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Department of Physics and Astronomy
University of Mississippi

News

Sumeet Kulkarni Awarded the 2023 Eric & Wendy Schmidt Award for Excellence in Science Communications

Physics Graduate Student Sumeet Kulkarni Awarded the 2023 Eric & Wendy Schmidt Award for Excellence in Science Communications by the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine.

Sumeet Kulkarni is a graduate student studying astrophysics at the University of Mississippi, and an aspiring science journalist. His research with the LIGO experiment involves studying violent black hole collisions through the gravitational waves that they emit. As an amateur astrophotographer, he captures beautiful celestial canvases on his camera, and wherever applicable, uses these as storytelling elements. Kulkarni is passionate about increasing public engagement in science and does so via co-hosting a local science cafe in Oxford, MS. For more details please see: https://www.nationalacademies.org/awards/excellence-in-communication/winners/sumeet-kulkarni.

The 2023 Physics Nobel Prize

The Nobel Prize in Physics 2023  was awarded “for experimental methods that generate attosecond pulses of light for the study of electron dynamics in matter” to be shared jointly between Pierre Agostini, Ferenc Krausz and Anne L’Huillier.

The three Nobel Prize laureates in physics 2023 are being recognized for their experiments, which have given humanity new tools for exploring the world of electrons inside atoms and molecules. They have demonstrated a way to create extremely short pulses of light that can be used to measure the rapid processes in which electrons move or change energy.

Physics Graduate Students Baisakhi Mitra and Byungchul Yu Receive a Fermilab Fellowship

Baisakhi Mitra and Byungchul Yu were just awarded URA Visiting Scholar fellowships! These awards will support their research in residence at the Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory (Fermilab) over the next year with Dr. Breese Quinn on the Muon g-2 experiment.

Congratulations to the Holders of our Physics Scholarships for 2023-24

Arthur B. and Alma G. Lewis Scholarship

Elizabeth Goreth
Quinn Jordan
Jackson Puleo
Byron Villacorta

The Dr. Lee N. Bolen, Jr. Scholarship

Isabella Armstrong
Kaylyn Beard

Wofford Reynolds and Opal Read Price Scholarship

Isabella Armstrong
Adrell Evans
Courtland Nobles
Harrison Roth

New Faculty Member: Dr. Nicholas Roy MacDonald

Dr. Nicholas Roy MacDonald has just joined us as an Assistant professor. Dr. MacDonald received a Ph.D. in Astrophysics from Boston University. He was a postdoctoral researcher and staff scientist at the Max Planck Institute for Radio Astronomy, Bonn, Germany. His research focuses on the study of extragalactic jets.  He has been involved in theoretical, observational, and numerical studies of the physics of jet propagation and emission from kilo-parsec to sub-parsec scales.

He is a member of the following scientific collaborations:

The Event Horizon Telescope (EHT) Collaboration

(see https://eventhorizontelescope.org)

Polarimetric Monitoring of AGN at mm-Wavelengths (POLAMI) Program

(see http://polami.iaa.es)

MPIfR Radio Astronomy/VLBI Group

(see https://www.mpifr-bonn.mpg.de/research/vlbi)

Boston University Blazar Group

(see https://www.bu.edu/blazars)