Roy Arnold, a longtime faculty member in this department and member of NCPA, passed away peacefully on April 28, 2024. Details of his funeral and Obituary can be found here: https://www.colemanfuneralhome.com/obituaries/Roy-Arnold-3/  .

The 2024 US Belle II Summer Workshop will be held from June 17 – 21, 2024.

This workshop will be primarily face-to-face with a SpeakApp connection for those who are unable to attend in person.

The purpose of this workshop is to give students, postdocs, and more senior researchers the tools and knowledge needed to get started and make progress on Belle II physics analysis and performance studies. Topics will include Belle II physics, software, and computing in a hands-on tutorial format.

This workshop is open to all Belle II collaborators and we welcome attendance from across the collaboration.

The University of Mississippi is one the 200 international institutions that are participating in Fermilab’s Deep Underground Neutrino Experiment, or DUNE. Excavation of the colossal caverns for Fermilab’s  DUNE experiment was completed on February 1, 2024. The Department of Physics and Astronomy DUNE effort is led by Dr. Gavin Davies.

For more details pleas see the University of Mississippi News article and the Fermilab article.

Sumeet Kulkarni has Successfully Defended his Doctoral Dissertation entitled “Spins and Kicks: An Analysis of Dynamical Properties of Compact Binaries Using Gravitational Waves” on Thursday, January 25, 2024.

He will start an internship writing news for Nature.

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.