The Nobel Prize in Physics 2024 was awarded to John J. Hopfield and Geoffrey E. Hinton “for foundational discoveries and inventions that enable machine learning with artificial neural networks”.

This year’s two Nobel Laureates in Physics have used tools from physics to develop methods that are the foundation of today’s powerful machine learning. John Hopfield created an associative memory that can store and reconstruct images and other types of patterns in data. Geoffrey Hinton invented a method that can autonomously find properties in data, and so perform tasks such as identifying specific elements in pictures.

The U.S. Department of Energy and the National Science Foundation have named University of Mississippi physics professor Breese Quinn to their High Energy Physics Advisory Panel. For more details please follow this link.

During the last week, University of Mississippi physics graduate students have successfully defended their Theses and Dissertations. The are:

Masters:

Azwad Adnan successfully defended his MS thesis, “Branching fraction measurements of Ξ_c⁺ → Σ⁺ h⁺ h^– and Λ_c⁺ → p⁺ h⁺ h^– using Belle II Monte Carlo” on Wednesday July 10, 2024.

Paul Gebeline successfully defended his MS thesis, “Measurement of the branching ratios of Ξ_c⁺ → Ξ⁰π⁺π⁺π^–, Σ⁺K^–π⁺, Σ⁺K⁺K^–, and Σ⁺π⁺π^– and the lifetime of the Ξ_c⁺ ” on Tuesday July 23, 2024.

Dinura Hettiarachchi successfully defended his MS thesis, “Measurements of Charge Parity asymmetries in Λ_c⁺ → p⁺ h⁺ h^– ” on Thursday July 11, 2024.

Wil Stacy successfully defended his MS thesis, “Inclusive measurement of Υ(4S) decays to Υ(1S) at Belle II” on Tuesday July 23, 2024.

Ph.D:

Akshay Khadse successfully defended his Ph.D.dissertation, “Data driven approaches to study gravitational waves from binary black hole mergers” on Wednesday July 17, 2024.

Saroj Pokharel successfully defended his Ph.D.dissertation, “An amplitude analysis of Ξ_c⁰ decays to Λ⁰ K^– π⁺ ” on Thursday, July 11, 2024.

Joe Rivest successfully defended his Ph.D.dissertation, “Tidal perturbations of Kerr spacetime and their impact on orbits” on Saturday, July 13, 2024.

Prof. Jake Bennett and Prof. Leo Stein have received a promotion to Associate Professor.

UM team seeks answers to questions about Standard Model, dark matter.

Pushing the boundaries of what is known about the universe, a team of University of Mississippi students and postdoctoral researchers has contributed to one of the world’s premier particle physics experiments, Muon g-2, at Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory. See this page for more details.