Carnegie Mellon University

2017 News

Monday, December 4, 2017
Theory Frameworks Behind Black Hole and Neutron Star Collisions
The recent detection of gravitational waves has been a success that depended on a broad range of scientists spread across the globe. CMU was not directly involved in the LIGO experiment but has played interesting supporting roles, including leadership in one of the follow-up experiments, constructive advice on software development, and introducing a new, powerful way of predicting the signal from the spectacular events that produce gravitational waves.

Monday, October 16, 2017
A Good Month for Gravitational Wave Astronomy
Three pioneers in the field were awarded the Nobel Prize in Physics on October 3. Two weeks later, the astronomy community celebrated yet another stunning success with the announcement of multiple observations of a binary neutron star merger, detected first via the gravitational waves it emitted and thereafter in multiple electromagnetic bands.

Tuesday, October 10, 2017
Bennett-McWilliams Lecture 2017: Dan Akerib
Stanford Physicist Dan Akerib presented Carnegie Mellon University’s 5th Bennett-McWilliams Lecture in Cosmology, on Thursday, Oct. 26, at 4:30 p.m. in the Gates-Hillman Center’s Rashid Auditorium.

Friday, September 29, 2017
CMU Physics Partners with NIST to Promote Neutron Scattering in the Life Sciences
The National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) announced an award to CMU to promote neutron scattering in the life sciences. The $2.5M award recognizes the development and application of neutron scattering techniques in membrane biophysics and makes CMU a key partner of the NIST Center for Neutron Research in biological and biomedical research.

Thursday, September 28, 2017
CMU Physics Team Measures Gravitational Redshift of Galaxies
Astrophysicists at Carnegie Mellon found a way to measure the frequency shift of light from massive galaxies due to gravity ("gravitational redshift"). Their results are consistent with Einstein's Theory of General Relativity and appeared as a series of four papers in the journal Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society.

Wednesday, September 27, 2017
Ben Hunt Wins DOE Early Career Award
The U.S. Department of Energy awarded Physics professor Benjamin Hunt a prestigious Early Career grant. The award provides $750,000 over five years to study how layering different two-dimensional crystals can lead to new, emergent properties in the composite layered structure. 

Wednesday, September 20, 2017
Chasing the Secrets of Internal Cell Organization
Researchers at Carnegie Mellon University led by Physics Professor Markus Deserno have recognized a fundamental inconsistency in a widely accepted model that accounts for the elasticity of lipid membranes.

Friday, September 1, 2017
New HEDM Project at ANL
The National Science Foundation announced funding of a $1.5M new High Energy Diffraction Microscope (HEDM) at the Advanced Photon Source synchrotron. For the project led by Prof. Robert M. Suter, the new instrument will take advantage of new detector and positioning technologies and use modern software designs to allow enhanced experimental control and feedback as well as accelerated data reduction to produce microscope output on the time scale of the data collection. 

Thursday, August 17, 2017
Dodelson Named Department Head
Renowned astrophysicist Scott Dodelson will take the helm at CMU Physics as the new Department Head. Dodelson is known for his research at the intersection of particle physics and cosmology.

Tuesday, August 15, 2017
The Solar Eclipse and Eddington's Experiment
At 1:45pm on August 21, 2017 the moon began blocking the light coming to us from the sun. Assistant Professor Matt Walker attempted to recreate Arthur Eddington's famous 1919 experiment that proved Albert Einstein's theory of general relativity to be corrent.

Friday, May 12, 2017
BlueTides Simulation Explores Early Universe
Physics professors Tiziana Di Matteo and Rupert Croft and their collaborators implemented a simulation that encompasses hundreds of thousands of galaxies and contains almost a trillion individual objects.

Wednesday, April 26, 2017
Leonard Kisslinger Wins Carnegie Science Award
Physics Professor Emeritus Leonard Kisslinger was recognized for the CMU Physics Concepts Program he founded more than 20 years ago, in which CMU students mentor local middle school students from disadvantaged families.

Wednesday, April 5, 2017
William Bialek Gives Buhl Lecture on the Intersection of Physics and Life
Princeton University physicist William Bialek presented Carnegie Mellon University’s annual Buhl Lecture at 4:30 p.m., Tuesday, April 13 in the Mellon Institute Auditorium, 4400 Fifth Ave. in Oakland. His lecture was titled, “The Physics of Life: How Much Can We Calculate."

Monday, February 27, 2017
Glue-X Experiment at Jefferson Laboratory Starts to Pay Off
After 20 years of designing, building and commisioning, the Gluonic Excitations experiment, a flagship physics experiment at the DOE's JLab, produced its first scientific results.

Sunday, February 19, 2017
Search for Supersymmetry
Carnegie Mellon Physicists search for light supersymmetric particles at the Large Hadron Collider in Geneva, Switzerland.