Frank M. Freimann Professor of Physics Ani Aprahamian was the keynote speaker at the Armenian American Medical Society's 35th Anniversary Gala held at Universal City, in California on November 20, 2021. Aprahamian serves the director of A. Alikhanyan National Science Laboratory of Armenia. At the gala Professor Aprahamian was also honored for her outstanding leadership and dedication in expanding the capacity of the scientific and healthcare sectors of the Republic of Armenia. “The Cryogen Center/Oxygen Generator project was one of the largest projects the AAMS has ever funded,” said Garni Barkhoudarian, MD, FAAP. “Professor Aprahamian was the person responsible for this project. Because of her, Armenia now has enough liquid oxygen for the entire country in all sectors for at least fifty years. We couldn’t think of a more deserving recipient.”…

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Freimann Professor of Physics Michael Wiescher has published book Radioactivity - Volume II: Developments and Applications in the Modern Industrial Age…

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Daniel Burdette successfully defended his Doctoral Dissertation on November 4, 2021. The title of his thesis is "Precision tests of the standard model at low energy via nuclear beta decay." advised by Professor Maxime Brodeur…

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The elements that make up our world were produced in various astrophysical environments. Some are produced in the cores of stars and some in violent cataclysmic explosions such as supernovae. Notre Dame researchers have now unlocked a key piece of a puzzle in understanding how some rare-earth nuclei, such as Mo and Ru, are produced in the cosmos. Among supernovae researchers, there has been a long-standing debate on whether the production of elements heavier than Cu is terminated by what is called the Ni-Cu cycle. This new experimental result hints that this is not actually the case, as it found that the (p,α) reaction that produces the isotope ⁵⁶…

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Freimann Professor Ani Aprahamian has been elected as one of five Vice Presidents of the General Council of the International Union of Pure and Applied Physics (IUPAP). 

IUPAP representation in the USA is carried out by the Science Academies. The aims of IUPAP with 60 member countries from across the world are:…

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Professor Ani Aprahamian has been elected to become the Chair of the IUPAP Commission on Nuclear Physics (C12). She replaces Professor Claes Faehlander of the University of Lund in Sweden. The commission that she chairs works closely with the OECD efforts globally.…

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Scott Carmichael, a fourth-year graduate student in the Department of Physics at the University of Notre Dame, was one of 65 graduate students selected to receive world-class training through the Department of Energy’s (DOE) Office of Science Graduate Research (SCGSR) program.

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Michael Wiescher, Freimann Professor of Physics published the biography “Arthur E. Haas – The Hidden Pioneer of Quantum Mechanics” at Springer. A German version is being published by the LIT Verlag in Vienna. Arthur E. Haas came to ND as a professor of physics in 1936 on the recommendation of Albert Einstein. At the time, he was a well known theoretical physicist who escaped from the growing dangers of fascism in Austria/Germany to the United States to build a new life.

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Professor Dan Bardayan received a Major Research Instrumentation (MRI) grant from the National Science Foundation to conduct research on nuclear astrophysics at the University of Notre Dame’s Nuclear Science Laboratory.

With the $505,000 grant to be matched with $217,000 from the University, Bardayan will develop a nuclear decay spectrometer called SABRE, the Silicon Array for Branching Ratio Experiments. SABRE will take advantage of the unique TriSol facility at the Nuclear Science Lab to measure proton and alpha branching ratios as small as one part in one-hundred thousand, which is characteristic of many important resonances of astrophysical interest.
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Prof. Anna Simon will lead a project to develop a neutron irradiation station (NIS) at the Nuclear Science Laboratory at the University of Notre Dame. NIS will utilize a high-intensity proton beam from the 5U accelerator to produce a flux of neutrons at energies up to a few MeV via nuclear reactions on low-Z targets. First of its kind in the U.S., NIS will deliver monoenergetic neutron beams with intensities of the order of 10⁸…

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The research of several Notre Dame Physics faculty members and graduate students resulted in a recently published article in ACS Applied Materials & Interfaces Journal (Irradiation-Driven Restructuring of UO₂ Thin Films: Amorphization and Crystallization Vol 13, pp. 35153–35164, 2021) on the preparation, characterization and irradiation stability of thin UO₂…

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Profesor Michael Wiescher, Freimann Professor of Physics and Director of the Institute for Structure and Nuclear Astrophysics (ISNAP) at the University of Notre Dame and founding director of the Joint Institute for Nuclear Astrophysics (JINA) received the prestigious Wolfson Fellowship of the British Royal Society.

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Samuel Henderson successfully defended his Doctoral Dissertation on June 22, 2021. The title of his thesis is "Studies of Nuclear Structure Via B(E2) Measurements in ⁷Be and ⁸Li" advised by Prof. Tan Ahn…

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Many cosmetics sold in the United States and Canada likely contain high levels of per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances (PFAS), a potentially toxic class of chemicals linked to a number of serious health conditions, according to new research from the University of Notre Dame.

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Uncertainty over First Stars

Stars are dutiful recyclers. The material used and discarded by one generation of stars is taken up and reused by the next. But that cycling process has trouble explaining the surprisingly high calcium concentrations in stars that formed early on. Astrophysicists have proposed that these old stars were seeded by a first generation that expired in “faint supernovae,” producing calcium but few other heavy elements. However, a new analysis of nuclear reaction measurements suggests that this model may not be so solid [1…

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Over the last few years CASPAR has driven forward with its for researching experimental plan. Work has continued through a global pandemic and underground blasting of nearby cavities. Students and faculty have pressed hard to complete crucial experiments before having to pause for extensive nearby excavations. Currently CASPAR has now been mothballed, but still has much to do.

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Each year the Department of Physics recognizes the outstanding research and dissertation of a PhD graduate. This year the recipients are Erika Holmbeck and Nirupama Sensharma.

Holmbeck's thesis is titled "The Looking-Glass and Beyond: Using Observations and Modeling of Stellar Actinide Abundances and Modeling of Stellar Actinide." She was advised by Professors Timothy Beers…

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Outstanding Senior Physics Major Award

• Charles Marrder, advised by Prof. Grant Matthews 

The Outstanding Senior Physics Major award is given in recognition of academic performance, contributions to the major, and potential for future success.

Outstanding Undergraduate Research Award…

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The College of Science at the University of Notre Dame is pleased to announce that Umesh Garg, a professor in the Department of Physics, has received a Fulbright U.S. Scholar Program award to India from the U.S. Department of State and the J. William Fulbright Foreign Scholarship Board.…

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Physics graduate students Kevin Lee (advised by Prof. Ani Aprahamian) and Sethupathy Subramanian (advised by Prof. Dinshaw Balasra) are the recipients of 2021 Outstanding Graduate Student Teaching Awards from the Kaneb Center. 

This award was created in 1999 to recognize graduate student instructors and TAs who demonstrate commitment to exceptional teaching in lectures, seminars, labs, and across the academic profession. The Graduate School and the Kaneb Center for Teaching and Learning present the award annually to TAs that are nominated by their departments. The award consists of a certificate from the Kaneb Center and Graduate School, a letter documenting the award for the graduate student’s file, a $100 honorarium, and an invitation to a formal event hosted by the Kaneb Center and the Graduate School.…

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