PAS in Spotlight History


Chris Marshall receives DOE Early Career Research award

August 4, 2023

Christopher Marshall, an assistant professor in the University of Rochester’s Department of Physics and Astronomy, has been named a recipient of an Early Career Research award from the United States Department of Energy (DOE) to continue his work studying tiny subatomic particles called neutrinos. The award is designed to bolster the nation’s scientific workforce by providing support to exceptional researchers during the crucial early career years, when many scientists do their most formative work.

Continue Reading



Life of a Cosmology Graduate Student: Zackery Brown

December 14, 2022

Zachery Brown in the lab

Growing up, I never imagined that I’d become a physicist. I always enjoyed my physics classes, but was convinced that I’d study engineering in college. Yet as a high school senior, I took an electricity and magnetism course that really caught my attention. And as it happened, I attended a small liberal arts college without an engineering program. I made the decision to major in physics instead.

Continue Reading

USRA Establishes the Judith L. Pipher Memorial Scholarship Award

July 27, 2022

Columbia, MD—June 27, 2022. Universities Space Research Association (USRA) proudly announces the addition of a new award—the Judith L. Pipher Memorial Scholarship Award—to honor the memory of Dr. Judith L. Pipher. With the establishment of this new award, USRA will now routinely offer five Distinguished Undergraduate Award scholarships.

Continue Reading



Ryan Rygg Elected APS Fellow

September 29, 2020

Congratulations to Dr. Ryan Rygg, Assistant Professor (Research) of Mechanical Engineering and Physics, on being elected as a Fellow by the American Physical Society (APS)!

Continue Reading



Carla Watson Awarded NSF Fellowship

July 1, 2019

Congratulations to Carla Watson, a PhD student working as a condensed matter physics research assistant with Professor Stephen Wu. Carla has been awarded the 2019 National Science Foundation (NSF) Graduate Research Fellowship. She is finishing up her second year with the department of Physics and Astronomy and also serves on the executive board of our physics and astronomy student association (PASSAGE).

Continue Reading

HIRMES: SOFIA's latest high-resolution Mid-infrared Spectrometer

November 15, 2017

Professor Dan Watson, chair of Rochester's Department of Physics and Astronomy, is a member of the team under the leadership of Dr. Harvey Moseley at NASA Goddard Space Flight Center that is developing the new HIRMES instrument and its mission on NASA’s Stratospheric Observatory for Infrared Astronomy (SOFIA).

Continue Reading

2016 Arthur L. Schawlow Prize in Laser Science Recipient

August 1, 2016

Robert Boyd Wins 2016 Arthur L. Schawlow Prize in Laser Science for his fundamental contributions to the field of nonlinear optics, including the development of approaches for controlling the velocity of light, of quantum imaging methods, and of composite nonlinear optical materials.

Continue Reading

A new way to determine the age of stars?

March 22, 2016

Rochester researchers have developed a new conceptual framework for understanding how stars similar to our Sun evolve. According to Eric Blackman, professor of physics and astronomy, the work could also “ultimately help to determine the age of stars more precisely than is currently possible.”

Continue Reading


Discovery of classic pi formula a ‘cunning piece of magic’

November 10, 2015

When most people think about pi, they associate the mathematical constant with arcs and circles. Mathematicians, however, are accustomed to seeing it in a variety of fields. But two University physicists were still surprised to find it lurking in a quantum mechanics formula for the energy states of the hydrogen atom.

Continue Reading