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From the Chair’s desk – ‐ZhiqiangMao

Both research and teaching in Physics and Engi-neering Physics (PEP) are experiencing exciting growth. Our current research areas include mate-rials science, materials engineering, computation-al science, polymer physics, quantum physics, cold neutron physics, nuclear physics and cos-mology. We have done extremely well in some of these areas. In the last 5 years, our faculty attract-ed $13.5 M in extramural research funding. Prof. John Perdew has made pioneering contributions to developing density functional theory, which un-dergirds much of modern materials science. He has now been inducted into the National Academy of Sciences and recently received the Materials Theory Award from the Materials Research So-ciety. Prof. Wayne Reed has done excellent work in integrating fundamental research in polymer physics with applications. He is the founder of the Tulane Center for Polymer Reaction Monitoring and Characterization (PolyRMC), which has es-tablished strong partnerships with industry, and a spin-off company, APMT. In recognition of his work, Prof. Reed was honored in the past year with the 6th annual Tulane Science and Engineer-ing Outstanding Researcher Award, bringing to three the number of awardees representing PEP. Our former colleague, Prof. Ulrike Diebold (who is now professor at the Technical University of Vienna) has been selected by the American Chemical Society to receive the 2013 Arthur W. Adamson Award for Distinguished Service in the Advancement of Surface Chemistry.

Our Engineering Physics (ENGP) program, which is still growing and developing, is already in strong shape. We earned ABET accreditation in 2012. Furthermore, three new faculty members (Doug Chrisey, Matthew Escarra, and Michelle Sanchez) have been recruited to this program. Prof. Chrisey has filled the Jung Chair position for which we have searched for more than five years. His research involves energy materials and bio-materials, which allows him to have wonderful opportunities to collaborate with the medical school and with the Biomedical Engineering de-partment. He is leading the effort to develop a new interdisciplinary PhD program in materials science and engineering (MSE). Prof. Escarra will join us in July, 2013 as an Assistant Professor. His research interest is in photonic materials and de-vices. Prof. Sanchez has joined our faculty as Pro-fessor of the Practice, and is reinventing our courses in circuits and computation. Our PhD program in Physics was recently reviewed by an external team. The preliminary feedback we re-ceived from the program evaluator is encouraging; the evaluator indicated that we are on a strong upward trajectory. In the next academic year, the ENGP program will be going through the second ABET-accreditation review. The associate Chair, Prof. Lev Kaplan, will say a little more in this re-gard below. New space in Stanley Thomas Hall will provide opportunities for expansion in our research and teaching missions, including new research labs (for Profs. Chrisey and Escarra), a new Engineer-ing Physics design lab, and office space for facul-ty and students in materials science and engineer-ing. Ultimately, this space will be the home of the proposed Materials Institute and the new PhD program in MSE.

From the Associate Chair –  ‐LevKaplan

Our academic programs continue to grow and de-velop, with the addition of new faculty, new and revised courses, and added research and internship opportunities. Our Engineering Physics under-graduate program earned ABET accreditation last

Tulane University

DEPARTMENT OF PHYSICS ANDENGINEERING PHYSICSNewsletter 2013

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year, and we will have our first re-accreditation visit in Fall 2013, putting us on the same schedule as the other Engineering programs at Tulane. ABET accreditation is a challenging process, re-quiring us to continuously re-evaluate how the various pieces of the program fit together to best meet the program objectives and the needs of the students. As we prepare our updated self-study and get ready for the fall visit, we will once again be asking all of our constituencies - students, fac-ulty, alumni, and members of the board of advi-sors - for your valuable input and support. Although no formal accreditation process exists for the Physics BS and PhD programs, we are ful-ly committed to taking the principles of continu-ous quality improvement and applying them to everything that we do in PEP. We try to do this through course evaluations, end-of-semester fac-ulty course roundups, annual retreats, student sur-veys, alumni surveys, and - very importantly - feedback that we receive informally from all of you. So if you have suggestions for improving the education and experience of students in PEP, please do not hesitate to stop by my office or con-tact me at lkaplan@tulane.edu.

Maintaining and improving our website (tulane.edu/sse/pep) and better use of social net-works (including Facebook and LinkedIn) are also priorities for PEP: if you have ideas for how we can do a better job in communicating with all of you or have requests for information that you would like to see on the website, please let me know. Two additional updates: The first three students pursuing the new Tulane-Johns Hopkins dual de-gree engineering program are expected to begin the Hopkins portion of their curriculum in Fall 2013, leading to degrees in Electrical, Environ-mental, and Civil Engineering. We wish them the best! And finally, Prof. Doug Chrisey is taking the lead in designing and introducing an exciting new PhD program in Materials Science and Engineer-ing at Tulane, which will complement the Engi-neering Physics program at the graduate level. We expect a small group of students to begin this course of study in the Fall, taking advantage of the pre-existing Interdisciplinary PhD program in the School of Science and Engineering.

 New and noteworthy –   

Prof. John Perdew has received the 2012 Mate-rials Theory Award of the Materials Research Society

Quote from MRS: "For his pioneering contributions to the funda-mental development and nonempirical approximations in density functional theory."

Dr. Perdew’s research in the density functional theory of electronic structure has helped to estab-lish this theory as the most widely used method to predict the properties of atoms, molecules and sol-ids from the principles of quantum mechanics. Prof. Perdew has previously been elected to the National Academy of Sciences, and was the recip-ient of the First Annual Tulane SSE Outstanding Researcher Award in 2007. Prof. Wayne Reed was honored as the 2012 School of Science and Engineering Outstand-ing Researcher on Thursday, April 12, 2012. Tulane University physicist Wayne Reed says he wants to revolutionize the polymer manufacturing

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sector, an important component of the global

economy. Through his patented technology, Reed and colleagues see a $100 billion opportunity in the $1.2 trillion polymer industry, and the key to helping this industry become greener and more efficient. Prof. Ulrike Diebold received Arthur W. Ad-amson Award Prof. Ulrike Diebold has been selected by the American Chemical Society to receive the 2013 Arthur W. Adamson Award for Distinguished Service in the Advancement of Surface Chemistry, for "significantly advancing the fundamental un-derstanding of the surface chemistry of metal ox-ides." Prof. Douglas Chrisey invested as Cornelia and Arthur L. Jung Chair in Materials Engineer-ing

From left, Leslie Williamson, A. Louis Jung III, Dr. Douglas Chrisey, Dean Nick Altiero and Carroll Jung Williamson (Photo by Tracie Morris Schaefer)

The School of Science and Engineering wel-comed Douglas Chrisey as the new Cornelia and Arthur L. Jung Chair in Materials Engineering during an investiture ceremony inside Freeman Auditorium on Jan. 30. Chrisey, who also serves as adjunct professor of biomedical engineering, joined the Tulane faculty in the fall after teaching at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute in Troy, NY. “Dr. Chrisey’s work disrupts the status quo and pushes innovation,” says Nick Altiero, dean of the School of Science and Engineering. “An in-terdisciplinary approach to science and engineer-ing draws on the strengths of each field to give our students an edge in thinking about solutions to the problems presented to them.” Created in 1994 through generous gifts from Har-riett T. and Arthur L. Jung Jr. (E ’38) and match-ing funds from the Louisiana Board of Regents, the chair was originally established to advance expertise in mechanical engineering. The chair is named in honor of Arthur L. Jung Jr.’s parents. Prof. James McGuire retires. Prof. James McGuire retires this year after over 20 years as a faculty member in the Department of Physics and Astronomy at Tulane. He describes his part of life in Tulane with the following: “As I drove into New Orleans in the summer of 1991 with my wife, Janie, and youngest, Marti, in tow, I did not imag-ine I’d be here longer than any other place where I have lived, or that so much would happen before my retirement in summer of 2013. At that point, coming from rural Kansas, my family did not ac-cuse me of a lack of imagination – not then at least. The inclusion of the endowed Murchison-Mallory Chair (the first endowed chair in science at Tulane, I believe) was frosting on a very nice offer by Tulane that came at just the right time in the life of myself and my family. New Orleans seemed magical to us. We were able to develop a relationship with the Mallory (and some of the Murchison) family of San Antonio with Dr. Mal-lory, himself, becoming my closest friend. Tulane was rather different than the

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as the Section Head of Plasma Processing Section in the Materials Science and Technology Division at Naval Research Laboratory from 1990 to Sept. 2005, where he conducted research on the capa-bilities of laser-based processing to fabricate nov-el electronic materials. He has been an advisory professor at many prestigious institutions such as Romanian National Institute of Lasers and Plasma Physics.

Prof. Matthew Escarra is currently a postdoctoral schol-ar in applied physics and ma-terials science at the Califor-nia Institute of Technology. He received a B.S. in electri-cal engineering from Rice University in 2006 and a Ph.D.

in electrical engineering from Princeton Universi-ty in 2011. He will be joining Tulane as an assis-tant professor in materials engineering for the up-coming Fall 2013 semester. Prof. Jiang Wei joined Tulane Physics in July

2012 after two-year Welch Postdoc Fellowship training at Rice University. He received a Ph.D. in physics from Uni-versity of Washington at Seat-tle in 2010. His research in-terests include nanomaterial synthesis and nano-micro

scale electrical mechanical (NEMS and MEMS) fabrication and quantum device physics. Prof. Michelle Hewlett Sanchez joined the facul-ty of the School of Science and Engineering at

Tulane as a Professor of Practice in the Physics and Engineering Physics Depart-ment in August 2012. Michelle received the Ph.D. degree from the Department of Electrical Engineering at Stanford University in De-cember 2011. She started

working in the Speech Technology and Research Laboratory at SRI International as a student asso-ciate in September 2008 and joined SRI as a re-search engineer in August 2011. Her research in-terests include machine learning as applied to par-alinguistic speech problems including emotion recognition and suicide risk and depression detec-tion. Being a native New Orleanian and a Tulane University graduate (B.S.E. in Computer Engi-neering and Mathematics and M.S. in Electrical Engineering), she always wanted to return to Tulane. She is the Assistant Director of K-12 STEM Outreach (soon to be Director) and is in-volved in outreach programs at Tulane as well as throughout Louisiana.

 Faculty news –   

Prof. Doug Chrisey joined Tulane University this past fall and has since been setting up both of his labs in materials engineering and biomedical en-gineering on the uptown and downtown campuses respectively. Joined by two graduate students (Theresa Phamduy and Brian Riggs) and postdoc researcher (Dr.Venkata Sreenivas Puli), Chrisey’s current research ranges from conventional materi-al science to novel applications of biomaterials and fundamental research. They are working in the area of Nano-crystalline ceramics, glasses,

ceramic-glass composite materials and thin films for energy storage. One of their focuses is to de-velop technology of thick film printing with ferro-electric and anti-ferroelectric materials combined with glass and polymer matrices to form high en-ergy density materials. In Biomedical Engineering, they focus on generating in vitro tissue constructs to study physiological interactions between cancer and host tissue cells that cause tumor invasion and metastasis. They employ bottom-up laser-based bio-printing techniques to fabricate spatially-

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resolved, 3-D co-cultures of mammary cancer cells and stromal cells, within the context of breast tissue microarchitecture. From Prof. Lev Kaplan: Prof. Kaplan's Quantum Chaos and Quantum In-formation group has seen much activity in the past year, including the graduation of two PhD stu-dents from our group, to whom we offer our con-gratulations. Dr. Linghang Ying, whose research included optimization of multi-qubit quantum gates using optics and simulation of rogue wave formation in the ocean, is now applying his math-ematical and computational skills to risk analytics at Citigroup. Dr. Basil Davis's recent work has focused on light carrying orbital angular momen-tum, with applications to interaction with matter and the possibility of photon Zitterbewegung (analogous to the "trembling motion" of electrons predicted by the Dirac equation); Basil is continu-ing the work this year as a visiting Assistant Pro-fessor at Tulane. Yang Zhang, a 2nd year PhD student, is continu-ing work on two tracks: computation of vacuum energy (associated with zero-point fluctuations of a quantum field) that may form on the outside of a closed box, and a project in quantum metrology (designing a measurement that will extract maxi-mum information from a quantum photon beam passing through an interferometer). The latter pro-ject is being performed in collaboration with Prof. Dmitry Uskov of Brescia University. We are excited to welcome Three (!) new PhD students who joined our group this year. Abhirup Patra is investigating regularization in quantum field theory with application to vacuum energy, Farren Curtis is studying ray and wave motion through disordered media (with applications rang-ing from rogue ocean waves to random lasers), and Nick Sparks is investigating the relationship between dense quantum coding and symmetries (also in collaboration with Prof. Uskov). In a new biophysics collaboration with Prof. Ar-min Kargol at Loyola University New Orleans and a group at Universita Cattolica in Italy (in-cluding former Tulane postdoc Luca Celardo), we are investigating the use of random noise for nonequilibrium focusing of an ion channel into a

specific conformation state - the ultimate goal is both to understand how the channels work and sometimes malfunction, and also to control the channels under physiological conditions. Last but not least, senior Bryan Quigley is com-pleting his honors thesis in physics and math on the convergence of numerical computations of vacuuum energy in regular in chaotic cavities, with the goal of ascertaining whether simple ray models may provide good estimates for the attrac-tive or repulsive Casimir forces in nontrivial ge-ometries.

From left to right: Jim McGuire, Abhirup Patra, Lev Kaplan, Nick Sparks, Farren Curtis, Bryan Quigley, and Yang Zhang

If you are interested in any of the above, please come talk to us! Prof. Zhiqiang Mao’s main research interest is in the area of strongly correlated materials. Materials with correlated electrons carry the promise for developing next generation of electronics. His long-term research goal is to seek for novel quan-tum phenomena in strongly correlated materials, investigate their underlying physics, and explore their applications. His expertise spans single crystal growth of various materials, electronic and magnetic property characterization of materials, and knowledge of condensed matter physics. His current research focuses on strongly correlated oxides and layered intermetallic compounds. Strongly correlated oxides exhibit a rich variety of fascinating ordered ground states, such as uncon-ventional superconductivity, giant magnetore-sistance, quantum criticality, itinerant ferromag-

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netism, antiferromagnetic Mott insulating state, ferroelectricity, etc. The richness of exotic states in correlated oxides testifies to the complex inter-play between the charge, spin, lattice and orbital degrees of freedom, and provides a remarkable opportunity for observing novel quantum phe-nomena through controlling external stimuli and for potential applications. Prof. Mao’s research work on ruthenates is to discover and characterize novel quantum states in these materials. His ex-perimental approach includes single-crystal growth and low-temperature measurements on electronic, magnetic, and thermal dynamic proper-ties. He has also established important collabora-tions with National Labs to study microscopic magnetic properties of various materials via neu-tron scattering. In addition to strongly correlated oxides, Dr. Mao’s group is also studying mag-netism and superconductivity of intermetallic compounds such as iron chalcogenides. The ob-jective of this research subproject is to clarify the superconducting pairing symmetry as well as to shed light on the role of spin fluctuations in medi-ating Cooper pairing in this system. Recently Prof. Mao’s group is also expanding to some other new materials such as topological insulators. Prof. Mao’s research is now supported by NSF, DOD-ARO and the Louisiana Board of Regents. His group currently includes four graduate stu-dents, two visiting students, and one undergradu-ate student. Jin Peng has recently graduated from Prof. Mao’s group; she received her PhD degree in Dec. 2012. From Prof. Guy V. Norton: This Fall in the Product and Experimental Design class we again had a diverse group of team pro-jects. We had four teams in total, three teams con-sisting of three people, with one fourth team hav-ing four people. The projects consisted of a Candy Launching Induction Gun (CLIG) based on elec-tromagnetic induction! Project members included Hannah Weisbecker, Greg Michaelson and Ben Sonin. Somewhere on You Tube there is a video of me attempting to catch, in my mouth, candy launched from the machine! A water Filter Project

based on evaporation. Project members included Wade Hilts, Zach Resnick and Danny Muraida. A panel of LEDs that could be switched to make dif-ferent designs. Project members included Vivian Dao, Kelliann Mateker and Sigrid Whitmore. If you need anything soldered contact any of them, they know how to solder circuits now! And a Hand Crank Generator. Project members included, William Timaeus, Matthew Ducote, Sara Gottesman and Danny Manzo. Looking at these diverse projects you can see that each project re-quires a lot of different skills. And along with these skills, lab space and tools are needed to build the projects. With the new undergraduate lab space in Stanley Thomas hopefully ready by next Fall, we will have even more dynamic and interesting projects. Based on what we saw last year with regard to projects, we decided to introduce some hands-on electronic labs this year. Using bread boards and basic electronic devices the students were able to make and test simple circuits. Like last year, we continued the requirement of learning and using the SolidWorks program. Each student who want-ed to, could install the software on their laptop so as to use and learn the software outside the class-room. For many students working as a team member is a new experience. And working to build something that was designed by a team is not as easy as it may seem. But as a future engineer, working as a member of a team is a real possibility. So we try to give the students a taste of what it will be like to be a member of a design team. This includes having to interact with other members and learn-ing how and when to compromise and when not to compromise in order that work on the project con-tinues toward completion. I’m sure if you talk with any of the students that took the class this Fall they would say that they enjoyed designing and building their project. But they wish they had more time and more equip-ment/resources. With the new undergraduate lab space in Stanley Thomas, I’m sure that some of their wishes will be answered.

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From Prof. Wayne Reed: PolyRMC (The Tulane Center for Polymer Reac-tion Monitoring and Characterization) had many exciting moments in2012. Here is the list of a few. PolyRMC celebrated its 5th anniversary in August 2012. Zheng Li has successfully defended his the-sis, "Study on stimuli-sensitive copolymers: syn-thesis and characterization," for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy. His dissertation director is Prof. Alina Alb. PolyRMC wishes Dr. Li good luck in his future work at Ashland Specialty In-gredients, Inc. The PolyRMC-led Louisiana Sustainable Chemi-cal Manufacturing Consortium submitted a pro-posal to the Innovative Manufacturing Initiative in the Department of Energy’s Advanced Manufac-turing Office which was selected as an ‘alternate’ for funding. 39 proposals were selected to be funded or as ‘alternates’ from over 1,400 initial letters of intent. In August 2012, PolyRMC, along with proposal PI Prof. Scott Grayson (Tulane) and Prof. Daniel Savin (USM-School of Polymers), were awarded funding by the Gulf of Mexico Research Initiative to work on a project to improve oil dispersants. The $1M, 3 year project was one of 19 awards from over 336 proposals. PolyRMC hosted 3 Brazilian researchers working at the Center: Gisele Peres (Chemistry graduate student funded by the Brazilian federal science agency, CNPq), Claiton Brusamarello (Chemical Engineering graduate student funded by CNPq) and Evelyn de Melo (Pharmaceutical science un-dergraduate student funded under Brazil’s Science without Borders Program). PolyRMC’s Brazilian colleagues each work on unique and exciting pro-jects. The Center hopes to continue forging ties with Brazil, an emerging scientific powerhouse which is investing heavily in its R&D infrastruc-ture. PolyRMC had a full-time Engineering Physics intern in Summer 2012, Olivia Carnes, who con-tinued on to do her senior design project with Pol-yRMC with expected completion in 2013.

Visiting Brazilian researchers: (l-r) Claiton Brusamarello, Gisele Peres, Evelyn de Melo

PolyRMC’s spin-off company, Advanced Poly-mer Monitoring Technologies, Inc. (APMT) is driving the commercialization of several patented technologies developed at PolyRMC. CEO Alex Reed reports that APMT closed its first large scale contracts for industrial scale implementation of its ACOMP platform (Automatic Continuous Online Monitoring of Polymerization reactions) at the end of 2012 and is actively working on several projects. PolyRMC has continued funded collaborations with a wide range of industrial sponsors in the pharmaceutical, polymer, and natural products area. Work with existing partners is continuing and new partnerships are evolving for 2013. PolyRMC joined the Smart Manufacturing Lead-ership Coalition (SMLC) at the end of 2012. The SMLC is a non-profit organization committed to overcome barriers to the development and de-ployment of Smart Manufacturing (SM) Systems through an implementation agenda for building a scaled, shared infrastructure called the Smart Manufacturing Platform (SM Platform). PolyRMC hosted two intensive advanced polymer characterization training courses in 2012 that drew industry scientists from all over the U.S. The course also serves to educate Tulane graduate students and faculty and graduate students from PolyRMC collaborating institutions such as USM and LSU. The event is an ongoing collaboration between PolyRMC, WGE Dr Bures (Berlin, Ger-many), and Polymer Standards and Services

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(Mainz, Germany and Amherst, MA) that pro-vides trainees with both fundamental and applied perspectives. The next course will be May 20-22, 2013. PolyRMC is hosting the 26th International Sym-posium for Polymer Analysis and Characteriza-tion (ISPAC) June 9-12, 2013 at the Hotel Mon-teleone downtown. This conference, which moves to another country each year, brings to-gether global authorities and academic, industrial, and government researchers in the field. Ongoing research at PolyRMC includes funda-mental properties of electrically charged macro-molecules, the biophysics of proteins, new syn-thetic and analytical approaches to polymeric ma-terials, stimuli sensitive polymers, hybrids, and biological conjugates, and integrated methods for simultaneous characterization of optical activity and hydrodynamic properties of biopolymers. Tulane graduate students Zifu Zhu and Colin McFaul are actively working in these areas. Prof. Jerry Shakov’s main focus remains on finding and implementing better and more effec-tive pedagogical strategies and educational tech-nologies to further improve the quality of under-graduate instructions here at Tulane. As Chair of the School of Science and Engineering Curricu-lum Committee, and 2012-2013 CELT Distin-guished Teaching Mentor, he is deeply involved in the university-wide effort to promote a more active and engaging style of teaching and learning across the disciplines. Starting in the Fall 2012 semester, Prof. Shakov started to use a variation of a “flipped classroom” method of teaching, shifting the focus of his classroom activities from routine transfer of information from instructor to students to more engaging, group-based approach. This model allows the students ample opportuni-ties to put the newly acquired knowledge and skills to solve problems, and become more self-aware of their own level of understanding.

Discussion between Prof. Shakov and his students in a “flipped classroom”

Prof. Shakov is currently working on designing and implementing a new course, Physics for Ar-chitects, that will be addressing specific needs of the Tulane School of Architecture students using similar strategies. He also continues to experiment with the latest tools provided by developments in educational technology. In the Spring 2013, he started to use a new, cloud-based generation of classroom re-sponse systems, that allows the students to use their own internet-ready devises (smart phones, tablets, laptops) instead of “clickers” to participate in in-class instant polls – an essential part of the “flipped classroom” approach that relies on ensur-ing that the students do complete the preparatory activities prior to coming to the class. Prof. Diyar Talbayev’s Ultrafast & Terahertz Spectroscopy Laboratory has completed its first full calendar year in existence at Tulane in 2012. Dr. Talbayev’s group currently includes graduate student Punam Silwal and undergraduates Skylar Deckoff-Jones, Brian Duong, and David Locascio. Current major research projects includes “Te-rahertz time-domain ellipsometry: probing collec-tive modes and itinerant electrons in complex functional materials” supported by a new grant from the Louisiana Board of Regents under its Research Competitiveness Subprogram and “THz spectroscopic study of PLD NiCo2O4 films”. Skylar Deckoff-Jones, a freshman Physics major, and Brian Duong, a junior in the Physics – Engi-neering dual degree program, are working to cre-ate on-chip emitters and receivers of terahertz sur-

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face plasmon-polaritons. If successful, these new devices will find use in sensing, spectroscopy, and fast on-chip communications. David Locascio, an Engineering Physics junior, is working on the world’s first femtosecond time-domain measure-ment of electronic spin noise, which is supported by a grant from the CELT Fund for Facul-ty/Student Scholarly and Artistic Engagement for this work. Their research at Tulane has led to a publication in Applied Physics Letters. Dr. Tal-bayev was also the recipient of the 2012 Universi-ty Senate COR Fellowship.

Prof. Talbayev’s graduate student Punam Silwal is working on the low temperature terahertz optical experiment.

From Prof. Horwitz: The engineers are doing well this year. Students are doing internships in these companies: General Motors, Kiewit, NYSE&G, PolyRMC, Intralox, Jacobs Engineering and Senior Design projects in: Intralox, Crescent Unmanned, PolyRMC, School of Tropical Medicine, Blade Dynamics. The grad-uated students found jobs at Blade Dynamics, Penta Corporation, US Navy Nuclear Power School, Humedica. Some of them got accepted by graduate schools such as Columbia Mechanical Engineering, Tufts, UConn, LSU Mechanical En-gineering. David Locascio was inducted into Tau Beta Pi, the national engineering honors society, and Prof. Horwitz was also inducted as an Emi-nent Engineer. We are in the process of opening our new PEP lab in Stanly Thomas Hall. The lab is expected to be completed in July, several professors, including Prof. Norton, Prof. McGuire, and Prof. Horwitz,

have already moved their offices there, and Prof. Kaplan is expected to move over the summer.

Students are working in the Intralox fabrication shop for senior design and internships

Prof. Matthew Escarra’s research interests in-clude quantum devices in semiconductor hetero-structures, high efficiency photovoltaics, and nanostructured optical metamaterials. He is excit-ed about joining the PEP faculty at Tulane this upcoming fall and returning to his hometown of New Orleans. Dr. Escarra’s research at Caltech is focused on developing the first 50% efficient photovoltaic module. The current world record module effi-ciency is 33.9%. Dr. Escarra and his colleagues at Caltech are pursuing this ambitious goal through novel optical approaches that split the broadband solar spectrum into narrow spectral slices, each directed onto a solar cell with a different bandgap for optimal conversion of that part of the sun’s spectrum. Dr. Escarra has designed and fabricated III-V solar cells in several material systems over a range of bandgaps for this project. He has also led the design of a holographic spectrum splitting photonic architecture for use in these modules. In parallel, he has been exploring dielectric nanoan-tennas for phased array spectrum splitting optics. Initially supported through a university-industry partnership with Dow Solar, this project has re-cently been awarded $2.4 million in funding from DOE’s ARPA-E program.

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Prof. Fred Wietfeldt’s Tulane Neutron Physics Group continues its research on precision neutron decay measurements and neutron interferometery at the NIST Center for Neutron Research in Gaithersburg, Maryland. The aCORN experiment, a large collaboration for which Fred Wietfeldt is the PI and spokesman and Tulane is the lead institution, continues to run at NIST and will do so through the end of 2013. It is collecting data that will make the world's best measurement of the electron-neutrino correlation in free neutron decay, an important parameter for understanding the weak nuclear force. We are also gearing up for a repeat of our famous cold beam neutron lifetime experiment with a goal of im-proving our precision from 3.5 seconds to 1 sec-ond. This measurement has important conse-quences for astrophysics and cosmology. At the NIST neutron interferometer we are con-ducting high precision measurements of neutron scattering lengths of light gases such as hydrogen, deuterium, and helium, which help elucidate the strong nuclear force between protons and neutrons.

Photo caption: The Tulane Neutron Physics Group at the NIST Center for Neutron Research in July 2012 (l-r: Ph.D. student Con-nor Whitaker, postdoc Guillaume Darius, Ph.D. student Taufique Hassan, recent Ph.D. student Mike Huber, Ph.D student Chandra Shahi, Prof. Fred Wietfeldt, undergraduate Mae Scott)

From Prof. Jiang Wei: The Wei group's research interest focuses on na-noscale condensed matter physics, particularly on the underlying physics of the emerging quantum phenomena in nanostructures. Nanodevice physics fascinates us because when the characteristic

length of physical systems approaches the na-noscale, quantum mechanical effects start to ap-pear or even dominate. We are primarily interest-ed in two groups of nanostructured materials: 1D and 2D quantum materials, and strongly correlat-ed materials. We utilize our state-of-the-art micro-nano fabrication facilities to transform these mate-rials into measureable nanoscale devices. Because a low-dimensional material exhibits different physical properties from those of the bulk material, we investigate the electrical, magnetic, and optical properties of low-dimensional structures to under-stand the fundamental physics. The nanostruc-tured devices of a strongly correlated material can be used as a research vehicle to explore the un-known territory of the phase diagram, to investi-gate the collective many-body behavior, and to manipulate the phase transition by applying elec-tric field, magnetic field, strain, and chemical doping. We also explore the technological appli-cations of these nanodevices. Current research directions: Quantum transport study of 1D and 2D materials, Investigation of the phase transition on nanostructured strongly correlated materials mod-

ulated by mesoscopic

strain and chem-ical doping engi-neering, Scan-ning photocur-rent and surface enhanced Raman spectroscopy on

nanodevices, Development of fabrication tech-nique of ultra-small nanostruc-tures.

Prof. Wei’s group inside their newly constructed copper room (Faraday cage). From left to right: Chunlei Yue, Jake Smith, Ro-land Harvey, Xue Liu, Jiang Wei.

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If you have a newsworthy item, please send it toJiangWei(jwei1@tulane.edu).

Ifyouwould like tohelpusbuildthe futureatPEPbydonatingyourtimeormoney,yoursupport

would bemostwelcome. Please get in touchwithZhiqiangMao(zmao@tulane.edu).–JiangWei,Editor

Physics and Engineering Physics 6400 Freret Street 2001 Percival Stern Hall New Orleans, LA 70118 Tel: (504) 865-5520 Fax: (504) 862-8702 www.physics.tulane.edu