Physics Colloquium Schedule

The colloquium will take place in LaTourette Hall, room 200 and will start at 3:30 p.m.

View the Current Series

Past Colloquia

* = graduate colloquium speakers

Fall 2021

Sept. 17 - Yasuo Ito, NIU Department of Physics: 1st General meeting of Physics majors
Sept. 24 - Jonathan Lunine, Cornell University : The search for life in the outer solar system
Oct. 10 - Brendan Steffens, Florida Institute of Technology / Goddard Space Flight Center: From NIU to NASA, Titan, and Beyond!
Oct. 15 - Matthew Deady, Bard College: The Equations of Physics
Oct. 22 - Alysia Marino, University of Colorado Boulder: Discovering Neutrino Properties with Long-Baseline Beams
Nov. 12 - Roland Winkler / Philippe Piot, NIU: Special Faculty Research Colloquium #1
Nov. 19 - Jahred Adelman / Xueying Lu / Laurence Lurio, NIU: Special Faculty Research Colloquium #2
Dec. 03 - Dakota McCoy/ Matthew Sowinski/ August Lee, NIU Physics Department: PHYS 498/499 Senior Capstone Project Seminars

Spring 2021

Jan. 22 - Dan Hooper, Fermilab/University of Chicago: Black Holes in the Early Universe
Jan. 29 - Brian Odom, Northwestern University: Adding Molecules to the Quantum Toolkit
Feb. 26 - Jesse Thaler, MIT: Collision Course: Particle Physics meets Machine Learning
Apr. 16 - Xie Chen, California Institute of Technology: Fracton order: from quantum hard drive to foliated manifold
Apr. 21* - Senior Seminar presentation Karissa Olsen: Carbon Ion RadiationTherapy, NIU Physics Department: PHYS 498/499 Senior Capstone Project presentations
Apr 23 - Jimena Canales, 86 South St. 5A, Boston, MA 02111: Science and the History of Nonexistents

Fall 2020

Sept. 11 - Venumadhav Korampally, NIU, College of Engineering and Engineering Technology: Engineered Nanoparticle Systems Towards Thin Films with Programmed Optical Constants and Sensors
Sept. 25 - Spencer Gessner, SLAC national laboratory: Prospects in Beam-Driven Plasma Wakefield Acceleration
Oct. 2 - Chris Rasmussen, CERN, EP department, Geneva, Switzerland: Testing fundamental symmetries with trapped antihydrogen
Oct. 16 - Ryan Roussel, The University of Chicago: Large Scale Multi-Objective Bayesian Optimization for Accelerator Control and Tuning
Oct. 23 - Ilias Cholis , Oakland University: Searching for Dark Matter; a High Energy Astrophysicist's Perspective
Oct. 30 - Katherine Pachal, Duke University: Hunting for new physics at the ATLAS experiment using long-lived particles
Nov. 6 - Gerard Andonian, University of California Los Angeles (UCLA): Acceleration and phase space manipulation with beam-driven wakefields in dielectrics
Nov. 13 - Nestor Zaluzec, Argonne National Laboratory: Advanced analytical electron microscopy in soft and hard matter systems: opportunities (and challenges) enabled by the Argonne PicoProbe
Nov. 20 - Oksana Chubenko, Arizona State University (ASU) : Monte Carlo Modeling of Photoemission from Semiconductor Photocathodes for Accelerator Applications
Dec. 4 - Eric Padilla, Northern Illinois University: Micromagnetic Simulation: In-situ Tunable Stray-field Distribution in an Artificial Spin Ice

Spring 2020

Feb. 21 - Norbert M. Linke, University of Maryland: A Quantum cinouter based on trapped ions
Feb. 28 - Imre Bartos, University of Florida: Unforeseen Directions in Gravitational Wave Astrophysics
Mar. 6 - Xueying Lu, SLAC National Laboratory: Metamaterial Structures for High-Power Microwave Generation

Fall 2019

Sept. 13 - Physics Graduate Student Association, NIU: Faculty Research Seminar
Oct. 11 - Jeremiah Mans, University of Minnesota: Searching for dark matter candidates with accelerators
Oct. 18 - Jason Hogan, Stanford University: Atom interferometry for fundamental physics and gravitational wave detection
Oct. 25 - Alexander Valishev, Fermilab: Accelerator and Beam Physics Research at Fermilab
Nov. 1 - Taylor Hoyt, The University of Chicago, 5640 S Ellis Ave, Chicago IL, 60615: The Carnegie Chicago Hubble Program: A New Measurement of the Hubble Constant using Red Giant Stars
Nov. 8 - Andrey Varlamov, University of Rome, Tor Vergata: Physics in the Gastronomy Universe
Dec. 6 - Senior Projects Presentations, Department of Physics, Northern Illinois University: Phys 498 and Phys 499 Poster Presentations

Spring 2019

Jan. 25 - Bela Erdelyi, Department of Physics, Northern Illinois University: Two Computational Thinking Tales: The NIU Center for Research Computing and Data, and the Physics Colloquium Management System
Feb. 1 - Sarah Garner, NIU Ethics Compliance Office: Sexual Harassment in the Scientific Community
Feb. 22 - Stephen K. Doorn, Center for Integrated Nanotechnologies, Los Alamos National Laboratory: Photophysics and Quantum Emission Behavior of Carbon Nanotube Defect States
Mar. 1 - Stephan Hruskewycz, Materials Science Division: Argonne National Laboratory: New opportunities for materials science with coherent x-ray diffraction imaging
Mar. 22 - Stephanie Majewski, University of Oregon: Searching for the Supersymmetric Partner to the Top Quark at ATLAS
Mar. 29 - Drs. Beth Wilkins and Gary Baker, The Graduate School: What the Labor Market Indicates about Career Opportunities for Grad Students in Physics
Apr. 5 - André Schleife, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign: Excited electronic states: Dielectric screening and hot-electron mediated ion diffusion
Apr. 26 - Senior Projects Presentations, Physics Department, Northern Illinois University: Phys 498 and Phys 499 Poster Presentations by Marc Crowell, Paula Moraga, Jeffrey Meuser, Daniel Rapson.

Fall 2018

Sept. 21 - Stanislas Baturin, Enrico Fermi Institute, Physical Sciences Division, The University of Chicago: Pen and Paper Mathematical Models for State-of-the-Art Wakefield Accelerators
Sept. 28 - IVAN BOZOVIC, Brookhaven National Laboratory, and, Applied Physics Departments, Yale University: What makes cuprate superconductors so amazing?
Oct. 12 - Andrei Patapenka, NIU, Physics Department / NICADD: The Fermilab Integrable Optics Test Accelerator and Its Nonlinear Dynamics
Oct. 19 - Roland Winkler, Northern Illinois University: Asymmetric g Tensor in Low-Symmetry Two-Dimensional Hole Systems
Oct. 26 - valia allori, Northern Illinois University, Department of
Philosophy: Quantum Mechanics between History, Physics and Philosophy
Nov. 2 - Herman Schaumburg, Northern Illinois University: An Efficient N-body Simulation Algorithm
Nov. 9 - Wes Gohn, University of Kentucky: Accelerating Physics with GPUs
Dec. 7 - Senior Seminar Poster Session, NIU Physics: Reserved for the Phys 498 and Phys 499H students presentations

Spring 2018

Feb. 23 - Ivan Sadovskyy, Computation Institute, University of Chicago, 5735 S. Ellis Av., Chicago, IL 60637, USA, Materials Science Division, Argonne National Laboratory, 9700 S. Cass Av., Argonne, IL 60637, USA, Targeted Evolution for Designing better Superconductors
Mar. 2 - Ben Freemire, Northern Illinois University, Department of Physics: Space Charge Compensation Using an Electron Column at Fermilab’s Integrable Optics Test Accelerator
Mar. 23 - Umeshkumar Patel, X-ray Science Division, Argonne National Laboratory, 9700 S. Cass Avenue, Argonne, IL 60439.: Superconducting Circuits for Quantum Information and X-ray Detection Technology
Apr. 6 - Alexey Snezhko, Materials Science Division, Argonne National Laboratory, 9700 S. Cass Av., Argonne, IL 60637, USA: Active Spinner Materials
Apr. 13 - Tammy Walton, Fermilab: Measuring the Beam Dynamics for the Muon g-2 Experiment at Fermilab
Apr. 20 - Michael Eads, Northern Illinois University, Department of Physics: Using Concept Inventories to Enable General Physics Course Reform at NIU
Apr. 27 - Physics Department Presents, Northern Illinois University: Senior Seminar and Awards ceremony

Fall 2017

Sept. 1 - Bharat Ratra, Department of Physics, Kansas State University: The "Standard" Model of Cosmology ... and Open Questions
Sept. 22 - Pushpa Bhat, Senior Scientist, Particle Physics Division, Deputy Head, Program Planning, Office of the Director, Fermilab: Fifty Years of Particle Physics and Discoveries at Fermilab
Sept. 29 - Maria Baldini, Geophysical Lab., Carnegie Institution of Washington: Emerging materials under pressure
Oct. 13 - Laurence Lurio, NIU: How to measure molecular motion with x-rays
Oct. 27 - Matthias Benjamin Jungfleisch, Materials Science Division, Argonne National Laboratory: New Twists for Magnons
Nov. 3 - Vishnu Zutshi, Northern Illinois University: Detecting Photons for Discovery
Nov. 10 - Mike Syphers, Northern Illinois University: Rings Around Fermilab -- An interplay of HEP and beam physics
Dec. 1 - Melina Avila, Argonne National Laboratory: Stellar explosions: The importance of nuclear reaction rates
Dec. 8 - Physics Undergraduate Capstones, Northern Illinois University: 3-4:30 pm Poster Presentations of the Senior Capstone Projects

Spring 2017

Jan. 20 - H. Ulrich Wienands, Argonne National Laboratory: Channeling experiments with Electrons and Positrons at SLAC
Jan. 27 - Hyunjung Kim, Department of Physics, Sogang University, Seoul, Korea : X-Ray Free Electron Laser Studies of In situ Structural Dynamics: Applications and Perspective on Coherent properties
Feb. 3 - Sheldon Stone, Syracuse University: Physics at LHCb
Feb. 24 - Tony Leggett, Dept.of Physics, University of Illinois, Urbana,IL : Prospects for Topological Quantum Computing
Mar. 10 - Tao Xu, Department of Chemistry and Biochemistry, Northern Illinois University, DeKalb, IL 60115: Cold Thoughts on Perovskite Fever
Mar. 24 - Robert Leheny, Department of Physics, Johns Hopkins University, Baltimore, MD: Anisotropic Particles in Anisotropic Fluids
Mar. 31 - Andreas Glatz, Northern Illinois University and Argonne National
Laboratory: The Nobel Prize in Physics 2016: Theoretical discoveries of topological phase transitions and topological phases of matter
Apr. 7 - Jianguo Wen, Electron & X-ray Microscopy Group, Center for Nanoscale Materials, Argonne National Laboratory, Building 212-A235, 9700 S. Cass Avenue, Argonne, IL 60439: Stabilizing a Highly Polar Phase Through Interface Engineering
Apr. 14 - Debora Katz, United States Naval Academy: How Selecting a Textbook Can Improve Your Class.
Apr. 21 - Jahred Adelman, NIU: The ATLAS Fast TracKer and trigger: A problem at 40 MHz
Apr. 28 - NIU Physics Students Seniors, Department of Physics NIU:
Physics Undergraduate Senior Symposium and Department Awards Ceremony

Fall 2016

Sept. 2 - Alexey Burov, MS 221, Fermilab, P.O. Box 500, Batavia, IL: Genesis of a Pythagorean Universe
Sept. 9 - Michael Dine, Physics Department, University of California, Santa Cruz: Challenges for Theoretical Particle Physics in the LHC Era
Sept. 23 - Carol Thompson, Northern Illinois University: In Situ X-Ray Studies of Vapor Phase Crystal Growth
Sept. 30 - Jigang Wang, Associate Professor, Department of Physics and Astronomy, Associate Scientist, Ames Laboratory US-DOE, , Iowa State University, Ames, Iowa 50011, Office: A311 Zaffarano, jwang@ameslab.gov, phone: 515-294-5630, How Fast is Ultrafast: Quantum Science and Technology at One Trillionth of a Second and Less
Oct. 7 - Ben Farr, Enrico Fermi Institute and Kavli Institute for Cosmological Physics,, University of Chicago, Chicago, IL 60637: LIGO: From Detector to Observatory
Oct. 14 - Mark Thomson, University of Cambridge: DUNE: The Deep Underground Neutrino Experiment
Oct. 21 - Jon Miller, University of Michigan, Department of Astronomy, 1085 South University Avenue, Ann Arbor, MI 48109: Measuring Black Hole Spin in X-ray Light
Oct. 28 - Matt Wiesner, Benedictine University, : One Survey to Rule Them All: Preparing to do Astrophysics in the Age of the Large Synoptic Survey Telescope
Nov. 4 - Jordan Webster, Argonne National Lab: Recent ttH Results from ATLAS
Nov. 11 - Lei Xia, Argonne National Laboratory, 362 HEP, 9700 S Cass Ave., Lemont, IL 60439: Development of Fast Photo Detector Using Micro Channel Plate
Nov. 18 - Swapan Chattopadhyay, Northern Illinois University: Quantum Sensors for Fundamental and Quantum Information Science
Dec. 2 - Carol Thompson, NIU Physics: Physics Department Senior Seminar and Capstone Project Symposium

Spring 2016

Jan. 29 - Wanjun Jiang, Materials Science Division, Argonne National
Laboratory: Magnetic skyrmions at room temperature: materials, physics, and device
Feb. 05 - Lauren Hsu, Fermilab Center For Particle Astrophysics, MS 209, P.O. Box 500, Batavia, IL 60510, Dark matter: Perhaps the next great discovery of particle physics?
Feb. 12 - Giulio Stancari, Fermilab: Electron lenses in beam physics
Feb. 19 - Robert J. Joynt, Physics Department, University of
Wisconsin-Madison: Casimir and the Qubit: Decoherence from Evanescent-wave Johnson Noise
Feb. 26 - Chris Stoughton, Fermilab MS 127, Kirk and Wilson Roads, Batavia IL 60510: The Fermilab Holometer: Search for Space-Time Correlations from the Planck Scale
Mar. 4 - Young-Min Shin, NIU Physics Department: Ultrafast electron beam R&D - high field acceleration dynamics in structured warm dense matters
Mar. 11 - Corrado Gatto, INFN - Napoli: An new experiment to discover fundamental asymmetries of the nature
Mar. 25 - Mike Syphers, Northern Illinois University: Toward a Future 100 TeV-scale Hadron Collider
Apr. 1 - Gaston Gutierrez, Fermilab, PO Box 500, Batavia, IL 60510, DESI: mapping the Universe with BAO
Apr.15 - Joseph Zennamo, University of Chicago, Enrico Fermi Institute: Discovering the Undetectable: (Sterile) Neutrino Oscillations
Apr. 22 - Robert Johnson, Univ. of California at Santa Cruz, Santa Cruz Institute of Particle Physics, 1156 High St., Santa Cruz, CA 95064, The Loma Linda - Santa Cruz Proton Computed Tomography Detector for Medical Imaging
Apr. 29 - Department of Physics, NIU: Physics Senior Symposium

Fall 2015

Sept. 4 - Alexander Dunn, Stanford University: Force Sensing at Cell-Cell and Cell-Matrix Adhesions
Sept. 11 - Nenad Miljkovic, University of Illinois at Urbana Champaign, 2136 Mechanical Engineering Laboratory, 105 South Mathews Avenue, Urbana, IL 61801, : Nanoengineered Surfaces for Enhanced Condensation in Energy Applications
Sept. 18 - Oscar W Greenberg, Dept. of Physics, Physical Science Center, University of Maryland, College Park, MD 20742: Color in Particle Physics
Sept. 25 - Pavel Snopok, Department of Phyiscs, Illinois Institute of Technology, 3101 S Dearborn St, Chicago, IL 60616: Advanced Simulation Tools for Muon-Based Accelerators
Oct. 2 - Symposium Speakers, Northern Illinois University: A symposium honoring the legacy of Clyde Kimball
Oct. 16 - Gerald Blazey, NIU: Since Policy in the White House
Oct. 23 - Rui Li, Jefferson Lab, 12050 Jefferson Ave., Newport News, VA23606: CSR and LSC induced Microbunching Instability in a Recirculating Ring
Oct. 30 - Keith Taddei, Physics Department, Northern Illinois University: At the Crossroads of Superconductivity and Magnetism: The Complex Phase Behavior of the Iron Based Superconductors
Nov. 6 - Emily Thompson, Insight Data Science, 260 Sheridan Ave, Ste 310, Palo Alto, CA 94306: Data Science: Making the Transition from Academia to Industry
Nov. 13 - Vishnu Zutshi, Department of Physics, Northern Illinois University: The Mu2e Experiment at Fermilab
Nov. 20 - Robert Calkins, Department of Physics, Southern Methodist University, P.O. Box 750175, Dallas, TX 75275-0175: "Recent results from the SuperCDMS experiment and the status of SuperCDMS SNOLAB"

Spring 2015

Fall 2014

Sept. 12 Michael Papka, Argonne National Laboratory, Delivering Science at the Petascale: High-Performance Computing at Argonne National Laboratory.
Sept. 19 - Dmitri Denisov, Fermilab, Towards the Next Energy-Frontier Machine: A 100 TeV Proton-Proton Collider
Sept. 26 - Joseph Grange, Argonne Nationbal Laboratory, The Magnetic Field Measurement for the New Muon g-2 Experiment.
Oct. 3 - Jeanie Lau, University of California, Riverside, Quantum Transport and Correlated Phenomena in Bilayer and Trilayer Graphene Membranes.
Oct. 10 - Roland Winkler, Department of Physics, NIU, Spins and Pseudospins in Graphene.
Oct. 24 - Jahred Adelman, Department of Physics, NIU, Searches, measurements and the future: A new era of Higgs boson physics at ATLAS.
Oct. 31 - Jayakjar Charles Tobin Thangaraj, Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory, When billion electrons huddle: Collective effects on high-brightness electron beams.
Nov. 7 - Michael Lubell, The City College of New York, Department of Physics, American Physical Society, Director of Public Affairs, Science in a Populist Era: Challenges and Opportunities.
Nov. 14 - Panagiotis Spentzouris, Fermilab, Advanced Computation for High-Intensity Beam Physics.
Nov. 21 - Juan A, Colon Santana, Department of Physics, NIU, Rare Earth Based Heterostructure Diodes for Spintronics Applications.
Nov. 28 - No Colloquium, Thanksgiving break
Dec. 5 - Senior Symposium, Graduating Seniors, Department of Physics, NIU

Spring 2014

Jan. 17 - No Colloquium
Jan. 24 - Trevor Vickey, U. Witwatersrand, South Africa, "Evidence for Higgs Boson Decays to Tau Lepton Pairs from the ATLAS Experiment at the CERN Large Hadron Collider''.
Jan. 31 - Lidija Zivkovic, Institute of Physics, Belgrade, "Higgs boson - from the discovery to the measurement of its properties".
Feb. 7 - Sanjay Padhi, UC. San Diego,
Feb. 14 - Micael Eads, NIU, "Muon g-2 experiment".
Feb. 21 - Jahred Adelman, Yale University,
Feb. 28 - Young-Min Shin, NIU, "Advanced Accelerater R&D" (TBD).
Mar. 7 - APS March meeting
Mar. 14 - Spring break
Mar. 21 - Igor Aronson, ANL
Mar. 28 - Sowjanya Gollapinni, Fermi Lab, "MicroBooNE experiment" (TBD).
Apr. 4 - Adina Luican-Mayer, ANL Center for Nanoscale Materials, "Graphene research" (TBD)
*Apr. 11 - Elsa Garmire
Apr. 18 - Scott Willenbrock, UIUC,
Apr. 25 - Senior Seminar, Awards, & pizza! Starts at 3:00 pm.
May 2 - Reading Day

Fall 2013

*Sept. 6 - Oleg Shpyrko, University of California, San Diego, "X-ray Nanovision".
*Sept. 13 - Erick Blomberg, Iowa State University, "Structural and electronic anisotropy in iron-based superconductors".
Sept. 20 - Deepak Kar, University of Glasgow, UK, "Not a jet all the way: discovery prospects using substructure".
*Sept. 27 - Marge Bardeen, Fermi Lab, "Run Like a Proton and Other Ways to Engage Young People with Science".
*Oct. 4 - Elena Semouchkina, Michigan Technological University, "Metamaterials and Invisibility Cloaks Made of Dielectrics".
Oct. 11 - Zhili Xiao, NIU, "Size matters: nanoscale superconductors and beyond".
Oct. 18 - Mary Anne Cummings, Fermilab, Muonsinc, "New Paths Toward a Muon Collider".
Oct. 25 - Peter Littlewood, ANL, "Polariton Condensation".
Nov. 1 - Omar Chmaissem, NIU, "Nematic Order in Fe based superconductors".
Nov. 8 - HEP (TBD)
Nov. 15 - George Coutrakon, NIU, "The NIU Proton CT Project".
Nov. 22, Robert Kephart, Fermi Lab, "Applications of Accelerators and the Illinois Accelerator Research Center". Presentation is available HERE!
Nov. 30 - No colloquium. Thanksgiving break
Dec. 6 - Senior Seminar

Spring 2013

Jan. 18 - Carol Johnstone, Fermilab, "Future Accelerators, from Green Energy to Cancer Therapy"
Feb. 1 - Igor Beloborodov, California State University Northridge, "New Frontiers in Materials Science: Superconductive Mesosolids"
Feb. 8 - Charles Reichhardt, Los Alamos National Lab, "Jamming and Clogging Transitions for Systems with Quenched Disorder"
Feb. 22 - Mandy Rominsky, Fermilab, "New Muon g-2 Experiment at Fermilab"
Mar. 8 - Eva Andrei, Rutgers University, "Fractional quantum Hall effect and insulating phase of Dirac electrons in graphene"
Mar. 22 - Johann Rafelski, University of Arizona, "Laser-electron Scattering at the Critical Force Limit"
Mar. 29 - Tatyana Baturina, Novosibirsk, Russia, "Coexistence and interplay of superconductivity and localization in two dimensions"
Apr. 5 - Valerii Vinokour, Argonne National Lab, "Transport in nano-structured materials"
Apr. 12 - David Rasmussen, Oak Ridge National Lab, "The ITER International Partnership: Demonstrating the Scientific and Technological Feasibility of Fusion Energy"
Apr. 19 - George Coutrakon, NIU, Quantum Reality and Schrodinger's Cat
Apr. 26 - Awards Ceremony and Student Presentations. Presentation of awards by Chair Laurence Lurio; Harsha Panuganti "Generation of Electron Bunches using Photo- and Field Emission"; James A. Maloney, "Muon Collider Physics and Muon Cooling".

Fall 2012

Sept. 14 - Prof. Dhiman Chakraborty, NIU, "Discovery of the Higgs boson (?) at the LHC"
Sept. 21 - Stanislaw Kolesnik, NIU, "The complex side of a simple cubic perovskite"
Sept. 28 - Eric Dufresne, APS ANL, "The short-pulse hard x-ray beamlines in the Advanced Photon Source upgrade"
Oct. 5 - Prof. Andreas Schroeder, University of Illinois at Chicago, "High brightness, ultrafast, laser-driven electron sources"
Oct. 12 - No colloquium
Oct. 19 - Jason Steffen, Fermilab, "Exoplanet Science from NASA's Kepler Mission"
Oct. 26 - Brandon Armstrong, Harvard U., "Elucidating the dynamics of biology with Dynamic Nuclear Polarization". View video.
Nov. 2 - No colloquium
Nov. 9 - Jason M. Allred, Argonne National Lab, "Structural trends and insights in the iron-based superconductors BaFe₂(As_1-xP_x)₂, Ba_1-xK_xFe₂As₂, Ca₁₀(Pt_nAs₈)(Fe₂As₂)_5"
Nov. 16 - Jason Hoffman, Argonne National Lab, "Magnetoelectric Coupling in Composite Multiferroic Heterostructures".
Nov. 23 - Thanksgiving break
Nov. 30 - Prof. Kathryn Levin, University of Chicago, Understanding Fermi Gases: Providing Insights into Condensed- and Quark-Gluon Matter
Dec. 7 - Senior seminars: 3:30 Samuel Watt "Teaching Physics – Taking an Example Just Far Enough". 3:45 Carlos Celada "Dark Energy, Dark Matter, and the Expansion of the Universe". 4:00 Gregory Maj "Noise Reduction in Electron Energy Loss Spectra".

Spring 2012

Feb. 10 - Steve Martin, NIU. The Acceleration of the Expansion of the Universe: Physics Nobel Prize 2011.
Feb. 17 - Young-Min Shin, NIU. Advanced Microwave and THz Vacuum Electron Beam Devices.
Feb. 24 - George Coutrakon, NIU. Quantum Reality and Schrodinger's Cat: An Historical Perspective.
Mar. 2 - Sean Mattingly, Bank of America. Business for Poets: Physics Careers Outside of Physics.
Mar. 23 - Uwe Bergmann, SLAC. Archimedes' Oldest Writings under X-ray Vision.
Apr. 6 - Jianguo Wen, Argonne. Sub-Angstrom Transmission Electron Microscopy with Aberration Correction.
Apr. 13 - Bogdan Dabrowski, NIU. Search and Discovery of Strongly Coupled Multi-Ferroic Perovskites Sr_1-xBa_xMnO₃.
Apr. 20 - Mark Pankuch, Director of Medical Physics and Dosimetry, CDH ProCure Proton Therapy Facility. The Clinical Use of Accelerated Protons: Proton Radiotherapy.
Apr. 27 - Senior Seminar. (1) Michael Wesley (Faculty Mentor: Professor Yasuo Ito). Observation of Fe doped SrRuO₃ Thin-Films. (2) Zachary Johnson (Faculty Mentor: Professor Carol Thompson). Magnetic Force Microscopy of Materials. (3) Anthony M. Schroeder (Faculty Mentor: Professor Zhili Xiao). A Guided Inquiry into Nano-Scale Hydrogen Sensors.

Fall 2011

August 19 - Safety Orientation.
August 26 - LAS State of the College address.
Sept. 16 - Welcome picnic for new graduate students, 12-2 pm.
Sept. 16 - Prof. Lobat Tayebi, University of Oklahoma. Biomaterial Multilayer Assemblies.
Sept. 23 - All-day symposium in honor of Prof. Clyde Kimball.
Sept. 30 - Jeffrey Lynn, NIST Center for Neutron Research, National Institute of Standards and Technology. Magnetic Moments in Superconductors: From Assassin to Facilitator.
Oct. 14 - Andreas Glatz, Materials Science Division, Argonne National Laboratory. Thermoelectric and Non-equilibrium Phenomena in Mesoscopic Meta-materials.
Oct. 21 - Rajendran Raja, Fermilab. Nuclear Energy Using Accelerator Driven Sub-critical Systems - The Thorium Option.
Oct. 28 - Michael Turner, University of Chicago. Quarks and the Cosmos.
Nov. 4 - Jyotsana Lal, Materials Science Division, Argonne National Laboratory. Slow Dynamics in Complex Systems Measured by High Energy Resolution Neutron Scattering Techniques.
Nov. 11 - D. N. Kafle, Argonne National Laboratory. Aerosol Optical Depth Derived from Micropulse Lidar Data at Various ARM Sites World-wide.
Nov. 18 - Linda Young, Advanced Photon Source, Argonne National Laboratory. Exploring the frontier of ultrafast/ultraintense x-ray interactions with matter.
Dec. 2 - Jian-rong Gao, Advanced Photon Source, Argonne National Laboratory. Phase relations in La-Fe-Si alloys for magnetic refrigeration applications.

Spring 2011

Jan. 28 - Roland Winkler, NIU. Graphene: The Ultimate Flatland. The Nobel Prize in Physics 2010.
Feb. 4 - Probing Itinerant Ferromagnetism with Spin Waves. Vincent Vlamnick, Argonne.
Feb. 18 - Ultrananocrystalline Diamond for MEMS and NEMS: Opportunities and Challenges. Anirudha V. Sumant, Argonne.
Mar. 4 - Size Matters: Palladium Nanostructures for Fast and Sensitive Hydrogen Detection. Prof. Zhili Xiao, NIU.
Mar. 11 - New Experiments with Antiprotons. Daniel Kaplan, IIT.
Mar. 18 - Spring Break.
Apr. 1 - Joel Moore, University of California, Berkeley. New Topologically Ordered Phases of Condensed Matter.
Apr. 8 - Rocky Kolb, University of Chicago. Taking Sides on Dark Energy.
Apr. 15 - Wayne Newhauser, Department of Radiation Physics, University of Texas M. D. Anderson Cancer Center. High Performance Computing for Proton Radiation Therapy.
Apr. 22 - Christophe Royon, Commissariat a l'Energie Atomique, Saclay. First Results from the ATLAS Experiment at the LHC and the ATLAS Forward Physics Project.
Apr. 29 - Senior Seminar. Talks will be followed by awards ceremony and reception.
May 6 - Heinlich Jaeger, University of Chicago. Self-Assembled Nanoparticle Monolayers.

Fall 2010

Sept. 3 - Philippe Guyot-Sionnest, University of Chicago. Sparse Density of States in Colloidal Quantum Dots: Tuning Energy Relaxation and Transport.
Sept. 17 - David Hedin, NIU. Understanding our Asymmetric Universe: Evidence for an Anomalous Like-Sign Dimuon Asymmetry.
Sept. 24 - G. P. Yeh, Fermilab. The Energy Transformation.
Oct. 1 - Sidney Nagel, University of Chicago. The Life and Death of a Drop: Topological Transitions and Singularities in Fluids
Oct. 15 - James Rabchuk, Western Illinois University. A Mechanical Demonstration Illustrating Parametric Resonance.
Oct. 22 - Matt Bellis, Stanford University: Searching for Baryon Number Violation in the BaBar Dataset.
Oct. 29 - Alexander Yarin, University of Ilinois at Chicago. Thorny Devil Nanofibers: The Way to Cooling Rates of the Order of 1 kW/cm2.
Nov. 12 - Robert Hirosky, University of Virginia. The CMS Detector: Peformance and First Physics.

Contact Us

Department of Physics
La Tourette Hall, Room 202
815-753-1772
physics@niu.edu