Research Spotlight

In January, 2008 the Minnesota “Heavy Flavor” group led by Professors Ron Poling and Dan Cronin-Hennessy joined the BESIII experiment at the Institute of High Energy Physics in Beijing, China. This expanded an already fruitful program of collaborative research in high energy physics between the United States and the People’s Republic of China that was initiated by T.D. Lee, “Pief” Panofsky and Bob Wilson in the 1970’s. More »

Alexander Heger is a new professor in the area of nuclear theory and cosmology. His research involves creating and running computer simulations of "massive stars" (those that are 10-1000 the size of the sun) from formation through nuclear burning phases. More »

Oriol T. Valls and students, Klaus Halterman and Paul Barsic, have been studying some unusual properties of nanostructures consisting of intercalated superconductor and ferromagnetic materials. Such structures are very interesting for a variety of technological (application to "spintronics") and scientific reasons. They exhibit what is called "proximity effects:" the superconductivity leaks into the magnetic layers and the magnetism into the superconducting ones. More »

What does epidemiology have to do with quantum physics? Condensed matter theorist, Alexander Kamenev has been using the tools of the quantum mechanic to help biologists further understand the behavior of diseases. “If you think about it, an epidemiologist tries to describe a large community of bacteria to determine their behavior statistically.” Kamenev says that task is not that different from what a condensed matter theorist does when studying interacting groups of particles. More »

For the past ten years, Cheng-Cher “C.C” Huang and his collaborators have been exploring properties of liquid crystals with a technique called resonant x-ray scattering. This is the most reliable and effective method for getting to the specific liquid crystal states that Huang and his group are researching. Liquid crystals, a phase of matter between a liquid and a solid, have been used in technologies from high-resolution camera viewfinders to large-area “liquid crystal displays” used in monitors More »

MINOS, or the Main Injector Neutrino Oscillation Search, is now on its third phase of data collection. According to Professor Marvin Marshak, the Fermilab Main Injector accelerator has now aimed more than 5 x 10²⁰ protons at the target in the neutrino beam line. The protons create pions and kaons, which then decay to create the neutrino beam. MINOS has now observed more than 1,000 neutrino interactions in the Far Detector at Soudan MN. “MINOS is clearly in its precision measuring phase." More »

We compare every sound that we hear against the sounds that we have already heard and are stored in our memory. More »

"My laboratory is a supernova," Yong Qian states matter-of-factly with a smile. Qian is a theoretical physicist studying neutrino oscillations, the change from one "flavor" to another as a neutrino moves through matter and space. This phenomenon occurs because a neutrino is created in one of three flavor states (or simply “flavors”), with three distinct mass states. More »

Professor Vuk Mandic is an observational cosmologist involved in the search for gravitational waves with LIGO (Laser Interferometer Gravitational-wave Observatory.) Gravitational Waves were predicted by Einstein’s Theory of General Relativity, but have yet to be observed in the natural world. More »

Claire Hypolite is an Institute of Technology alumna who is involved in a new program, PACES (Parents And Children Experiencing Science) designed to get families doing science and thinking critically together. More »