Happening @ Michigan https://events.umich.edu/list/rss RSS Feed for Happening @ Michigan Events at the University of Michigan. Mathematical Biology (March 6, 2017 12:00pm) https://events.umich.edu/event/38187 38187-6993499@events.umich.edu Event Begins: Monday, March 6, 2017 12:00pm
Location: West Hall
Organized By: Department of Mathematics

Cells move in tissue in several situations such as the spread of cancer. It is known that cell motility leads to deformation of the tissue. We argue here that the deformations are generically plastic and irreversible. We study an experimental model system of breast cancer cells in collagen-I. We observe large, irreversible deformations, namely dense collagen bundles between cells which do not decay when the cells stop contracting. We give a numerical model that shows how sliding of cross-links in the collagen can give the observed results. The same model reproduces bulk rheology observations of plasticity. We also observe the micro-rheology of the collagen bundles.

We discuss the implications of our results for cell motility via durotaxis and contact guidance. We propose that cell motility, even at low densities, is a collective effect due to mechanical
communication between cells.
Speaker(s): Leonard Sander (University of Michigan)

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Workshop / Seminar Mon, 06 Mar 2017 18:16:52 -0500 2017-03-06T12:00:00-05:00 2017-03-06T13:00:00-05:00 West Hall Department of Mathematics Workshop / Seminar West Hall
Quantitative Biology Seminar | Irreversible Remodeling of Tissue by Cells: Implications for the Spread of Cancer (March 6, 2017 12:00pm) https://events.umich.edu/event/38460 38460-7191696@events.umich.edu Event Begins: Monday, March 6, 2017 12:00pm
Location: West Hall
Organized By: Quantitative Biology Seminars

Cells move in tissue in several situations such as the spread of cancer. It is known that cell motility leads to deformation of the tissue. We argue here that the deformations are generically plastic and irreversible. We study an experimental model system of breast cancer cells in collagen-I. We observe large, irreversible deformations, namely dense collagen bundles between cells which do not decay when the cells stop contracting. We give a numerical model that shows how sliding of cross-links in the collagen can give the observed results. The same model reproduces bulk rheology observations of plasticity. We also observe the micro-rheology of the collagen bundles.

We discuss the implications of our results for cell motility via durotaxis and contact guidance. We propose that cell motility, even at low densities, is a collective effect due to mechanical communication between cells.

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Workshop / Seminar Mon, 27 Feb 2017 08:43:28 -0500 2017-03-06T12:00:00-05:00 2017-03-06T13:00:00-05:00 West Hall Quantitative Biology Seminars Workshop / Seminar Physics
HEP-Astro Seminar | Probing QCD Matter at Extremely High Temperatures in ATLAS: Jet Measurements in p+p, p+Pb and Pb+Pb Collisions at 5 TeV (March 6, 2017 4:00pm) https://events.umich.edu/event/38470 38470-7191704@events.umich.edu Event Begins: Monday, March 6, 2017 4:00pm
Location: West Hall
Organized By: HEP - Astro Seminars

Collisions between two lead nuclei at the Large Hadron Collider produce extremely high temperature QCD matter which is best described as consisting of deconfined quarks and gluons. A powerful tool to understand this matter is to use the high momentum quarks and gluons generated in hard scattering processes in the earliest stages of the nuclear collision as probes of the matter at later times. These measurements use modifications to the jet rates and properties induced by the scattering of the probes off the constituents of the matter to infer the nature of the interactions and constrain the properties of the matter. This talk will describe the new measurements at 5 TeV collision energy of jets and their properties in the ATLAS detector in lead-lead collisions as well proton-proton and proton-lead collisions which provide a baseline for the lead-lead measurements.

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Workshop / Seminar Mon, 27 Feb 2017 09:26:45 -0500 2017-03-06T16:00:00-05:00 2017-03-06T17:00:00-05:00 West Hall HEP - Astro Seminars Workshop / Seminar Physics
2016 Ralph Baldwin Prize in Astrophysics and Space Science (Reception at 3pm, Lecture at 3:40pm) (March 7, 2017 3:00pm) https://events.umich.edu/event/35621 35621-5280553@events.umich.edu Event Begins: Tuesday, March 7, 2017 3:00pm
Location: West Hall
Organized By: Department of Astronomy

Title: From Disks to Planets Through the Astrochemical Lens

Abstract: During the first few Myr of a young, Sun-like star's life, it is encircled by a disk made up of molecular gas, dust, and ice. These materials form the building blocks for future planetary systems. Improvements in observational spatial resolution and sensitivity have allowed us to characterize the protoplanetary disk environment in great detail. Recent interferometric observations with both the Submillimeter Array (SMA) and the Atacama Large Millimeter/Submillimeter Array (ALMA) have shed light on disks' chemical composition and the structure of their rocky/solid and gaseous components, which together feed young terrestrial and gas giant planets. I will discuss recent results and new puzzles regarding our understanding of protoplanetary disk chemical and structural evolution, along with future avenues to detect individual young planets forming in situ.

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Lecture / Discussion Fri, 03 Mar 2017 12:00:39 -0500 2017-03-07T15:00:00-05:00 2017-03-07T16:30:00-05:00 West Hall Department of Astronomy Lecture / Discussion West Hall
CM-AMO Seminar | Adding Trapped Molecules to the Quantum Toolkit (March 7, 2017 4:00pm) https://events.umich.edu/event/38359 38359-7140403@events.umich.edu Event Begins: Tuesday, March 7, 2017 4:00pm
Location: West Hall
Organized By: CM-AMO Seminars

Development of laser-based techniques to cool and manipulate trapped atoms led to a quantum revolution, with applications ranging from creation of novel phases of matter to realization of new tools for navigation and timekeeping. Because of their comparatively richer internal structure, molecules offer additional potential for quantum-controlled chemistry, quantum information processing, and precision spectroscopy. However, obtaining control over the rotational quantum state of trapped molecules, a prerequisite for most applications, has presented a significant challenge because of the large number of internal states. I will discuss techniques we have developed to optically cool rotations of trapped molecular ions, using a single spectrally shaped broadband laser. I will also discuss our progress toward using this quantum control for molecular coherent manipulation, single-molecule fluorescence imaging, and single-molecule spectroscopy.

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Workshop / Seminar Mon, 30 Jan 2017 09:09:14 -0500 2017-03-07T16:00:00-05:00 2017-03-07T17:00:00-05:00 West Hall CM-AMO Seminars Workshop / Seminar Physics
Department Colloquium | Building with Crystals of Light and Quantum Matter: From Clocks to Computers (March 8, 2017 4:00pm) https://events.umich.edu/event/38472 38472-7191710@events.umich.edu Event Begins: Wednesday, March 8, 2017 4:00pm
Location: West Hall
Organized By: Department Colloquia

Understanding the behavior of interacting electrons in solids or liquids is at the heart of modern quantum science and necessary for technological advances. However, the complexity of their interactions generally prevents us from coming up with an exact mathematical description of their behavior. Precisely engineered ultracold gases are emerging as a powerful tool for unraveling these challenging physical problems. In this talk, I will present recent developments at JILA on using alkaline-earth atoms (AEAs) --currently the basis of the most precise atomic clock in the world-- for the investigation of complex many-body phenomena and magnetism. I will discuss ideas to use AEAs to engineer synthetic materials with no yet known counterpart in nature. I will also discuss how to use laser fields to make neutral AEAs behave as charged electrons in ultra-strong magnetic fields.

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Workshop / Seminar Wed, 01 Mar 2017 14:12:30 -0500 2017-03-08T16:00:00-05:00 2017-03-08T17:00:00-05:00 West Hall Department Colloquia Workshop / Seminar Physics
Frequentist/Bayes controversies, homeopathy and (ES)P-values (March 9, 2017 11:30am) https://events.umich.edu/event/39111 39111-7692827@events.umich.edu Event Begins: Thursday, March 9, 2017 11:30am
Location: West Hall
Organized By: The Center for the Study of Complex Systems

I compare and contrast the two predominant philosophies for characterizing empirical uncertainty, frequentist and Bayesian statistics. The frequentist approach, in particular Neyman’s formulation of confidence intervals and Neyman-Pearson significance testing, held sway in much of the last century, but the Bayesian approach has experienced a dramatic revival in recent years. I’ll discuss why. While frequentist ideas remain essential for keeping our models from sending us off the rails, Bayes provides a comprehensive and logical inferential framework for addressing the entire spectrum of uncertainty, from extraterrestrial life to tennis strategy. The P-value debate, homeopathic treatments and ESP are discussed from the Bayesian and frequentist perspectives.

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Workshop / Seminar Tue, 21 Feb 2017 13:23:31 -0500 2017-03-09T11:30:00-05:00 2017-03-09T12:30:00-05:00 West Hall The Center for the Study of Complex Systems Workshop / Seminar Roderick Little Talk Poster
CM Theory Seminars | Hunds Interaction, Spin-Orbit Coupling and the Mechanism of Superconductivity in Heavily Hole-Doped Iron Pnictides (March 9, 2017 2:00pm) https://events.umich.edu/event/37140 37140-6173170@events.umich.edu Event Begins: Thursday, March 9, 2017 2:00pm
Location: West Hall
Organized By: Interdisciplinary QC/CM Seminars

Argument will be made for a novel unconventional mechanism for s-wave (A1g) Cooper pairing in heavily hole doped iron pnictides. This mechanism avoids large on-site intra-orbital repulsion, and is favored when the renormalized Hunds interaction exceeds the renormalized onsite inter-orbital Couplomb repulsion. In the absence of spin-orbit interaction, the Cooper pairing has A2g spin triplet character, but with spin-orbit included, the gap transforms as A1g. This is not just a change in bookkeeping. Rather, it results in a qualitative difference in the nature of the pairing instability, and in the temperature dependence of the Knight shift. The resulting gap has most of the features of the structure and gap anisotropy observed in laser angle resolved photoemission, including thepossibility of accidental nodes. It explains why, when such nodes are observed, they appear only on the outer (Eg) Fermi surface, as well as why the overall gap magnitude is smaller there than on the inner (Eg) Fermi surface.

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Workshop / Seminar Mon, 06 Mar 2017 08:45:17 -0500 2017-03-09T14:00:00-05:00 2017-03-09T15:00:00-05:00 West Hall Interdisciplinary QC/CM Seminars Workshop / Seminar Physics
CSAAW TALK: Memory Anomalies and How to Measure Them (March 10, 2017 12:00pm) https://events.umich.edu/event/39372 39372-8038554@events.umich.edu Event Begins: Friday, March 10, 2017 12:00pm
Location: West Hall
Organized By: The Center for the Study of Complex Systems

Abstract: Almost every general model of constructive memory has a lot to say about how generalizations are abstracted, information is synthesized and patterns are discovered. In other words, these accounts are about combining, compressing and drawing connections. However, many memory operations are better thought of as dividing and isolating. The paradigmatic example is a memory anomaly. For instance, you might remember a strange interaction with a friend where their behaviour seemed out of character, only to later discover that they had witnessed a traumatic event on that day. What is the purpose of keeping these odd memories around and how do we select for them? How does this process relate to the more familiar one of systematizing and combining? This paper compares information-theoretic and informal measures of what makes an event anomalous and proposes a preliminary theory of the kinds of weird events that should stick in our memory.

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Workshop / Seminar Mon, 06 Mar 2017 11:24:54 -0500 2017-03-10T12:00:00-05:00 2017-03-10T13:00:00-05:00 West Hall The Center for the Study of Complex Systems Workshop / Seminar UM Complex Systems
Sexual Harassment and Gender Discrimination on Campus (March 10, 2017 2:00pm) https://events.umich.edu/event/38608 38608-7249602@events.umich.edu Event Begins: Friday, March 10, 2017 2:00pm
Location: West Hall
Organized By: Physics Workshops & Conferences

A representative from the University of Michigan Office of Institutional Equity (OIE) will be here to provide an overview of information related to to sexual harassment and gender discrimination on campus.

Elizabeth Seney, a deputy Title IX coordinator at OIE will answer the following questions: What is sexual harassment and gender discrimination? How do you report it? What community resources exist for individuals who are experiencing it? What happens when behavior is reported? The presentation will provide a broad overview of information for anyone who's been wondering how to make sense of these concepts and their associated procedures and related resources. It will also cover details about confidential reporting vs so-called "mandatory reporting" required of responsible employees. You'll leave with a better understanding of our community as well as with resources to have questions answered and support provided. This is recommended for interested students (graduate and undergraduate), faculty members, and staff. Everyone is welcome and we hope you can join us!

This workshop is sponsored by the Society of Women in Physics and the Department of Physics Student Services Office.

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Workshop / Seminar Fri, 03 Feb 2017 15:15:45 -0500 2017-03-10T14:00:00-05:00 2017-03-10T15:00:00-05:00 West Hall Physics Workshops & Conferences Workshop / Seminar Physics Department Logo
HET Seminar | Hawking Radiation in a Condensate of Rubidium Atoms (March 10, 2017 3:00pm) https://events.umich.edu/event/38484 38484-7191723@events.umich.edu Event Begins: Friday, March 10, 2017 3:00pm
Location: West Hall
Organized By: HET Seminars

A sonic analogy for Hawking radiation was introduced nearly 40 years ago, motivated in part by the “trans-Planckian puzzle”. This has shed light on the puzzle (which, however, remains enigmatic), and it suggested that analog Hawking radiation could one day be observed in a laboratory. That day has come. In two recent papers, observations of Hawking radiation in rubidium condensates have been reported. The first attributed the observed features to the "black hole laser" effect, while the second reported measurements of the quantum entanglement of Hawking phonons with their partners. I'll explain this circle of ideas, describe the experiments, and report on theoretical analyses showing that, in fact, the laser effect was most likely not behind the observations, and that more work is needed to determine whether the measurements actually demonstrated entanglement.

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Workshop / Seminar Mon, 06 Mar 2017 08:53:34 -0500 2017-03-10T15:00:00-05:00 2017-03-10T16:00:00-05:00 West Hall HET Seminars Workshop / Seminar Physics
Mathematical Biology (March 13, 2017 12:00pm) https://events.umich.edu/event/39602 39602-8155297@events.umich.edu Event Begins: Monday, March 13, 2017 12:00pm
Location: West Hall
Organized By: Department of Mathematics

Speaker(s): Jonathan Harrison (Wolfson Centre for Mathematical Biology, University of Oxford)

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Workshop / Seminar Mon, 13 Mar 2017 18:16:57 -0400 2017-03-13T12:00:00-04:00 2017-03-13T13:00:00-04:00 West Hall Department of Mathematics Workshop / Seminar West Hall
Quantitative Biology Seminar | The Impact of Collecting Data at Varying Temporal Resolution on Parameter Inference for Biological Transport Models (March 13, 2017 12:00pm) https://events.umich.edu/event/39615 39615-8210441@events.umich.edu Event Begins: Monday, March 13, 2017 12:00pm
Location: West Hall
Organized By: Quantitative Biology Seminars

TBA

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Workshop / Seminar Mon, 13 Mar 2017 08:24:47 -0400 2017-03-13T12:00:00-04:00 2017-03-13T13:00:00-04:00 West Hall Quantitative Biology Seminars Workshop / Seminar Physics
HEP-Astro Seminar | Nucleosynthesis and Neutrinos Near Newly Formed Compact Objects (March 13, 2017 4:00pm) https://events.umich.edu/event/37482 37482-6603844@events.umich.edu Event Begins: Monday, March 13, 2017 4:00pm
Location: West Hall
Organized By: HEP - Astro Seminars

The origin of the r-process elements remains the biggest unsolved question in our understanding of chemical evolution in the Milky Way. The most likely astrophysical sites for the formation of these nuclei involve dynamical events in the lives of neutron stars: the inner most regions of massive stars during core collapse supernovae and the merger of a neutron star and another compact object. In both of these environments, nuclear physics plays a paramount role in determining both the evolution of the dense object itself, the properties of neutrinos that are emitted, and what nuclei are synthesized in material that is ejected from the system. In this talk, I will discuss neutrino emission and nucleosynthesis in core collapse supernovae and in neutron star mergers, and some of the theoretical uncertainties that exist in these scenarios.. Astrophysical observables that may give us a direct window into the formation of the r-process elements and the properties of dense matter will also be examined.

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Workshop / Seminar Mon, 06 Mar 2017 08:40:04 -0500 2017-03-13T16:00:00-04:00 2017-03-13T17:00:00-04:00 West Hall HEP - Astro Seminars Workshop / Seminar Physics
CM-AMO Seminar | Erbium Doped Materials for Optical Quantum Memories (March 14, 2017 4:00pm) https://events.umich.edu/event/38360 38360-7140404@events.umich.edu Event Begins: Tuesday, March 14, 2017 4:00pm
Location: West Hall
Organized By: CM-AMO Seminars

Rare-earth doped solids are known for their luminescence properties. Among them erbium takes a special place because the Erbium Doped Fiber Amplifier has revolutionized the telecommunications by giving access to long distance communication. The transposition of this scheme to quantum cryptography is appealing. The core element of the so-called quantum repeater is an optical memory [1] for which direct operation at 1.5mm is desirable. We use an erbium doped crystal in the C-band of telecom. I’ll essentially focus on the material properties: how they impact the memory performances and how they can be controlled in this prospect.

I’ll first introduce the general properties of rare-earth ions inserted in optical crystals. The goal of theses opening remarks is essentially pedagogical. To pay honour to whom honour is due, I’ll give also points of comparison with other atomic systems as atomic vapours (hot or cold), trapped ions or coloured centres in diamond.

I’ll briefly review the recent work that we did on an erbium doped yttrium orthosilicate sample (Er3+:Y2SiO5) by applying an original protocol named Revival of Silenced Echo (ROSE) [2]. These later is quite efficient in Er3+:Y2SiO5 [2] as compared to other protocols. I’ll finally show that these performances are limited by the erbium-erbium electron spin interaction [3].

Although we work on the optical transition, the spin properties are absolutely critical for the coherence time governing the memory storage time. As an illustration, I’ll present a recent study of an Er3+:Y2SiO5 crystal in which we added a controlled level of disorder with scandium as co-dopant [4]. This perturbation can surprisingly increase the coherence time at low magnetic field. This counter intuitive result is due to the reduction of Er-Er spin flip-flop rate because the disorder effectively slows down the flip-flop mechanism by making the magnetic interaction non resonant.

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Workshop / Seminar Mon, 06 Mar 2017 09:56:04 -0500 2017-03-14T16:00:00-04:00 2017-03-14T17:00:00-04:00 West Hall CM-AMO Seminars Workshop / Seminar Physics
Department Colloquium | Neutrinos from Nuclear Reactors: Searches and Surprises (March 15, 2017 4:00pm) https://events.umich.edu/event/38473 38473-7191711@events.umich.edu Event Begins: Wednesday, March 15, 2017 4:00pm
Location: West Hall
Organized By: Department Colloquia

Nuclear reactors are very bright sources of neutrinos. The radioactive fission products are neutron rich, and beta decay back to the valley of stability while emitting (electron anti-)neutrinos along the way. This was how the neutrino was discovered, and how we verified that neutrino oscillations explained the Solar Neutrino Problem. More recently, the Daya Bay Reactor Neutrino Experiment discovered a new mode of neutrino oscillation, and the PROSPECT experiment is being planned to search for “sterile” neutrinos.

This talk will first review the basics of neutrinos, their detection, neutrino oscillations, and nuclear reactors as neutrino sources. We’ll then take a tour of recent results and next steps, including some surprises in what we’ve learned about the reactor neutrino source itself.

Bio: Jim Napolitano is Professor of Physics and Department Chair at Temple University, arriving in January 2014 after 20 years at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute. His field is experimental nuclear and particle physics with an emphasis on fundamental problems in physics and astrophysics. An enthusiastic educator, he has developed several courses and has authored or co-authored revisions of three physics textbooks.

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Workshop / Seminar Wed, 15 Feb 2017 09:57:03 -0500 2017-03-15T16:00:00-04:00 2017-03-15T17:00:00-04:00 West Hall Department Colloquia Workshop / Seminar Physics
Life After Grad School Seminar | How to take Money Away from Goldman Sachs FX Trading Against Their Will (March 17, 2017 12:00pm) https://events.umich.edu/event/39617 39617-8210442@events.umich.edu Event Begins: Friday, March 17, 2017 12:00pm
Location: West Hall
Organized By: Life After Grad School Seminars

What do physics skills have to do with this?

Watch the video.
http://cds.cern.ch/record/1217166/

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Workshop / Seminar Wed, 15 Mar 2017 14:09:50 -0400 2017-03-17T12:00:00-04:00 2017-03-17T13:00:00-04:00 West Hall Life After Grad School Seminars Workshop / Seminar Physics
4 Field Colloquium Series: "An Anthropologist Embraces Comics: an ethnoGRAPHIC story about medical promise, friendship, and Revolution" (March 17, 2017 3:00pm) https://events.umich.edu/event/35857 35857-5351654@events.umich.edu Event Begins: Friday, March 17, 2017 3:00pm
Location: West Hall
Organized By: Department of Anthropology

Our 4 Field Colloquium series presents speakers from the four fields of anthropology on new and topical interests in the field.

Sherine Hamdy will be talking about her work on a graphic novel, Lissa, which takes place against the backdrop of Egypt's popular uprisings. Set in Cairo, the project is informed by Sherine Hamdy’s work in the field of Islamic bioethics – specifically, her ethnographic research in Egypt on the vulnerabilities that expose people to kidney and liver disease, and the difficulties of accessing proper treatment. The work also draws on Coleman Nye’s research in the U.S. on the social and political calculus of managing genetic risk for breast and ovarian cancer within a commercial healthcare system. This graphic work of “ethnofiction” tells the story of an unlikely friendship between Anna, the daughter of an America oil company executive living in Cairo, who has a family history of breast cancer and Layla, the daughter of the doorman/servant of Anna’s apartment building, who grows to become a resolute physician struggling for better public health justice and rights in Egypt. Following the women as they grow up together and grapple with difficult medical decisions, the project explores how different people come to terms with illness and mortality against the backdrop of political, economic, and environmental crises.

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Lecture / Discussion Tue, 03 Jan 2017 09:08:37 -0500 2017-03-17T15:00:00-04:00 2017-03-17T17:00:00-04:00 West Hall Department of Anthropology Lecture / Discussion West Hall
HET Seminar | Heavy Flavor Baryon Oscillations and Baryogenesis (March 17, 2017 3:00pm) https://events.umich.edu/event/38485 38485-7191725@events.umich.edu Event Begins: Friday, March 17, 2017 3:00pm
Location: West Hall
Organized By: HET Seminars

I discuss CP violating oscillations of neutral baryons into anti-baryons, and propose an experimentally allowed and conceivably testable scenario where some heavy flavored baryons oscillate at rates which are within a few orders of magnitude of their lifetimes, while the flavor structure of the baryon violation suppresses neutron oscillations and baryon violating nuclear decays. I describe a scenario for producing such baryons in the early universe via the out of equilibrium decays of a neutral particle, after the hadronization temperature but before nucleosynthesis, and the prospects for baryogenesis.

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Workshop / Seminar Mon, 06 Mar 2017 10:01:04 -0500 2017-03-17T15:00:00-04:00 2017-03-17T16:00:00-04:00 West Hall HET Seminars Workshop / Seminar Physics
HEP-Astro Seminar | Shining Light on the Hidden Pathways of Galaxy Transformation (March 20, 2017 4:00pm) https://events.umich.edu/event/37483 37483-6603845@events.umich.edu Event Begins: Monday, March 20, 2017 4:00pm
Location: West Hall
Organized By: HEP - Astro Seminars

The morphological and color bimodalities displayed by modern-day galaxies suggest that a galaxy must have rapidly transformed from one class to the other. In the modern universe, this transition is one-way, which makes it essential to gain a census of initial conditions capable of catalyzing this metamorphosis. Classical searches that capture transitioning galaxies via signatures of intermediate-aged stars and lack of nebular ionized gas emission exclude the very gas physics that are often fundamental to understanding the galaxy’s transition. I will present the Shocked POststarburst Galaxy Survey (SPOGS), a novel method for finding previously-missed transitioning galaxies using their ionized gas line ratios. I will discuss early results suggesting my SPOGS criterion pinpoints objects at an earlier phase of transformation, when more signs of transition triggers still exist. Our exquisite case study, NGC1266, demonstrates the success of this method. These new observations shed light on the fundamental role gas plays in the ultimate quenching and transformation of a galaxy.

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Workshop / Seminar Mon, 20 Mar 2017 08:25:41 -0400 2017-03-20T16:00:00-04:00 2017-03-20T17:00:00-04:00 West Hall HEP - Astro Seminars Workshop / Seminar Physics
REBUILD Seminar | Exploring Student Reasoning to Support Better Teaching (March 21, 2017 12:00pm) https://events.umich.edu/event/38313 38313-7070217@events.umich.edu Event Begins: Tuesday, March 21, 2017 12:00pm
Location: West Hall
Organized By: REBUILD Seminars

Register here for this Brown Bag Seminar: http://crlt.umich.edu/node/94759

The focal point of Dr. Talanquer’s work is the study, reflection, and improvement of chemistry education and science teacher preparation. His research characterizes the conceptual frameworks and patterns of reasoning used by chemistry students to answer questions and solve problems that require qualitative reasoning (e.g., classification, prediction, inference, comparison). He is exploring how students' ideas and reasoning strategies evolve as they develop more expertise in the discipline (trajectories of expertise). These studies are of central importance not only to design learning progressions that foster meaningful learning but also to improve the preparation of future chemistry teachers through the development of their assessment thinking (to learn more see The University of Arizona Chemistry and Biochemistry Department).

REBUILD and the Center for Research on Learning and Teaching are talking to administrators, faculty, staff and students across the University about foundational courses. Our goal is to generate a shared vision and agenda for a program of collaborative course design to advance teaching and learning in foundational courses at the University of Michigan.

The Foundational Course Initiative Seminar Series features high-profile speakers who have extensive experience leading the transformation of foundational courses to incorporate innovative technologies, research-based pedagogies, systematic assessment strategies, and novel approaches to supporting the success of diverse students at scale.

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Workshop / Seminar Fri, 27 Jan 2017 12:59:55 -0500 2017-03-21T12:00:00-04:00 2017-03-21T13:00:00-04:00 West Hall REBUILD Seminars Workshop / Seminar Physics
CM-AMO Seminar | Meta and Useful: Dynamic Kirigami Solar Cells and Vapor Printed Nanolobes (March 21, 2017 4:00pm) https://events.umich.edu/event/38362 38362-7140405@events.umich.edu Event Begins: Tuesday, March 21, 2017 4:00pm
Location: West Hall
Organized By: CM-AMO Seminars

Abstract: Part I – A simple 2-dimensional cut pattern undergoes a surprisingly intricate transformation into a 3-dimensional shape upon stretching. The resulting mechanical metamaterial has several interesting properties and applications, with further modifications enabling conformal electronics and transformative improvements in the economics of solar energy harvesting. Part II – A simple thin-film printing technique is used to generate 2-dimensional patterns micrometers across that also contain complex nano-crystalline structures within the patterned deposits. These nanocrystalline structures exhibit interesting dissolution behavior that unlocks new frontiers for pharmaceutical discovery, formulation, and production. In each case, the nominally 2-dimensional patterning technologies are used to generate structure that circumvents long-standing technological and application trade-offs – an approach applicable to other areas of innovation.

References:
1. Dynamic kirigami structures for integrated solar tracking. Nature Comm. 6, 8092 (2015)
2. Growth and modelling of spherical crystalline morphologies of molecular materials. Nature Comm. 5, 5204 (2014)

Bio: Prof. Shtein earned his B.S. in Chemical Engineering at UC Berkeley (1998) and Ph.D. in Chemical Engineering, while co-advised by Prof. Benziger in ChE and Prof. Forrest in EE at Princeton (Summer 2004), where he developed key aspects of Organic Vapor Phase Deposition and invented Organic Vapor Jet Printing. He joined the Materials Science and Engineering de-partment at the Univ. of Michigan in Fall 2004, where he now serves as Associate Professor, with appointments in Chemical Engineering, Applied Physics, Macromolecular Science and En-gineering, Art & Design, and as faculty co-director for the Undergraduate Program in Entre-preneurship in the College of Engineering. His work has been recognized through several awards: the Presidential Early Career Award for Scientists and Engineers (PECASE), the MSE Department Achievement Award, College of Engineering-wide Vulcans Prize for Excellence in Education, the Newport Award for Excellence and Leadership in Photonics and Optoelectronics, the Materials Research Society (MRS) graduate student Gold Medal Award, and others. He co-founded Arborlight, LLC (www.arborlight.com – a multiple award-winning lighting technology company), and co-authored the book Scalable Innovation: A Guide for Inventors, Entrepre-neurs, and IP Professionals. (Taylor & Francis, ISBN-10: 1466590971)

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Workshop / Seminar Mon, 20 Mar 2017 11:10:17 -0400 2017-03-21T16:00:00-04:00 2017-03-21T17:00:00-04:00 West Hall CM-AMO Seminars Workshop / Seminar Physics
CSAAW Talk: Considering Human Conversation as a Complex System: Some Early Success and a Lot of Failures (March 23, 2017 12:00pm) https://events.umich.edu/event/39779 39779-8308729@events.umich.edu Event Begins: Thursday, March 23, 2017 12:00pm
Location: West Hall
Organized By: The Center for the Study of Complex Systems

Imagine you are having a delightful conversation with a friend on a sunny afternoon in the Quad. With what degree of precision do you think you can predict the next thing your friend will say? Maybe you can guess the type of speech act, but the exact words? What about what your friend will say in five minutes? For that matter, with what degree of precision to you think you can predict exactly what you will say in five minutes? It seems impossible. However, we know conversations must follow some type of agreed upon rules, otherwise we wouldn’t be able to carry on conversions or to produce the types of outcomes that we desire (e.g., agreement, support, idea development). Though conversations are the basic mechanism by which humans accomplish everything from meeting a new person to building an economic system, we know very little about how conversations work. If we understood, Siri, Cortana, Alexa and Watson would be able to form a study group! We will be presenting findings from research in which we are trying to discover the rules that give rise to the apparent complexity of human communication. We’ll describe a novel approach to studying conversations and present a variety of results ranging from some successes to lots of failures, in hopes of stimulating some great feedback from the CSAAW group.
Sign up at:
https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1SQcC0pv73CUVtseQ6ci2KYr8Y64H4Te4L1FNJ24fXL8/edit#gid=0

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Workshop / Seminar Fri, 17 Mar 2017 14:05:23 -0400 2017-03-23T12:00:00-04:00 2017-03-23T13:00:00-04:00 West Hall The Center for the Study of Complex Systems Workshop / Seminar Complex Systems
CM Theory Seminars | Superconductivity Mediated by Quantum Critical Antiferromagnetic Fluctuations: The Rise and Fall of Hot Spots (March 23, 2017 2:00pm) https://events.umich.edu/event/37141 37141-6173171@events.umich.edu Event Begins: Thursday, March 23, 2017 2:00pm
Location: West Hall
Organized By: Interdisciplinary QC/CM Seminars

The maximum transition temperature Tc observed in the phase diagrams of several unconventional superconductors takes place in the vicinity of a putative antiferromagnetic quantum critical point. This observation motivated the theoretical proposal that superconductivity in these systems may be driven by quantum critical fluctuations, which in turn can also promote non-Fermi liquid behavior. In this talk, we present a combined analytical and sign-problem-free Quantum Monte Carlo investigation of the spin-fermion model – a widely studied low-energy model for the interplay between superconductivity and magnetic fluctuations. By engineering a series of band dispersions that interpolate between near-nested and open Fermi surfaces, and by also varying the strength of the spin-fermion interaction, we find that the hot spots of the Fermi surface provide the dominant contribution to the pairing instability in this model. We show that the analytical expressions for Tc and for the pairing susceptibility, obtained within a large-N Eliashberg approximation to the spin-fermion model, agree well with the Quantum Monte Carlo data, even in the regime of interactions comparable to the electronic bandwidth.

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Workshop / Seminar Fri, 17 Mar 2017 13:49:52 -0400 2017-03-23T14:00:00-04:00 2017-03-23T15:00:00-04:00 West Hall Interdisciplinary QC/CM Seminars Workshop / Seminar Physics
Decentralization 2017 (March 24, 2017 1:00pm) https://events.umich.edu/event/36429 36429-5613600@events.umich.edu Event Begins: Friday, March 24, 2017 1:00pm
Location: West Hall
Organized By: The Center for the Study of Complex Systems

The Univesity of Michigan Department of Economics MITRE Center also provides funding for this conference.
See website shown below for all conference details and Registration.

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Conference / Symposium Thu, 23 Mar 2017 12:15:47 -0400 2017-03-24T13:00:00-04:00 2017-03-24T17:30:00-04:00 West Hall The Center for the Study of Complex Systems Conference / Symposium West Hall Arch Room 411
Decentralization 2017 (March 25, 2017 8:00am) https://events.umich.edu/event/36429 36429-5613601@events.umich.edu Event Begins: Saturday, March 25, 2017 8:00am
Location: West Hall
Organized By: The Center for the Study of Complex Systems

The Univesity of Michigan Department of Economics MITRE Center also provides funding for this conference.
See website shown below for all conference details and Registration.

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Conference / Symposium Thu, 23 Mar 2017 12:15:47 -0400 2017-03-25T08:00:00-04:00 2017-03-25T18:00:00-04:00 West Hall The Center for the Study of Complex Systems Conference / Symposium West Hall Arch Room 411
Decentralization 2017 (March 26, 2017 8:00am) https://events.umich.edu/event/36429 36429-5613602@events.umich.edu Event Begins: Sunday, March 26, 2017 8:00am
Location: West Hall
Organized By: The Center for the Study of Complex Systems

The Univesity of Michigan Department of Economics MITRE Center also provides funding for this conference.
See website shown below for all conference details and Registration.

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Conference / Symposium Thu, 23 Mar 2017 12:15:47 -0400 2017-03-26T08:00:00-04:00 2017-03-26T13:00:00-04:00 West Hall The Center for the Study of Complex Systems Conference / Symposium West Hall Arch Room 411
Mathematical Biology (March 27, 2017 12:00pm) https://events.umich.edu/event/35561 35561-5272171@events.umich.edu Event Begins: Monday, March 27, 2017 12:00pm
Location: West Hall
Organized By: Department of Mathematics

Speaker(s): Brian Carlson (UM Molecular & Integrative Physiology)

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Workshop / Seminar Mon, 27 Mar 2017 18:16:44 -0400 2017-03-27T12:00:00-04:00 2017-03-27T13:00:00-04:00 West Hall Department of Mathematics Workshop / Seminar West Hall
4 Field Colloquium Series: "What There is to Fear: Reflections on work with Colombians in Ecuador" (March 27, 2017 3:00pm) https://events.umich.edu/event/35856 35856-5351653@events.umich.edu Event Begins: Monday, March 27, 2017 3:00pm
Location: West Hall
Organized By: Department of Anthropology

Our 4 Field Colloquium series presents speakers from the four fields of anthropology on new and topical interests in the field.

"What there is to fear” is how a taxi driver friend put it. That is, in different worlds “what there is to fear” shifts. It’s a dark definition of a world—a universe of possible/shared fears. For instance, in Ecuador’s Amazon, snakes are one thing there is to fear, and travelling by canoe to a community three hours down the Bobonaza river, I watched every stick to see if it would turn into a boa. But in metropolitan Quito, among Colombian refugees, other Colombians are what there is to fear: paramilitaries, decommissioned guerillas or extortionists that cross the border to exact a price—in blood, pain or money. Yet, in therapeutic encounters several refugees I know were told they suffered from persecution anxiety and that the face of the killer they saw across the market stall was most probably just another Ecuadorean face. “Do you think I could forget the face of the man who killed my brother?” a Colombian refugee asks me accusingly. It’s as if the therapist is calling her world, a world, delineated by fear, into question. How does fear work to create and break human kinship--or what Sahlins has called the mutuality of being--and what I am calling a world? How do we understand the communicability of fear and its potential to create unliveable worlds, or worlds where there is very little mutuality of being? How do we maintain any sense of the mutuality of being in the face of great fear?"

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Lecture / Discussion Thu, 02 Feb 2017 10:29:07 -0500 2017-03-27T15:00:00-04:00 2017-03-27T17:00:00-04:00 West Hall Department of Anthropology Lecture / Discussion West Hall
HEP-Astro Seminar | Probing Cosmological Reionization with the Lyman-alpha Forest (March 27, 2017 4:00pm) https://events.umich.edu/event/37484 37484-6603846@events.umich.edu Event Begins: Monday, March 27, 2017 4:00pm
Location: West Hall
Organized By: HEP - Astro Seminars

When the first galaxies emerged, ~100 - 500 million years after the Big Bang, their starlight likely reionized and heated the intergalactic hydrogen that had existed since cosmological recombination. Much is currently unknown about this process, including what spatial structure it had, when it started and completed, and even which sources drove it. I will discuss what recent Lyman-alpha forest measurements tell us about the reionization process and about structure formation in the first billion years.

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Workshop / Seminar Mon, 27 Mar 2017 08:29:04 -0400 2017-03-27T16:00:00-04:00 2017-03-27T17:00:00-04:00 West Hall HEP - Astro Seminars Workshop / Seminar Physics
CM-AMO Seminar | Antihydrogen: Trapped and Measured (March 28, 2017 4:00pm) https://events.umich.edu/event/38364 38364-7140407@events.umich.edu Event Begins: Tuesday, March 28, 2017 4:00pm
Location: West Hall
Organized By: CM-AMO Seminars

Atoms made of a particle and an antiparticle are unstable, usually surviving less than a microsecond. Antihydrogen, the bound state of an antiproton and a positron, is made entirely of antiparticles and is believed to be stable. It is this longevity that holds the promise of precision studies of matter-antimatter symmetry. Low energy (Kelvin scale) antihydrogen has been produced at CERN since 2002. I will give an overview of the experiment (ALPHA) which has recently succeeded in trapping antihydrogen in a cryogenic Penning trap for times up to approximately 15 minutes. We have also been able to flip the spin inside of the atom using microwaves, performing the first measurement of resonant transitions within an antimatter atom. Most recently, we have measured the 1s-2s frequency to one part in 5 billion. I will conclude with prospects for laser cooling antihydrogen and future precision measurements.

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Workshop / Seminar Mon, 06 Mar 2017 09:57:01 -0500 2017-03-28T16:00:00-04:00 2017-03-28T17:00:00-04:00 West Hall CM-AMO Seminars Workshop / Seminar Physics
Department Colloquium | Two-Dimensional Melting (& The Physics of Polygons) (March 29, 2017 4:00pm) https://events.umich.edu/event/39790 39790-8314871@events.umich.edu Event Begins: Wednesday, March 29, 2017 4:00pm
Location: West Hall
Organized By: Department Colloquia

The melting transition of two-dimensional (2D) systems is a fundamental problem in condensed matter and statistical physics that has advanced significantly through the application of computational resources and algorithms. 2D systems present the opportunity for novel phases and phase transition scenarios not observed in 3D systems, but these phases depend sensitively on the system and thus predicting how any given 2D system will behave remains a challenge. Recently we carried out a comprehensive simulation study of the phase behavior near the melting transition of all hard regular polygons with 3 ≤ n ≤ 14 vertices using massively parallel Monte Carlo simulations of up to one million particles. By investigating this family of shapes, we can show that the melting transition depends upon both particle shape and symmetry considerations, which together can predict which of three different melting scenarios will occur for a given n.

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Workshop / Seminar Mon, 27 Mar 2017 08:33:59 -0400 2017-03-29T16:00:00-04:00 2017-03-29T17:00:00-04:00 West Hall Department Colloquia Workshop / Seminar Physics
HET Seminar | Fuzzy Dark Matter from IR Confinement (March 31, 2017 3:00pm) https://events.umich.edu/event/38486 38486-7191726@events.umich.edu Event Begins: Friday, March 31, 2017 3:00pm
Location: West Hall
Organized By: HET Seminars

An ultra light axion dark matter (DM) may avoid certain problems of the cold DM paradigm with observations at galactic scales. Such an axion, often referred to as "Fuzzy DM (FDM)," may get its tiny mass from large masses suppressed by non-perturbative stringy effects. We examine an alternative possibility that the mass of FDM is generated by infrared confining dynamics, in analogy with the QCD axion. We find that cosmological constraints are suggestive of a period of mild of inflation that reheats the Standard Model (SM) sector only. A typical prediction of the scenario, broadly speaking, is a larger effective number of neutrinos compared to the SM value Neff≈3, as inferred from precision measurements of the cosmic microwave background. Some of the new degrees of freedom may be identified as "sterile neutrinos," which may be required to explain certain neutrino oscillation anomalies.

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Workshop / Seminar Mon, 27 Mar 2017 08:42:39 -0400 2017-03-31T15:00:00-04:00 2017-03-31T16:00:00-04:00 West Hall HET Seminars Workshop / Seminar Physics
HEP-Astro Seminar | Neutrino Mass from Cosmology (April 3, 2017 4:00pm) https://events.umich.edu/event/37485 37485-6603847@events.umich.edu Event Begins: Monday, April 3, 2017 4:00pm
Location: West Hall
Organized By: HEP - Astro Seminars

Neutrinos are the only standard model particles of unknown mass. Thus, measuring their mass is one of the leading goals in fundamental physics. Cosmology currently provides the tightest bounds on the sum of the neutrino masses and the possibility that next generation experiments can provide a detection looks promising. Then, further questions would have to be addressed, such as those related to the neutrino hierarchy and the neutrino nature.

In this talk, I will discuss the treasure trove of information about massive neutrinos that we can collect from different cosmological probes. In particular, I will show that the combination of Cosmic Microwave Background (CMB) and Large Scale Structure (LSS) measurements provides a tight and robust bound on the neutrino mass scale and I will introduce a novel method to assess the sensitivity of cosmological data to the neutrino hierarchy. Finally, I will choose a different angle and show how massive neutrino unknowns can affect the constraints on inflationary models. Important findings in the neutrino sector are just around the corner and cosmology, in combination with laboratory avenues, will unveil neutrino secrets in the coming years.

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Workshop / Seminar Fri, 31 Mar 2017 13:42:58 -0400 2017-04-03T16:00:00-04:00 2017-04-03T17:00:00-04:00 West Hall HEP - Astro Seminars Workshop / Seminar Physics
Complex Systems Seminar Series Presents: "Network Evolution and Synchronization in the Olfactory System" (April 4, 2017 11:30am) https://events.umich.edu/event/39985 39985-8431639@events.umich.edu Event Begins: Tuesday, April 4, 2017 11:30am
Location: West Hall
Organized By: The Center for the Study of Complex Systems

The early processing of olfactory information in the olfactory bulb of rodents is highly dynamic. On long time scales the connectivity of its neuronal network evolves persistently - even in adult animals - through synaptic rewiring and the addition and removal of neurons. On short time scales the neuronal activity exhibits pronounced population rhythms reflecting the coherent activity of large ensembles of neurons. Starting from various experimental observations, we have developed simple computational models of this network evolution that suggest that cortical feed-back controls the adaptive formation of subnetworks through which cortex then modifies sensory processing by the olfactory bulb. The gamma-rhythms of different such subnetworks can have different frequencies. We show that even uncorrelated noise can synchronize these population rhythms.

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Workshop / Seminar Sat, 25 Mar 2017 15:46:39 -0400 2017-04-04T11:30:00-04:00 2017-04-04T13:00:00-04:00 West Hall The Center for the Study of Complex Systems Workshop / Seminar Talk Flyer
REBUILD Seminar | Lessons Learned from the Dynamic Genome Program (April 4, 2017 12:00pm) https://events.umich.edu/event/38314 38314-7070218@events.umich.edu Event Begins: Tuesday, April 4, 2017 12:00pm
Location: West Hall
Organized By: REBUILD Seminars

Register here for this Brown Bag Seminar: http://www.crlt.umich.edu/events/FCI

Dr. Sue Wessler is the Neil A and Rochelle A Campbell Presidential Chair for Innovations in Science Education and Distinguished Professor of Genetics at University of California Riverside; Howard Hughes Medical Institute Professor; Home Secretary, National Academy of Sciences.
The University of California, Riverside (UCR) is one of the most diverse research universities in the country. More than half of the 5000 students in our College of Natural and Agricultural Sciences (CNAS) are supported by Pell grants, are members of underrepresented groups, and are first generation college students. To improve student persistence in STEM, CNAS has focused on two experiential interventions for first year students: (1) Learning Communities - designed to engage groups of 24 students with faculty, academic advisors and near-peer mentors, and (2) the Dynamic Genome course - an authentic research experience where UCR research faculty take ownership of a section and bring the excitement of their research labs to the classroom. The Dynamic Genome (DG) course is an alternative to the traditional Intro Bio Lab where learning communities are randomly assigned to one lab experience or the other.

Now in its sixth year at UC Riverside, DG is a hands-on bioinformatics/wet lab course that is taught in the state of the art Neil A Campbell Science Learning Laboratory. First articulated in my HHMI Professor Program in 2006, the DG course was initially proposed as an undergraduate laboratory that replicated my research lab where students learned to navigate cutting-edge methodologies applied to transposable elements in eukaryotic genomes. UC Riverside has proven to be fertile ground for the rapid expansion of the DG course model to a projected 24 sections with a total of 600 first year students by 2018. With the tools and knowledge gained from the Learning Community and Dynamic Genome experiences, an increasing number of students are entering faculty laboratories as first or second year students.

For more information about the Foundational Course Initiative, please see https://rebuild.lsa.umich.edu/ or contact Tim McKay (tamckay@umich.edu).

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Workshop / Seminar Fri, 24 Mar 2017 09:54:15 -0400 2017-04-04T12:00:00-04:00 2017-04-04T13:00:00-04:00 West Hall REBUILD Seminars Workshop / Seminar Physics
CM-AMO Seminar | Defects in Optically Active Semiconductors for Quantum Applications (April 4, 2017 4:00pm) https://events.umich.edu/event/38365 38365-7140408@events.umich.edu Event Begins: Tuesday, April 4, 2017 4:00pm
Location: West Hall
Organized By: CM-AMO Seminars

Defects can provide highly homogeneous potentials for quantum particles (electrons and holes) in crystals, enabling atomic-like physics in a solid-state environment. The availability of high-purity crystals, in which either single defects can be resolved or ensembles of non-interacting identical defects can exist, has spurred significant interest in utilizing defects for quantum-enabled applications (e.g. information processing and sensing). In this talk I will first present the potential of combining solid-state defects and integrated photonics to realize quantum information processors, focusing on my own group’s research on the nitrogen-vacancy defect in diamond. In the second half, I present our work researching the fundamental properties of effective mass carriers and excitons bound to defects (0D, 1D, and 2D) in direct bandgap materials which may be promising alternatives to diamond-based platforms.

Bio: Kai-Mei Fu received her A.B. in Physics from Princeton University in 2000 and her M.S. and Ph.D. in Applied Physics from Stanford University in 2003 and 2007, respectively. She worked as a research associate at HP Labs, Palo Alto from 2007-2011 before joining the faculty at the University of Washington with a joint position in Physics and Electrical Engineering. Her research focuses on understanding and engineering the quantum properties of point defects in crystals for quantum information and sensing applications. She is the recipient of the NSF CAREER Award, the Cottrell Scholar Award, and the UW College of Engineering Junior Faculty Award.

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Workshop / Seminar Fri, 31 Mar 2017 13:45:28 -0400 2017-04-04T16:00:00-04:00 2017-04-04T17:00:00-04:00 West Hall CM-AMO Seminars Workshop / Seminar Physics
Department Colloquium | Digging Into the Large Scale Structure: From the Galaxies to the Cosmic Web (April 5, 2017 4:00pm) https://events.umich.edu/event/38475 38475-7191713@events.umich.edu Event Begins: Wednesday, April 5, 2017 4:00pm
Location: West Hall
Organized By: Department Colloquia

Galaxy spectroscopic surveys provide the means to map out this cosmic large-scale structure in three dimensions, furnishing a cornerstone of observational cosmology. The information is given in the form of galaxy locations, and is typically condensed into a single function of scale, such as the galaxy correlation function or power-spectrum. However, galaxy correlation functions are not the only information those surveys provide. One of the most striking features of N-body simulations is the network of filaments into which dark matter particles arrange themselves. We however traditionally only use the information contained in the positions of the galaxies, and in some occasions, we look at other cosmic structures of the Universe such as voids. In this colloquium, I explore the information beyond the galaxy positions in large sky surveys combining novel ideas with recent techniques in statistical methods and machine learning algorithms. In particular, we will investigate the following two topics: the "cosmic web" that are mostly ignored in any large scale structure analyses in the Universe and how it affects the surrounding galaxies; and "likelihood free analysis" with machine learning.

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Workshop / Seminar Fri, 31 Mar 2017 13:47:53 -0400 2017-04-05T16:00:00-04:00 2017-04-05T17:00:00-04:00 West Hall Department Colloquia Workshop / Seminar Physics
Marine Hydrodynamics Laboratory Building Tour (April 6, 2017 3:00pm) https://events.umich.edu/event/39730 39730-8265743@events.umich.edu Event Begins: Thursday, April 6, 2017 3:00pm
Location: West Hall
Organized By: Bicentennial Office

The Marine Hydrodynamics Laboratory was built in 1904 under the direction of Mortimer E. Cooley, dean of the College of Engineering and Architecture, as the first university-based towing tank in the United States. It is comprised of a suite of labs and facilities that engage in classic naval architecture experiments, such as calm water resistance, seakeeping, propeller tests, and supports education and research at the Department of Naval Architecture and Marine Engineering.

Parking is available at the South Forest Avenue Parking Structure. Additionally, metered parking along State Street, Tappan Avenue, or East University Avenue may be available. For more detailed information about this event, please visit our A-maizing Building Tours webpage.

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Reception / Open House Wed, 15 Mar 2017 14:12:50 -0400 2017-04-06T15:00:00-04:00 2017-04-06T17:00:00-04:00 West Hall Bicentennial Office Reception / Open House Photo courtesy of: Marine Hydrodynamics Lab
Life After Grad School Seminar | My AAAS S&T Policy Fellowship: Transitioning into Science and Technology Policy - The Role of Evidence-Based Decision Making for Better Governance (April 7, 2017 12:00pm) https://events.umich.edu/event/40147 40147-8483293@events.umich.edu Event Begins: Friday, April 7, 2017 12:00pm
Location: West Hall
Organized By: Life After Grad School Seminars

In my talk I will share, first my experience as a Higher Energy Particle Physicist, highlighting some aspects of my 4-year postdoctoral career and what got me thinking more seriously about science for policies and policies for science. I will then give an overview of my STEM education initiatives in South America, in particular, my work with a Peruvian no for profit organization whose mission is to implement fully inclusive innovative education STEM projects for students in Peru. I will then talk about my transition into science policy as a first year AAAS Science and Technology Policy Fellow in the Division of Undergraduate Education at the National Science Foundation. I will highlight my work investigating institutional efforts to transform teaching and learning in STEM fields into environments that support and scale-up evidence-based teaching and learning practices across all STEM departments. I will also talk about some of my own projects, ranging from science diplomacy to regional food systems for sustainable food production and consumption. I will finish talking about all that there is to learn and explore in the nation’s capital and my "vision" for "my future."

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Workshop / Seminar Fri, 31 Mar 2017 14:00:09 -0400 2017-04-07T12:00:00-04:00 2017-04-07T13:00:00-04:00 West Hall Life After Grad School Seminars Workshop / Seminar Physics
Decolonizing Diversity: Critical Feminist Ethnographies of "Diversity Work" (April 7, 2017 2:00pm) https://events.umich.edu/event/40146 40146-8483292@events.umich.edu Event Begins: Friday, April 7, 2017 2:00pm
Location: West Hall
Organized By: The College of Literature, Science, and the Arts

Discussion on Critical Feminist Ethnographies of "Diversity Work".

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Lecture / Discussion Mon, 03 Apr 2017 10:57:32 -0400 2017-04-07T14:00:00-04:00 2017-04-07T15:30:00-04:00 West Hall The College of Literature, Science, and the Arts Lecture / Discussion Event poster
HET Seminar | Dark Matter and Light Forces: Precisely Predicting Indirect Signals (April 7, 2017 3:00pm) https://events.umich.edu/event/38487 38487-7191727@events.umich.edu Event Begins: Friday, April 7, 2017 3:00pm
Location: West Hall
Organized By: HET Seminars

Heavy dark matter coupled to much lighter force carriers exhibits a range of interesting behaviors that are not well-characterized by the usual perturbative Feynman diagram expansion, including long-range interactions, annihilation rates modified by both large velocity-dependent enhancements and large logarithms, and the presence of bound states. There has been great interest in recent years in dark sectors containing both dark matter and much lighter particles; as the LHC continues to constrain low-scale supersymmetry, even classic weakly interacting dark matter candidates may need to be heavy relative to the weak gauge bosons. I will describe recent work to characterize the novel properties of heavy dark matter coupled to light force carriers, in two principal directions: (1) the precision calculation of heavy wino dark matter annihilation to line photons using effective field theory, now to NLL’ order, and (2) the properties of dark-sector bound states where multiple force carriers and several states in a dark matter multiplet may be involved, using the wino as an example. I will discuss the importance of these results for indirect detection experiments searching for the products of dark matter annihilation.

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Workshop / Seminar Fri, 31 Mar 2017 13:52:21 -0400 2017-04-07T15:00:00-04:00 2017-04-07T16:00:00-04:00 West Hall HET Seminars Workshop / Seminar Physics
2017 Andean Circle Conference (April 8, 2017 9:00am) https://events.umich.edu/event/40367 40367-8527310@events.umich.edu Event Begins: Saturday, April 8, 2017 9:00am
Location: West Hall
Organized By: Department of Linguistics

This year’s Andean Circle conference will address the ways in which social inequality is practiced and experienced in the Andes. The silent yet pervasive mechanisms of social categorization have led to substantial discrimination in the Andes. Rosaleen Howard, our keynote speaker for the 2017 conference and Chair of Hispanic Studies and Professor in the School of Modern Languages at the University of Newcastle, will speak directly to these issues. Over the course of her career, Prof. Howard’s anthropological and sociolinguistic work has focused on language politics and cultural identities in the Andes. Her talk will discuss the nature of linguistic racism in theory and in practice as it emerges between mainstream Spanish-speaking society and speakers of indigenous languages across the Andean-Amazonian states of South America. Talks by Allison Caine, Bruce Mannheim and Devin Grammon will address issues of linguistic, racial and gender-based inequality in the Andes drawn from a combination of fieldwork methodologies, in situ ethnography, historical research, and in-depth analysis of linguistic data and global education.

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Conference / Symposium Wed, 05 Apr 2017 16:19:46 -0400 2017-04-08T09:00:00-04:00 2017-04-08T15:30:00-04:00 West Hall Department of Linguistics Conference / Symposium event poster
Mathematical Biology (April 10, 2017 12:00pm) https://events.umich.edu/event/34534 34534-4959719@events.umich.edu Event Begins: Monday, April 10, 2017 12:00pm
Location: West Hall
Organized By: Department of Mathematics

Enhancers are small regulatory pieces of DNA that control the activity of genes, which eventually determine cellular fates during the development of multicellular organisms. They need to measure the concentrations of various input effector molecules, called transcription factors, and then act over often very long distances along the DNA in order to activate a distantly located gene. In this talk I will present my laboratory's progress on two fundamental physical properties of these enhancers: 1. How do enhancers operate at long distances to instruct gene activity? 2. How do enhancers decode the information of the input transcription factors and then transduce it into a precise output? We use a combination of genome editing, live imaging and statistical mechanics techniques to address these questions in the developing fly embryo. Speaker(s): Thomas Gregor (Princeton University)

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Workshop / Seminar Mon, 10 Apr 2017 18:16:32 -0400 2017-04-10T12:00:00-04:00 2017-04-10T13:00:00-04:00 West Hall Department of Mathematics Workshop / Seminar West Hall
Quantitative Biology Seminar | How the Physics of Enhancers Shapes Development (April 10, 2017 12:00pm) https://events.umich.edu/event/36418 36418-5607182@events.umich.edu Event Begins: Monday, April 10, 2017 12:00pm
Location: West Hall
Organized By: Quantitative Biology Seminars

Enhancers are small regulatory pieces of DNA that control the activity of genes, which eventually determine cellular fates during the development of multicellular organisms. They need to measure the concentrations of various input effector molecules, called transcription factors, and then act over often very long distances along the DNA in order to activate a distantly located gene. In this talk I will present my laboratory’s progress on two fundamental physical properties of these enhancers: 1. How do enhancers operate at long distances to instruct gene activity? 2. How do enhancers decode the information of the input transcription factors and then transduce it into a precise output? We use a combination of genome editing, live imaging and statistical mechanics techniques to address these questions in the developing fly embryo.

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Workshop / Seminar Mon, 10 Apr 2017 08:23:36 -0400 2017-04-10T12:00:00-04:00 2017-04-10T13:00:00-04:00 West Hall Quantitative Biology Seminars Workshop / Seminar Physics
CM-AMO Seminar | Symmetry, Topology, and Classifying Quantum "Stuff" (April 11, 2017 4:00pm) https://events.umich.edu/event/38366 38366-7140409@events.umich.edu Event Begins: Tuesday, April 11, 2017 4:00pm
Location: West Hall
Organized By: CM-AMO Seminars

Over the past several decades, topology has emerged as an important part of how we understand materials in the quantum regime, allowing us to identify a new type of phase of matter known as a topologically ordered phase. More recently we have understood that symmetry can act in topologically ordered systems in a way that is quite different from its effect in conventional systems. I will review how topology entered our understanding of quantum matter, and how symmetry acts differently in some of these systems. This will allow us to explore new possibilities for quantum materials with strong inter-particle interactions.

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Workshop / Seminar Wed, 05 Apr 2017 10:11:15 -0400 2017-04-11T16:00:00-04:00 2017-04-11T17:00:00-04:00 West Hall CM-AMO Seminars Workshop / Seminar Physics
Densifying Networks (April 13, 2017 11:30am) https://events.umich.edu/event/40149 40149-8483296@events.umich.edu Event Begins: Thursday, April 13, 2017 11:30am
Location: West Hall
Organized By: The Center for the Study of Complex Systems

We discuss the unusual properties of networks that grow by either: (a) redirection or (b) node duplication. The former leads to unusual network properties when the redirection probability equals 1. For example, the number of nodes of degree greater than 1 scales slower than linearly in the total number of nodes N. In the latter case, a new node attaches to a randomly selected target node and also to each of its neighbors with probability p. The resulting network is sparse for p < 1/2 and dense (average degree increasing with number of nodes N) for p ≥ 1/2. The dense regime is especially rich. Individual network realizations are not self-averaging. There is also an infinite sequence of structural anomalies at p = 2/3, 3/4, 4/5, etc., where the N dependences of the number of triangles (3-cliques), 4-cliques, undergo phase transitions. When linking to second neighbors of the target can occur, the probability that the resulting graph is complete as N → ∞. This is collaborative work with U. Bhat, P.L. Krapivsky, and R. Lambiotte.

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Workshop / Seminar Fri, 31 Mar 2017 15:27:40 -0400 2017-04-13T11:30:00-04:00 2017-04-13T13:00:00-04:00 West Hall The Center for the Study of Complex Systems Workshop / Seminar Sid Redner Talk poster
HET Seminar | Dualities in Quantum Hall Physics (April 14, 2017 3:00pm) https://events.umich.edu/event/38489 38489-7191729@events.umich.edu Event Begins: Friday, April 14, 2017 3:00pm
Location: West Hall
Organized By: HET Seminars

Dualities are a powerful concept in quantum field theory, helping us to identify to correct low energy degrees of freedom. In this talk several old and many new dualities in 2+1 dimensions will be shown to all follow from one conjectural base pair, with potential applications to the physics of the quantum Hall effect.

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Workshop / Seminar Wed, 05 Apr 2017 10:18:54 -0400 2017-04-14T15:00:00-04:00 2017-04-14T16:00:00-04:00 West Hall HET Seminars Workshop / Seminar Physics
HEP-Astro Seminar | Higgs Boson Property Measurements with ATLAS at the LHC (April 24, 2017 4:00pm) https://events.umich.edu/event/39363 39363-8038545@events.umich.edu Event Begins: Monday, April 24, 2017 4:00pm
Location: West Hall
Organized By: HEP - Astro Seminars

After the discovery of Higgs boson by the ATLAS and CMS experiments at the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) at CERN, a new era of studying the properties of this new particle has begun. In this talk, I will give a brief overview of Higgs boson property measurements using LHC Run 1 data, and then focus on the measurements of Higgs boson production in the four-lepton decay channel using data collected in 2015 and 2016 at center-of-mass energy of 13 TeV at the LHC by the ATLAS detector.

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Workshop / Seminar Thu, 20 Apr 2017 15:42:28 -0400 2017-04-24T16:00:00-04:00 2017-04-24T17:00:00-04:00 West Hall HEP - Astro Seminars Workshop / Seminar Physics
A Special CSCS Seminar: Principle of least rattling: a general framework or an over-idealization? (June 1, 2017 11:30am) https://events.umich.edu/event/41069 41069-8934964@events.umich.edu Event Begins: Thursday, June 1, 2017 11:30am
Location: West Hall
Organized By: The Center for the Study of Complex Systems

We begin with the loose observation that in many complex real-world systems, dynamics seem to settle into some relatively simple behaviors, rather than remaining completely chaotic. Think of planets solidifying out of a chaotically moving gas, sand-dunes forming with reproducible shapes and sizes, debris on a river getting trapped near the shores, active colloids accumulating in corners, or DNA reliably copying itself via proofreading mechanisms. While vastly different mechanisms account for each of these phenomena, the emergence of simplicity seems to be a common thread. So: how general is this phenomenon? How easy is it to break? Is there some common mathematical framework that can capture some of it? To begin a discussion of these questions, I will restrict to non-equilibrium dynamical systems with two strongly separated time-scales - which is another common feature of the above examples. In this context, the structures from field theory prove relevant, and we derive that under fairly general conditions, slow variables will settle into configurations where fast dynamics become least stochastic. Illustrating the relevance of the framework on a toy example, I will then talk about the steps for extending it to broader contexts.

If you are interested in meeting with Pavel after his talk, please email him directly at pchvykov@mit.edu

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Workshop / Seminar Thu, 25 May 2017 14:29:04 -0400 2017-06-01T11:30:00-04:00 2017-06-01T13:00:00-04:00 West Hall The Center for the Study of Complex Systems Workshop / Seminar Talk Flyer
Special Condensed Matter Seminar (June 29, 2017 2:00pm) https://events.umich.edu/event/41387 41387-9199026@events.umich.edu Event Begins: Thursday, June 29, 2017 2:00pm
Location: West Hall
Organized By: Department of Physics

The temperature-dependence of f-d hybridized band dispersions and Fermi-energy f spectral weight in the Kondo lattice system CeCoIn5 is investigated using f-resonant angle-resolved photoemission (ARPES) with sufficient detail to allow direct comparison to first principles dynamical mean field theory (DFT+DMFT) calculations containing full realism of crystalline electric field (CEF) states. The low T ARPES results, for two orthogonal (001) and (100) cleaved surfaces, show the counterintuitive result that features peculiar to the localized f-electron 3D Fermi surface found in DFT calculations nonetheless display clear itinerant felectron participation, consistent with the low energy scale description of DFT+DMFT. Also the ARPES T dependence of three different f-d hybridization scenarios, with additional microscopic insight provided by DMFT, reveal f participation in the Fermi surface at temperatures much higher than the lattice coherence temperature, T* ≈ 45 K, commonly believed to be the onset for such behavior. The observation of a T-dependent CEF degeneracy crossover in the DMFT theory, below T*, is specifically highlighted.

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Workshop / Seminar Tue, 27 Jun 2017 10:50:13 -0400 2017-06-29T14:00:00-04:00 2017-06-29T15:00:00-04:00 West Hall Department of Physics Workshop / Seminar Figure pertaining to seminar
CSAAW: Evolutionary game theory short course (July 18, 2017 8:30am) https://events.umich.edu/event/41478 41478-9302160@events.umich.edu Event Begins: Tuesday, July 18, 2017 8:30am
Location: West Hall
Organized By: The Center for the Study of Complex Systems

When: Tuesday 7/18, 8:30am - 3:45pm
Where: 340 West Hall
Who: All are welcome!
Registration (free): bit.ly/2tj6EIG
Questions? Email us at csaaw-organizers@umich.edu



Schedule:
8:30 am Coffee and bagels

9 am Prof. Carl Simon (U. of Michigan)
Introduction to Evolutionary Game Theory I

10:30am 15-min Break

10:45am Prof. Charles Doering (U. of Michigan)
Introduction to Evolutionary Game Theory II

12:15pm Lunch break (Lunch is not provided)

1:30 pm Prof. Christoph Adami (Michigan State University)
Computational simulation of evolutionary games: from "good", to "better", to "best"

2:30pm 15-min Break

2:45pm Prof. Christoph Adami (Michigan State University)
Computers, ZD strategies, and all that.

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Workshop / Seminar Thu, 13 Jul 2017 12:25:48 -0400 2017-07-18T08:30:00-04:00 2017-07-18T15:45:00-04:00 West Hall The Center for the Study of Complex Systems Workshop / Seminar Evolutionary game theory short course 7/18 9-3:45
Town Hall Session for All Employees on Performance Planning (August 16, 2017 9:00am) https://events.umich.edu/event/40781 40781-8750077@events.umich.edu Event Begins: Wednesday, August 16, 2017 9:00am
Location: West Hall
Organized By: LSA Human Resources

Town Hall Session for All Employees on Performance Planning

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Workshop / Seminar Thu, 31 Aug 2017 09:07:09 -0400 2017-08-16T09:00:00-04:00 2017-08-16T11:00:00-04:00 West Hall LSA Human Resources Workshop / Seminar West Hall
Town Hall Session for All Employees on Performance Planning (August 22, 2017 10:00am) https://events.umich.edu/event/40781 40781-8750078@events.umich.edu Event Begins: Tuesday, August 22, 2017 10:00am
Location: West Hall
Organized By: LSA Human Resources

Town Hall Session for All Employees on Performance Planning

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Workshop / Seminar Thu, 31 Aug 2017 09:07:09 -0400 2017-08-22T10:00:00-04:00 2017-08-22T12:00:00-04:00 West Hall LSA Human Resources Workshop / Seminar West Hall
Town Hall Session for All Employees on Performance Planning (August 24, 2017 1:00pm) https://events.umich.edu/event/40781 40781-8750079@events.umich.edu Event Begins: Thursday, August 24, 2017 1:00pm
Location: West Hall
Organized By: LSA Human Resources

Town Hall Session for All Employees on Performance Planning

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Workshop / Seminar Thu, 31 Aug 2017 09:07:09 -0400 2017-08-24T13:00:00-04:00 2017-08-24T15:00:00-04:00 West Hall LSA Human Resources Workshop / Seminar West Hall
Department Colloquium | State of the Department Address (September 6, 2017 4:00pm) https://events.umich.edu/event/42179 42179-9584867@events.umich.edu Event Begins: Wednesday, September 6, 2017 4:00pm
Location: West Hall
Organized By: Department of Physics

Brad Orr will open the school year by informing everyone of the new research and happenings in the Physics Department.

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Workshop / Seminar Wed, 06 Sep 2017 18:16:56 -0400 2017-09-06T16:00:00-04:00 2017-09-06T17:00:00-04:00 West Hall Department of Physics Workshop / Seminar West Hall
Quantitative Biology | Systems Analysis of Clathrin-Mediated Endocytosis (September 11, 2017 12:00pm) https://events.umich.edu/event/43121 43121-9728883@events.umich.edu Event Begins: Monday, September 11, 2017 12:00pm
Location: West Hall
Organized By: Department of Physics

There is a growing body of evidence suggesting that clathrin-mediated endocytosis (CME) is dysregulated in cancer. CME is not only the major route for receptor ligand uptake but also a dynamic plasma membrane process that is highly integrated into signal transduction pathways. In addition to hyperactive signaling in cancer cells, they also exhibit markedly different biomechanical properties. My lab is interested in studying the mechanochemical responses of biological systems. I will present our projects on the regulation of CME in this context. We are interested in how physical cues might influence the dynamics of clathrin-coated pits, the fundamental functional unit of CME. Combining live cell imaging, high content image analysis, and micro-patterned surfaces of different sizes to control the cell spreading sizes and hence cell tension, we found that increasing cell spreading increased CCP initiation and the proportions of short-lived, and likely abortive, CCPs. By analyzing fluorescence intensities of CCPs under different conditions, we discovered that cortical tension regulates the size of individual CCPs. We further went on to characterize the dynamics of CCPs in breast cell lines with increasing metastatic potential and revealed the tumor suppressor protein PTEN as a key regulatory protein that in part contributes to these dynamic differences. When endocytosis is inhibited, while Akt signaling is upregulated, mTOR signaling becomes downregulated. Finally, we are using spatially resolved proteomics by engineered ascorbate peroxidase to unravel the dynamic interactome of chemokine receptor CXCR4 during ligand-induced endocytosis. Together, our study reveals new mechanistic insights into how cell tension regulates the dynamics of CCPs and the interconnection between endocytosis and cell signaling.

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Workshop / Seminar Mon, 11 Sep 2017 18:16:56 -0400 2017-09-11T12:00:00-04:00 2017-09-11T13:00:00-04:00 West Hall Department of Physics Workshop / Seminar West Hall
CM-AMO Seminar | Double Feature (September 12, 2017 4:00pm) https://events.umich.edu/event/42180 42180-9584868@events.umich.edu Event Begins: Tuesday, September 12, 2017 4:00pm
Location: West Hall
Organized By: Department of Physics

We report on rubidium vapor-cell Rydberg electromagnetically induced transparency (EIT) in a 0.7 T magnetic field where all involved levels are in the hyperfine Paschen-Back regime, and the Rydberg state exhibits a strong diamagnetic interaction. Signals from both 85RB and 87Rb are present in the EIT spectra. Isotope-mixed Rb cells allow us to measure the field strength to within a ± 0.12% relative uncertainty. The measured spectra are in excellent agreement with the results of a Monte Carlo calculation and indicate unexpectedly large Rydberg-level dephasing rates. Line shifts and broadenings due to magnetic-field inhomogeneities are included in the model.

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Workshop / Seminar Tue, 12 Sep 2017 18:16:37 -0400 2017-09-12T16:00:00-04:00 2017-09-12T17:00:00-04:00 West Hall Department of Physics Workshop / Seminar West Hall
Town Hall Session for All Employees on Performance Planning (September 14, 2017 10:00am) https://events.umich.edu/event/40781 40781-9748070@events.umich.edu Event Begins: Thursday, September 14, 2017 10:00am
Location: West Hall
Organized By: LSA Human Resources

Town Hall Session for All Employees on Performance Planning

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Workshop / Seminar Thu, 31 Aug 2017 09:07:09 -0400 2017-09-14T10:00:00-04:00 2017-09-14T12:00:00-04:00 West Hall LSA Human Resources Workshop / Seminar West Hall
Life After Grad School Seminar | What Is It All About? Adulthood? (September 15, 2017 12:00pm) https://events.umich.edu/event/42181 42181-9920274@events.umich.edu Event Begins: Friday, September 15, 2017 12:00pm
Location: West Hall
Organized By: Department of Physics

Ph.D. student becomes Post-Doctoral Fellow, who becomes an Assistant Professor, who becomes an Associate Professor, who becomes a Professor, who becomes... well the list can continue. This is a typical thought trend of many who consider getting a Ph.D. while the reality is different. During this talk, we will discuss the theoretical perspective of life after graduate school and what reality looks like. In addition, this talk will highlight transitions in career paths and fields and how to overcome the stress. In conclusion, this talk will go through an overview of what matters and what doesn’t matter beyond the Ph.D.

Prior to joining CFC in 2017, Peter held several positions working for, and with electric cooperatives. Most recently, he served as the Chief Strategy Officer at Pedernales Electric Cooperative, the largest distribution electric cooperative in the U.S. Prior to that, he was an Advisor at the Cooperative Research Network, the technology research arm of the National Rural Electric Cooperative Association. He has previously launched several small businesses focused on energy analysis, bottom of the pyramid issues and poverty reduction through electricity access. He serves on boards and advisory committees, and is a sought after speaker both nationally and internationally.

Peter holds a Ph.D. in Applied Physics from the University of Michigan with a focus on energy.

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Workshop / Seminar Fri, 15 Sep 2017 18:16:36 -0400 2017-09-15T12:00:00-04:00 2017-09-15T13:00:00-04:00 West Hall Department of Physics Workshop / Seminar Headshot of Peter Muhuro
HET Seminar (September 15, 2017 3:00pm) https://events.umich.edu/event/43406 43406-9759936@events.umich.edu Event Begins: Friday, September 15, 2017 3:00pm
Location: West Hall
Organized By: HET Brown Bag Series

TBA

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Workshop / Seminar Thu, 31 Aug 2017 09:32:45 -0400 2017-09-15T15:00:00-04:00 2017-09-15T16:00:00-04:00 West Hall HET Brown Bag Series Workshop / Seminar West Hall
HET Seminar | A New Solution to the Gravitino Problem: Suppressed Production by Sgoldstino Dynamics (September 15, 2017 3:00pm) https://events.umich.edu/event/44112 44112-9886084@events.umich.edu Event Begins: Friday, September 15, 2017 3:00pm
Location: West Hall
Organized By: HET Seminars

In supersymmetric theories, the gravitino is copiously produced by the scattering of the thermal particles at the end of inflationary reheating. The gravitino is overproduced unless the reheat temperature is sufficiently low, which is incompatible with thermal leptogenesis. This is known as the gravitino problem. In models of low scale mediation, the field value of the sgoldstino determines the mediation scale. We point out that the sgoldstino field value can be different in the early Universe than the present one. In particular, a large initial field value since the era of the inflationary reheating suppresses the gravitino production significantly and removes the gravitino problem. We rigorously analyze the cosmological evolution of the sgoldstino and show that the reheat temperature may well exceed the conventional upper bound, restoring the compatibility with thermal leptogenesis.

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Workshop / Seminar Mon, 11 Sep 2017 09:41:05 -0400 2017-09-15T15:00:00-04:00 2017-09-15T16:00:00-04:00 West Hall HET Seminars Workshop / Seminar West Hall
CM-AMO Seminar | Using DNA to Program Pathways in Colloidal Self-Assembly (September 19, 2017 4:00pm) https://events.umich.edu/event/42182 42182-9584870@events.umich.edu Event Begins: Tuesday, September 19, 2017 4:00pm
Location: West Hall
Organized By: Department of Physics

DNA is not just the stuff of our genetic code; it is also a means to build materials. Grafting DNA onto colloidal nano- and microparticles can, in principle, ‘program’ them with information that tells them exactly how to self-assemble. Recent advances in our understanding of how this information is compiled into specific interparticle attractions have enabled the assembly of crystal phases not found in ordinary colloids, and could be extended to the assembly of prescribed, nonperiodic structures. However, structure is just one piece of a more complicated story; in actuality, self-assembly describes a phase transition between a disordered state and an ordered state, or a pathway on a phase diagram. In this talk, I will present experiments showing that the information stored in DNA sequences can be used to design the entire self-assembly pathway, and not just its endpoint. Using free DNA strands that either link together strands grafted to particles or compete to bind with them, I will show that it is possible to create colloids with new types of phase behavior, such re-entrant melting, temperature-independent coexistence, and reversible transitions between different solid phases. Going forward, this work could prove especially useful in nanomaterials research, where a central goal is to manufacture functional materials that can respond or reconfigure on demand.


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Workshop / Seminar Tue, 19 Sep 2017 18:16:35 -0400 2017-09-19T16:00:00-04:00 2017-09-19T17:00:00-04:00 West Hall Department of Physics Workshop / Seminar West Hall
Department Colloquium | Numerical Methods for the Many-Electron Problem (September 20, 2017 4:00pm) https://events.umich.edu/event/42183 42183-9584871@events.umich.edu Event Begins: Wednesday, September 20, 2017 4:00pm
Location: West Hall
Organized By: Department of Physics

Quantum systems with many strongly correlated degrees of freedom are fundamentally different from systems with only a few particles. This is evident in many condensed matter systems, where the interplay of many degrees of freedom leads to the emergence of theoretically interesting and practically useful quantum phases such as superconductivity, charge order, and magnetism. Because of the absence of small parameters and the large number of degrees of freedom, understanding these phases with traditional tools of many-body theory has proven to be challenging. This talk will show how numerical methods can be used to simulate strongly correlated quantum systems and explore the connections to simple analytical theories and experiment. In particular, we will show quantitative simulations for lattice model systems and their comparison to ultracold atomic gas experiment, and an analysis of the interplay between superconductivity and the so-called pseudogap phase in high-temperature superconducting materials.

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Workshop / Seminar Wed, 20 Sep 2017 18:16:46 -0400 2017-09-20T16:00:00-04:00 2017-09-20T17:00:00-04:00 West Hall Department of Physics Workshop / Seminar West Hall
Polaritronics MURI Kick-Off Meeting (September 21, 2017 12:00pm) https://events.umich.edu/event/44641 44641-9934464@events.umich.edu Event Begins: Thursday, September 21, 2017 12:00pm
Location: West Hall
Organized By: Physics Workshops & Conferences

Please see website for details: https://sites.lsa.umich.edu/polaritronics/event/kickoff-meeting/

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Meeting Fri, 15 Sep 2017 17:08:35 -0400 2017-09-21T12:00:00-04:00 2017-09-21T15:00:00-04:00 West Hall Physics Workshops & Conferences Meeting West Hall
Life After Grad School Seminar | Atypical Adventures in Astrophysics: Airplanes, Airports, and a School (September 22, 2017 12:00pm) https://events.umich.edu/event/44788 44788-9980559@events.umich.edu Event Begins: Friday, September 22, 2017 12:00pm
Location: West Hall
Organized By: Department of Physics

Deano Smith completed his Ph.D. in Astronomy and Astrophysics at the University of Michigan in 2000, studying dark matter distributions with Professor Gary Bernstein. His dissertation, “Determining Field Galaxy Halo Masses Via the Weak Gravitational Lensing Effect,” was based upon observations made using the BTC, or “Big Throughput Camera,” that he worked on developing, testing, and putting into service as part of his graduate program. The camera, which was the largest high-throughput astronomical camera at the time, was used on the 4-meter Victor Blanco Telescope at the Cerro-Tololo Inter-American Observatory in Chile, so he got some travel time and was able to enjoy the southern skies rather extensively. He was fortunate in the breadth of his astronomy experience, having also worked with Joel Bregman and Mario Mateo on different research projects, and having received advice, tutelage, and fun times at conferences with numerous faculty including Fred Adams, Pat Seitzer, and Gus Evrard. Since departing U of M with a two-body-academic problem, he has taught high school science, taught people to fly airplanes, operated a small airport, and held a tenure-track Research Scientist position in the Marine Hydrodynamics Laboratories. He has now returned to teaching high school science at Greenhills School in Ann Arbor.

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Workshop / Seminar Fri, 22 Sep 2017 18:16:36 -0400 2017-09-22T12:00:00-04:00 2017-09-22T13:00:00-04:00 West Hall Department of Physics Workshop / Seminar West Hall
HEP-Astro Seminar | Constraining New Physics with Lepton Flavor Violating Meson Decays (September 25, 2017 4:00pm) https://events.umich.edu/event/44764 44764-9971937@events.umich.edu Event Begins: Monday, September 25, 2017 4:00pm
Location: West Hall
Organized By: Department of Physics

Radiative and non-radiative lepton flavor violating (LFV) decays M --> (gamma) + l-lbar pair of meson states M with different quantum numbers can be used to put constraints on the Wilson coefficients of effective operators describing LFV interactions at low energy scales. The restricted kinematics of the two-body meson decays allows for the selection of operators with particular quantum numbers, significantly reducing the reliance on the single operator dominance assumption that is prevalent in constraining parameters of the effective LFV Lagrangian. Studies of radiative lepton flavor violating M --> (gamma) + l-lbar pair decays provide complementary access to those effective operators, but more importantly, they can provide access to operators that cannot be directly probed via two-body decays.

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Workshop / Seminar Mon, 25 Sep 2017 18:16:31 -0400 2017-09-25T16:00:00-04:00 2017-09-25T17:00:00-04:00 West Hall Department of Physics Workshop / Seminar West Hall
CM-AMO Seminar | Superconductivity Near a Quantum Critical Point (September 26, 2017 4:00pm) https://events.umich.edu/event/42184 42184-9584872@events.umich.edu Event Begins: Tuesday, September 26, 2017 4:00pm
Location: West Hall
Organized By: Department of Physics

I discuss the interplay between non-Fermi liquid behaviour and superconductivity near a quantum-critical point (QCP) in a metal. It was thought by many researchers that in D=2, non-Fermi liquid behaviour near a QCP extends to energies well above superconducting Tc, and that superconductivity involves non Fermi-liquid quasiparticles and emerges due to peculiar interplay between strong attraction and strong pair-breaking effects from self-energy. I argue that this is not necessary always the case. I show that in a situation, when critical bosons are slow compared to electrons, fermionic self-energy plays little role for superconductivity in 2D, despite that it is strong and destroys fermionic coherence. I discuss the special role of the “first Matsubara frequency” in this regard. I present explicit results for Tc for the set of models with frequency dependent effective interaction, including the strong coupling limit of electron phonon interaction.


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Workshop / Seminar Tue, 26 Sep 2017 18:16:33 -0400 2017-09-26T16:00:00-04:00 2017-09-26T17:00:00-04:00 West Hall Department of Physics Workshop / Seminar West Hall
Department Colloquium | Fast Radio Bursts - Nature's Latest Cosmic Mystery (September 27, 2017 4:00pm) https://events.umich.edu/event/42276 42276-9593310@events.umich.edu Event Begins: Wednesday, September 27, 2017 4:00pm
Location: West Hall
Organized By: Department of Physics


Abstract: Fast Radio Bursts are millisecond-duration pulses of unknown origin that were discovered by pulsar astronomers in 2007. A decade on from the discovery, with only 20 further bursts currently known, fast radio bursts remain enigmatic sources which parallel the early days of gamma-ray burst astronomy in the early 1970s. I will tell the story of their discovery, summarize what we know about them so far, describe the science opportunities these bursts present, and make predictions for what we will learn in the next decade.

Bio sketch: Duncan Lorimer got his PhD in 1994 for his contributions to Pulsar Astronomy from the University of Manchester in the UK working under the supervision of Prof. Andrew Lyne, Dick Manchester and Matthew Bailes. Since then he has held positions at the University of Manchester (Lecturer; 1994-5); the Max-Planck-Institute for Radio Astronomy (Postdoctoral Fellow; 1995-8); Cornell University (Postdoctoral Fellow; 1998-2001); University of Manchester (Royal Society Research Fellow; 2001-6) and West Virginia University (Faculty; 2006-present). He is a Fellow of the Royal Astronomical Society since 1994. While at West Virginia University, he has received a Cottrell Scholar Award (2008-present) from the Research Corporation for Scientific Advancement and has received both his College and University’s recognition for excellence in teaching (2009, 2010). He is currently Associate Chair of the Department of Physics and Astronomy. Among his notable research achievements are his contributions to our understanding of the population of pulsars and the discovery of Fast Radio Bursts which he will describe in this talk.

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Workshop / Seminar Wed, 27 Sep 2017 18:16:31 -0400 2017-09-27T16:00:00-04:00 2017-09-27T17:00:00-04:00 West Hall Department of Physics Workshop / Seminar West Hall
HET Seminar | Gravitational Radiation from Classical QCD (September 29, 2017 3:00pm) https://events.umich.edu/event/44543 44543-9923136@events.umich.edu Event Begins: Friday, September 29, 2017 3:00pm
Location: West Hall
Organized By: HET Seminars

TBA

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Workshop / Seminar Mon, 25 Sep 2017 10:07:55 -0400 2017-09-29T15:00:00-04:00 2017-09-29T16:00:00-04:00 West Hall HET Seminars Workshop / Seminar West Hall
HEP-Astro Seminar | Evolution of Reactor Flux and Spectrum at Daya Bay and the implications on the Reactor Antineutrino Anomaly (October 2, 2017 4:00pm) https://events.umich.edu/event/42185 42185-9584873@events.umich.edu Event Begins: Monday, October 2, 2017 4:00pm
Location: West Hall
Organized By: Department of Physics

The reactor antineutrino anomaly (RAA) has been puzzling reactor neutrino physics community since 2011. The RAA refers to the deficit of electron antineutrinos detected by reactor neutrino experiments compared with the number of electron antineutrinos predicted by state of the art reactor models. The Daya Bay experiment has utilized eight functionally identical underground detectors to sample reactor antineutrino fluxes from three pairs of nuclear reactors in South China, accruing the largest reactor antineutrino sample to date. This talk will summarize Daya Bay's most recent result, which presents observations of correlations between reactor core fuel evolution and changes in the detected reactor antineutrino flux and energy spectrum. A 10σ variation in IBD yield was found to be energy-dependent, rejecting the hypothesis of a constant antineutrino energy spectrum at 5.1 standard deviations. While measurements of the linear variation with respect to the fuel content in the IBD spectrum show general agreement with predictions from recent reactor models, the measured linear variation with respect to the fuel content in the total IBD yield disagrees with recent predictions. This discrepancy indicates that an overall deficit in measured flux with respect to predictions does not result from equal fractional deficits from the primary fission isotopes 235U, 239Pu, 238U, and 241Pu. A 7.8% discrepancy between the observed and predicted 235U yield suggests that this isotope may be the primary contributor to the reactor antineutrino anomaly.

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Workshop / Seminar Mon, 02 Oct 2017 18:16:32 -0400 2017-10-02T16:00:00-04:00 2017-10-02T17:00:00-04:00 West Hall Department of Physics Workshop / Seminar West Hall
CM-AMO Seminar | The Power of Strong Spin-Orbit Interactions: Electrical Control of Structural and Physical Properties of Iridates (October 3, 2017 4:00pm) https://events.umich.edu/event/42186 42186-9584874@events.umich.edu Event Begins: Tuesday, October 3, 2017 4:00pm
Location: West Hall
Organized By: Department of Physics

Effects of spin-orbit interactions in condensed matter are an important and rapidly evolving topic. Strong competition between spin-orbit, on-site Coulomb and crystalline electric field interactions in iridates drives exotic quantum states that are unique to this group of materials. In this talk, we briefly review current experimental studies of iridates, and then present results of our recent study on electrical-current controlled behavior in iridates. Electrical control of structural and physical properties is a long-sought, but elusive goal of contemporary science and technology. We demonstrate that a combination of strong spin-orbit interactions (SOI) and a canted antiferromagnetic (AFM) Mott state is sufficient to attain that goal. The AFM insulator Sr_2IrO_4 provides a model system in which strong SOI lock canted Ir magnetic moments to IrO_6-octahedra, causing them to rigidly rotate together. A novel coupling between an applied electrical current and the canting angle reduces the Néel temperature and drives a large, non-linear lattice expansion that closely tracks the magnetization, increases the electron mobility, and precipitates a unique resistive switching effect. These observations open new avenues for understanding fundamental physics driven by strong SOI in condensed matter, and provide a new paradigm for functional materials and devices.


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Workshop / Seminar Tue, 03 Oct 2017 18:16:34 -0400 2017-10-03T16:00:00-04:00 2017-10-03T17:00:00-04:00 West Hall Department of Physics Workshop / Seminar West Hall
Department Colloquium | The Softest Crystals (October 4, 2017 4:00pm) https://events.umich.edu/event/42301 42301-9595525@events.umich.edu Event Begins: Wednesday, October 4, 2017 4:00pm
Location: West Hall
Organized By: Department of Physics

Usually, crystals have three-dimensional periodicity. Smectic liquid crystals, however, have one-dimensional order, even in three-dimensional samples. These systems, as simple as they might seem, connect the physics of biomembranes, superconductivity, and even special relativity. I will provide an introduction for non-specialists and show how this diverse set of ideas comes together in these very, very soft systems.

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Workshop / Seminar Wed, 04 Oct 2017 18:16:41 -0400 2017-10-04T16:00:00-04:00 2017-10-04T17:00:00-04:00 West Hall Department of Physics Workshop / Seminar West Hall
I Am Art Among the Arts/Arte soy entre las artes: Being An Independent Book Artist in Cuba (October 4, 2017 4:00pm) https://events.umich.edu/event/44358 44358-9911777@events.umich.edu Event Begins: Wednesday, October 4, 2017 4:00pm
Location: West Hall
Organized By: University Library

Join us for a talk by Rolando Estévez, a Cuban visual artist and poet renowned for his spectacular artist books. He will present for the first time a series of his new artist books, which are in exuberant conversation with a range of Cuban poets, including José Martí, Dulce María Loynaz, and Nancy Morejón, and talk about being a book artist in a rapidly changing Cuba. The lecture will be in Spanish with simultaneous English translation, and followed by a reception.

An artist of the book for more than thirty years, and now the first licensed independent bookmaker in Cuba, Estévez is finding exciting ways for words and images to speak to each other, creating books at once delicate and sturdy, ambitious and humble, books that breathe, carry earth, sand, seashells, and twigs, and are full of life.

U-M Library holds a major collection of his books, which offer a window onto Cuban cultural and artistic life over the past three decades. View a selection of these holdings in the online exhibit Intersections: Cultures, Identities, Narratives.

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Lecture / Discussion Wed, 13 Sep 2017 12:14:02 -0400 2017-10-04T16:00:00-04:00 2017-10-04T18:00:00-04:00 West Hall University Library Lecture / Discussion Arte soy entre las artes
Life After Grad School | Being a Physicist Business Leader, and the Art of People Management (October 6, 2017 12:00pm) https://events.umich.edu/event/42187 42187-9584875@events.umich.edu Event Begins: Friday, October 6, 2017 12:00pm
Location: West Hall
Organized By: Department of Physics

I always wanted to be a teacher. And then once I got to grad school I learned that being a professor and running a lab required much more. Setting a research vision, budgets and funding, building the lab, recruiting students, guiding and growing them, and keeping the whole ship running… it wasn't mostly teaching the way I thought it was. If those were the things I was going to do anyways, I decided to do them in the business world and shipped myself off to Silicon Valley. I'll talk to you about what it’s like being a physicist in the business world, and what I've learned along my random walk. I'll go deeper on people management as the critical skill to scaling yourself. And I'll leave plenty of time for questions on anything, or to hear thoughts you have.

Joel leads the global Sales Planning & Operations org which scales Facebook's business. Prior to Facebook, Joel worked at Yahoo! leading the Americas Ad Marketplaces team and as the Chief of Staff to the CEO, and prior to that worked with McKinsey & Company leading digital media business growth in high tech. Joel holds a B.S.E. in Engineering Physics from the University of Michigan and an M.S. in Applied Physics from Caltech. And Joel still wants to be a teacher, someday.

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Workshop / Seminar Fri, 06 Oct 2017 18:16:47 -0400 2017-10-06T12:00:00-04:00 2017-10-06T13:00:00-04:00 West Hall Department of Physics Workshop / Seminar West Hall
HET Seminar | Exploring the Low Mass Frontier in Dark Matter Direct Detection (October 6, 2017 3:00pm) https://events.umich.edu/event/45282 45282-10150122@events.umich.edu Event Begins: Friday, October 6, 2017 3:00pm
Location: West Hall
Organized By: HET Seminars

I will discuss ideas and prospects to search for sub-GeV dark matter, below the typical thresholds of current direct detection experiments. While WIMP dark matter with mass above a GeV is increasingly constrained, there is a wide landscape of interesting candidates that may require new kinds of direct detection targets. I will highlight examples covering the meV-GeV mass range, including prospects for absorption of bosonic dark matter with current semiconductor targets as well as proposals to detect scattering of sub-MeV dark matter.

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Workshop / Seminar Mon, 02 Oct 2017 10:24:28 -0400 2017-10-06T15:00:00-04:00 2017-10-06T16:00:00-04:00 West Hall HET Seminars Workshop / Seminar West Hall
Special Physics Lecture | The Ultracold Neutron Physics Program at the ILL (October 9, 2017 2:30pm) https://events.umich.edu/event/45542 45542-10228832@events.umich.edu Event Begins: Monday, October 9, 2017 2:30pm
Location: West Hall
Organized By: Department of Physics

The Institut Laue Langevin (ILL) is an international research centre at the leading edge of neutron science and technology. As the world’s flagship centre for neutron science, the ILL provides scientists with a very high flux of neutrons feeding some 40 state-of-the-art instruments, which are constantly being developed and upgraded.
The instruments of the nuclear and particle physics group (NPP) and their fields of research are briefly presented.
ILL’s two ultracold neutron installations are described in more detail.
The ongoing research program using ultracold neutrons as measuring the lifetime of the free neutron, the search for an electric dipole moment and gravity resonance spectroscopy are highlighted.

About the Speaker:
Peter W.H. Geltenbort received a PhD from the University of Tuebingen, Germany, in 1983. He joined the Nuclear and Particle Physics (NPP) College at the ILL in 1983 responsible for a fission fragment spectrometer. From 1989 to 1993 he held the position of Head of the Detector Group. In 1993 he reintegrated into the NPP group responsible for the Ultracold Neutron/Very Cold Neutron facilities at the ILL. His current research interests are the fundamental properties of the neutron.

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Workshop / Seminar Mon, 09 Oct 2017 10:33:57 -0400 2017-10-09T14:30:00-04:00 2017-10-09T15:30:00-04:00 West Hall Department of Physics Workshop / Seminar West Hall
HEP-Astro Seminar | Laser Interferometer Space Antenna (LISA) (October 9, 2017 4:00pm) https://events.umich.edu/event/45095 45095-10084361@events.umich.edu Event Begins: Monday, October 9, 2017 4:00pm
Location: West Hall
Organized By: Department of Physics

The last 24 months did not only see the first direct detection of gravitational waves by LIGO but also the successful launch and operation of the LISA Pathfinder (LPF) mission. While the LIGO detection sparked the scientific and public interest in these 'mysterious' waves, the LPF results show that a space-based gravitational wave observatory is within reach. This Laser Interferometer Space Antenna (LISA) has the goal to detect the infrasound of the universe over five decades in frequency centered around a few mHz. Expected sources range from hundred thousand compact galactic binaries to extreme mass ratio inspirals out to redshifts up to 2 to massive and supermassive black hole mergers in the million to hundred million solar mass mass range out to redshifts of 20. LIGO sources years before the merger have recently been added to LISA's source catalogue. LISA will use free falling cubic test masses as the end points of their 2.5 Gm long interferometer arms. As shown by LPF, these test masses follow their geodesics with spurious accelerations below a femto-g/√Hz. LISA will use laser interferometry to measure distance changes between the test masses at the few pm √Hz level. ESA is leading the LISA project and NASA is exploring how to participate as a minority partner. LISA is ESA's L3 mission with an expected launch in the early 2030s. I will discuss LISA's payload and also the schedule of the LISA mission.

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Workshop / Seminar Mon, 09 Oct 2017 18:16:41 -0400 2017-10-09T16:00:00-04:00 2017-10-09T17:00:00-04:00 West Hall Department of Physics Workshop / Seminar West Hall
CM-AMO Seminar | The “Saturn-Rings” Drop and Other Electrohydrodynamic Instabilities (October 10, 2017 4:00pm) https://events.umich.edu/event/42188 42188-9584876@events.umich.edu Event Begins: Tuesday, October 10, 2017 4:00pm
Location: West Hall
Organized By: Department of Physics

I will present some intriguing instabilities of a droplet in a uniform electric field: drop rotation, surface vortices, and formation of rings encircling the drop. I will discuss how these instabilities arise from the coupling of fluid flow, interface deformation, and charge convection.

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Workshop / Seminar Tue, 10 Oct 2017 18:17:14 -0400 2017-10-10T16:00:00-04:00 2017-10-10T17:00:00-04:00 West Hall Department of Physics Workshop / Seminar West Hall
Department Colloquium | Prophecies of the Coming Flood (October 11, 2017 4:00pm) https://events.umich.edu/event/44505 44505-9923099@events.umich.edu Event Begins: Wednesday, October 11, 2017 4:00pm
Location: West Hall
Organized By: Department of Physics

Our planet provides clues that geologists can interpret to tell us how our planet has responded to past climate change. These clues tell a story of massive mountains of ice—called ice sheets—that covered huge portions of our planet. These mountains of ice waxed and waned over millennia resulting in massive floods. We used to think that these glacial cycles (and floods) were driven by changes in atmospheric temperature. However, evidence shows that the long term growth and decay of these ice mountains were punctuated by abrupt, rapid ice sheet changes. These disintegration events involved the near total disintegration of large sections of ice sheets in as little as a few centuries resulting in meters or even tens of meters of sea level rise. Surprisingly, the onset of ice sheet disintegration is not correlated with atmospheric temperature; many events initiating during periods when atmospheric temperatures were extremely cold. Today, we have two mountains of ice remaining called the Greenland Ice Sheet and West Antarctic Ice Sheet. We are increasingly witnessing retreat, decay and disintegration in portions of these ice sheets on a scale that is unprecedented over the past ten thousand years and this has (re)awakened concern that irreversible ice sheet collapse, perhaps analogous to past ice sheet disintegration may have already begun. This concern has been amplified by modeling studies suggesting the near total disintegration of large portions of the ice sheets in as little as a few centuries. At present these predictions remain prophecies, clouded by uncertainty and affected by choices we as a society have yet to make. Here I will review some of the past changes hinted at by clues in the geological record and summarize more recent changes, like the ongoing retreat of the Larsen ice shelves in Antarctica that we are currently observing. I will also summarize how work that my group is doing increasingly points towards the ocean as the trigger for past, present and future ice sheet disintegration events. Finally, I will conclude by discussing the limitations of current ice sheet models and why this uncertainty coupled with intrinsic non-linearities in the dynamic system limits us to prophesying a range of discrete fates for the ice sheets, but unable to pick which of these fates is our destiny. Unfortunately, even the most optimistic of the fates we can foresee results in significant ice sheet decay, sea level rise and coastal flooding in the coming century.

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Workshop / Seminar Wed, 11 Oct 2017 18:16:36 -0400 2017-10-11T16:00:00-04:00 2017-10-11T17:00:00-04:00 West Hall Department of Physics Workshop / Seminar West Hall
Interrogating the Histories and Futures of “Diversity’’ Symposium (October 16, 2017 9:00am) https://events.umich.edu/event/45224 45224-10116110@events.umich.edu Event Begins: Monday, October 16, 2017 9:00am
Location: West Hall
Organized By: Department of Anthropology

The symposium will investigate the concept, history and institutional implications of the discourse and practice of “diversity” as an emerging globalized form of inclusion.

To what extent does “diversity’’ sustain the status quo and to what extend does it transform it? How does “diversity’’ work in relation to demands for social justice? What are other means of inclusion? How are they working and being theorized in particular global contexts?

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Conference / Symposium Fri, 13 Oct 2017 10:33:13 -0400 2017-10-16T09:00:00-04:00 2017-10-16T17:00:00-04:00 West Hall Department of Anthropology Conference / Symposium Interrogating Diversity
Interrogating the Histories and Futures of “Diversity’’ Symposium (October 17, 2017 9:00am) https://events.umich.edu/event/45224 45224-10116111@events.umich.edu Event Begins: Tuesday, October 17, 2017 9:00am
Location: West Hall
Organized By: Department of Anthropology

The symposium will investigate the concept, history and institutional implications of the discourse and practice of “diversity” as an emerging globalized form of inclusion.

To what extent does “diversity’’ sustain the status quo and to what extend does it transform it? How does “diversity’’ work in relation to demands for social justice? What are other means of inclusion? How are they working and being theorized in particular global contexts?

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Conference / Symposium Fri, 13 Oct 2017 10:33:13 -0400 2017-10-17T09:00:00-04:00 2017-10-17T13:00:00-04:00 West Hall Department of Anthropology Conference / Symposium Interrogating Diversity
Department Colloquium | Dark Matter (October 18, 2017 4:00am) https://events.umich.edu/event/44506 44506-9923100@events.umich.edu Event Begins: Wednesday, October 18, 2017 4:00am
Location: West Hall
Organized By: Department of Physics

This talk will present an overview of the compelling astrophysical and cosmological evidence that one quarter the mass of the Universe is of a completely new kind: Dark Matter. It remains however entirely unknown what constitutes Dark Matter. What we do know places some constraints and a few requirements on experimental searches for Dark Matter particles, which will be sketched out. Some particularly promising techniques and their status to tackle the identification of Dark Matter will also be described in this talk.

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Workshop / Seminar Wed, 18 Oct 2017 18:16:48 -0400 2017-10-18T04:00:00-04:00 2017-10-18T17:00:00-04:00 West Hall Department of Physics Workshop / Seminar West Hall
Towards a More Inclusive Astronomy (TaMIA): Centering Diversity and Inclusion: Conversations on Marginalized Lived Experiences (October 20, 2017 9:30am) https://events.umich.edu/event/45294 45294-10152970@events.umich.edu Event Begins: Friday, October 20, 2017 9:30am
Location: West Hall
Organized By: Michigan Institute for Research in Astrophysics

During this (slide-less) edition of Conversations on Inclusion and Equity, I will model TaMIA's version of these conversations and our approach for addressing issues in inclusion and equity. TaMIA, or Towards a More Inclusive Astronomy, is a discussion group started by Mallory Molina at Penn State in 2016, with current co-leaders Angie Wolfgang, Caleb Cañas, and Jonathan Jackson. We began as a grassroots effort to introduce intersectional discussions about equity and inclusion in our department, highlighting the importance of the experiences of those with marginalized identities. During this event, I will take the participants through the typical structure of a meeting while talking about TaMIA's goals, philosophy, how and why we started, as well as some lessons learned.

About the Presenter
Angie Wolfgang is a National Science Foundation Astronomy & Astrophysics Postdoctoral Research Fellow at Penn State doing research in exoplanet demographics and population-based astrostatistics, and is co-leader for the Towards a More Inclusive Astronomy discussion group at Penn State. For more about Angie’s scientific contributions, visit https://sites.psu.edu/awolfgang/; for more about TaMIA, visit http://www.tamiastronomy.org/.

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Presentation Tue, 03 Oct 2017 14:56:55 -0400 2017-10-20T09:30:00-04:00 2017-10-20T10:45:00-04:00 West Hall Michigan Institute for Research in Astrophysics Presentation West Hall
Equity & Inclusion Seminar | A Presentation on Imposter Syndrome (October 20, 2017 2:00pm) https://events.umich.edu/event/45696 45696-10262627@events.umich.edu Event Begins: Friday, October 20, 2017 2:00pm
Location: West Hall
Organized By: Department of Physics

Two experts from the University's Counseling and Psychological Services will join us to share information about imposter syndrome. Imposter Syndrome is the belief that, despite outstanding academic and professional accomplishment, we really are not bright and have fooled anyone who thinks otherwise. It can impact students and faculty members alike. The presentation will focus on describing common experiences and identifying imposter syndrome as well as on ways that we—as individuals and as a community—can support one another to overcome the effects. This is recommended for students, faculty, and staff, particularly those who mentor. All are welcome.

(Please contact Elise Bodei (eharper@umich.edu) for accommodation on the basis of disability.)

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Presentation Thu, 12 Oct 2017 08:57:59 -0400 2017-10-20T14:00:00-04:00 2017-10-20T15:00:00-04:00 West Hall Department of Physics Presentation West Hall
Special Astronomy Talk | Light Pollution: Simple Solutions for a Serious Environmental Issue (October 20, 2017 3:30pm) https://events.umich.edu/event/45806 45806-10307559@events.umich.edu Event Begins: Friday, October 20, 2017 3:30pm
Location: West Hall
Organized By: Department of Physics

Light pollution is increasingly a major environmental threat. In addition to obscuring the night sky, the destruction of the natural nocturnal environment disrupts the behavior of countless species, triggering biological abnormalities and seriously impacting the health of many populations, including our own. Light pollution is a waste of energy, generated simply by human thoughtlessness and poor planning. Although meant to improve public safety, many lighting systems actually compromise safety. Light pollution is easy to address by good planning and public awareness, and at low financial cost. There is already substantial awareness of light pollution in Michigan, where dark skies are a recognized commodity. I will review the types of light pollution, safety and environmental impacts, and easy things everyone can do to help.

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Workshop / Seminar Mon, 16 Oct 2017 08:55:53 -0400 2017-10-20T15:30:00-04:00 2017-10-20T16:30:00-04:00 West Hall Department of Physics Workshop / Seminar West Hall
Quantitative Biology Seminar | The ParA/MinD Family of ATPases Make Waves to Position DNA, Cell Division, and Organelles in Bacteria (October 23, 2017 12:00pm) https://events.umich.edu/event/45906 45906-10324587@events.umich.edu Event Begins: Monday, October 23, 2017 12:00pm
Location: West Hall
Organized By: Department of Physics

Positional information in eukaryotic cells is mainly orchestrated by cytoskeletal highways and their associated motor proteins like Myosin, Kinesin, and Dynein. Bacteria don't have motors, so how are they spatially organized? I will be discussing three members of the ParA/MinD family of ATPases that are part of self organizing systems that put things in their place in cells across the microbial world. I will first present the ATPase called ParA, which is part of the most common DNA-segregation system in bacteria. ParA proteins form dynamic waves on the nucleoid to position chromosomes and plasmids in opposite cell-halves so that they are faithfully inherited after cell division. I will then discuss the ATPase called MinD, which is part of a system that forms oscillatory waves on the inner membrane. The oscillation aligns cell division at mid-cell so that daughter cells are equal in size. Finally, I will introduce a new member of this ATPase family we call McdA, which is part of an organelle trafficking system in bacteria. Yes. Bacteria have organelles. Our work is shedding light on what seems to be a general mode of subcellular organization in bacteria – dynamic protein gradients surfing biological surfaces to impart positional information for a wide variety of fundamental biological processes. My new lab focuses on subcellular organization in bacteria with a strong emphasis towards reconstituting the self-organizing activities of these systems in a cell-free setup using purified and fluorescent labeled components. By visualizing the biochemistry driving self-organization outside the cell we are able to provide comprehensive molecular mechanisms that explain subcellular organization inside the cell.

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Workshop / Seminar Mon, 23 Oct 2017 18:16:35 -0400 2017-10-23T12:00:00-04:00 2017-10-23T13:00:00-04:00 West Hall Department of Physics Workshop / Seminar West Hall
HEP-Astro Seminar | The Coolest Place in the Solar System: New Worlds Beyond Neptune from the Dark Energy Survey (October 23, 2017 4:00pm) https://events.umich.edu/event/45789 45789-10279562@events.umich.edu Event Begins: Monday, October 23, 2017 4:00pm
Location: West Hall
Organized By: Department of Physics

The Dark Energy Survey is carrying out a 5-year survey of one-eighth of the sky using the 4-meter Blanco telescope in Chile and its state-of-the-art 570 Mpix camera, DECam. Though this dataset was primarily envisioned for cosmology and extragalactic science, our University of Michigan group has developed it into a powerful tool to study the solar system beyond Neptune. The hundreds of new objects we've discovered include a dwarf-planet-sized object at nearly three times Pluto's distance, and several "extreme trans-Neptunian objects" whose orbits may hint at the presence of a ~10 earth-mass ninth planet. I'll discuss these discoveries in our own cosmic back yard, and their implications for what may lie beyond.

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Workshop / Seminar Mon, 23 Oct 2017 18:16:35 -0400 2017-10-23T16:00:00-04:00 2017-10-23T17:00:00-04:00 West Hall Department of Physics Workshop / Seminar West Hall
CM-AMO Seminar | Controlling Electronic Structure and Correlations in Artificial Quantum Materials (October 24, 2017 4:00pm) https://events.umich.edu/event/42189 42189-9584877@events.umich.edu Event Begins: Tuesday, October 24, 2017 4:00pm
Location: West Hall
Organized By: Department of Physics

Our ability to control the electronic structure of materials, for instance at semiconductor interfaces, has had enormous scientific and technological implications. Recently, this concept has been extended to materials which possess inherently strong quantum many-body interactions, such as strongly correlated transition metal oxides, allowing us to synthesize artificial heterostructures which can harbor novel electronic or magnetic properties. The ability to deterministically manipulate the strength of electron correlations or the electronic band structure will be critical to designing new materials with novel properties. I will describe some examples of our recent work in thin films of nickelates (LaNiO3) and ruthenates (the odd-parity superconductor Sr2RuO4), and how we have used both epitaxial strain as well as dimensional confinement in atomically thin films to control the strength of electronic correlations, the electronic band structure, the Fermi surface topology, and drive a metal-insulator transition. These new insights could someday enable deterministic control over the emergent properties of quantum materials.

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Workshop / Seminar Tue, 24 Oct 2017 18:22:34 -0400 2017-10-24T16:00:00-04:00 2017-10-24T17:00:00-04:00 West Hall Department of Physics Workshop / Seminar West Hall
Department Colloquium | Highlights from Recent LIGO and Virgo Observations (October 25, 2017 4:00pm) https://events.umich.edu/event/44697 44697-9968977@events.umich.edu Event Begins: Wednesday, October 25, 2017 4:00pm
Location: West Hall
Organized By: Department of Physics

Following the first Advanced LIGO data run (O1) in fall 2015, which included two definitive gravitational wave discoveries of binary black hole mergers, LIGO commissioners spent much of 2016 working to improve detector sensitivity, with mixed success. Data taking resumed with the start of the O2 run near the end of 2016 and continued through the summer of 2017, yielding additional discoveries. For the last several weeks of the O2 run, the European gravitational wave detector, Virgo, also collected data in parallel, providing not only independent corroboration of detection, but also dramatically improving source localization via triangulation across the Earth's surface. Highlights from early analysis of the O2 observations will be presented.

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Workshop / Seminar Wed, 25 Oct 2017 18:16:41 -0400 2017-10-25T16:00:00-04:00 2017-10-25T17:00:00-04:00 West Hall Department of Physics Workshop / Seminar West Hall
HET Brown Bag Seminar | Landau Singularities and the Amplituhedron (October 27, 2017 3:00pm) https://events.umich.edu/event/46077 46077-10387186@events.umich.edu Event Begins: Friday, October 27, 2017 3:00pm
Location: West Hall
Organized By: HET Seminars

Modern methods for computing scattering amplitudes in quantum field theory get enormous mileage out of knowledge (or assumed knowledge) of their singularity structure. I will demonstrate how, in the very special case of supersymmetric Yang-Mills theory, all information about this singularity structure can (in principle) be derived via combinatorial geometry problems using the amplituhedron, providing thereby the basic input to the "amplitude bootstrap" program.

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Workshop / Seminar Mon, 23 Oct 2017 09:02:47 -0400 2017-10-27T15:00:00-04:00 2017-10-27T16:00:00-04:00 West Hall HET Seminars Workshop / Seminar West Hall
HEP-Astro Seminar | From Muon Colliders Toward an Accelerator-Driven Subcritical Reactor (October 30, 2017 4:00pm) https://events.umich.edu/event/45824 45824-10310498@events.umich.edu Event Begins: Monday, October 30, 2017 4:00pm
Location: West Hall
Organized By: Department of Physics

Subcriticial nuclear reactors have been considered an alternative to conventional nuclear reactors for years. Development and operation of high-power SRF particle accelerators at two US national laboratories allows us to consider a less-expensive nuclear reactor that operates without the need for a critical core, fuel enrichment, or reprocessing.

I'll describe a reactor that without redesign will burn spent nuclear fuel, natural uranium, thorium, or surplus weapons material. I’ll talk about my company, Muons, Inc., and our history as an SBIR company devoted to a design of a future particle accelerator, the Muon Collder, and how innovations that came out of those R&D efforts have helped shape our vision of a new, sustainable, zero carbon footprint energy source to replace our current fossil fuel regime.

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Workshop / Seminar Mon, 30 Oct 2017 18:16:52 -0400 2017-10-30T16:00:00-04:00 2017-10-30T17:00:00-04:00 West Hall Department of Physics Workshop / Seminar West Hall
CM-AMO Seminar | Raman Spectroscopy Studies of Charge Order in Metallic La-doped Sr3Ir2O7 (October 31, 2017 4:00pm) https://events.umich.edu/event/42190 42190-9584878@events.umich.edu Event Begins: Tuesday, October 31, 2017 4:00pm
Location: West Hall
Organized By: Department of Physics

Charge order has been universally observed in underdoped copper-oxide based high-Tc superconductors (cuprates) and shown to compete with superconductivity. In a strong spin orbit coupled cuprate analogue system, layered perovskite iridium oxides (iridates), Mott insulating, pseudogap and d-wave gap behaviors have been discovered in the single layer variant Sr2IrO4, while metal insulator transition and charge-order like Fermi surface instability has only been seen in the bilayer counterpart Sr3Ir2O7. However, a full symmetry characterization on the charge order in Sr3Ir2O7 is yet missing, making its analogy to the charge order in cuprates incomplete. In this talk, I will show that an amplitude mode of charge order at ~25cm-1 is detected in the metallic La-doped Sr3Ir2O7 at temperatures below ~ 200K by using Raman spectroscopy, which is reminiscent of that observed in cuprates. I will further show that this charge order has two-fold rotational symmetry, breaking the four-fold one of the crystal lattice, which is the same as the unidirectional charge order in cuprates does. Finally, I will discuss the weak coupling between the charge order and the lattice by tracking the phonon evolution upon the emergence of the charge order.

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Workshop / Seminar Tue, 31 Oct 2017 18:16:26 -0400 2017-10-31T16:00:00-04:00 2017-10-31T17:00:00-04:00 West Hall Department of Physics Workshop / Seminar West Hall
Department Colloquium | Blazing a Trail: Towards Imaging Super-Earth from the Ground and Space (November 1, 2017 4:00pm) https://events.umich.edu/event/44698 44698-9968978@events.umich.edu Event Begins: Wednesday, November 1, 2017 4:00pm
Location: West Hall
Organized By: Department of Physics

The discovery and characterization of extrasolar planets has been data-driven: clearly there are more things in heaven and earth than are dreamt of in our philosophies. As the demographics of the myriad diverse systems becomes known, we begin to piece together the larger story of their formation and evolution. Ultimately, we seek to understand the prospects for life elsewhere in the Universe. In addition to this scientific quest, 'exploration' also plays a role. In particular, the nearest star systems provide an opportunity to explore in detail strange new worlds. The recent announcement of a planet < 10 Mearth in the liquid-water zone of Proxima Centari sent shock waves through the community. What is the nature of this planetary system found in our own galactic backyard? Could it be habitable? How will we know and when? Here we will review recent progress in imaging planets from the ground, contributions the NASA/ESA/CSA James Webb Space Telescope will make in imaging sub-Saturns (perhaps with habitable moons) at larger orbital radii, and complementary work to be done by next generation Extremely Large Telescopes in thermal emission as well as NASA's WFIRST-AFTA in reflected light, which will enable us to image terrestrial planets around the nearest stars by the end of the next decade.

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Workshop / Seminar Wed, 01 Nov 2017 18:16:35 -0400 2017-11-01T16:00:00-04:00 2017-11-01T17:00:00-04:00 West Hall Department of Physics Workshop / Seminar West Hall
HET Seminars | New Directions in the Search for Dark Matter (November 3, 2017 3:00pm) https://events.umich.edu/event/46336 46336-10464011@events.umich.edu Event Begins: Friday, November 3, 2017 3:00pm
Location: West Hall
Organized By: HET Seminars

The existence of dark matter has been well established with overwhelming evidence, but its particle identity is still unknown. For more than three decades, significant theoretical and experimental efforts have been directed towards the search for a Weakly Interacting Massive Particle (WIMP), often overlooking other possibilities. The lack of an unambiguous positive WIMP signal, at both indirect- and direct-detection experiments and at the LHC, stresses the need to expand dark matter research into additional theoretical scenarios and, more importantly, to develop new experimental capabilities that go beyond the limitations of WIMP detection. In this talk I will shortly review the current status of the field and discuss new theoretical ideas and experimental avenues for searching for light dark matter in the MeV to GeV mass range, focusing on direct detection experiments.

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Workshop / Seminar Mon, 30 Oct 2017 08:46:12 -0400 2017-11-03T15:00:00-04:00 2017-11-03T16:00:00-04:00 West Hall HET Seminars Workshop / Seminar West Hall
Special MIRA - U-M Physics Department Seminar | The Tragic Destiny of Mileva Marić Einstein (November 6, 2017 4:00pm) https://events.umich.edu/event/46016 46016-10353059@events.umich.edu Event Begins: Monday, November 6, 2017 4:00pm
Location: West Hall
Organized By: Department of Physics

What were Albert Einstein's first wife’s contributions to his extraordinary productivity in the first years of his career? A first biography of Mileva Marić was published in Serbian in 1969 but remained largely unknown despite being translated first in German, then in French in the 1990’s. The publication of Mileva and Albert’s love letters in 1987 brought more information but more recently, two very well documented publications shed even more light on Mileva Marić’s life and work. I will review this evidence in its social and historical context to give a better idea on her contributions. The audience will be able to appreciate why such a talented physicist has been so unkindly treated by history.

About the Speaker:
Pauline Gagnon was born in Chicoutimi in Quebec, Canada in 1955. She received a B.Sc. in Physics from Université du Québec à Montréal in 1978 and taught physics for six years in local colleges. After moving to California, she first obtained a Masters degree at San Francisco State University then completed a PhD in particle physics at the University of California in Santa Cruz in 1993. She joined a research team from Carleton University in Ottawa to conduct research at CERN, the European Laboratory for Particle Physics located near Geneva. She later became Senior Research Scientist at Indiana University until she retired in 2016. She contributed to the construction of a tracking device for the ATLAS detector, and searched for dark matter particles in the decays of Higgs bosons and in the form of hypothetical particles called dark photons.

From 2011 until 2014, she worked within the CERN Communication group, writing blogs for the Quantum Diaries and answering questions from numerous media worldwide. Explaining particle physics in simple and accessible terms has become her trademark. Since 2013, she has given more than 80 presentations to large audiences in eight countries on three continents. Her popular science book Who Cares about Particle Physics: Making Sense of the Higgs boson, the LHC and CERN goes beyond the current research program at CERN, looking at how research is done by large international teams and exploring the importance of fundamental research in physics. With this book, she hopes to reach even larger audiences, being convinced that particle physics is too much fun to leave it only to physicists!

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Workshop / Seminar Mon, 23 Oct 2017 14:11:38 -0400 2017-11-06T16:00:00-05:00 2017-11-06T17:00:00-05:00 West Hall Department of Physics Workshop / Seminar West Hall
The tragic destiny of Mileva Marić Einstein (November 6, 2017 4:00pm) https://events.umich.edu/event/45727 45727-10268268@events.umich.edu Event Begins: Monday, November 6, 2017 4:00pm
Location: West Hall
Organized By: Michigan Institute for Research in Astrophysics

Abstract
What were Albert Einstein's first wife’s contributions to his extraordinary productivity in the first years of his career? A first biography of Mileva Marić was published in Serbian in 1969 but remained largely unknown despite being translated first in German, then in French in the 1990’s. The publication of Mileva and Albert’s love letters in 1987 brought more information but more recently, two very well documented publications shed even more light on Mileva Marić’s life and work. I will review this evidence in its social and historical context to give a better idea on her contributions. The audience will be able to appreciate why such a talented physicist has been so unkindly treated by history.
Co-sponsored by the Department of Physics

About the Speaker
Pauline Gagnon was born in Chicoutimi in Quebec, Canada in 1955. She received a B.Sc. in Physics from Université du Québec à Montréal in 1978 and taught physics for six years in local colleges. After moving to California, she first obtained a Masters degree at San Francisco State University then completed a PhD in particle physics at the University of California in Santa Cruz in 1993. She joined a research team from Carleton University in Ottawa to conduct research at CERN, the European Laboratory for Particle Physics located near Geneva. She later became Senior Research Scientist at Indiana University until she retired in 2016. She contributed to the construction of a tracking device for the ATLAS detector, and searched for dark matter particles in the decays of Higgs bosons and in the form of hypothetical particles called dark photons.
From 2011 until 2014, she worked within the CERN Communication group, writing blogs for the Quantum Diaries and answering questions from numerous media worldwide. Explaining particle physics in simple and accessible terms has become her trademark. Since 2013, she has given more than 80 presentations to large audiences in eight countries on three continents. Her popular science book Who Cares about Particle Physics: Making Sense of the Higgs boson, the LHC and CERN goes beyond the current research program at CERN, looking at how research is done by large international teams and exploring the importance of fundamental research in physics. With this book, she hopes to reach even larger audiences, being convinced that particle physics is too much fun to leave it only to physicists!

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Presentation Sat, 21 Oct 2017 12:44:01 -0400 2017-11-06T16:00:00-05:00 2017-11-06T17:00:00-05:00 West Hall Michigan Institute for Research in Astrophysics Presentation Gagnon
CM-AMO Seminar | Opportunities in Layered Correlated Materials (November 7, 2017 4:00pm) https://events.umich.edu/event/42191 42191-9584879@events.umich.edu Event Begins: Tuesday, November 7, 2017 4:00pm
Location: West Hall
Organized By: Department of Physics

Correlated materials is one of the central themes in the development of condensed matter physics because of their rich physics such as superconductivity and quantum magnetism. The correlated materials associated with layered structure are even more interesting because of their unique quasi-two-dimensionality. In this talk, I will discuss the discovery, synthesis and characterization of two novel layered correlated materials: the strong spin-orbit coupled IrTe_2 and spin jammed (Sr,Ba)Cr_{9p}Ga_{12-9p}O_{19}.

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Workshop / Seminar Tue, 07 Nov 2017 18:16:16 -0500 2017-11-07T16:00:00-05:00 2017-11-07T17:00:00-05:00 West Hall Department of Physics Workshop / Seminar West Hall
Department Colloquium | Force from Non-Equilibrium Fluctuations in QED and Active Matter (November 8, 2017 4:00pm) https://events.umich.edu/event/42553 42553-9611966@events.umich.edu Event Begins: Wednesday, November 8, 2017 4:00pm
Location: West Hall
Organized By: Department of Physics

The pressure of a gas, the van der Waals attraction between molecules, and the Casimir force in quantum electrodynamic (QED) are classical examples of forces resulting from equilibrium (thermal or quantum) fluctuations. Current research on "Active Matter" studies collective behaviors of large groups of self-driven entities (living or artificial), whose random motions superficially resemble thermally fluctuating particles. However, the absence of time reversal symmetry leads to unusual phenomena such as directed (ratchet) forces, and a pressure that depends on the shape and structure of the confining wall.

Some manifestations of QED fluctuations out of thermal equilibrium are well-known, as in the Stefan-Boltzmann laws of radiation pressure and heat transfer. These laws, however, acquire non-trivial twists in the near-field regime of sub-micron separations, and in the proximity of moving surfaces. I will discuss dissipation in moving steady states, and the non-Gaussian fluctuations of a particle in a quantum bath.

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Workshop / Seminar Wed, 08 Nov 2017 18:16:17 -0500 2017-11-08T16:00:00-05:00 2017-11-08T17:00:00-05:00 West Hall Department of Physics Workshop / Seminar West Hall
Quantitative Biology | Real-Time Imaging of Single mRNA Translation Dynamics in Living Cells (November 13, 2017 12:00pm) https://events.umich.edu/event/46306 46306-10432697@events.umich.edu Event Begins: Monday, November 13, 2017 12:00pm
Location: West Hall
Organized By: Department of Physics

We are developing technology to image single RNA translation dynamics in living cells. Using high-affinity antibody-based probes, multimerized epitope tags, and single molecule microscopy, we are able to visualize and quantify the emergence of nascent protein chains from single premarked RNA1. Here, I'll describe this technology as well as a two color extension useful for comparing translation rates between two different parts of a single open reading frame (ORF) or two different ORFs. Using information from the correlations of fluorescence fluctuations, we can accurately quantify single mRNA translation elongation rates in both tagged and untagged portions of ORFs. By transiently loading probes and reporter DNA into cells in a combinatorial fashion, multiplexed imaging of gene expression is possible. Preliminary application of this technology to the study of viral frameshifting will be discussed.

Timothy J. Stasevich is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Biochemistry at Colorado State University (CSU). His lab uses a combination of advanced fluorescence microscopy, genetic engineering, and computational modeling to study the dynamics of gene regulation in living mammalian cells. Most recently, his lab has pioneered the imaging of real-time single mRNA translation dynamics in living cells [1]. Dr. Stasevich received his B.S. in Physics and Mathematics from the University of Michigan, Dearborn, and his Ph. D. in Physics from the University of Maryland, College Park. He transitioned into experimental biophysics as a post-doctoral research fellow in the laboratory of Dr. James G. McNally at the National Cancer Institute. During this time, he developed technology based on fluorescence microscopy to help establish gold-standard measurements of live-cell protein dynamics. Dr. Stasevich next moved to Osaka University, where he worked with Dr. Hiroshi Kimura as a Japan Society for the Promotion of Science Foreign Postdoctoral Research Fellow. While there, he helped create technology to image endogenous proteins and their post-translation modifications in vivo. This allowed him to image the live-cell dynamics of epigenetic histone modifications during gene activation for the first time [2]. Before joining the faculty at CSU, Dr. Stasevich took a one year hiatus at the HHMI Janelia Research Campus, where he further improved the spatio-temporal resolution of endogenous protein imaging in live-cells.

1. Morisaki, T. et al. Real-time quantification of single RNA translation dynamics in living cells. Science 352, 1425–1429 (2016).

2. Stasevich, T. J. et al. Regulation of RNA polymerase II activation by histone acetylation in single living cells. Nature 516, 272–275 (2014).

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Workshop / Seminar Mon, 13 Nov 2017 18:16:44 -0500 2017-11-13T12:00:00-05:00 2017-11-13T13:00:00-05:00 West Hall Department of Physics Workshop / Seminar West Hall
HEP-Astro Seminar | Methods and Challenges in Searches for Continuous Gravitational Wave Signals (November 13, 2017 4:00pm) https://events.umich.edu/event/46427 46427-10489736@events.umich.edu Event Begins: Monday, November 13, 2017 4:00pm
Location: West Hall
Organized By: Department of Physics

Recently, LIGO has made great strides in detecting gravitational waves produced by the coalescence of black holes and neutron stars. Nonetheless, a major target of LIGO observations remains elusive: continuous waves from fast-spinning, galactic neutron stars. We outline a few of the techniques used to search for these signals, and detail the challenges such searches present.

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Workshop / Seminar Mon, 13 Nov 2017 18:16:44 -0500 2017-11-13T16:00:00-05:00 2017-11-13T17:00:00-05:00 West Hall Department of Physics Workshop / Seminar West Hall
CM-AMO Seminar | Mind the Gap: a Cascade of Instabilities Created by Rotating Beads Near a Floor (November 14, 2017 4:00pm) https://events.umich.edu/event/45392 45392-10167095@events.umich.edu Event Begins: Tuesday, November 14, 2017 4:00pm
Location: West Hall
Organized By: Department of Physics

Does a rotating bead always spin in place? Not if that bead is near a surface: rolling leads to translational motion, as well as very strong flows around the bead, even quite far away. These flows strongly couple the motion of nearby microrollers (rotating beads), which leads to a rich variety of collective effects. Using experiments in tandem with large-scale 3D simulations, we have shown that driving a compact group of microrollers leads to a new kind of flow instability, whose wavelength is controlled not by the driving torque or the fluid viscosity, but a geometric parameter: the microroller's distance above the container floor. Furthermore, under the right conditions, stable, compact clusters we term "critters" can emerge from the unstable interface. Our simulations and experiments suggest that these critters are a stable state of the system, move much faster than individual rollers, and quickly respond to a changing drive. We believe that critters are unique in that they are clusters which form only with hydrodynamic interactions; no interparticle potentials are needed to create these structures. Furthermore, as compact, self-assembled structures which can easily be remotely guided, critters may offer a promising tool for microscopic transport.

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Workshop / Seminar Tue, 14 Nov 2017 18:16:07 -0500 2017-11-14T16:00:00-05:00 2017-11-14T17:00:00-05:00 West Hall Department of Physics Workshop / Seminar West Hall
Department Colloquium | The Physics and Applications of 2D and 3D Organic Heterojunctions (November 15, 2017 4:00pm) https://events.umich.edu/event/44699 44699-9968979@events.umich.edu Event Begins: Wednesday, November 15, 2017 4:00pm
Location: West Hall
Organized By: Department of Physics

Recently, we introduced a comprehensive theory of carrier recombination and energy transport at organic and hybrid organic/inorganic semiconductor heterojunctions (OI-HJ).[1] The OI-HJ has been found to play an important role in numerous devices in photodetection and energy power conversion. By developing a quantum mechanical model of the hybrid charge transfer exciton (HCTE) that is the intermediate between exciton generation and charge collection, we have been successful in understanding the behavior of several organic/III-V semiconductor OI-HJs.[2] More recently, we have extended this analysis to quantify the behavior of a new class of OI-HJs: those comprising a very thin film organic layered on a 2D transition metal dichalcogenide monolayer. For this latter purpose, we have fabricated an organic/WS2 OI-HJ photodetector used to elaborate the charge and energy transport across these limited dimensional systems.[3] In this talk, we will discuss the theoretical framework of HCTE dynamics, along with measurement of its properties and its application to photodetection and other optoelectronic systems consisting of combinations of excitonic and conventional semiconductors.

[1] C. K. Renshaw and S. R. Forrest, "Excited State and Charge Dynamics of Hybrid Organic/Inorganic Heterojunctions. I. Theory," Phys. Rev. B, vol. 90, p. 045302, 2014.
[2] A. Panda, K. Ding, and S. R. Forrest, "Free and trapped charge transfer excitons at a ZnO/small molecule heterojunction," Phys. Rev. B, vol. 94, p. 125429, 2016.
[3] X. Liu, J. Gu, K. Ding, D. Fan, X. Hu, Y.-W. Tseng, et al., "Photoresponse of an Organic Semiconductor/Two-Dimensional Transition Metal Dichalcogenide Heterojunction," Nano Lett., vol. 17, p. 3176, 2017.


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Workshop / Seminar Wed, 15 Nov 2017 18:16:22 -0500 2017-11-15T16:00:00-05:00 2017-11-15T17:00:00-05:00 West Hall Department of Physics Workshop / Seminar West Hall
Life After Grad School Seminar | Science Communication as a Career Path (November 17, 2017 12:00pm) https://events.umich.edu/event/46226 46226-10421227@events.umich.edu Event Begins: Friday, November 17, 2017 12:00pm
Location: West Hall
Organized By: Department of Physics

José Francisco Salgado is an astronomer (BS in Physics, Univ. of Puerto Rico; PhD in Astronomy, Univ. of Michigan), experimental photographer, visual artist, and public speaker who uses the arts to communicate science in engaging ways. He graduated from U-M with his mind set on Education and Public Outreach. During his tenure at the Adler Planetarium in Chicago, he worked in the development of web resources, Spanish-language programming, scientific visualization, exhibit galleries, and stereoscopic (3D) shows. He also co-developed and hosted an astronomy news section on TV (Univision Chicago, WGBO) for which he received an Emmy nomination.

Nowadays, he serves as the Executive Director of KV 265, a non-profit science and arts education organization he co-founded in 2010. Through KV 265, Dr. Salgado collaborates with orchestras, composers, and musicians to produce and present multimedia works that provoke curiosity and a sense of wonder about the Earth and the Universe.

As an experimental photographer, Salgado has visited more than 30 scientific sites around the world and has contributed visuals to documentaries produced for the History, Discovery, BBC, and National Geographic channels. As a public speaker, he has given presentations about science and art in all seven continents, including a presentation at the Amundsen-Scott South Pole Station. Leveraging his skills as a photographer, he leads tours to Northern Canada to view and photograph the aurora borealis.

Dr. Salgado will speak about his career path and how he ended up combining the disciplines that have fascinated him from an early age: astronomy, music, and photography; all with the simple and personal mission of inspiring people to learn more.

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Workshop / Seminar Fri, 17 Nov 2017 18:16:05 -0500 2017-11-17T12:00:00-05:00 2017-11-17T13:00:00-05:00 West Hall Department of Physics Workshop / Seminar West Hall
HET Seminars | Cosmology of a Fine-Tuned SUSY Higgs (November 17, 2017 3:00pm) https://events.umich.edu/event/46738 46738-10592253@events.umich.edu Event Begins: Friday, November 17, 2017 3:00pm
Location: West Hall
Organized By: HET Seminars

I will discuss some work in progress that explores whether a mildly fine-tuned Higgs boson, as in (mini-)split supersymmetry, can have interesting or observable cosmological consequences. As moduli fields oscillate, the Higgs can respond and temporarily acquire very large values along a D-flat direction. Possible consequences include a burst of gravitational wave production and an altered estimate of the number of e-folds of inflation.

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Workshop / Seminar Mon, 13 Nov 2017 08:19:26 -0500 2017-11-17T15:00:00-05:00 2017-11-17T16:00:00-05:00 West Hall HET Seminars Workshop / Seminar West Hall
HEP-Astro Seminar | Probing the Growth of Structure Using Clusters of Galaxies (November 20, 2017 4:00pm) https://events.umich.edu/event/46827 46827-10647792@events.umich.edu Event Begins: Monday, November 20, 2017 4:00pm
Location: West Hall
Organized By: Department of Physics

We discuss the growth of cosmic structure as constrained using galaxy clusters from the 2500 deg2 South Pole Telescope SZ survey. The current sample contains 377 uniformly selected cluster candidates with Sunyaev-Zeldovich effect detection significance greater than five and redshift z>0.25. Of these, 89 also have Chandra X-ray data, and 32 have deep optical follow-up data used to measure the weak gravitational lensing shear. This multi-wavelength data set extends up to z~1.7, and allows for unique tests of astrophysics and cosmology beyond redshift 1.

In this talk, we will discuss the multi-wavelength analysis of the SPT-SZ cluster sample, simultaneously constraining cluster scaling relations and cosmology. After reviewing past and current results, we will discuss the next steps in the SPT cluster cosmology effort which will allow for even more powerful measurements of structure growth. These steps involve incorporating more weak lensing mass calibration data from different ground- and space-based facilities such as the Dark Energy Survey or the Hubble space telescope, as well as data from the next generations of CMB surveys.

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Workshop / Seminar Mon, 20 Nov 2017 18:16:05 -0500 2017-11-20T16:00:00-05:00 2017-11-20T17:00:00-05:00 West Hall Department of Physics Workshop / Seminar West Hall
Thanksgiving Week - No Seminar (November 21, 2017 4:00pm) https://events.umich.edu/event/42192 42192-9584880@events.umich.edu Event Begins: Tuesday, November 21, 2017 4:00pm
Location: West Hall
Organized By: Department of Physics

CM-AMO Seminar

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Workshop / Seminar Tue, 15 Aug 2017 12:16:16 -0400 2017-11-21T16:00:00-05:00 2017-11-21T17:00:00-05:00 West Hall Department of Physics Workshop / Seminar West Hall
HEP-Astro Seminar | Data-Driven Models 
of the Milky Way 
in the Gaia Era (November 27, 2017 4:00pm) https://events.umich.edu/event/46938 46938-10703012@events.umich.edu Event Begins: Monday, November 27, 2017 4:00pm
Location: West Hall
Organized By: Department of Physics

The Gaia satellite will soon deliver magnitudes, parallaxes, and proper motions of billions of stars, offering an unprecedented detailed view of the structure and dynamics of our Galaxy. Correctly exploiting Gaia is challenging due to the colossal amount of data, the complicated selection effects and noise, and the inaccuracy of current stellar and 3D Galactic models with respect to the precision of the data. I will demonstrate how those issues can be addressed with modern statistical methods, specifically hierarchical data-driven probabilistic models, which allow us to bridge the gap between the statistical power of the data and the physics of interest. I will showcase results obtained from the first Gaia data release, including precise models of the color-magnitude diagram, red-clump stars, and unresolved double and triple systems, and discuss upcoming data releases and the prospects of constructing detailed three-dimensional models the Galaxy.

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Workshop / Seminar Mon, 27 Nov 2017 18:16:06 -0500 2017-11-27T16:00:00-05:00 2017-11-27T17:00:00-05:00 West Hall Department of Physics Workshop / Seminar West Hall
CM-AMO Seminar | Optical Studies of Current-Induced Magnetization and Photonic Quantum States (November 28, 2017 4:00pm) https://events.umich.edu/event/42193 42193-9584881@events.umich.edu Event Begins: Tuesday, November 28, 2017 4:00pm
Location: West Hall
Organized By: Department of Physics

The ever-decreasing size of electronic components is leading to a fundamental change in the way computers operate, as at the few-nanometer scale, resistive heating and quantum mechanics prohibit efficient and stable operation. One of the most promising next-generation computing paradigms is Spintronics, which uses the spin of the electron to manipulate and store information in the form of magnetic thin films. I will present our optical studies of the fundamental mechanisms by which we can efficiently manipulate magnetization using electrical current. Although electron spin is a quantum-mechanical property, Spintronics relies on macroscopic magnetization and thus does not take advantage of quantum mechanics in the algorithms used to encode and transmit information. For the second part of my talk, I will present our work under the umbrella of new computing and communication technologies based on the quantum mechanical properties of photons. Quantum technologies often require the carriers of information, or qubits, to have specific properties. Photonic quantum states are good information carriers because they travel fast and are robust to environmental fluctuations, but characterizing and controlling photonic sources so the photons have just the right properties is still a challenge. I will describe our work towards enabling quantum-physics-based communication and computation using photons.

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Workshop / Seminar Tue, 28 Nov 2017 18:16:09 -0500 2017-11-28T16:00:00-05:00 2017-11-28T17:00:00-05:00 West Hall Department of Physics Workshop / Seminar West Hall
Let's Talk About It: Mental Health in Academia (November 29, 2017 2:00pm) https://events.umich.edu/event/46913 46913-10675586@events.umich.edu Event Begins: Wednesday, November 29, 2017 2:00pm
Location: West Hall
Organized By: Michigan Institute for Research in Astrophysics

Note: Refreshments will be served in Room 337 following the talk

Abstract
Mental health struggles are often equated with personal weakness or deficiency, rather than an illness, in society at large and particularly within academia. This has led to a stigma around mental health and little meaningful discussion of the significant effects it can have on happiness, productivity, and overall health. Recent studies have shown that large fractions of people working at universities are at risk of having ordeveloping mental illness, and that graduate students are especially susceptible due to the great demands on their time, high expectations, and little control over the direction of their work and/or job prospects. In this talk I will present results from some of these studies, and I will also share my personal journey with mental health struggles. I will conclude with recommendations for what we can do as a community to help break the silence surrounding mental health and make academia a more supportive and inclusive environment.

Co-sponsored by the Department of Astronomy

About the Speaker

Johanna grew up in Central Pennsylvania, with a farm field at the end of her street. This meant she was lucky enough to have relatively dark skies, and found inspiration watching meteor showers ​​in the early morning hours, although she also enjoyed creek-walking, writing short stories, and pretending to be a spy. Johanna got her B.S. degree in Physics in 2008 from American University in Washington, DC, and then went to graduate school at the University of Arizona in Tucson, Arizona, where she got her Ph.D. in Astronomy in 2014. For the first two years of her Carnegie Origins Postdoctoral Fellowship she lived in Washington, DC and worked at the Carnegie Department of Terrestrial Magnetism before moving to Pasadena in August 2016 to work at the Carnegie Observatories. In her free time Johanna likes teaching astronomy to others (and learning from them!), watching baseball, and running marathons.

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Presentation Sat, 18 Nov 2017 14:06:52 -0500 2017-11-29T14:00:00-05:00 2017-11-29T15:00:00-05:00 West Hall Michigan Institute for Research in Astrophysics Presentation Johanna Teske
Department Colloquium | The Universe at One Second after the Big Bang (November 29, 2017 4:00pm) https://events.umich.edu/event/42554 42554-9611967@events.umich.edu Event Begins: Wednesday, November 29, 2017 4:00pm
Location: West Hall
Organized By: Department of Physics

The Universe is dynamical and has expanded by a factor of over one billion between the present-day and the early thermal epoch known as the neutrino decoupling. The production of relic neutrinos is within seconds of the inflation and heating processes that imprinted the seeds of future structure formation in the Universe. These early universe relics have cooled under the expansion of the Universe and are sensed indirectly through the action of their diminishing thermal velocities on large-scale structure formation. Experimental advances have opened up new opportunities to directly detect the CNB, an achievement which would profoundly confront and extend the sensitivity of precision cosmology data. PTOLEMY is a novel method of 2D target surfaces, fabricated from Graphene, that has unique directional detection capabilities for MeV dark matter and forms a basis for a future large-scale relic neutrino detector. The discussion of PTOLEMY focusses on experimental challenges, recent developments and the path forward to discovery sensitivity.

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Workshop / Seminar Wed, 29 Nov 2017 18:16:16 -0500 2017-11-29T16:00:00-05:00 2017-11-29T17:00:00-05:00 West Hall Department of Physics Workshop / Seminar West Hall
Thermal equivariance and its applications (December 1, 2017 3:00pm) https://events.umich.edu/event/46739 46739-10592254@events.umich.edu Event Begins: Friday, December 1, 2017 3:00pm
Location: West Hall
Organized By: HET Seminars

I will describe how techniques from topological field theory and equivariant cohomology find a role in physical problems. I will define the notion of thermal equivariance which will involve gauging thermal diffeomorphisms, and argue that these constructions naturally lead to entropy being interpretable as a Noether current. I will outline an application to constructing dissipative hydrodynamic effective actions, reproducing previously known facts about the admissible constitutive relations.

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Workshop / Seminar Fri, 10 Nov 2017 14:32:16 -0500 2017-12-01T15:00:00-05:00 2017-12-01T16:00:00-05:00 West Hall HET Seminars Workshop / Seminar West Hall
HEP-Astro Seminar | Searches for New Physics Through Third Generation Particles at the ATLAS Detector (December 4, 2017 4:00pm) https://events.umich.edu/event/42194 42194-9584882@events.umich.edu Event Begins: Monday, December 4, 2017 4:00pm
Location: West Hall
Organized By: Department of Physics

The Standard Model (SM) has been central to particle physics for decades, and its success in predicting observational results has culminated in the 2012 discovery of a Higgs boson at the Large Hadron Collider. However, the theory is considered 'not natural', requiring finely-tuned parameters to allow for the precise cancellation of large radiative corrections to the Higgs boson mass. In pursuit of a more natural theory, extensions to the SM have been proposed that would stabilize the Higgs boson mass and resolve the hierarchy problem (supersymmetry, extended Higgs sectors, models with vector-like quarks). This presentation will focus on several ATLAS searches for new physics involving third generation particles, both targeting extended Higgs sectors and vector-like quarks.

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Workshop / Seminar Mon, 04 Dec 2017 18:16:11 -0500 2017-12-04T16:00:00-05:00 2017-12-04T17:00:00-05:00 West Hall Department of Physics Workshop / Seminar West Hall
CM-AMO Seminar | Playing with Photons in Flatland: Controlling Light and Matter in Two-Dimensional Materials (December 5, 2017 4:00pm) https://events.umich.edu/event/42195 42195-9584883@events.umich.edu Event Begins: Tuesday, December 5, 2017 4:00pm
Location: West Hall
Organized By: Department of Physics

The discovery of monolayer two-dimensional semiconductors of atomic-scale thickness presents a new two-dimensional landscape in which to play with the interaction between light and matter. These nanomaterials at the extreme limit of surface-to-volume ratio exhibit rich optical phenomenology such as layer dependent bandgaps and degenerate, but distinct, valley-polarized excitonic states. The unique features of atomically-thin materials suggest that these layered systems can be exploited to achieve new regimes of light-matter interactions. In this presentation, I will discuss efforts to control the interaction of monolayer semiconductors with light using both top-down nanopatterning and photonic device integration. In particular, I will describe the emergence of spin-polarized exciton-polariton quasi-particles in monolayer semiconductors embedded in a photonic microcavity. Cavity enhancement of optical interactions results in modified dynamics of these coherent light-matter states. Examples will illustrate how optical and quantum phenomena can be rationally designed in monolayer semiconductors, suggesting exciting potential for novel hybrid quantum systems or opto-electronic applications harnessing the unique properties of low-dimensional nanomaterials.

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Workshop / Seminar Tue, 05 Dec 2017 18:16:10 -0500 2017-12-05T16:00:00-05:00 2017-12-05T17:00:00-05:00 West Hall Department of Physics Workshop / Seminar West Hall
Department Colloquium | Structure and Dynamics with Ultrafast Electron Microscopes … or how to make atomic-level movies of molecules and materials (December 6, 2017 4:00pm) https://events.umich.edu/event/43295 43295-9751017@events.umich.edu Event Begins: Wednesday, December 6, 2017 4:00pm
Location: West Hall
Organized By: Department of Physics

In this talk I will describe how combining ultrafast lasers and electron microscopes in novel ways makes it possible to directly 'watch' the time-evolving structure of condensed matter on the fastest timescales open to atomic motion. By combining such measurements with complementary (and more conventional) spectroscopic probes one can develop structure-property relationships for materials under even very far from equilibrium conditions.

I will give several examples of the remarkable new kinds of information that can be gleaned from such studies and describe how these opportunities emerge from the unique capabilities of the current generation of ultrafast electron microscopy instruments. For example, in diffraction mode it is possible to identify and separate lattice structural changes from valence charge density redistribution in materials on the ultrafast timescale and to identify novel photoinduced phases that have no equilibrium analogs. It is also possible to directly probe the strength of the coupling between electrons and phonons in materials across the entire Brillouin zone and to probe nonequilibrium phonon dynamics (or relaxation) in exquisite detail. In imaging mode, real space pictures of nano- to microstructural evolution in materials at unprecedented spatio-temporal resolution can be obtained.

I will assume no familiarity with ultrafast lasers or electron microscopes.

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Workshop / Seminar Wed, 06 Dec 2017 18:16:30 -0500 2017-12-06T16:00:00-05:00 2017-12-06T17:00:00-05:00 West Hall Department of Physics Workshop / Seminar West Hall
HET Seminar | Effective field theories for dark matter direct detection (December 8, 2017 3:00pm) https://events.umich.edu/event/47257 47257-10855068@events.umich.edu Event Begins: Friday, December 8, 2017 3:00pm
Location: West Hall
Organized By: HET Seminars

I will discuss the nonperturbative matching of the effective field theory describing dark matter interactions with quarks and gluons to the effective theory of nonrelativistic dark matter interacting with nonrelativistic nucleons. In general, a single partonic operator already matches onto several nonrelativistic operators at leading order in chiral counting. Thus, keeping only one operator at the time in the nonrelativistic effective theory does not properly describe the scattering in direct detection. Moreover, the matching of the axial--axial partonic level operator, as well as the matching of the operators coupling DM to the QCD anomaly term, naively include momentum suppressed terms. However, these are still of leading chiral order due to pion poles and can be numerically important. I will illustrate the impact of these effects with several examples. Finally, I will comment about the importance of renormalization group running in direct dark matter detection.

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Workshop / Seminar Mon, 04 Dec 2017 08:40:24 -0500 2017-12-08T15:00:00-05:00 2017-12-08T16:00:00-05:00 West Hall HET Seminars Workshop / Seminar West Hall
HEP-Astro Seminar | Surveying the Landscape of DUNE (December 11, 2017 4:00pm) https://events.umich.edu/event/47067 47067-10782623@events.umich.edu Event Begins: Monday, December 11, 2017 4:00pm
Location: West Hall
Organized By: Department of Physics

DUNE is an ambitious international program aiming for discovery in neutrino oscillation physics as well as in searches for nucleon decay and studies of neutrinos from core-collapse supernovae. The central elements of the experimental platform that will enable this program include a new, high-intensity neutrino beam line that will be constructed at Fermilab and a suite of massive liquid argon time projection chambers (LArTPC's) to be deployed deep underground in the former Homestake gold mine, now home to the Sanford Underground Research Facility, in Lead, South Dakota. I will describe the scientific context in which DUNE sits, talk about several aspects of technology development for DUNE including work toward efficient detection of scintillation photons in large-volume LArTPC's, and summarize the status and outlook for DUNE.

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Workshop / Seminar Mon, 11 Dec 2017 18:16:12 -0500 2017-12-11T16:00:00-05:00 2017-12-11T17:00:00-05:00 West Hall Department of Physics Workshop / Seminar West Hall
Statistics Department Seminar Series: Jason Xu, Department of Biomathematics, UCLA (January 5, 2018 11:30am) https://events.umich.edu/event/47951 47951-11157183@events.umich.edu Event Begins: Friday, January 5, 2018 11:30am
Location: West Hall
Organized By: Department of Statistics

Abstract

The likelihood function is central to many statistical procedures, but poses challenges in many classical and modern data settings. Motivated by emergent cell lineage tracking experiments to study blood cell production, we present recent methodology newly enabling likelihood-based inference for partially observed data arising from continuous-time stochastic processes with countable state spaces. These computational advances allow principled inferential procedures such as maximum likelihood estimation, posterior inference, and expectation-maximization (EM) algorithms. We then discuss limitations and alternatives when data are very large or generated from a hidden process, and address some of the remaining challenges using optimization. We highlight majorization-minimization (MM) methods that generalize EM, showcasing their merits and breadth on related problems including likelihood-based approaches for sparse and low-rank estimation.

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Workshop / Seminar Tue, 02 Jan 2018 10:29:18 -0500 2018-01-05T11:30:00-05:00 2018-01-05T13:00:00-05:00 West Hall Department of Statistics Workshop / Seminar Xu,Jason
Quantitative Biology Seminar | Geometric Singular Perturbation Theory and the Mathematical Description of Enzyme Kinetics (January 8, 2018 12:00pm) https://events.umich.edu/event/48107 48107-11180649@events.umich.edu Event Begins: Monday, January 8, 2018 12:00pm
Location: West Hall
Organized By: Department of Physics

Due to the prevelance of fast and slow timescales in enzyme-catalyzed reactions, geometric singular perturbation theory (GSPT) plays a pivotal role in the mathematical illustration of enzyme kinetics. I’ll begin the talk by reviewing some of the earlier work that characterizes single-enzyme/single-substrate (SE/SS) reactions. At the same time, I’ll introduce some of the principal theorems of GSPT and demonstrate their applicability to SE/SS reactions. Finally, I’ll conclude with a description of my current work on coupled reactions. Coupled reactions generally consist of multiple fast timescales and multiple slow timescales; thus, they serve as a novel platform from which to study the applicability of GSPT in higher dimensional dynamical systems.

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Workshop / Seminar Mon, 08 Jan 2018 18:16:06 -0500 2018-01-08T12:00:00-05:00 2018-01-08T13:00:00-05:00 West Hall Department of Physics Workshop / Seminar West Hall
HEP-Astro Seminar | The Fermilab Muon g-2 Experiment (January 8, 2018 4:00pm) https://events.umich.edu/event/48014 48014-11170143@events.umich.edu Event Begins: Monday, January 8, 2018 4:00pm
Location: West Hall
Organized By: Department of Physics

The magnetic moment anomaly of the muon, g-2, can be measured with sub ppm precision and can challenge the Standard Model prediction. In fact the most recent measurement, Brookhaven E821, reveals a 3-4 sigma discrepancy with the SM prediction. A new effort at Fermilab using the Brookhaven storage ring magnet will provide 20 times more muons over two years, which, combined with a number of technical advances, is expected to provide a factor of 4 improvement of the combined statistical and systematic error. Production data collection will commence in January, 2018, and E821-level statistics should be acquired in a few months. In this talk, I will set the stage and describe the eclectic experimental effort that brings together expertise in accelerator physics, particle physics, nuclear physics, atomic physics and precision measurement.

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Workshop / Seminar Mon, 08 Jan 2018 18:16:06 -0500 2018-01-08T16:00:00-05:00 2018-01-08T17:00:00-05:00 West Hall Department of Physics Workshop / Seminar West Hall
Optimal sensors in random environments (January 9, 2018 11:30am) https://events.umich.edu/event/47739 47739-11004725@events.umich.edu Event Begins: Tuesday, January 9, 2018 11:30am
Location: West Hall
Organized By: The Center for the Study of Complex Systems

** note location change to 411 West Hall **

Abstract: The efficient coding hypothesis has revolutionized theoretical neuroscience. I would argue that its next-generation instantiation is best understood using rate-distortion theory. I use rate-distortion theory to inspire a simple model of sensory adaptation. In randomly drawn, fluctuating environments, this model explains the absence of sensory neurogenesis and predicts that biological sensors are poised to just barely confuse ``minimal confounds'' in the environment.

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Workshop / Seminar Fri, 05 Jan 2018 15:47:10 -0500 2018-01-09T11:30:00-05:00 2018-01-09T13:00:00-05:00 West Hall The Center for the Study of Complex Systems Workshop / Seminar Sarah Merzen headshot
CM-AMO Seminar | Control of Topological Defects in Liquid Crystals (January 9, 2018 4:00pm) https://events.umich.edu/event/42196 42196-9584884@events.umich.edu Event Begins: Tuesday, January 9, 2018 4:00pm
Location: West Hall
Organized By: Department of Physics

Among the many physical systems that form topological defects, liquid crystals are special because their characteristic topological defects are easy to visualize and manipulate. Many strategies can be employed to manipulate topological defects in these fluids with long-range order, either by external fields, or by choosing an appropriate topography of the confining surfaces, or dispersing colloidal particles in liquid crystals. Through combinations of these strategies, it is possible to generate defect arrays which then can be used for optics or to promote self-assembly of colloidal particles. I will discuss the behavior of a colloidal particle in liquid crystals next to an undulated surface, and the case of focal conic defects in smectic liquid crystals that can be assembled on curved interfaces to form an array of micro-lenses. I will also discuss defect arrays in nematic liquid crystals driven by electrical fields, which can form large, regular and reconfigurable structures.

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Workshop / Seminar Tue, 09 Jan 2018 18:16:09 -0500 2018-01-09T16:00:00-05:00 2018-01-09T17:00:00-05:00 West Hall Department of Physics Workshop / Seminar West Hall
Statistics Department Seminar Series: Zhou Fan, Department of Statistics, Stanford University (January 9, 2018 4:10pm) https://events.umich.edu/event/47999 47999-11167555@events.umich.edu Event Begins: Tuesday, January 9, 2018 4:10pm
Location: West Hall
Organized By: Department of Statistics

Random effects models are commonly used to measure genetic variance-covariance matrices of quantitative phenotypic traits in a population. The eigenvalues of these matrices describe the evolutionary response of the population to selection. However, they may be difficult to estimate from limited samples when the number of traits is large. I will discuss several phenomena concerning the eigenvalues of classical MANOVA estimators in such high-dimensional settings, including dispersion of the bulk eigenvalue distribution, bias and aliasing of large "spike" eigenvalues, and Tracy-Widom limits at the spectral edges. I will then describe a new statistical procedure that uses these results to consistently estimate the large population eigenvalues in a high-dimensional regime. The proofs develop and extend techniques in random matrix theory and free probability, which I will also briefly describe.

This is joint work with Iain M. Johnstone, Yi Sun, Mark W. Blows, and Emma Hine

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Workshop / Seminar Fri, 05 Jan 2018 16:23:37 -0500 2018-01-09T16:10:00-05:00 2018-01-09T17:00:00-05:00 West Hall Department of Statistics Workshop / Seminar Fan,Zhou
Department Colloquium | Promoting Gender Equity in STEM: Theory and Applications (January 10, 2018 4:00pm) https://events.umich.edu/event/47573 47573-10953044@events.umich.edu Event Begins: Wednesday, January 10, 2018 4:00pm
Location: West Hall
Organized By: Department of Physics

This presentation will begin by briefly reviewing data on the current status of women in STEM disciplines: degrees earned, careers pursued, obstacles encountered. Next, it will draw on social science research to illuminate a variety of underlying causes for gender disparities in STEM. These, in turn, will be shown to suggest an array of concrete actions that individual scientists, group leaders, and institutions can take to improve gender diversity; a few that the speaker has found especially effective in her academic leadership roles will be noted. While the primary focus of the talk will be on women in physics, some of the broader issues encountered by sexual and gender minorities in STEM will also be discussed. In the remainder of the presentation, two particular interventions in which the speaker has been involved for the past several years will be covered in more detail: one aimed at building career skills of women physicists in developing nations and the other aimed at improving the climate for LGBT physicists here in the United States. These illustrate the wide array of opportunities open to all of us for making STEM fields more inclusive.

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Workshop / Seminar Wed, 10 Jan 2018 18:16:15 -0500 2018-01-10T16:00:00-05:00 2018-01-10T17:00:00-05:00 West Hall Department of Physics Workshop / Seminar West Hall
Learning from nature: biomimetic mechanisms for new materials (January 11, 2018 11:30am) https://events.umich.edu/event/47824 47824-11015165@events.umich.edu Event Begins: Thursday, January 11, 2018 11:30am
Location: West Hall
Organized By: The Center for the Study of Complex Systems

Biological structures exhibit a level of complexity, functionality, and hierarchy that, if fully understood at a mechanistic level, could usher in the next generation of complex designer materials. For example, biological hydrogels act as selective permeability barriers by filtering nano-scale particles based on size as well as biochemical and biophysical interactions. However, for a class of situations that includes the Nuclear Pore Complex, the mechanism of this filtering has proven challenging to untangle because large non-binding particles are caged by the surrounding polymer network while binding particles exhibit increased, not decreased, mobility. We present an equilibrium mechanism for this counter-intuitive filtering strategy that does not require energy consumption. We show that selective mobility can be achieved and controlled in a simple crosslinked polymer gel by coupling binding to crosslink dynamics. Our results lead to specific design rules for manufacturing complex selective gels and could help explain how the Nuclear Pore Complex attains selectivity.

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Workshop / Seminar Tue, 02 Jan 2018 12:50:44 -0500 2018-01-11T11:30:00-05:00 2018-01-11T13:00:00-05:00 West Hall The Center for the Study of Complex Systems Workshop / Seminar Carl Goodrich Headshot
Statistics Department Seminar Series: Shizhe Chen, Department of Statistics and Grossman Center for the Statistics of Mind, Columbia University (January 12, 2018 11:30am) https://events.umich.edu/event/48318 48318-11220075@events.umich.edu Event Begins: Friday, January 12, 2018 11:30am
Location: West Hall
Organized By: Department of Statistics

New techniques in neuroscience have opened the door to rich new data sets of neural activities. These data sets shed light on the computational foundation of the brain, i.e., neurons and synapses. However, these data also present unprecedented challenges: novel statistical theory and methods are required to model neural activities, and well-designed experiments are needed to collect informative data. In this talk, we take on the task of learning connectivity among large sets of neurons. In particular, we discuss i) how to learn functional connectivity from spike train data using the Hawkes process, and ii) how to optimally design experiments to collect data that allow us, for the first time, to learn physiological connectivity in vivo.

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Workshop / Seminar Mon, 08 Jan 2018 10:10:49 -0500 2018-01-12T11:30:00-05:00 2018-01-12T13:00:00-05:00 West Hall Department of Statistics Workshop / Seminar Chen, Shizhe
HET Semiars | SIMPs and ELDERs: New Ideas for Dark Matter (January 12, 2018 3:00pm) https://events.umich.edu/event/48218 48218-11191401@events.umich.edu Event Begins: Friday, January 12, 2018 3:00pm
Location: West Hall
Organized By: HET Seminars

Dark Matter could reside in a hidden sector with gauge structure similar to the Standard Model. In particular, the hidden sector may include a non-Abelian gauge interaction with confinement scale around 100 MeV, similar to our QCD. Dark mesons, counterparts of the usual pions, kaons etc., can then play the role of dark matter. Such particles may experience strong number-changing self-interactions, similar to the 2K<->3pi scattering familiar in QCD. Intriguingly, such self-interactions can naturally produce a thermal relic abundance of dark mesons consistent with observations. In this talk we will explore two variations of this basic scenario, “Strongly-Interacting Massive Particle” (SIMP) and “Elastically-Decoupling Relic” (ELDER). We will discuss the basic features of each scenario, explicit models in which they may be realized, and their experimental signatures.

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Workshop / Seminar Fri, 05 Jan 2018 12:20:09 -0500 2018-01-12T15:00:00-05:00 2018-01-12T16:00:00-05:00 West Hall HET Seminars Workshop / Seminar West Hall
Statistics Department Seminar Series: Aaditya Ramdas, Department of Statistics and EECS University of California, Berkeley (January 15, 2018 4:10am) https://events.umich.edu/event/48320 48320-11251670@events.umich.edu Event Begins: Monday, January 15, 2018 4:10am
Location: West Hall
Organized By: Department of Statistics

Data science is at a crossroads. Each year, thousands of new data scientists are entering science and technology, after a broad training in a variety of fields. Modern data science is often exploratory in nature, with datasets being collected and dissected in an interactive manner. Classical guarantees that accompany many statistical methods are often invalidated by their non-standard interactive use, resulting in an underestimated risk of falsely discovering correlations or patterns. It is a pressing challenge to upgrade existing tools, or create new ones, that are robust to involving a human-in-the-loop.

In this talk, I will describe two new advances that enable some amount of interactivity while testing multiple hypotheses, and control the resulting selection bias. I will first introduce a new framework, STAR, that uses partial masking to divide the available information into two parts, one for selecting a set of potential discoveries, and the other for inference on the selected set. I will then show that it is possible to flip the traditional roles of the algorithm and the scientist, allowing the scientist to make post-hoc decisions after seeing the realization of an algorithm on the data. The theoretical basis for both advances is founded in the theory of martingales : in the first, the user defines the martingale and associated filtration interactively, and in the second, we move from optional stopping to optional spotting by proving uniform concentration bounds on relevant martingales.

This talk will feature joint work with (alphabetically) Rina Barber, Jianbo Chen, Will Fithian, Kevin Jamieson, Michael Jordan, Eugene Katsevich, Lihua Lei, Max Rabinovich, Martin Wainwright, Fanny Yang and Tijana Zrnic.

Bio : Aaditya Ramdas is a postdoctoral researcher in Statistics and EECS at UC Berkeley, advised by Michael Jordan and Martin Wainwright. He finished his PhD in Statistics and Machine Learning at CMU, advised by Larry Wasserman and Aarti Singh, winning the Best Thesis Award in Statistics. A lot of his research focuses on modern aspects of reproducibility in science and technology —
involving statistical testing and false discovery rate control in static and dynamic settings.

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Workshop / Seminar Mon, 08 Jan 2018 10:41:17 -0500 2018-01-15T04:10:00-05:00 2018-01-15T17:30:00-05:00 West Hall Department of Statistics Workshop / Seminar Ramdas,Aaditya
Thermodynamic limits far from equilibrium. (January 16, 2018 11:30am) https://events.umich.edu/event/47967 47967-11159791@events.umich.edu Event Begins: Tuesday, January 16, 2018 11:30am
Location: West Hall
Organized By: The Center for the Study of Complex Systems

Thermodynamics is a remarkably successful theoretical framework, with wide ranging applications across the natural sciences. Unfortunately, thermodynamics is limited to equilibrium or near-equilibrium situations, whereas most of the natural world, especially life, operates very far from thermodynamic equilibrium. Without a robust nonequilibrium thermodynamics, we cannot address a whole host of pressing research questions regarding the energetic requirements to operate outside of equilibrium, like the energetic cost to form a pattern, replicate an organism, or sense an environment, to name a few. Cutting-edge research in nonequilibrium statistical thermodynamics is beginning to shed light on these questions. In this talk, I will present two such recent predictions. The first is a novel linear-response-like bound that quantifies how dissipation shapes fluctuations far from equilibrium. Besides its intrinsic allure as a universal relation, I will discuss how it can be used to probe the energetic efficiency of molecular motors, offer energetic constraints on chemical clocks, and bound the dissipation in complex materials, both biological and synthetic, allowing us to gain insight into the fundamental energetic requirements to operate out of thermodynamic equilibrium. The second is an extended second law of thermodynamics with information that quantifies the precise energetic costs to process information, which I will apply to the energetic requirements of sensory adaptation in E. coli.

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Workshop / Seminar Tue, 02 Jan 2018 13:47:25 -0500 2018-01-16T11:30:00-05:00 2018-01-16T13:00:00-05:00 West Hall The Center for the Study of Complex Systems Workshop / Seminar Jordan Horowitz
CM-AMO Seminar | Transistors without Semiconductors by Functionalized Boron Nitride Nanotubes (January 16, 2018 4:00pm) https://events.umich.edu/event/48613 48613-11256986@events.umich.edu Event Begins: Tuesday, January 16, 2018 4:00pm
Location: West Hall
Organized By: Department of Physics

Miniaturization of silicon field effect transistors (FETs) is encounter with various fundamental limitations, including i) high power consumption due to leakage in the semiconducting channels; ii) short channel effects as the conduction length approaches the scale of the depletion layer width, and iii) high contact resistance at the semiconducting channels. The development of nano FETs by various nanowires (NWs), and carbon nanotubes (CNTs) are still hindered by surface defects and difficulty in controlled synthesis of semiconducting CNTs, respectively.

Apparently, beyond the box approaches should be explored to overcome the above mentioned limitations. Here we discuss about creation of transistors and electronic switches without semiconductors. Furthermore, these devices are based on quantum tunneling, potentially bypass most if not all the above mentioned limitation. Specifically, we will discuss about room temperature tunneling FETs by metallic quantum dots functionalized boron nitride nanotubes (QDs-BNNTs) [1]. These QDs-BNNTs can also be designed for use in flexible electronics [2]. Finally, graphene-BNNTs heterojunctions are also created to convert metallic graphene into digital switches [3]. All these results are made possible after the success in controlled synthesis of high-quality BNNTs by catalytic chemical vapor deposition (CCVD) [4-6].

This work is supported by the U.S. Department of Energy, the Office of Basic Energy Sciences (DOE-BES Grants DEFG0206ER46294, and DESC0012762). Part of this work was conducted at the Center for Nanophase Materials Sciences (Projects CNMS-2009213 and CNMS-2012083), which is sponsored at Oak Ridge National Laboratory (ORNL) by the DOEBES Scientific User Facilities Division, and by ORNL’s Shared Research Equipment (ShaRE) User Program.

References:
[1] C. H. Lee et al, Adv Mat 25, 2544 (2013).
[2] B. Hao et al, Sci Rep 6, 20293 (2016).
[3] V. Parashar et al, Sci Rep 5, 12238 (2015).
[4] (Review) J. Wang et al, Nanoscale 2, 2028 (2010)
[5] (Review) B. Hao et al, Chapter 20 in Nanotubes and Nanosheets: Functionalization and Applications of Boron Nitride and Other Nanomaterials, (CRC Press) pp 551-572 (2015).
[6] (Review) S. Bhandari et al, Chapter 1 in Boron Nitride Nanotubes in Nanomedicine, (Elsevier) pp 116 (2016).

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Workshop / Seminar Tue, 16 Jan 2018 18:16:16 -0500 2018-01-16T16:00:00-05:00 2018-01-16T17:00:00-05:00 West Hall Department of Physics Workshop / Seminar West Hall
Department Colloquium | Implications and Challenges for the Application of Artificial Intelligence in Physics and in Society (January 17, 2018 4:00pm) https://events.umich.edu/event/48332 48332-11222703@events.umich.edu Event Begins: Wednesday, January 17, 2018 4:00pm
Location: West Hall
Organized By: Department of Physics

The increased availability of large data sets and advancements in AI algorithms have revolutionized the role of data in both commercial industries and academic research. Today, AI permeates multiple industries, from self-driving vehicles and entertainment choices to cancer-detection and criminal justice. Moreover, in the last few years, it has had substantial impacts in molecular chemistry, particle physics, and more recently astronomy. AI, and it’s sub-fields, like machine learning, are more than likely here to stay. But, what are these algorithms really doing, and are they ethically implemented?

We'll discuss these topics, as well as the theory of deep learning, and its application to modern astronomical surveys, which are providing data sets that are unprecedented in size, precision, and complexity. Recent work with convolutional neural networks and strong gravitational lensing intimate the long-term potential for deep learning and its application to larger challenges in cosmology. However, AI is not without its own shortcomings. We'll discuss the barriers to deep learning having its highest impact on science.

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Workshop / Seminar Wed, 17 Jan 2018 18:16:20 -0500 2018-01-17T16:00:00-05:00 2018-01-17T17:00:00-05:00 West Hall Department of Physics Workshop / Seminar West Hall
Statistics Department Seminar Series: Xinran Li, Department of Statistics, Harvard University. (January 19, 2018 11:30am) https://events.umich.edu/event/48561 48561-11251662@events.umich.edu Event Begins: Friday, January 19, 2018 11:30am
Location: West Hall
Organized By: Department of Statistics

Many previous causal inference studies require no interference among units, that is, the potential outcomes of a unit do not depend on the treatments of other units. This no-interference assumption, however, becomes unreasonable when units are partitioned into groups and they interact with other units within groups. In a motivating application from Peking University, students are admitted through either the college entrance exam (also known as Gaokao) or recommendation (often based on Olympiads in various subjects). Right after entering college, students are randomly assigned to different dorms, each of which hosts four students. Because students within the same dorm live together and interact with each other extensively, it is very likely that peer effects exist and the no interference assumption is violated. More importantly, understanding peer effects among students gives useful guidance for future roommate assignment to improve the overall performance of students. Methodologically, we define peer effects in terms of potential outcomes, and propose a randomization-based inference framework to study peer effects in general settings with arbitrary numbers of peers and arbitrary numbers of peer types. Our inferential procedure does not require any parametric modeling assumptions on the outcome distributions. Additionally, our analysis of the data set from Peking University gives useful practical guidance for policy makers.

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Workshop / Seminar Fri, 12 Jan 2018 10:46:40 -0500 2018-01-19T11:30:00-05:00 2018-01-19T13:00:00-05:00 West Hall Department of Statistics Workshop / Seminar Li,Xinran
HET Seminars | Marble Statues in the Forest Beyond Quantum Mechanics and Spacetime (January 19, 2018 3:00pm) https://events.umich.edu/event/48023 48023-11170152@events.umich.edu Event Begins: Friday, January 19, 2018 3:00pm
Location: West Hall
Organized By: HET Seminars

TBA

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Workshop / Seminar Wed, 03 Jan 2018 14:16:44 -0500 2018-01-19T15:00:00-05:00 2018-01-19T16:00:00-05:00 West Hall HET Seminars Workshop / Seminar West Hall
HEP - Astro Seminar | Cutting-Edge Instrumentation for the Advanced ACT Polarimeter (January 22, 2018 4:00pm) https://events.umich.edu/event/49102 49102-11375486@events.umich.edu Event Begins: Monday, January 22, 2018 4:00pm
Location: West Hall
Organized By: HEP - Astro Seminars

In this talk I will present an overview of the upgrade to the polarization-sensitive camera on the Atacama Cosmology Telescope known as Advanced ACTPol (AdvACT). This upgrade targets ambitious science goals using advanced technologies including dense arrays of cryogenic bolometers with superconducting sensors and continuously-rotating silicon-metamaterial half-wave plates for modulation of incoming polarization. I will discuss work on the detector arrays, advances in our understanding of our bolometers, and the data processing pipeline under development to handle polarization-modulated data.

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Workshop / Seminar Mon, 22 Jan 2018 13:31:34 -0500 2018-01-22T16:00:00-05:00 2018-01-22T17:00:00-05:00 West Hall HEP - Astro Seminars Workshop / Seminar West Hall
CM-AMO Seminar | Exact Results in NMR (January 23, 2018 4:00pm) https://events.umich.edu/event/42198 42198-9584886@events.umich.edu Event Begins: Tuesday, January 23, 2018 4:00pm
Location: West Hall
Organized By: Department of Physics

After a short introduction to NMR technique, a brief, three-part survey of recent NMR studies on solid-state materials will be presented. These studies are each underpinned by an exact theoretical result that leads to a possibly approximate, but reliable basis for interpretation of experimental data. The first example is the behavior of nuclear spin-lattice relaxation in two of the high-Tc materials vis-a-vis inelastic neutron scattering (INS) studies that evaluate the dynamic susceptibility chi”(q,omega)*. Such a comparison shows that a substantial amount of intensity for chi” is simply missing from currently available INS data. The other two examples feature NMR studies of the stoichiometric QCP compound YbRh2Si2. In the first of these, NMR shows that high-quality crystals of this system enter into a macroscopic two-state admixture of non-Fermi-liquid and Fermi-liquid phases**. Such a result is not accessible with bulk measurements. In the second example, quantitative measurements of indirect spin-spin couplings exhibit a temperature dependence revealing modifications of the Fermi Surface with temperature***. To our knowledge, none of the results described has any precedent in the NMR literature.

* R. E. Walstedt, T. E. Mason, G. Aeppli, S. M. Hayden, H. A. Mook, Phys. Rev. B84, 024530 (2011).
** S. Kambe, H. Sakai, Y. Tokunaga, G. Lapertot, T. D. Matsuda, G. Knebel, J. Flouquet, R. E. Walstedt, Nat. Phys. 10, 840 (2014).
*** S. Kambe, H. Sakai, Y. Tokunaga, T. Hattori, G. Lapertot, T. D. Matsuda, G. Knebel, J. Flouquet, R. E. Walstedt, Phys. Rev. B95, 195121 (2017).

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Workshop / Seminar Tue, 23 Jan 2018 18:16:32 -0500 2018-01-23T16:00:00-05:00 2018-01-23T17:00:00-05:00 West Hall Department of Physics Workshop / Seminar West Hall
LACS Lecture Series. Cuzco to Ceuta to Buenos Aires: Juan Bautista Tupac Amaru and Atlantic Revolutions, 1780-1825 (January 23, 2018 4:00pm) https://events.umich.edu/event/48672 48672-11265205@events.umich.edu Event Begins: Tuesday, January 23, 2018 4:00pm
Location: West Hall
Organized By: Center for Latin American and Caribbean Studies

Charles Walker is writing a graphic history of Juan Bautista Tupac Amaru, in collaboration with Liz Clarke. The brother of the rebel leader Jose Gabriel Condorcanqui or Tupac Amaru, Juan Bautista was arrested in Cusco after the massive uprising (1780-83), taken in chains to Lima and then in a miserable journey to Spain, where he was sentenced to the northern Africa presido of Ceuta. He spent more than 30 years as a prisoner there and upon his release in 1820, was taken to Argentina as an “Inca hero” of the nascent Argentine republic. He died in Buenos Aires, never returning to Peru. Professor Walker will discuss Juan Bautista's life as a witness to the age of revolution and also discuss the challenges and joys of graphic histories.

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Lecture / Discussion Fri, 12 Jan 2018 16:50:15 -0500 2018-01-23T16:00:00-05:00 2018-01-23T17:30:00-05:00 West Hall Center for Latin American and Caribbean Studies Lecture / Discussion walker_image
Statistics Department Seminar Series: Yuting Wei, Department of Statistics, University of California, Berkeley (January 23, 2018 4:10pm) https://events.umich.edu/event/48566 48566-11254297@events.umich.edu Event Begins: Tuesday, January 23, 2018 4:10pm
Location: West Hall
Organized By: Department of Statistics

As the title indicates, the talk consists of two vignettes: on hypothesis testing and early stopping for
boosting algorithms.

The first part focuses on a certain class of composite testing problems with null and alternative specified by cones; such geometric testing problems arise in various applications (e.g., treatment effects, radar detection, and shape-constrained testing). Despite the widespread use of the generalized likelihood ratio test (GLRT), its properties have yet to be fully understood. When is it optimal, and when can it be improved upon? How does its performance depend on the cones? I provide some answers to these and other questions, all based on a tight characterization of the GLRT's performance.

In the second part, I will discuss how to understand the behavior of early stopping with boosting for non -parametric regression. While non-parametric models offer great flexibility, they can lead to overfitting and thus poor generalization performance. For this reason, procedures for fitting these models must involve some form of regularization. Although early-stopping of iterative algorithms is a widely-used form of regularization in statistics and optimization, it is less well-understood than its analogue based on penalized regularization. In this talk, I will establish some precise connections between these two, and give an explicit and optimal stopping criteria for boosting algorithms run in a reproducing kernel Hilbert space.

This talk is based on joint works with Adityanand Guntuboyina, Martin Wainwright and Fanny Yang.

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Workshop / Seminar Thu, 11 Jan 2018 14:19:56 -0500 2018-01-23T16:10:00-05:00 2018-01-23T17:30:00-05:00 West Hall Department of Statistics Workshop / Seminar Wei,Yuting
Department Colloquium | Weighing Neutrinos (January 24, 2018 4:00pm) https://events.umich.edu/event/47838 47838-11025470@events.umich.edu Event Begins: Wednesday, January 24, 2018 4:00pm
Location: West Hall
Organized By: Department of Physics

The mass of the neutrino has been an elusive quantity physicists have tried to measure since the very inception of the particle. The most sensitive direct method to establish the absolute neutrino mass is observation of the endpoint of the tritium beta-decay spectrum. A lower bound of iis set by observations of neutrino oscillations, while the KATRIN Experiment -- the current-generation tritium beta-decay experiment that is based on Magnetic Adiabatic Collimation with an Electrostatic (MAC-E) filter -- will achieve a sensitivity of better than 250 meV. Project 8 is a new experiment that uses Cyclotron Radiation Emission Spectroscopy (CRES) to probe much of the unexplored neutrino mass range with greater resolution. In this talk, I will review the current status of these two experiments (KATRIN and Project 8) as they seek to finally measure the mass of the neutrino.

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Workshop / Seminar Wed, 24 Jan 2018 18:16:29 -0500 2018-01-24T16:00:00-05:00 2018-01-24T17:00:00-05:00 West Hall Department of Physics Workshop / Seminar West Hall
Statistics Department Seminar Series: Ziwei Zhu, Department of Operations Research and Financial Engineering, Princeton University (January 26, 2018 11:30am) https://events.umich.edu/event/48567 48567-11251667@events.umich.edu Event Begins: Friday, January 26, 2018 11:30am
Location: West Hall
Organized By: Department of Statistics

Modern data sets are often decentralized; they are generated and stored in multiple sources across which the communication is constrained by bandwidth or privacy. This talk focuses on distributed estimation of principal eigenspaces of covariance matrices with decentralized data. We introduce and analyze a distributed algorithm that aggregates multiple principal eigenspaces through averaging the corresponding projection matrices. When the data distribution has sign-symmetric innovation, the distributed PCA is proved to be “unbiased” such that its statistical error will converge to zero as the number of data splits grows to infinity. For general distributions, when the number of data splits is not large, this algorithm is shown to achieve the same statistical efficiency as the full sample oracle. We applied our algorithm to implement distributed partition of traffic network of Manhattan; the distributed procedure delivered similar partition results as the centralized procedure provided that the number of data splits is not large.

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Workshop / Seminar Sat, 20 Jan 2018 09:20:51 -0500 2018-01-26T11:30:00-05:00 2018-01-26T13:00:00-05:00 West Hall Department of Statistics Workshop / Seminar Zhu,Ziwei
Life After Graduate School Seminar | From grad school to Goldman Sachs: What PhDs are doing in Finance (and how to get there) (January 26, 2018 12:00pm) https://events.umich.edu/event/49012 49012-11345061@events.umich.edu Event Begins: Friday, January 26, 2018 12:00pm
Location: West Hall
Organized By: Department of Physics

It is no secret that banks and financial institutions hire PhDs from quantitative fields to fill their ‘quant’ positions. However pretty much everything else about the job can be a mystery. What do quants do? Why do they need PhDs? What is life like working as a quant? Will I like the role? How do I apply and get the position?

All of the above (and more) were a mystery to me a year ago. I will try to shed some light by drawing from my own experience transitioning from Physics grad student into modeling/data-science role at Goldman Sachs. I will give a short introduction to the Market Risk Modeling team and why we are looking for PhDs (yes, we are hiring*). Following that is a free Q&A sessions where you can ask me anything about working in Finance.

* Candidates interested to apply for intern/full-time are encouraged to bring their resume or find us at the Engineering Career Fair on Wed, Jan 24.

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Workshop / Seminar Fri, 26 Jan 2018 18:16:41 -0500 2018-01-26T12:00:00-05:00 2018-01-26T13:00:00-05:00 West Hall Department of Physics Workshop / Seminar West Hall
The Michigan Anthropology Colloquia Series: "Cattle/Beef -- Health, Development, and Self-Devouring Growth in Botswana" (January 26, 2018 3:00pm) https://events.umich.edu/event/40862 40862-8808046@events.umich.edu Event Begins: Friday, January 26, 2018 3:00pm
Location: West Hall
Organized By: Department of Anthropology

This talk takes up the interplay between the health of cattle and that of humans in Botswana as a way of accounting for competing modes of reckoning future health under the sign of development. Cattle, the ur-category of wealth, and the basis of ritual, have always been central figures in Tswana political, social, and economic life. As modes of affiliation and patronage, technologies of metaphysical and material production, and aesthetic beings of tremendous regard, cattle have always been necessary to creating futures. But since independence, they’ve been disenchanted, rendered as beef. Through the rise of the beef industry within the developmental state, cattle have become figures of economic development, the subject of intense technoscientific management, and for many Europeans who consume Tswana beef as well as their Batswana counterparts, a more regular part of the diet. The talk considers the effects of the transformation from cattle to beef – from the slow draining of the water table from cattle-watering boreholes, to the emission of methane and carbon, to the long term effects of regular meat consumption manifest in hypertension, heart disease, and diabetes. Ultimately the paper asks what does it mean to build a future around cattle as a mode of affiliation as versus beef as a mode of growth?

The Michigan Anthropology Colloquia Series presents speakers on current topics in the field of anthropology.

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Lecture / Discussion Wed, 06 Dec 2017 12:35:32 -0500 2018-01-26T15:00:00-05:00 2018-01-26T17:00:00-05:00 West Hall Department of Anthropology Lecture / Discussion West Hall
Statistics Department Seminar Series: Phyllis Wan, Department of Statistics, Columbia University (January 30, 2018 4:10am) https://events.umich.edu/event/48568 48568-11251668@events.umich.edu Event Begins: Tuesday, January 30, 2018 4:10am
Location: West Hall
Organized By: Department of Statistics

Preferential attachment is an appealing mechanism for modeling power-law behavior of degree distributions in social networks.  In this talk, we consider fitting a directed linear preferential attachment model to network data under three data scenarios: 1) When the full history of the network growth is given, MLE of the parameter vector and its asymptotic properties are derived.  2) When only a single-time snapshot of the network is available, an estimation method combining method of moments with an approximation to the likelihood is proposed.  3) When the data are believed to have come from a misspecified model or have been corrupted, a semi-parametric approach to model heavy-tailed features of the degree distributions is presented, using ideas from extreme value theory.  We illustrate these estimation procedures and explore the usage of this model through simulated and real data examples.

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Workshop / Seminar Sat, 20 Jan 2018 09:23:06 -0500 2018-01-30T04:10:00-05:00 2018-01-30T17:30:00-05:00 West Hall Department of Statistics Workshop / Seminar Wan,Phyllis
CM-AMO Seminar | Mesoscale Theory and Modeling of Polymer-Based Nanocomposites (January 30, 2018 4:00pm) https://events.umich.edu/event/42199 42199-9584887@events.umich.edu Event Begins: Tuesday, January 30, 2018 4:00pm
Location: West Hall
Organized By: Department of Physics

Polymer-inorganic nanocomposites – materials in which inorganic nanoscale inclusions (“fillers”) are added to a polymer host (“matrix”) – are of great interest for many industrial applications. The physical and mechanical properties of nanocomposites depend crucially on our ability to design and control their morphology, i.e., the arrangement of the particles in the matrix. The nanocomposite morphologies depend on a number of factors, such as the size and shape of the fillers, the molecular weight and composition of the matrix polymer, and the interactions between the filler and the matrix. In most cases, the interaction between the matrix and the filler is very unfavorable, leading to aggregation of the filler particles and poor mechanical or physical properties. To counter this effect, in recent years, filler particles are being functionalized by oligomeric ligands covalently bonded to particle surfaces. These “hairy” nanoparticles can organize into complex soft-crystalline 3d, 2d, or 1d structures. We develop a mesoscale field theory (combination of Self-Consistent Field Theory for polymers and Density Functional Theory for particles) to describe the nanocomposite morphologies. Two specific examples are considered. In the first case, we investigate the arrangements of organically modified (“hairy”) spherical nanoparticles dispersed in a polymer matrix. Depending on the particle volume fraction, ligand grafting density, and ligand/matrix polymer molecular weight ratio, we find structures such as 3d-aggregates, 2d-sheets, and 1d-strings. Those results are in a good qualitative agreement with earlier experiments (P. Akcora et al., Nature Materials 2009) and simulations. The second example is the case of single-component nanocomposites (“hairy” nanoparticles with no matrix). Here, again, we find various structures, from 3d FCC crystals to 2d sheets to 1d lamellae. These predictions are also in good qualitative agreement with experimental results and particle-based simulations of Glotzer and co-workers (R. Marson et al., MRS Communications 2015). These findings demonstrate that field-based mesoscale simulations are going to play important role in designing new polymeric and polymer-based nanocomposite materials.

I received my B.S. (Physics) and Ph. D. (Polymer Physics) from Moscow Institute of Physics and Technology (“FizTech”), Moscow, Russia, with Ph.D. thesis on “Modeling the Dynamics and Thermodynamics of Melting Polyethylene Crystals” (advisor Prof. Leonid I. Manevitch). After moving to the US in 1992, I worked as a postdoctoral researcher at the University of Colorado (1993-97, advisor Prof. Noel A. Clark) and the University of Pittsburgh (1998-2000, advisor Prof. Anna C. Balazs). In early 2001, I joined Corporate R&D of The Dow Chemical Company in Midland, Michigan, where I am currently a Senior Research Scientist. My research interests are in applied theoretical and computational polymer science, with specific emphasis on polymer-inorganic nanocomposites, polyurethane foams and elastomers, directed self-assembly of block copolymers, and other applications of polymer theory to predict structure-property relationships in industrially relevant systems. I am a Fellow of American Physical Society (2014), and recipient of Dow internal award for Excellence in Science (2015).

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Workshop / Seminar Tue, 30 Jan 2018 18:16:40 -0500 2018-01-30T16:00:00-05:00 2018-01-30T17:00:00-05:00 West Hall Department of Physics Workshop / Seminar West Hall
Department Colloquium | The Dark Matter in the Universe (January 31, 2018 4:00pm) https://events.umich.edu/event/48333 48333-11222704@events.umich.edu Event Begins: Wednesday, January 31, 2018 4:00pm
Location: West Hall
Organized By: Department of Physics

"What is the Universe made of?" This question is the longest outstanding problem in all of modern physics, and it is one of the most important research topics in cosmology and particle physics today. The bulk of the mass in the Universe is thought to consist of a new kind of dark matter particle, and the hunt for its discovery in on. I'll start by discussing the evidence for the existence of dark matter in galaxies, and then show how it fits into a big picture of the Universe containing 5% atoms, 25% dark matter, and 70% dark energy. Neutrinos only constitute ½% of the content of the Universe, but much can be learned about neutrino properties from cosmological data. Leading candidates for the dark matter are Weakly Interacting Massive Particles (WIMPs), axions, and sterile neutrinos. WIMPs are a generic class of particles that are electrically neutral and do not participate in strong interactions, yet have weak-scale interactions with ordinary matter. There are multiple approaches to experimental searches for WIMPS: at the Large Hadron Collider at CERN in Geneva; in underground laboratory experiments; with astrophysical searches for dark matter annihilation products, and upcoming searches with the James Webb Space Telescope for Dark Stars, early stars powered by WIMP annihilation. Current results are puzzling and the hints of detection will be tested soon. At the end of the talk I'll briefly turn to dark energy and its effect on the fate of the Universe.

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Workshop / Seminar Wed, 31 Jan 2018 18:16:35 -0500 2018-01-31T16:00:00-05:00 2018-01-31T17:00:00-05:00 West Hall Department of Physics Workshop / Seminar West Hall
Life After Graduate School Seminar | PANEL: Faculty search: the view from applicants and hiring committee (February 2, 2018 12:00pm) https://events.umich.edu/event/49404 49404-11453745@events.umich.edu Event Begins: Friday, February 2, 2018 12:00pm
Location: West Hall
Organized By: Department of Physics

Three faculty members (Henriette Elvang, Ben Safdi, and Liuyan Zhao) will discuss and take questions about the process of applying for faculty jobs and how the faculty search committee works.

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Workshop / Seminar Fri, 02 Feb 2018 18:16:40 -0500 2018-02-02T12:00:00-05:00 2018-02-02T13:00:00-05:00 West Hall Department of Physics Workshop / Seminar West Hall
HET Seminars | String Theory of Supertubes (February 2, 2018 3:00pm) https://events.umich.edu/event/49365 49365-11450940@events.umich.edu Event Begins: Friday, February 2, 2018 3:00pm
Location: West Hall
Organized By: HET Seminars

The internal structure of extremal and near-extremal black holes in string theory involves a variety of ingredients — strings and branes — that lie beyond supergravity, yet it is often difficult to achieve quantitative control over these ingredients in a regime where the state being described approximates a black hole. The supertube is a brane bound state that has been proposed as a paradigm for how string theory resolves black hole horizon structure. This talk will describe how the worldsheet dynamics of strings can be solved exactly in a wide variety of supertube backgrounds, opening up the study of stringy effects in states near the black hole transition.

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Workshop / Seminar Mon, 29 Jan 2018 08:31:40 -0500 2018-02-02T15:00:00-05:00 2018-02-02T16:00:00-05:00 West Hall HET Seminars Workshop / Seminar West Hall
The Michigan Anthropology Colloquia Series: "Making Do/Making Kin: Child Development, Caretaking Practice, & the Caribbean in the Global Market" (February 5, 2018 3:00pm) https://events.umich.edu/event/41330 41330-9141934@events.umich.edu Event Begins: Monday, February 5, 2018 3:00pm
Location: West Hall
Organized By: Department of Anthropology

Although there is growing interest in the ways that cultural practice, resource availability, and social identity mediate individual decisions regarding childrearing, many quantitative analyses of parental investment remain anchored in discussions of variables that can be more easily operationalized, such as hours spent co-sleeping and duration of breastfeeding. Using original data gathered in Manchester Parish, Jamaica, I analyze qualitative evidence to explore diversity in forms of caretaker investment received by children living in two different settings: state-regulated children’s homes and familial residences. I also investigate whether these differences in care received are correlated to variability in child growth and psychosocial development. What presents as individual choice or cultural practice reflects decisions that are structured by the integration of Caribbean communities in the global market, gendered migration, and the legacies of colonialism. This bio-cultural study of human familial systems and child thriving reflects my central interest in women and children’s understandings of their own lives, and the relationship between social identity and health.

The Michigan Anthropology Colloquia Series presents speakers on current topics in the field of anthropology.

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Lecture / Discussion Mon, 08 Jan 2018 10:11:47 -0500 2018-02-05T15:00:00-05:00 2018-02-05T17:00:00-05:00 West Hall Department of Anthropology Lecture / Discussion West Hall
HEP-Astro Seminar | The Mu2e Experiment: A Search for Charged Lepton Flavor Violation (February 5, 2018 4:00pm) https://events.umich.edu/event/49079 49079-11375461@events.umich.edu Event Begins: Monday, February 5, 2018 4:00pm
Location: West Hall
Organized By: Department of Physics

The Mu2e experiment in Fermilab will search for the charged-lepton flavor violating (CLFV) coherent neutrinoless conversion of a muon into an electron in the field of an aluminum nucleus, a key process in the search for physics beyond the Standard Model. This measurement will improve sensitivity by 4 orders of magnitude over existing limits, presenting a rare opportunity for an indirect probe of new physics beyond the reach of current or planned high energy colliders. To achieve a single conversion event sensitivity better than 3e-17 the experiment requires a very intense muon beam and a high precision measurement of the ~105 MeV/c conversion electron momentum, while reducing to negligible all background contributions in the signal window. The measurement strategy, the detector design, and the current experimental status will be presented in this talk.

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Workshop / Seminar Mon, 05 Feb 2018 18:16:18 -0500 2018-02-05T16:00:00-05:00 2018-02-05T17:00:00-05:00 West Hall Department of Physics Workshop / Seminar West Hall
CM-AMO Seminar | On the Emergence of Coulomb Forces: a quest for a rigorous version of QED (February 6, 2018 4:00pm) https://events.umich.edu/event/42200 42200-9584888@events.umich.edu Event Begins: Tuesday, February 6, 2018 4:00pm
Location: West Hall
Organized By: Department of Physics

The possibility is investigated that Coulomb forces are emergent forces. More precisely, the hypothesis is that Coulomb forces are carried by transversely polarized photons. Omission of the longitudinal and scalar photons removes some of the difficulties of standard QED. The second modification is the introduction of reducible representations of the canonical commutation and anti-commutation relations. Its main effect is that integrations over the wave vectors are postponed to the moment of evaluation of expectation values. In this way the problem of ultraviolet divergences becomes manageable. An overview of the theory is presented and some experimental consequences are discussed.

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Workshop / Seminar Tue, 06 Feb 2018 18:16:19 -0500 2018-02-06T16:00:00-05:00 2018-02-06T17:00:00-05:00 West Hall Department of Physics Workshop / Seminar West Hall
Department Colloquium | Production, Acceleration and Transport of Future Electron Beams (February 7, 2018 4:00pm) https://events.umich.edu/event/49635 49635-11487519@events.umich.edu Event Begins: Wednesday, February 7, 2018 4:00pm
Location: West Hall
Organized By: Department of Physics

Bright electron beams enable electron microscopy, brilliant X-ray sources, and collisions that probe the interactions of elementary particles. They are also essential for semiconductor device fabrication, the sterilization of medical equipment and the production of heat shrink tubing and tires. Achieving increased brightness and extending the scientific and industrial reach of these beams poses basic scientific questions about beam production, acceleration and transport, whose answers will require expertise spanning disciplines from ab initio physics, materials science, surface chemistry, and mathematics to accelerator physics. A new NSF Science and Technology Center, the Center for Bright Beams, has been formed to do exactly this. The colloquium will present some of the key scientific questions involved in producing and using future bright beams and Center for Bright Beams early results.

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Workshop / Seminar Wed, 07 Feb 2018 18:16:25 -0500 2018-02-07T16:00:00-05:00 2018-02-07T17:00:00-05:00 West Hall Department of Physics Workshop / Seminar West Hall
Quantitative Biology Seminar | Synthetic Human Embryology in a Dish (February 12, 2018 12:00pm) https://events.umich.edu/event/49553 49553-11476262@events.umich.edu Event Begins: Monday, February 12, 2018 12:00pm
Location: West Hall
Organized By: Department of Physics

Most of our current knowledge of mammalian embryology is derived from studies of the mouse embryo. However, mammalian development involves substantial divergence in the mechanism and order of cell-fate allocations among species, and there has been a critical lack of information regarding human development due to the scarcity of human embryo specimens. Recent studies from my laboratory and others have shown that under suitable culture conditions human pluripotent stem cells (hPSCs) can undergo intricate morphogenetic events and self-organize to form patterned human embryo-like structures in vitro. These synthetic human embryo-like structures have sparked great interests in using such human development models for advancing human embryology, embryo toxicology, and reproductive medicine. In this talk, I will first discuss our effort in developing a micropatterned hPSC-based neuroectoderm developmental model, wherein pre-patterned geometrical confinement induces emergent patterning of neuroepithelial (NE) and neural plate border (NPB) cells, mimicking neuroectoderm regionalization during early neurulation. In the second part of my talk, I will discuss our work in developing a hPSC-based, synthetic embryological model of human post-implantation development that recapitulates multiple embryogenic events including amniotic cavity formation, amnion-epiblast patterning, and primitive streak formation. Together, our studies provide novel insight into previously inaccessible but critical embryogenic events in human development. Continuous development of these human development models will provide synthetic embryological platforms that open up previously inaccessible phases of the human life cycle to experimental study.

Jianping Fu is an Associate Professor at the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, with a primary appointment in the Mechanical Engineering Department and courtesy appointments in the Biomedical Engineering Department and the Cell and Developmental Biology Department. He also serves as the Associate Director for the Michigan Center for Integrative Research in Critical Care (MCIRCC). Dr. Fu’s research interests lie at the nexus of bioengineering, biophysics, and biology. Specifically, his research group integrates micro/nanoengineering, single-cell technologies, and systems and synthetic biology methods with new discoveries of mechanobiology, epigenetics, and stem cell biology for advancing understanding of human development and cancer biology. Dr. Fu is the recipient of the American Heart Association Scientist Development Award (2012), the National Science Foundation CAREER Award (2012), the Mechanical Engineering Outstanding Faculty Achievement Award (2014), the Robert M. Caddell Memorial Award for Research (2014), the Ted Kennedy Family Team Excellence Award (2015), the Rising Star Award from Biomedical Engineering Society - Cellular and Molecular Bioengineering (2016), and the George J. Huebner, Jr. Research Excellence Award (2018). Dr. Fu's research group is supported by the National Science Foundation, the National Institutes of Health, the American Heart Association, and some other foundations and agencies.

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Workshop / Seminar Mon, 12 Feb 2018 18:16:19 -0500 2018-02-12T12:00:00-05:00 2018-02-12T13:00:00-05:00 West Hall Department of Physics Workshop / Seminar West Hall
HEP-Astro Seminar | Computationally Probing Large Scale Structures (February 12, 2018 4:00pm) https://events.umich.edu/event/49816 49816-11543715@events.umich.edu Event Begins: Monday, February 12, 2018 4:00pm
Location: West Hall
Organized By: Department of Physics

As understood today, the history of our universe can be described with six parameters. We can constrain these parameters by measuring patterns in the large scale structure of our universe, which are governed by the competition between gravitational collapse and the accelerated expansion of our universe. The most massive collapsed structures are clusters of galaxies, comprised of hundreds to thousands of galaxies. For galaxy clusters, the telltale cosmological pattern is simply their number count as a function of mass and time. In this talk, I will discuss the challenges in using galaxy clusters as a probe for cosmology. We address these challenges through computational methods that explore galaxy formation processes such as energy feedback from active galactic nuclei, synthetic observations of the superheated plasma that permeates galaxy clusters, and methods that automate aspects of pattern-recognition.

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Workshop / Seminar Mon, 12 Feb 2018 18:16:19 -0500 2018-02-12T16:00:00-05:00 2018-02-12T17:00:00-05:00 West Hall Department of Physics Workshop / Seminar West Hall
CM-AMO Seminar | Quantum Nano-Photonic Devices Based on Rare-Earth Ions (February 13, 2018 4:00pm) https://events.umich.edu/event/42201 42201-9584889@events.umich.edu Event Begins: Tuesday, February 13, 2018 4:00pm
Location: West Hall
Organized By: Department of Physics

Quantum light-matter interfaces that reversibly map photonic quantum states onto atomic states, are essential components in the quantum engineering toolbox with applications in quantum communication, computing, and quantum-enabled sensing. I present a new platform for on-chip quantum light-matter interfaces based on nanophotonic resonators coupled to rare-earth-ions in crystals. The rare-earth ions exhibit long coherence times on optical transitions, which makes them suitable for optical quantum memories. We demonstrate a high-fidelity nanophotonic quantum memory based on a mesoscopic neodymium ensemble coupled to a photonic crystal cavity. The nanocavity enables >95% spin polarization for efficient initialization of the atomic frequency comb memory, and time-bin-selective readout via enhanced optical Stark shift of the comb frequencies. Our current technology can be readily transferred to Erbium doped devices for telecom memories that can be integrated with silicon photonics. Besides ensemble memories, single rare-earth-ions coupled to nano-resonators can be used as single optically addressable quantum bits where the quantum state is mapped on their Zeeman or hyperfine levels with long coherence time. Our solid-state nano-photonic quantum light-matter interfaces can be integrated with other chip-scale photon source and detector devices for multiplexed quantum and classical information processing at the nodes of quantum networks. I also discuss prospects for integration with superconducting resonators and qubits, which can lead to devices for reversible quantum transduction of optical photons to microwave photons, thus enabling optical interconnects between superconducting quantum computers.

Biography: Dr. Andrei Faraon is an Assistant Professor of Applied Physics at California Institute of Technology. After earning a B.S. degree in physics with honors in 2004 at California Institute of Technology, he received his M.S. in Electrical Engineering and PhD in Applied Physics both from Stanford University in 2009. At Stanford, Dr. Faraon was involved with seminal experiments on quantum optics using single indium arsenide quantum dots strongly coupled to photonic crystal cavities in gallium arsenide. After earning his PhD, Dr. Faraon spent three years as a postdoctoral fellow at Hewlett Packard Laboratories. At HP he was involved with pioneering experiments on diamond quantum photonic devices coupled to solid-state spins. He demonstrated the first nano-resonators coupled to single nitrogen vacancy centers in mono-crystalline diamond.

Faraon left HP in 2012 to become an Assistant Professor at Caltech, where he set up a laboratory specialized in developing nano-photonic technologies for devices that operate close to the fundamental limit of light-matter interaction. He is focused both on fundamental challenges on how to control the interaction between single atoms and single photons using nano-technologies, and on using nano-photonics to build cutting edge devices for imaging and sensing. He is the recipient of the 2015 National Science Foundation CAREER award, the 2015 Air Force Office of Scientific Research young investigator award and the 2016 Office of Naval Research Young Investigator Award.


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Workshop / Seminar Tue, 13 Feb 2018 18:16:49 -0500 2018-02-13T16:00:00-05:00 2018-02-13T17:00:00-05:00 West Hall Department of Physics Workshop / Seminar West Hall
Statistics Department Seminar Series: Snigdha Panigrahi, Department of Statistics, Stanford University (February 13, 2018 4:10pm) https://events.umich.edu/event/48864 48864-11317270@events.umich.edu Event Begins: Tuesday, February 13, 2018 4:10pm
Location: West Hall
Organized By: Department of Statistics

The goal of eQTLS (Expression quantitative trait loci studies) is to identify and quantify effects of how genetic variants regulate the expression of genes in different biological contexts. The outcome variables (typically on the order of 20,000) are molecular measurements of gene expression and the predictors are genotypes (typically on the order of 1,000,000). The identification of regulatory variants in eQTLS (Consortium et al. (2015); Ongen et al. (2015); Consortium et al. (2017)) proceeds in a hierarchical fashion: the first stage of such a selection identifies promising genes, followed by a search of potential functional variants in a neighborhood around these discovered genes. Once promising candidates for functional variants have been detected, the logical next step is to attempt to estimate their effect sizes. However obtaining samples corresponding to a human tissue remains a costly endeavor. Thereby, eQTLS continue to be based on relatively small sample sizes with this limitation particularly serious for tissues as brain, liver, etc.– the organs of most immediate medical relevance. Naive estimates that ignore the genome-wide selection preceding inference can lead to misleading conclusions about that the magnitudes of the true underlying associations. Due to scarcity of biological samples, the problem of reliable effect size estimation is often deferred to future studies and therefore, inadequately addressed in the eQTLS research community.

In this talk, I will discuss a principled approach that allows the geneticist to use the available dataset both for discoveries and follow-up estimation of the associated effect sizes, adjusted for the considerable amount of prior mining. Motivated to measure these effect sizes as consistent point estimates and intervals with target coverage, my methods are modeled along the conditional approach to selective inference, introduced in Lee et al. (2016). The proposed procedure is based on a randomized hierarchical strategy that reflects state of the art investigations and introduces the use of randomness instead of data splitting to optimize the use of available data. I will describe the computational bottleneck in performing randomized conditional inference. To overcome these hurdles, I will describe a novel set of techniques that have higher inferential power than prior selective inference work in Lee et al. (2016).

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Workshop / Seminar Wed, 17 Jan 2018 11:11:13 -0500 2018-02-13T16:10:00-05:00 2018-02-13T17:30:00-05:00 West Hall Department of Statistics Workshop / Seminar Snigdha Panigrahi
Department Colloquia | Comb-Based Multidimensional Coherent Spectroscopy (February 14, 2018 4:00pm) https://events.umich.edu/event/49956 49956-11608293@events.umich.edu Event Begins: Wednesday, February 14, 2018 4:00pm
Location: West Hall
Organized By: Department of Physics

TBA

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Workshop / Seminar Mon, 12 Feb 2018 09:58:07 -0500 2018-02-14T16:00:00-05:00 2018-02-14T17:00:00-05:00 West Hall Department of Physics Workshop / Seminar West Hall
Department Colloquium | Comb-based Multidimensional Coherent Spectroscopy (February 14, 2018 4:00pm) https://events.umich.edu/event/49901 49901-11569059@events.umich.edu Event Begins: Wednesday, February 14, 2018 4:00pm
Location: West Hall
Organized By: Department of Physics

Over the last 20 years, there have been two seemingly disconnected developments in optical spectroscopy: frequency combs and multidimensional coherent spectroscopy. Frequency combs revolutionized optical frequency metrology and enabled optical atomic clocks while multidimensional coherent spectroscopy became a powerful tool for studying dynamics on ultrafast time scales in atomic, molecular and solid-state systems. Inspired by a method known as "dual comb spectroscopy", we have recently combined these two developments by demonstrating comb-based multidimensional coherent spectroscopy, which leverages the best aspects of both.

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Workshop / Seminar Wed, 14 Feb 2018 18:16:56 -0500 2018-02-14T16:00:00-05:00 2018-02-14T17:00:00-05:00 West Hall Department of Physics Workshop / Seminar West Hall
Statistics Department Seminar Series: Mert Pilanci, Assistant Professor, Electrical Engineering & Computer Science, University of Michigan (February 16, 2018 11:30am) https://events.umich.edu/event/49957 49957-11608302@events.umich.edu Event Begins: Friday, February 16, 2018 11:30am
Location: West Hall
Organized By: Department of Statistics

With the advent of massive data sets, machine learning, artificial intelligence and information processing techniques are expected to bring unprecedented and transformative capabilities in engineering and sciences across a variety of fields. However, existing algorithms for mathematical optimization, which is one of the critical core component in these techniques, often prove ineffective for scaling to the extent of all available data. This talk introduces our recent work on random projection methods in the context of distributed optimization of convex and non-convex objectives to address this challenge. First, we establish the theoretical relation between complexity and optimality in convex optimization. We provide a general information-theoretic lower bound on any method that is based on random projection, which surprisingly shows that the most widely used form of random projection is, in fact, statistically sub-optimal. We then present a novel method, which iteratively refines the solutions to achieve statistical optimality and generalize our method to optimizing arbitrary convex functions of a large data matrix. We also discuss distributed variants of the random projection methods which can be considered as a novel improvement of the Alternating Directions Method of Multipliers (ADMM) for distributed optimization. Moreover, due to the special structure of random projection, it is possible to speed up computation even further using dedicated hardware implementations such as graphical processing units (GPUs). Secondly, we consider a general class of non-convex optimization problems that arise in neural networks and phaseless imaging problems. We prove that the randomized second order optimization method with a suitable initialization recovers the global optimum under mild assumptions. We demonstrate that the proposed methods enable solving large scale convex and non-convex machine learning, statistical inference and inverse problems orders of magnitude faster than existing methods.

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Workshop / Seminar Fri, 16 Feb 2018 10:24:18 -0500 2018-02-16T11:30:00-05:00 2018-02-16T13:00:00-05:00 West Hall Department of Statistics Workshop / Seminar Pilanci
Life After Graduate School Seminar | Physics in Finance (February 16, 2018 12:00pm) https://events.umich.edu/event/48983 48983-11342268@events.umich.edu Event Begins: Friday, February 16, 2018 12:00pm
Location: West Hall
Organized By: Department of Physics

Modern finance offers numerous opportunities for those with advanced training in the natural sciences and mathematics: I found one such opportunity myself in 2010 and left academia for finance. Unfortunately it can be difficult to obtain reliable information about how to make the transition and what to expect on the other side. In my talk, I will draw from my own experiences and those of my colleagues to give you a sense of life in the quantitative financial world. I will survey the different sectors of the financial industry, the firms that inhabit them, the structure of financial markets, and asset categories. I will describe how to prepare for interviews and what to expect during the interview process, the skills that are generally required on the job, and a typical workday. Career transitions are deeply personal decisions, so I will talk about ethical issues and some points to ponder if you find yourself considering a move to finance.

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Workshop / Seminar Fri, 16 Feb 2018 18:16:52 -0500 2018-02-16T12:00:00-05:00 2018-02-16T13:00:00-05:00 West Hall Department of Physics Workshop / Seminar West Hall
HET Seminars | Universality and Thermalization of Fast Quenches (February 16, 2018 3:00pm) https://events.umich.edu/event/49948 49948-11608280@events.umich.edu Event Begins: Friday, February 16, 2018 3:00pm
Location: West Hall
Organized By: HET Seminars

Quantum quench - a sadden change of system Hamiltonian - provides a rich and tractable framework to access dynamics of thermalization of a quantum isolated system. When the chnge of Hamiltonian is fast but not instantaneous (so called fast quenches) the dynamics often can be described in terms of the UV fixed point, thus leading to universal predictions. We employ conformal perturbation theory to calculate the behavior of various quantities (one and two point functions) during and after the quench. Furthermore, by calculating the energy fluctuations after the quench we argue that at late times the system will thermalize, provided it satisfies the Eigenstate Thermalization Hypothesis.

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Workshop / Seminar Mon, 12 Feb 2018 08:21:36 -0500 2018-02-16T15:00:00-05:00 2018-02-16T16:00:00-05:00 West Hall HET Seminars Workshop / Seminar West Hall
The Michigan Anthropology Colloquia Series: "An ethos of vigilance: on sentience, militarized flâneurs, and phantasms of violence in Paris, France" (February 16, 2018 3:00pm) https://events.umich.edu/event/41394 41394-9207103@events.umich.edu Event Begins: Friday, February 16, 2018 3:00pm
Location: West Hall
Organized By: Department of Anthropology

"This talk attends to an anthropological research and writing project with which the author is currently engaged, on the aftermath of violence in Paris, France – specifically, the November 13, 2015, attacks in Paris. In reflecting on the political and sensorial atmosphere in Paris in the months after the attacks, and on certain aspects of Opération Sentinelle, the state-sponsored program in which military soldiers patrol the city’s streets to protect its residents and deter acts of violence, the author develops an ethnographically informed account of an “ethos of vigilance” currently in effect in Paris and elsewhere. The vigilance itself relates to certain phantasms of violence, in which everyday life appears to be threatened by potentialities of fear, terror, and sudden violence."

The Michigan Anthropology Colloquia Series presents speakers on current topics in the field of anthropology.

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Lecture / Discussion Mon, 15 Jan 2018 15:31:28 -0500 2018-02-16T15:00:00-05:00 2018-02-16T17:00:00-05:00 West Hall Department of Anthropology Lecture / Discussion West Hall
HEP-Astro Seminar | Interacting Dark Energy (February 19, 2018 4:00pm) https://events.umich.edu/event/50042 50042-11625145@events.umich.edu Event Begins: Monday, February 19, 2018 4:00pm
Location: West Hall
Organized By: Department of Physics

The ultimate nature of dark matter and dark energy are fundamental questions in cosmology; these two sectors may well interact with each other and observational bounds allow interesting possibilities. Indeed, some interactions may help to resolve some observed tensions between high and low redshift probes of structure. I will discuss a class of models where the interactions take the form of pure momentum exchange and show how these can lead to a dark energy sound speed that deviates from unity.

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Workshop / Seminar Mon, 19 Feb 2018 18:16:51 -0500 2018-02-19T16:00:00-05:00 2018-02-19T17:00:00-05:00 West Hall Department of Physics Workshop / Seminar West Hall
CM-AMO Seminar | Sub-cycle Terahertz Microscopy Down to the Atomic Scale (February 20, 2018 4:00pm) https://events.umich.edu/event/42202 42202-9584890@events.umich.edu Event Begins: Tuesday, February 20, 2018 4:00pm
Location: West Hall
Organized By: Department of Physics


A new experimental frontier has recently emerged with the potential to significantly impact physics, chemistry, materials science, and biology: the regime of ultrafast time resolution and ultrasmall spatial resolution. This is the domain in which single atoms, molecules, and electronic orbitals move. It also corresponds, on larger scales, to the territory of low-energy elementary excitations such as plasmons, phonons, and interlevel transitions in excitons. These processes are of particular importance for nanomaterial functionality. Moreover, they typically survive for only femtoseconds to picoseconds after photoexcitation and can evolve within a single oscillation period.

In this talk, I will show how these diverse dynamics can be studied with new techniques that combine terahertz technology with scanning probe microscopy. First, I will describe how ultrafast near-field microscopy has been employed to perform sub-cycle spectroscopy of single nanoparticles [1], reveal hidden structure in correlated electron systems [2], and resolve transient interface polaritons in van der Waals heterostructures [3]. Then, I will discuss the invention and development of a related technique: lightwave-driven terahertz scanning tunneling microscopy [4,5]. In this novel approach, the oscillating electric field of a phase-stable, few-cycle light pulse at a atomically sharp tip can be used to remove a single electron from a single molecular orbital within a time window faster than an oscillation cycle of the terahertz wave. I will show how this technique has been used to take ultrafast snapshot images of the electron density in single molecular orbitals and watch the motion of a single molecule for the first time [5].

[1] M. Eisele et al., Nature Photon. 8. 841 (2014).
[2] M. A. Huber et al., Nano Lett. 16, 1421 (2016).
[3] M. A. Huber et al., Nature Nanotech. 12, 207 (2017).
[4] T. L. Cocker et al., Nature Photon. 7, 620 (2013).
[5] T. L. Cocker et al., Nature 539, 263 (2016).

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Workshop / Seminar Tue, 20 Feb 2018 18:16:52 -0500 2018-02-20T16:00:00-05:00 2018-02-20T17:00:00-05:00 West Hall Department of Physics Workshop / Seminar West Hall
Department Colloquium | Study the Cosmic Rays with the AMS Experiment on the International Space Station (February 21, 2018 4:00pm) https://events.umich.edu/event/49976 49976-11611107@events.umich.edu Event Begins: Wednesday, February 21, 2018 4:00pm
Location: West Hall
Organized By: Department of Physics

The Alpha Magnetic Spectrometer (AMS) is a particle spectrometer on board of the International Space Station. It measures the charge, energy and momentum of charged cosmic rays with unprecedented precisions from 1GV to a few TV in rigidity. AMS has collected and analyzed more than 100 billion cosmic ray events during 6 years of operation since May 2011. In this talk we report the latest AMS measurements of the cosmic ray spectra of electron, positron, proton, antiproton, and light nuclei, including He, Li, Be, B, and C, O. Unexpected characteristics of the spectra are observed. They provide important new inputs for the study of fundamental physics as well as understanding the mechanism of cosmic ray acceleration and propagation.

Biosketch: Yuan-Hann Chang is a professor in the Physics Department of the National Central University, Chung-Li, Taiwan. He received his PhD from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. His professional interests are experimental particle physics. In the past 30 years, he participated particle experiments including L3, PHOBOS, and CMS, and astroparticle experiments NCT and AMS. He is currently a member of the AMS collaboration.

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Workshop / Seminar Wed, 21 Feb 2018 18:16:50 -0500 2018-02-21T16:00:00-05:00 2018-02-21T17:00:00-05:00 West Hall Department of Physics Workshop / Seminar West Hall
HET Seminars | Dark Matter Beyond Weakly Interacting Massive Particles (February 23, 2018 3:00pm) https://events.umich.edu/event/50190 50190-11656403@events.umich.edu Event Begins: Friday, February 23, 2018 3:00pm
Location: West Hall
Organized By: HET Seminars

Dark matter (DM) comprises approximately 27% of the energy in the observable universe. Its properties, such as its mass and interactions, remain largely unknown. Unveiling the properties of DM is one of the most important tasks in high energy physics. For the past few years, motivated by possible new physics at the electroweak scale, many DM experiments have looked for DM with mass at O(100) GeV. This is not the only possibility, however. Large chunks of parameter space supported by other well-motivated models remain to be carefully studied. Exploring these regimes requires creative ideas and advanced technologies. I will first talk about the novel proposal on using superconductor as the target material for DM direct detection. This setup has the potential to lower the direct detection mass threshold from few GeV to keV, consequently probing the warm dark matter scenario. Then I will present a recent proposal utilizing the Gravitational Wave (GW) experiments, i.e. LIGO and LISA, to search for ultra-light dark photon dark matter. We show these GW experiments can go well beyond existing constraints and probe large regions of unexplored parameter space. Both proposals are under serious investigation by experimental groups and likely to be carried out in the near future.

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Workshop / Seminar Fri, 16 Feb 2018 15:08:04 -0500 2018-02-23T15:00:00-05:00 2018-02-23T16:00:00-05:00 West Hall HET Seminars Workshop / Seminar West Hall
Spring Break - No Seminar (February 27, 2018 4:00pm) https://events.umich.edu/event/42203 42203-9584891@events.umich.edu Event Begins: Tuesday, February 27, 2018 4:00pm
Location: West Hall
Organized By: Department of Physics

CM-AMO Seminar

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Workshop / Seminar Wed, 16 Aug 2017 12:16:11 -0400 2018-02-27T16:00:00-05:00 2018-02-27T17:00:00-05:00 West Hall Department of Physics Workshop / Seminar West Hall