findings about the hormonal controls of two important fish life stage transitions – metamorphosis of Summer flounder and sex determination in American eel. 

  RKC pod 222  A chance to do homework, get help with your classes, eat pizza and socialize with your professors & fellow biology students!TuesdaysRKC POD 2227 p.m. 

RKC 111  A lecture by
John Cullinan
Mathematics program
Dynamical systems have been studied in the context of population modeling, fractal geometry, and topology for much of the 20th century, but it is only recently that they have been studied for their number-theoretic applications.  In fact, many open questions in number theory can be rephrased in terms of dynamical systems.  This talk will be an introduction to the arithmetic of polynomial dynamics and we will also discuss our recent work on the ramification of iterated rational functions.

  RKC pod 222  A chance to do homework, get help with your classes, eat pizza and socialize with your professors & fellow biology students!TuesdaysRKC POD 2227 p.m. 

RKC 111  Lecture by
Ethan Bloch
Mathematics Program
The angle defect, which goes back to Descartes, is a very simple way of measuring the curvature at the vertices of a polyhedral surface in Euclidean space.  The angle defect is the polyhedral (and much simpler) analog of Gaussian curvature, as studied in differential geometry.  Although the angle defect is the only plausible definition of curvature at the vertices of a polyhedral surface, it turns out that there is more than one possible way to generalize this definition to arbitrary finite 2-dimensional polyhedra, and to higher dimensional polyhedra.  This talk will present a few different such generalizations, and will discuss a way to compare these different generalizations in dimension 2.  The talk will be elementary, though a willingness to consider higher dimensional polyhedra is required.

  RKC pod 222  A chance to do homework, get help with your classes, eat pizza and socialize with your professors & fellow biology students!TuesdaysRKC POD 2227 p.m. 

Reem-Kayden Center Laszlo Z. Bito '60 Auditorium  The 2008 Nobel Prize Awards
Christian Bracher, Physics programLecturing on the Nobel Prize in Physics awarded jointly to Yoichiro Nambu for the discovery of the mechanism of spontaneous broken symmetry in subatomic physics and to Makoto Kobayashi and Toshilde Maskawa for the discovery of the origin of the broken symmetry which predicts the existence of at least three families of quarks in nature.
John Ferguson, Biology programLecturing on the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine awarded to Francoise Barre-Sinoussi and Luc Montagnier for their discovery of human immunodeficiency virus.
Michael Tibbetts, Biology programLecturing on the Nobel Prize in Chemistry awarded to Osamu Shimomura, Martin Chalfie and Roger Y. Tsien for the discovery and development of the green fluorescent protein, GFP.

  Reem-Kayden Center Laszlo Z. Bito '60 Auditorium  Led by
Stephanie Oleksyk (SES '06)
Learn more about the Semester in Environmental Science at Woods Hole, MA.

Study environmental science in an array of ecosystems with researchers at one of the world's premier centers for biological research and education!  The Semester in Environmental Science (SES) is a hands-on semester of courses taught in beautiful Woods Hole by some of the field's top scientists.  The aim of the core curriculum is to study global problems in a local context.  It covers ecosystem biogeochemistry and the biology of coastal bays, ponds, wetlands and forests of Cape Cod.  Students conduct independent research projects and make connections with researchers that can lead to internships and jobs at the MBL.

RKC lobby  Biology program

Fall 2008
Independent Research
Poster Session
Students presenting:
Alex Carlin
Jyoti Dev
Margo Finn
Samuel Israel
Allison James
Anna Josephson-Day
Sarah Mount
Jessica Philpott
Wyatt Shell
Ilya Smirnoff
Rachel Steinhorn
Emma Taylor-Salmon
William Wylie

RKC lobby  The Science, Mathematics & Computing Division presents...

Fall 2008
Senior Project Poster Session

Students presenting:
Priyanka Oberoi
Adviser: Felicia Keesing

"The Effect of Invasive Plant Species, Garlic Mustard Plant (Alliaria petiolata), on Entomopathogenic Fungi, Beauveria bassiana"

Faqir Usman
Adviser: Sam Hsiao

"Using Graphs to Model the Spread and Containment of Fire"

RKC 111  A lecture by
Maria Belk
Mathematics program
Why are some structures rigid, but others fall down?  We'll look at some simple structure and examine their rigidity.  We'll start by considering bar frameworks - place the vertices of a graph in 2 or 3 dimensions, and think of the edges of the graph as bars, forced to maintain their length.  After examining the rigidity of bar frameworks, we'll move to consider tensegrities.  In a tensigrity framework, some of the edges are called struts and are allowed to increase in length while others are called cables and are allowed to decrease in length.  These are tensegrities where the struts are suspended in the air by the cables, and yet the entire structure is rigid.

Reem-Kayden Center Laszlo Z. Bito '60 Auditorium  A lecture by
Sven Anderson
Computer Science program
Telling the difference between human and automated programs such as Web-bots has become important in preventing Web-bot access to e-mail addresses, private information and limited electronic resources. CAPTCHAs, programs that can accurately judge whether a user is human or machine, are the primary line of defense against Web-bot access. For example, Google's Mail program uses CAPTHCAs to prevent Web-bots from creating bogus user accounts from which to launch spam messages. Every day humans solve about 60 million CAPTHCAs. The human "computation" expended has an unintended benefit: it can be recycled to help digitize old printed texts that are unrecognizable using optical character recognizers. This talk, intended for a general audience, will explore the vanishing difference between humans and computer programs on current text CAPTCHAs and outline efforts to keep one step ahead of the intelligent Web-bots. We will also consider other efforts to recycle human computation. 

Reem-Kayden Center Laszlo Z. Bito '60 Auditorium  A lecture by
Lisa Scheifele
candidate for the position in Biology
Mobile DNA presents a considerable challenge to genome stability due to its presence as dispersed repeats.  Could this instability enable adaption and thereby explain why genomes retain high levels of mobile DNA?  Indeed, we have found that following experimental evolution, strains with higher levels of repetitive DNA contain a broader variation in chromosome structure.  The abundance of repetitive DNA must therefore be fine-tuned so that benefit of chromosome rearrangements in promoting genome evolution outweights the potential for lethal damage.

RKC 111  A lecture by
Keith O'Hara
candidate for the position in Computer Science

Just as special purpose mainframe computers grew into general purpose personal computers, special purpose industrial robots are evolving into general purpose personal robots.  Drawing on ideas from computer systems architecture such as parallelism, redundancy, heterogeneity, locality, and scaling laws, we propose a "robot systems architecture" perspective on the design of robot computing systems.  From this perspective, two distributed robot systems built for tasks as varied as computing education and mobile robot navigation will be presented.

Reem-Kayden Center Laszlo Z. Bito '60 Auditorium  A lecture by Jane Liu,  candidate for the open position in Chemistry.

Due to their central role in regulating bacterial pathogenesis, small non-coding RNAs (sRNAs) represent targets with therapeutic potential.  To investigate the entire repertoire of sRNAs in the human pathogen, Vibrio cholerae, we developed a method, sRNA-Seq, to directly clone and analyze whole populations of V. cholerae transcripts, 14 to 200 nucleotides, by high-throughput pyrosequencing.  From over 680,000 reads, 500 new intergenic sRNAs and 127 antisense sRNAs were identified.

  RKC 111  A lecture by Jim Belk

If you draw a grid on the plane and then zoom out, the empty squares between the gridlines become smaller and smaller until they are lost to sight.  The result is that the large-scale geometry of the plane is essentially the same as the large-scale geometry of an infinite grid.  In the same way, many non-Euclidean geometries can be understood on a large scale using infinite graphs.  In this talk, we will explore the geometry of several graphs that arise in this fashion, and we will discuss the sorts of questions that one might ask about the geometry of an infinite graph.

Reem-Kayden Center Laszlo Z. Bito '60 Auditorium  A lecture by Tracy Kress, candidate for the position in Biology.

From the beginning of transcription, mRNAs are processed in a myriad of ways to specify the correct timing, localization, and quantity of protein synthesized. To ensure the efficiency and accuracy of gene expression, transcription and mRNA processing steps are tightly coordinated both spatially and temporally. Despite their critical importance, few factors that regulate this coordination are known. I identified Npl3 as one such factor, and my work aims to uncover the mechanism of Npl3, and other factors, in this coordination.

Reem-Kayden Center Laszlo Z. Bito '60 Auditorium  A lecture by Patrick Page-McCaw, Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute

I will present two stories on how the zebrafish can be used as a model of heart disease.  In the first story, our lab has used genetic, pharmacological and surgical tools to dissect the affect of stress on cardiac output.  In the second story, we have discovered that Serum Amyloid A is required for cholesterol transport early in embryogenesis and that the failure to transport cholesterol results in defects in Hedgehog signaling.

Reem-Kayden Center Laszlo Z. Bito '60 Auditorium  A lecture by Jeremy Johnson, candidate for the open position in Chemistry

The mechanism of ribonuclease toxicity toward cancerous cells involves multiple steps, including cellular uptake and evasion of the ribonuclease inhibitor protein. Both of these steps of ribonuclease cytotoxicity are proposed to be controlled by the cationic nature of the ribonuclease and its interactions with the anionic cell membrane and anionic inhibitor. To understand the role that electrostatics play in ribonuclease biology, I investigated the effect that the positive charge of ribonuclease have on their cytotoxicity.

RKC 111  Interested in summer research in mathematics?

Come to an REU (Research Experience for Undergraduates) information session.
Hosted by the Mathematics program

Students Sylvia Naples and Tomasz Przytycki and faculty members John Cullinan and Lauren Rose will be speaking on the application process and their own experiences with past REU's.

Reem-Kayden Center Laszlo Z. Bito '60 Auditorium  A lecture by Brett Pellock, candidate for the open position in Biology.

Bacteria use small, non-coding RNAs (ncRNAs) to rapidly alter gene expression in response to changing conditions. Bacterial ncRNAs are small and difficult to identify experimentally. We are synthesizing computational and experimental methods to predict and validate the existence of ncRNAs in Shewanella oneidensis, a bacterium that can reduce a wide variety of substrates when grown anaerobically. Of particular interest is the ability of Shewanella to reduce soluble, toxic heavy metals to insoluble, much less toxic forms.

Reem-Kayden Center Laszlo Z. Bito '60 Auditorium  A lecture by Alexis Gambis, The Rockefeller University

Alexis Gambis will speak about the importance of visual imagery and narrative in both science understanding and communication. He will give insight into his current thesis work explaining the mechanisms of cellular death, how to use the fruit fly as a genetic model to study human neurodegenerative diseases, and the fluorescent toolkit to visualize neurons in the fruit fly eye . Using the camera eye, Alexis has also been actively making films with scientific themes during his graduate career. Alexis will talk about his recent films and the importance of visual storytelling in science communication, show a few clips of his film "A Fruit Fly in New York", and share his recent experience pioneering the first science film festival in New York.

Reem-Kayden Center Laszlo Z. Bito '60 Auditorium  A lecture by Richard A. Gordon, Professor of Psychology.

After the discovery of antidepressant drugs in the 1950s and the burst of research on neurotransmitters that took place in the 1960s, a scientific hypothesis about depression became firmly established in the community of researchers and clinicians: depression was rooted in depleted brain amines, such as norepinephrine and serotonin, a deficit that the antidepressants corrected. The amine hypothesis (known popularly and in pharmaceutical advertising as “chemical imbalance”) guided research throughout the rest of the 20th century. However, by the late 1990s it had become clear that direct research on the metabolism of depressed patients had failed to support the hypothesis. In this lecture I will discuss some exciting recent research that uses sophisticated techniques of brain imaging and has lent new support to the possibility that depleted amines are importantly involved in the chemistry of depression. Further commentary will be offered on the limitations and promise of this work, as well as some of the current thinking on the underpinnings of depression in the brain.

Reem-Kayden Center Laszlo Z. Bito '60 Auditorium  A lecture by Swapan Jain, candidate for the open position in Chemistry.

According to RNA World hypothesis, early life used RNA for information storage and chemical catalysis. Small molecules may have played an important role in this endeavor by assembling nucleic acids during prebiotic evolution. Our results with proflavine and coralyne (small organic ligands) show that reactions carried out by protein enzymes today could have been achieved by non-enzymatic means. Mechanistic studies using hydroxyl radical footprinting have also been instrumental in our understanding of RNA structure. Future work aims to understand the structural changes that occur in riboswitches (noncoding region of mRNA) upon ligand binding. I would also like to investigate whether RNA can be regulated simultaneously by multiple pathways.

RKC 111  New Biology course for spring semester:
Tropical Ecology

Professor Catherine O'Reilly

Tropical ecosystems are among the most biodiverse, most threatened, and the least studied in the world. This course will examine both practical and theoretical aspects that are unique to tropical ecosystems, including the role of geology, biogeochemical cycling, evolutionary processes and species interactions. In addition, we will discuss issues related to conservation, such as habitat fragmentation and climate change. This course will include lectures, student presentations, and research projects. Students will design, conduct, synthesize, and present a field research project. This course will involve a field trip to La Selva Biological Station in Costa Rica over spring break.

Prerequisites: Moderation, Bio 202 Ecology and Evolution, Permission of the instructor.

Come to the information meeting to learn more about the field trip, acceptance into this course, and the additional costs.

  Reem-Kayden Center Laszlo Z. Bito '60 Auditorium  Speakers include:

Cristina Ballantine, College of the Holy Cross
"Expander Graphs: Algebraic and Combinatorial Constructions"

Margaret Bayer, University of Kansas
"Flag Vectors of Polytopes: An Overview"

Debra Boutin, Hamilton College
"The Determining Set: A (Smallest) Set that Identifies Every Vertex in a Graph"

Robert McGrail, Bard College
"Knots, Quandles, and the Constraint Satisfaction Problem"

Ed Swartz, Cornell University
"f-Vectors of Manifolds"

RKC 111  A lecture by Charles Doran, University of Alberta.

We'll start by investigating the combinatorial properties of certain lattice polytopes in R^n, specifically reflexive polygons. By reinterpreting these as Newton polygons, we will relate these combintorial objects to algebraic equations naturally defined on complex tori. The vanishing loci of these equations are then elliptic curves, whose basic geometric and topological properties we will discuss. If time permits, we may also describe an application to string theory.

Reem-Kayden Center Laszlo Z. Bito '60 Auditorium  A lecture by Brooke A. Jude, candidate for the open position in Biology.

Investigation into Vibrio cholerae revealed that this organism colonizes both chitinous aquatic surfaces and the human small intestine via GbpA. Sequence analysis has revealed a GbpA homolog in all other Vibrio species that have been sequenced to date. We hypothesize that other aquatic Vibrio, such as Vibrio fluvialis, Vibrio vulnificus, or Vibrio parahemolyticus may also utilize GbpA to bind to environmental and intestinal surfaces. Current investigations include screening of aquatic isolates for attachment potential via GbpA.

  RKC 111  Tomasz Przytycki 4:30
Dexin Zhou 4:50
Scott McMillen 5:10
Tina Zhang

Hegeman 107  Interested in Studying Engineering? come hear about Bard's 3-2 combined plan with Columbia University. Derek Hernandez, former Bard student and current Columbia student, will speak about the program.

  RKC 111  Sylvia Naples - 4:15 p.m.
"An upper bound for the number of graceful labelings of a path with N edges"

Nicholas Michaud - 4:35 p.m.
"Delaunay Realizability of Certain Graphs"

Mona Merling - 4:55 p.m.
"Function Fields with Class Number Indivisible by a Prime 1"

Reem-Kayden Center Laszlo Z. Bito '60 Auditorium  A lecture by Peter G. Selfridge, Ph.D.

Virtual graphical environments (think Second Life or World Of Warcraft) have a number of real-world applications including training first responders, urban planning, and military training. Technology for creating both “geo-typical” terrain (e.g., a generic small city) and “geo-specific” terrain (e.g., downtown Kingston) has improved dramatically in recent years. What is missing is the ability to create realistic populations of regular people to populate the landscape: people commuting, going to lunch, taking their kids to daycare, et cetera.

This talk will first review some motivating applications, the current state-of-the-art in terrain generation, and the general problem. Approaches to creating realistic agent populations will be reviewed, including crowd modeling, game technologies, and work in AI-style cognitive architectures. Two key challenges will then be described: the creation and maintenance of realistic behaviors, and the idea of scalable cognition or cognition on demand. Some research ideas to address these challenges will be briefly sketched.

Bio:
Peter Selfridge received his Ph.D. in Artificial Intelligence at the University of Rochester and spent 19 years at Bell Labs and then AT&T Bell Labs doing research into sensory robotics, artificial intelligence, knowledge representation, software visualization, interactive database exploration, 3D web technologies, and more. For the last 5 years he has supported the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) in their mission of funding revolutionary R&D to help maintain the technological superiority of the United States. He also does independent research in Artificial Intelligence.

Reem-Kayden Center Laszlo Z. Bito '60 Auditorium  A lecture by Matthew Deady, Physics program
The Large Hadron Collider at the CERN laboratory in Switzerland has just been turned on for initial testing. The "Standard Model" of particles and fields has successfully matched theory and experiment for more than 30 years, and results from the LHC will put the model to its most stringent tests yet. The large energies available will also undoubtedly answer questions about extensions of and alternatives to the Standard Model, including supersymmetry, dark matter, dark energy, and string theory. In this lecture, these theories and what might be learned about them from the LHC will be explored. We will also discuss the spurious concerns that the LHC might cause a black hole that would swallow the universe.

This talk will focus on the theories of particles, as a complement to the October 2007 talk which focused on the accelerator technology itself. An edited version of that talk appears in the latest issue of the Bardian.

  RKC 111  Mona Merling 4:30
Nicholas Michaud 4:50
Serena Randolph 5:10
Ezra Winston 5:30

RKC 111  Lecture by Allison Pacelli, Williams College.

How do you divide a candy bar fairly between two people? The most popular solution is known by many and can even be found in the bible: one person divides the bar in half, the other gets to choose which piece she wants. But what happens if three people are dividing the candy? Worse yet, what do you do if you're dividing a collection of indivisible goods? Things like TV's and pianos are not much use cut in half! The idea of fairness itself is considerably more complicated when more than two people are involved, but mathematics can be surprisingly useful in these situations.

  Reem-Kayden Center Laszlo Z. Bito '60 Auditorium  A lecture by Martha F. Hoopes, Mount Holyoke College

Early metacommunity theory emphasized four distinct models to explain the spatial structure, dynamics, and species composition of communities: species sorting, patch dynamics, mass effects, and the neutral model. Several tests of metacommunity theory have focused on these models and on determining their relative importance in explaining spatial community structure. Applying metacommunity theory to invasion ecology redirects the focus to examine how theory on spatial community dynamics can inform our understanding of spatial interactions when all species are not considered equal. This talk examines how a focal species approach affects the interpretation of processes critical to metacommunity dynamics. I offer some preliminary thoughts on conceptual differences between the four conceptual metacommunity models and explore these with three invasion case studies.

  RKC lobby  Join the SM&C division faculty and students in presenting their summer research

RKC 111  A lecture by Robert McGrail, Computer Science program.

L'Hopital's Rule is a useful tool for computing limits with indeterminate forms. In fact, it is too useful. The speaker demonstrates how some of these limits can be computed without this rule. This talk is a shamless ruse designed to introduce the 0-1 law of finite mondel theory as well as expose the unwitting members of the audience to some very beautiful mathematics.

  RKC 111  A lecture by Gregory Landweber, Mathematics program.
In calculus, we teach you how to take derivatives, and then once you're good at that, we tell you about second derivatives. But how do we go in the other direction and try to take HALF a derivative? It turns out that to take a half derivative, your functions need to come in pairs, analogously to how a complex number can be thought of as a pair of numbers, one real and another imaginary. Supersymmetry is the study of such pairings. This talk will discuss different ways that supersymmetry arises, both through explicit constructions, and through the notion of superspace.
**Some exposure to multivariable calculus and linear algebra will be assumed**

Reem-Kayden Center Laszlo Z. Bito '60 Auditorium  A lecture by Dr. Lisa Schwanz, Cary Institute of Ecosystem Studies.

Parasites negatively impact their host’s fitness, potentially damaging host tissues and impairing host physiological or behavioral performance. In response to parasitic infection, hosts may alter their physiology, behavior or life history in ways that minimize the costs of infection. In this talk, I examine the optimal life history response of hosts when infected with parasites that have varying impacts. In addition, I explore the impacts of schistosome infection in deer mice by examining host physiology, survival and reproductive investment. In accordance with predictions, deer mice infected with this parasite increase their investment in offspring.

Reem-Kayden Center Laszlo Z. Bito '60 Auditorium  A lecture by Michael Tibbetts, Biology program.
What are the genetic bases of the qualities that we think of as uniquely human? Is there a set of “humaness” genes? Large-scale genome sequencing projects in multiple species are generating the kind of data that allow us, for the first time, to seriously ask such big questions. An article published in the September 5 issue of Science Magazine (Human-specific gain of function in a developmental enhancer, by Prabhakar, S. et al.) describes a gene whose human-specific activity may be necessary to form an opposable thumb. The nature of the differences between the human and chimpanzee versions of the gene they identify supports a popular model for how small modifications in genomes can lead to significant changes in physical characteristics. The methodologies employed by these researchers may lead to the discovery of genes important for other human-specific characteristics.