Professor Vesna Mitrović announces with congratulations that her advisee, Ph.D. student Ilija Nikolov, won a scholarship grant from the University of Bologna to work in Bologna for two months.

Interim Chair Gang Xiao is delighted to announce that Jia (Leo) Li has been appointed as the Richard and Edna Salomon Assistant Professor of Physics.

The Physics Merit Fellowship is a departmental fellowship awarded to a senior graduate student(s) and provides funding for one semester the next year. We asked the 2023 - 2024 recipient, Xianlong Liu, to tell us about his research involving matrices.

Ph.D. Student Calvin Bales was recently awarded a prestigious 2023-2024 STEM Chateaubriand Fellowship.

The Department of Physics gathered this week to thank Interim Department Chair Professor Gang Xiao for his service to the department after former chair Meenakshi Narain’s passing in January. Interim Provost, Professor of Engineering and the Sorensen Family Dean Emeritus of Engineering Lawrence E. Larson was also on hand to show gratitude and support for Gang’s leadership.

Zezhu Wei received the 2023 – 2024 Dissertation Fellowship Award from the Department of Physics. Zezhu discusses his research below.

The Physics Department has established an annual award for distinguished alumni of the department. Recipients are nominated based on their contributions in any field of work and awards are presented at the yearly commencement ceremony.

The Physics Merit Fellowship is a departmental fellowship awarded to a senior graduate student(s) and provides funding for one semester the next year. In her own words, Erin Morissette, a 2023 – 2024 awardee, tells us about her research.

The Physics Department caught up with Joseph Hall, Sc.B. Mathematical Physics and Contemplative Studies candidate, who talked with us about his experiences as a physics student at Brown.

Congratulations to Taylor Knapp, Sc.B. in Astrophysics!

As early as 2030, engineers and robots from Earth could begin construction on FarView, an astronomical observatory that would expand over 200 square kilometers of the Moon’s surface—almost entirely using materials mined from the Moon itself.

Physics concentrator Lucas Brito was recently awarded a prestigious Goldwater scholarship. Goldwater Scholarships are awarded to second- or third-year students planning research careers in mathematics, the natural sciences or engineering.

Brown Physics is pleased to announce that Kaley Brauer and Nora Shipp were recently honored with Astronomy and Astrophysics Postdoctoral awards from the National Science Foundation (NSF).

The US Department of Defense announced that Jia (Leo) Li is among awardees Under the Defense Established Program to Stimulate Competitive Research (DEPSCoR) for his work on emergent quantum phenomena in van der Waals 2D materials.

On Monday, April 24th, Professor Emeritus of Physics and Professor of Physics (Research) Humphrey J. Maris received the inaugural Brown Technology Innovation Impact Award. 

The Physics Department is pleased to announce that Daniel Li was honored with a Graduate Student Leader of the Year Award by the Student Activities Office (SAO) in the Leung Gallery of the Campus Center on May 3rd. Daniel was one of three recipients of the award for 2023.

The Tenth New England String Meeting was held at Brown on Friday, April 28.

On Monday, April 24, 2023, Assistant Professor of Physics Jonathan Pober, an experimental astrophysicist and world leader in cosmology, received an Early Career Research Achievement Award, Physical Science at the Celebration of Research at Sayles Hall.

The Physics Department is pleased to announce Jonathan Pober's 2023 Early Career Research Achievement Award.

The American Humanist Association (AHA) announced that Stephon Alexander will be awarded the prestigious Isaac Asimov Science Award at the AHA’s 82nd annual conference Crossroads and Collective Futures, in Denver, Colorado on May 6, 2023.

Seven Questions with Danielle Germann, National Science Foundation (NSF) Fellowship Recipient

Dean of the Faculty Leah Van Wey announced that Vesna Mitrović, L. Herbert Ballou University Professor of Physics and Engineering, will assume the position of Chair of the Department of Physics on July 1, 2023.

Physics PhD student Shayan Lame successfully defended her thesis "Electrokinetic Noise Driven Dynamics of DNA Molecules and Dynamics of Nanoparticles in Diffusivity Gradients" on Friday, March 24th.

Michael Toomey successfully defended his thesis "Theoretical and Computational Explorations of Beyond ΛCDM Cosmology” on Friday, March 24th, 2023.

The Physics Department is pleased to announce that Brad Marston was selected for the Kavli Foundation Special Symposium at the American Physical Society's (APS) March Meeting.

Watch Brad Marston discuss his talk on waves of topological origin for the Kavli Symposium at the APS March Meeting.

To all Department of Physics women who are postdocs and undergraduate, master’s and PhD students: this is your opportunity to be featured in the next Physics Fundamentals project!

Professor James Valles' research is recognized in China Science Daily as being among China's top ten breakthroughs in science and technology in 2022.

The Brooke Owens Fellowship—a nationally-acclaimed nonprofit program recognizing exceptional undergraduate women and gender minorities with space and aviation internships, senior mentorship, and a lifelong professional network—announces its Class of 2023 Brooke Owens Fellows.

Professor Vesna Mitrovic opened the 2023 CUWiP at Brown on Friday evening with introductory remarks, including a reflection of Dr. Meenakshi Narain’s impact on women in physics: “There isn’t anybody better that you should aim to be like.”

It is with deep sadness that we inform you that our colleague and friend, Meenakshi Narain, passed away on January 1, 2023. Meenakshi joined the Brown University Department of Physics faculty in 2007 and served as the first woman to chair the department beginning on July 1, 2022.

New experimental findings bolster Stephon Alexander's 2006 theory that suggested that Chern-Simons gravity could also potentially solve one of the biggest mysteries in cosmology: why our universe contains more matter than antimatter. Alexander's theory predicted that the Chern-Simons interaction could have yielded a relative abundance of left-handed gravitons, which would, in turn, preferentially create left-handed matter over right-handed antimatter.

The Fall 2022 edition of Imagine, Brown University's Department of Physics magazine, is here. In this issue, you will learn about the latest cutting-edge research being done in our department, as well as stories about our students, alumni, and more.

The Particle Astrophysics Group in the Department of Physics at Brown University will have an opening for a postdoctoral research associate starting July 1, 2023 or earlier if desired.