General News

The Soudan Underground Laboratory was named the number one nerd roadtrip by Popular Science Magazine. Check out Soudan Mine Braces for Nerd Invasion for the rest of the story.

School of Physics and Astronomy Professor Roger Rusack was featured in Minnesota Monthly as part of a series called "Minnesota Miracles." The profile is about his participation in the search for the Higgs boson. More »

Physicists in the School of Physics and Astronomy are members of one of the two groups that recently reported the discovery of an intriguing new particle state named Zc(3900). This exceedingly short-lived particle has physicists excited because it presents an unexpected twist in the Standard Model of particle physics, which is the playbook for how the building blocks of matter fit together. More »

The Twin Cities business magazine, Finance and Commerce, named the NOvA Far Detector building in Ash River, Minnesota as one of the top building projects of 2012. There were more than 70 nominees and the laboratory was one of 26 honored, and one of only two out-state projects to make the list.

Professor Mikahil Shifman will receive the 2013 Pomeranchuk Prize, an international award for theoretical physicists given by the Institute for Theoretical and Experimental Physics in Moscow. Shifman was cited "for outstanding results in nonperturbative quantum field theory."

School of Physics and Astronomy Professor James Kakalios has written an op ed piece in The Hill, Congress Blog that takes the President and Congress to task for the sequester cuts and their stifling effect on scientific research. More »

A NOvA Experience for Students, by Deane Morrison is currently running on the University of Minnesota News website.

The 2013 Van Vleck Lecture "A Random Walk to Graphene" by Andre Geim can be now be viewed online. More »

The most powerful neutrino detector in the United States has recorded its first three-dimensional images of particles.Using the first completed section of the NOvA neutrino detector, scientists have begun collecting data from cosmic rays—particles produced by a constant rain of atomic nuclei falling on the Earth’s atmosphere from space. More »

School of Physics and Astronomy Graduate Student Ke-Jung Ken Chen has received the 2013 Gruber Foundation (TGF) Fellowship. This prestigious fellowship in the amouont of $50,000 is awarded to only one applicant per year. Chen will use the award to fund his post-doctoral research at the University of California at Santa Cruz. Ken Chen is a student in astrophysics, studying supernovae with supercomputers, under the direction of Graduate Faculty member Alexander Heger. The Gruber Foundation is a part of the International Astronomical Union.