Physics Colloquium Schedule

The colloquium will take place in LaTourette Hall, room 200 and will start at 3:30 p.m.

View the Current Series

* = graduate colloquium speakers

Fall 2023

  • Sept. 1 - Xueying Lu, NIU & ANL: Advanced Concepts for Compact Accelerators
  • Sept. 8 - Sanati, Mahdi, Department of Physics & Astronomy, Texas Tech University, Lubbock TX 79409: Importance of Surface Morphology on Secondary Electron Emission
  • Sept. 15 - Bruce Law, Kansas State University: Dark Energy: a type of repulsive gravity. A soft matter physics perspective
  • Sept. 29 - Richard Hill, U. Kentucky: Effective field theory, factorization and renormalization: neutrino interactions, the Fermi function and more
  • Oct. 13 - Patterson, J. Ritchie, Cornell University: Bright Electron Beams for Science and Society
  • Oct. 27 - Robert Ainsworth, Fermilab: The Fermilab Recycler and Main Injector in the MW Era
  • Nov. 3 - Sergey Uzunyan, Northern Illinois University: High-Performance Computing (HPC) Facilities at NIU
  • Nov. 10 - Ornella Palamara, Fermilab: Signatures for New Physics in Short-Baseline Liquid Argon Neutrino Experiments
  • Dec. 1 - Gwanghui Ha, Northern Illinois University: Advanced beam manipulation method and its applications
  • Dec. 8 - Dave Carrano/ Delvon Alexander, NIU Physics Department: PHYS 498/499 Senior Capstone Project Seminars

Spring 2023

  • Jan. 20 - Tim Paquette, NIU, Counseling and Consultation Services (CCS), PCLB 200: Prioritizing Your Mental Health & Wellness
  • Jan. 27 - Milind N Kunchur, University of South Carolina, Dept. of Physics and Astronomy: Spatial dimensions, time-frequency relationship, and the human auditory system
  • Feb. 3 - Johannes Pollanen, Michigan State University and EeroQ Quantum Hardware: Creating and controlling hybrid quantum systems ... one electron at a time
  • Feb. 17 - Shane Larson, CIERA/Northwestern University: Probing the Cosmic Graveyard in low frequency gravitational waves
  • Mar. 24 - Walter Tangarife, Loyola University Chicago: Dark matter, neutrinos, and their interactions
  • Mar. 31 - Bela Erdelyi, Department of Physics, NIU: The Last Unsolved Problem in Classical Electrodynamics
  • Apr. 7 - Andrey Sokolov, Materials Science Division, Argonne National Laboratory: The Fascinating World of Active Nematic Materials
  • Apr. 14 - Jaehoon Yu, University of Texas at Arlington: Search for Dark Matter in Neutrino Beams
  • Apr. 21 - Sarah Miller, University of Wisconsin-Madison: Inclusive Learning through Scientific Teaching
  • Apr. 28 - Orion Arndt/ Dave Carrano/Sebastian Perez Osario/Ryan Turska, NIU Physics Department: PHYS 498/499 Senior Capstone Project Seminars

Fall 2022

  • Sept. 2 - Daniel Kaplan, Illinois Institute of Technology: A New Low-Energy Muon R&D and Experimental Facility at Fermilab
  • Sept. 23 - Diktys Stratakis, Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory: The Global Effort Towards Making a Muon Collider
  • Sept. 30 - Edmundo Garcia-Solis, Chicago State University: The NAUM (Non-invasive Archaeometry Using Muons) Project
  • Oct. 7 - Howard Baer, University of Oklahoma: Weak scale Supersymmetry after LHC Run 2 and WIMP search results
  • Oct. 14 - Corrado Gatto, INFN & NIU: REDTOP: a low energy meson factory to explore dark matter and physics beyond the Standard Model
  • Oct. 21 - Jahred Adelman, NIU: Computational challenges (and solutions!) in particle physics
  • Nov. 11 - Kristen McQuinn, Rutgers University: Galaxy Evolution at the Faint-End of the Luminosity Function
  • Nov. 18 - Steven Remsen, Intel Corporation: Making Career Left Turns: A NIU Physics Post Graduate Story
  • Dec. 02 - Mark McCauley/ Nathaniel Obert/Adam Walter/Sebastian Perez Osorio, NIU Physics Department: PHYS 498/499 Senior Capstone Project Seminars

Spring 2022

  • Mar. 4 - Nathan Kutz, University of Washington: Deep learning for the discovery of parsimonious physics models
  • Mar. 11 - Ganesh Tiwari, Argonne National Laboratory: Ray transfer matrix analysis for paraxial resonators
  • Mar. 25 - Chengkun Huang, Los Alamos National Laboratory: Computation methods for beam dynamics in conventional and advanced accelerators
  • Apr. 1 - Jing Xu, Argonne National Laboratory: Advance Quantum Information Science with Hybrid Electromagnonics
  • Apr 8 - Gwanghui Ha, Pohang University of Science and Technology, South Korea: Beam manipulations in modern accelerators
  • Apr.15 - Hector de la Torre, Michigan State University: Looking beyond the standard model with third generation quarks
  • Apr. 22 - Aleena Rafique, Argonne National Laboratory: Neutrino interaction measurements and electron energy scale resolution studies for neutrino physics experiments
  • Apr. 29 - Emily Calgaro/ Erinda Cuko/August Lee/Lauren Marc/Kaela Villafania, NIU Physics Department: PHYS 498/499 Senior Capstone Project Seminars

Fall 2021

  • Sept. 17 - Yasuo Ito, NIU Department of Physics: 1st General meeting of Physics majors
  • Sept. 24 - Jonathan Lunine, Cornell University : The search for life in the outer solar system
  • Oct. 10 -  Brendan Steffens, Florida Institute of Technology / Goddard Space Flight Center: From NIU to NASA, Titan, and Beyond!
  • Oct. 15 - Matthew Deady, Bard College: The Equations of Physics
  • Oct. 22 - Alysia Marino, University of Colorado Boulder: Discovering Neutrino Properties with Long-Baseline Beams
  • Nov. 12 - Roland Winkler / Philippe Piot, NIU: Special Faculty Research Colloquium #1
  • Nov. 19 - Jahred Adelman / Xueying Lu / Laurence Lurio, NIU: Special Faculty Research Colloquium #2
  • Dec. 03 - Dakota McCoy/Matthew Sowinski/August Lee, NIU Physics Department: PHYS 498/499 Senior Capstone Project Seminars

Spring 2021

  • Jan. 22 - Dan Hooper, Fermilab/University of Chicago: Black Holes in the Early Universe
  • Jan. 29 - Brian Odom, Northwestern University: Adding Molecules to the Quantum Toolkit
  • Feb. 26 - Jesse Thaler, MIT: Collision Course:  Particle Physics meets Machine Learning
  • Apr. 16 - Xie Chen, California Institute of Technology: Fracton order: from quantum hard drive to foliated manifold
  • Apr. 21* - Senior Seminar presentation Karissa Olsen: Carbon Ion RadiationTherapy, NIU Physics Department: PHYS 498/499 Senior Capstone Project presentations
  • Apr 23 - Jimena Canales, 86 South St. 5A, Boston, MA 02111: Science and the History of Nonexistents

Fall 2020

  • Sept. 11 - Venumadhav Korampally, NIU, College of Engineering and Engineering Technology: Engineered Nanoparticle Systems Towards Thin Films with Programmed Optical Constants and Sensors
  • Sept. 25 - Spencer Gessner, SLAC national laboratory: Prospects in Beam-Driven Plasma Wakefield Acceleration
  • Oct. 2 - Chris Rasmussen, CERN, EP department, Geneva, Switzerland: Testing fundamental symmetries with trapped antihydrogen
  • Oct. 16 - Ryan Roussel, The University of Chicago: Large Scale Multi-Objective Bayesian Optimization for Accelerator Control and Tuning
  • Oct. 23 - Ilias Cholis , Oakland University: Searching for Dark Matter; a High Energy Astrophysicist's Perspective
  • Oct. 30 - Katherine Pachal, Duke University: Hunting for new physics at the ATLAS experiment using long-lived particles
  • Nov. 6 - Gerard Andonian, University of California Los Angeles (UCLA): Acceleration and phase space manipulation with beam-driven wakefields in dielectrics
  • Nov. 13 - Nestor Zaluzec, Argonne National Laboratory: Advanced analytical electron microscopy in soft and hard matter systems: opportunities (and challenges) enabled by the Argonne PicoProbe
  • Nov. 20 - Oksana Chubenko, Arizona State University (ASU) : Monte Carlo Modeling of Photoemission from Semiconductor Photocathodes for Accelerator Applications
  • Dec. 4 - Eric Padilla, Northern Illinois University: Micromagnetic Simulation: In-situ Tunable Stray-field Distribution in an Artificial Spin Ice

Spring 2020

  • Feb. 21 - Norbert M. Linke, University of Maryland: A Quantum cinouter based on trapped ions
  • Feb. 28 - Imre Bartos, University of Florida: Unforeseen Directions in Gravitational Wave Astrophysics
  • Mar. 6 - Xueying Lu, SLAC National Laboratory: Metamaterial Structures for High-Power Microwave Generation
  • May 1 - Anthony Volpendesta-Valerio/Jesus Zacarias/Dayne Coveyou, NIU Physics Department: PHYS 498/499H Senior Capstone Project Seminars

Fall 2019

  • Sept. 13 - Physics Graduate Student Association, NIU: Faculty Research Seminar
  • Oct. 11 - Jeremiah Mans, University of Minnesota: Searching for dark matter candidates with accelerators
  • Oct. 18 - Jason Hogan, Stanford University: Atom interferometry for fundamental physics and gravitational wave detection
  • Oct. 25 - Alexander Valishev, Fermilab: Accelerator and Beam Physics Research at Fermilab
  • Nov. 1 - Taylor Hoyt, The University of Chicago, 5640 S Ellis Ave, Chicago IL, 60615: The Carnegie Chicago Hubble Program: A New Measurement of the Hubble Constant using Red Giant Stars
  • Nov. 8 - Andrey Varlamov, University of Rome, Tor Vergata: Physics in the Gastronomy Universe
  • Dec. 6 - Senior Projects Presentations, Department of Physics, Northern Illinois University: Phys 498 and Phys 499 Poster Presentations

Spring 2019

  • Jan. 25 - Bela Erdelyi, Department of Physics, Northern Illinois University: Two Computational Thinking Tales: The NIU Center for Research Computing and Data, and the Physics Colloquium Management System
  • Feb. 1 - Sarah Garner, NIU Ethics Compliance Office: Sexual Harassment in the Scientific Community
  • Feb. 22 - Stephen K. Doorn, Center for Integrated Nanotechnologies, Los Alamos National Laboratory: Photophysics and Quantum Emission Behavior of Carbon Nanotube Defect States
  • Mar. 1 - Stephan Hruskewycz, Materials Science Division: Argonne National Laboratory: New opportunities for materials science with coherent x-ray diffraction imaging
  • Mar. 22 - Stephanie Majewski, University of Oregon: Searching for the Supersymmetric Partner to the Top Quark at ATLAS
  • Mar. 29 - Drs. Beth Wilkins and Gary Baker, The Graduate School: What the Labor Market Indicates about Career Opportunities for Grad Students in Physics
  • Apr. 5 - André Schleife, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign: Excited electronic states: Dielectric screening and hot-electron mediated ion diffusion
  • Apr. 26 - Senior Projects Presentations, Physics Department, Northern Illinois University: Phys 498 and Phys 499 Poster Presentations by Marc Crowell, Paula Moraga, Jeffrey Meuser, Daniel Rapson.

Fall 2018

  • Sept. 21 - Stanislas Baturin, Enrico Fermi Institute, Physical Sciences Division, The University of Chicago: Pen and Paper Mathematical Models for State-of-the-Art Wakefield Accelerators
  • Sept. 28 - IVAN BOZOVIC, Brookhaven National Laboratory, and, Applied Physics Departments, Yale University: What makes cuprate superconductors so amazing?
  • Oct. 12 - Andrei Patapenka, NIU, Physics Department / NICADD: The Fermilab Integrable Optics Test Accelerator and Its Nonlinear Dynamics
  • Oct. 19 - Roland Winkler, Northern Illinois University: Asymmetric g Tensor in Low-Symmetry Two-Dimensional Hole Systems
  • Oct. 26 - valia allori, Northern Illinois University, Department of
  • Philosophy: Quantum Mechanics between History, Physics and Philosophy
  • Nov. 2 - Herman Schaumburg, Northern Illinois University: An Efficient N-body Simulation Algorithm
  • Nov. 9 - Wes Gohn, University of Kentucky: Accelerating Physics with GPUs
  • Dec. 7 - Senior Seminar Poster Session, NIU Physics: Reserved for the Phys 498 and Phys 499H students presentations

Spring 2018

  • Feb. 23 - Ivan Sadovskyy, Computation Institute, University of Chicago, 5735 S. Ellis Av., Chicago, IL 60637, USA, Materials Science Division, Argonne National Laboratory, 9700 S. Cass Av., Argonne, IL 60637, USA, Targeted Evolution for Designing better Superconductors
  • Mar. 2 - Ben Freemire, Northern Illinois University, Department of Physics: Space Charge Compensation Using an Electron Column at Fermilab’s Integrable Optics Test Accelerator
  • Mar. 23 - Umeshkumar Patel, X-ray Science Division, Argonne National Laboratory, 9700 S. Cass Avenue, Argonne, IL 60439.: Superconducting Circuits for Quantum Information and X-ray Detection Technology
  • Apr. 6 - Alexey Snezhko, Materials Science Division, Argonne National Laboratory, 9700 S. Cass Av., Argonne, IL 60637, USA: Active Spinner Materials
  • Apr. 13 - Tammy Walton, Fermilab: Measuring the Beam Dynamics for the Muon g-2 Experiment at Fermilab
  • Apr. 20 - Michael Eads, Northern Illinois University, Department of Physics: Using Concept Inventories to Enable General Physics Course Reform at NIU
  • Apr. 27 - Physics Department Presents, Northern Illinois University: Senior Seminar and Awards ceremony

Fall 2017

  • Sept. 1 - Bharat Ratra, Department of Physics, Kansas State University: The "Standard" Model of Cosmology ... and Open Questions
  • Sept. 22 - Pushpa Bhat, Senior Scientist, Particle Physics Division, Deputy Head, Program Planning, Office of the Director, Fermilab: Fifty Years of Particle Physics and Discoveries at Fermilab
  • Sept. 29 - Maria Baldini, Geophysical Lab., Carnegie Institution of Washington: Emerging materials under pressure
  • Oct. 13 - Laurence Lurio, NIU: How to measure molecular motion with x-rays
  • Oct. 27 - Matthias Benjamin Jungfleisch, Materials Science Division, Argonne National Laboratory: New Twists for Magnons
  • Nov. 3 - Vishnu Zutshi, Northern Illinois University: Detecting Photons for Discovery
  • Nov. 10 - Mike Syphers, Northern Illinois University: Rings Around Fermilab -- An interplay of HEP and beam physics
  • Dec. 1 - Melina Avila, Argonne National Laboratory: Stellar explosions: The importance of nuclear reaction rates
  • Dec. 8 - Physics Undergraduate Capstones, Northern Illinois University: 3-4:30 pm Poster Presentations of the Senior Capstone Projects

Spring 2017

  • Jan. 20 - H. Ulrich Wienands, Argonne National Laboratory: Channeling experiments with Electrons and Positrons at SLAC
  • Jan. 27 - Hyunjung Kim, Department of Physics, Sogang University, Seoul, Korea : X-Ray Free Electron Laser Studies of In situ Structural Dynamics: Applications and Perspective on Coherent properties
  • Feb. 3 - Sheldon Stone, Syracuse University: Physics at LHCb
  • Feb. 24 - Tony Leggett, Dept.of Physics, University of Illinois, Urbana,IL : Prospects for Topological Quantum Computing
  • Mar. 10 - Tao Xu, Department of Chemistry and Biochemistry, Northern Illinois University, DeKalb, IL 60115: Cold Thoughts on Perovskite Fever
  • Mar. 24 - Robert Leheny, Department of Physics, Johns Hopkins University, Baltimore, MD: Anisotropic Particles in Anisotropic Fluids
  • Mar. 31 - Andreas Glatz, Northern Illinois University and Argonne National
  • Laboratory: The Nobel Prize in Physics 2016: Theoretical discoveries of topological phase transitions and topological phases of matter
  • Apr. 7 - Jianguo Wen, Electron & X-ray Microscopy Group, Center for Nanoscale Materials, Argonne National Laboratory, Building 212-A235, 9700 S. Cass Avenue, Argonne, IL 60439: Stabilizing a Highly Polar Phase Through Interface Engineering
  • Apr. 14 - Debora Katz, United States Naval Academy: How Selecting a Textbook Can Improve Your Class.
  • Apr. 21 - Jahred Adelman, NIU: The ATLAS Fast TracKer and trigger: A problem at 40 MHz
  • Apr. 28 - NIU Physics Students Seniors, Department of Physics NIU:
  • Physics Undergraduate Senior Symposium and Department Awards Ceremony

Fall 2016

  • Sept. 2 - Alexey Burov, MS 221, Fermilab, P.O. Box 500, Batavia, IL: Genesis of a Pythagorean Universe
  • Sept. 9 - Michael Dine, Physics Department, University of California, Santa Cruz: Challenges for Theoretical Particle Physics in the LHC Era
  • Sept. 23 - Carol Thompson, Northern Illinois University: In Situ X-Ray Studies of Vapor Phase Crystal Growth
  • Sept. 30 - Jigang Wang, Associate Professor, Department of Physics and Astronomy, Associate Scientist, Ames Laboratory US-DOE, , Iowa State University, Ames, Iowa 50011, Office: A311 Zaffarano, jwang@ameslab.gov, phone: 515-294-5630,  How Fast is Ultrafast: Quantum Science and Technology at One Trillionth of a Second and Less
  • Oct. 7 - Ben Farr, Enrico Fermi Institute and Kavli Institute for Cosmological Physics,, University of Chicago, Chicago, IL 60637: LIGO: From Detector to Observatory
  • Oct. 14 - Mark Thomson, University of Cambridge: DUNE: The Deep Underground Neutrino Experiment
  • Oct. 21 - Jon Miller, University of Michigan, Department of Astronomy, 1085 South University Avenue, Ann Arbor, MI 48109: Measuring Black Hole Spin in X-ray Light
  • Oct. 28 - Matt Wiesner, Benedictine University, : One Survey to Rule Them All: Preparing to do Astrophysics in the Age of the Large Synoptic Survey Telescope
  • Nov. 4 - Jordan Webster, Argonne National Lab: Recent ttH Results from ATLAS
  • Nov. 11 - Lei Xia, Argonne National Laboratory, 362 HEP, 9700 S Cass Ave., Lemont, IL 60439: Development of Fast Photo Detector Using Micro Channel Plate
  • Nov. 18 - Swapan Chattopadhyay, Northern Illinois University: Quantum Sensors for Fundamental and Quantum Information Science
  • Dec. 2 - Carol Thompson, NIU Physics: Physics Department Senior Seminar and Capstone Project Symposium

Spring 2016

  • Jan. 29 - Wanjun Jiang, Materials Science Division, Argonne National
  • Laboratory: Magnetic skyrmions at room temperature: materials, physics, and device
  • Feb. 05 - Lauren Hsu, Fermilab Center For Particle Astrophysics, MS 209, P.O. Box 500, Batavia, IL 60510, Dark matter: Perhaps the next great discovery of particle physics?
  • Feb. 12 - Giulio Stancari, Fermilab: Electron lenses in beam physics
  • Feb. 19 - Robert J. Joynt, Physics Department, University of
  • Wisconsin-Madison: Casimir and the Qubit: Decoherence from Evanescent-wave Johnson Noise
  • Feb. 26 - Chris Stoughton, Fermilab MS 127, Kirk and Wilson Roads, Batavia IL 60510: The Fermilab Holometer: Search for Space-Time Correlations from the Planck Scale
  • Mar. 4 - Young-Min Shin, NIU Physics Department: Ultrafast electron beam R&D - high field acceleration dynamics in structured warm dense matters
  • Mar. 11 - Corrado Gatto, INFN - Napoli: An new experiment to discover fundamental asymmetries of the nature
  • Mar. 25 - Mike Syphers, Northern Illinois University: Toward a Future 100 TeV-scale Hadron Collider
  • Apr. 1 - Gaston Gutierrez, Fermilab, PO Box 500, Batavia, IL 60510, DESI: mapping the Universe with BAO
  • Apr.15 - Joseph Zennamo, University of Chicago, Enrico Fermi Institute: Discovering the Undetectable: (Sterile) Neutrino Oscillations
  • Apr. 22 - Robert Johnson, Univ. of California at Santa Cruz, Santa Cruz Institute of Particle Physics, 1156 High St., Santa Cruz, CA 95064, The Loma Linda - Santa Cruz Proton Computed Tomography Detector for Medical Imaging
  • Apr. 29 - Department of Physics, NIU: Physics Senior Symposium

Fall 2015

  • Sept. 4 - Alexander Dunn, Stanford University: Force Sensing at Cell-Cell and Cell-Matrix Adhesions
  • Sept. 11 - Nenad Miljkovic, University of Illinois at Urbana Champaign, 2136 Mechanical Engineering Laboratory, 105 South Mathews Avenue, Urbana, IL 61801, : Nanoengineered Surfaces for Enhanced Condensation in Energy Applications
  • Sept. 18 - Oscar W Greenberg, Dept. of Physics, Physical Science Center, University of Maryland, College Park, MD 20742: Color in Particle Physics
  • Sept. 25 - Pavel Snopok, Department of Phyiscs, Illinois Institute of Technology, 3101 S Dearborn St, Chicago, IL 60616: Advanced Simulation Tools for Muon-Based Accelerators
  • Oct. 2 - Symposium Speakers, Northern Illinois University: A symposium honoring the legacy of Clyde Kimball
  • Oct. 16 - Gerald Blazey, NIU: Since Policy in the White House
  • Oct. 23 - Rui Li, Jefferson Lab, 12050 Jefferson Ave., Newport News, VA23606: CSR and LSC induced Microbunching Instability in a Recirculating Ring
  • Oct. 30 - Keith Taddei, Physics Department, Northern Illinois University: At the Crossroads of Superconductivity and Magnetism: The Complex Phase Behavior of the Iron Based Superconductors
  • Nov. 6 - Emily Thompson, Insight Data Science, 260 Sheridan Ave, Ste 310, Palo Alto, CA 94306: Data Science: Making the Transition from Academia to Industry
  • Nov. 13 - Vishnu Zutshi, Department of Physics, Northern Illinois University: The Mu2e Experiment at Fermilab
  • Nov. 20 - Robert Calkins, Department of Physics, Southern Methodist University, P.O. Box 750175, Dallas, TX 75275-0175: "Recent results from the SuperCDMS experiment and the status of SuperCDMS SNOLAB"

Spring 2015

  • Jan. 23 - Swapan Chattopadhyay, NIU / Fermilab / CERN: Frontiers of >BeamPhysics: from High Energy Particle Colliders to Quantum Coherence
  • Jan. 30 - Bela Erdelyi, Department of Physics, Northern Illinois University: The Simple, the Clever, the Flexible, and the Fast: How to Solve the N-Body Problem Numerically
  • Feb. 06 - Jeremy Love, Argonne National Lab, 9700 S Cass Ave, Bldg 360, Argonne, IL 60439-4854: Search for Physics Beyond the Standard Model in the 3rd Generation
  • Feb. 13:David Adey, Fermilab, Kirk Road and Pinte Street, Batavia,IL, 60510: nuSTORM and the search for sterile neutrinos.
  • Feb. 20 - Jose Repond, Argonne National Laboratory, 9700 S Cass Avenue, Argonne, IL 60439: CALICE: Calorimetry Reinvented
  • Feb. 27 - Leonard Feldman, Leonard C. Feldman, Inst. for Advanced Materials, Devices and Nanotechnology, Rutgers University , 607 Taylor Road; Rm. CCR 208 , Piscataway, NJ 08854-8065: The On-going Electronic Materials Revolution
  • Mar. 6 - Mel Sabella, Chicago State University, Department of Chemistry and Physics, 9501 S. King Drive - SCI 309, Chicago State University: Using Physics Education Research to identify student resources and guide course and programmatic instructional innovations
  • Mar. 20 - Lin Wang, Geophysical Laboratory, Carnegie Institution of Washington, , Center for High Pressure Science and Technology Advanced Research, China, , Jilin University, China: Order from Disorder: Crystalline Materials Consist of Amorphous Building Blocks
  • Mar. 27 - Michael Eads, Northern Illinois University: Discovering New Physics with a Precision Measurement of the Muon Anomalous Magnetic Gyromagnetic Ratio
  • Apr. 3 - Vladimir Shiltsev, Accelerator Physics Center (APC), Fermilab: Quo Vadis? (Future Directions of Accelerator-based High Energy Physics)
  • Apr. 17 - Sol M. Gruner, Department of Physics & Cornell High Energy Synchrotron Source (CHESS), Cornell University, 162 Clark Hall, Ithaca, NY 14853-2501: Putting the Squeeze on Biology: Biomolecules Under Pressure
  • Apr. 24 - Physics Senior Symposium, Professor C Thompson, Department of Physics, Northern Illinois University, DeKalb, IL 60115: Physics Department Senior Symposium

Fall 2014

  • Sept. 12 Michael Papka, Argonne National Laboratory, Delivering Science at the Petascale: High-Performance Computing at Argonne National Laboratory.
  • Sept. 19 - Dmitri Denisov, Fermilab, Towards the Next Energy-Frontier Machine: A 100 TeV Proton-Proton Collider
  • Sept. 26 - Joseph Grange, Argonne Nationbal Laboratory, The Magnetic Field Measurement for the New Muon g-2 Experiment.
  • Oct. 3 - Jeanie Lau, University of California, Riverside, Quantum Transport and Correlated Phenomena in Bilayer and Trilayer Graphene Membranes.
  • Oct. 10 - Roland Winkler, Department of Physics, NIU, Spins and Pseudospins in Graphene.
  • Oct. 24 - Jahred Adelman, Department of Physics, NIU, Searches, measurements and the future: A new era of Higgs boson physics at ATLAS.
  • Oct. 31 - Jayakjar Charles Tobin Thangaraj, Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory, When billion electrons huddle: Collective effects on high-brightness electron beams.
  • Nov. 7 - Michael Lubell, The City College of New York, Department of Physics, American Physical Society, Director of Public Affairs, Science in a Populist Era: Challenges and Opportunities.
  • Nov. 14 - Panagiotis Spentzouris, Fermilab, Advanced Computation for High-Intensity Beam Physics.
  • Nov. 21 - Juan A, Colon Santana, Department of Physics, NIU, Rare Earth Based Heterostructure Diodes for Spintronics Applications.
  • Nov. 28 - No Colloquium, Thanksgiving break
  • Dec. 5 - Senior Symposium, Graduating Seniors, Department of Physics, NIU

Spring 2014

  • Jan. 17 - No Colloquium
  • Jan. 24 - Trevor Vickey, U. Witwatersrand, South Africa, "Evidence for Higgs Boson Decays to Tau Lepton Pairs from the ATLAS Experiment at the CERN Large Hadron Collider''.
  • Jan. 31 - Lidija Zivkovic, Institute of Physics, Belgrade, "Higgs boson - from the discovery to the measurement of its properties".
  • Feb. 7 - Sanjay Padhi, UC. San Diego,
  • Feb. 14 - Micael Eads, NIU, "Muon g-2 experiment".
  • Feb. 21 - Jahred Adelman, Yale University,
  • Feb. 28 - Young-Min Shin, NIU, "Advanced Accelerater R&D" (TBD).
  • Mar. 7 - APS March meeting
  • Mar. 14 - Spring break
  • Mar. 21 - Igor Aronson, ANL
  • Mar. 28 - Sowjanya Gollapinni, Fermi Lab, "MicroBooNE experiment" (TBD).
  • Apr. 4 - Adina Luican-Mayer, ANL Center for Nanoscale Materials, "Graphene research" (TBD)
  • *Apr. 11 - Elsa Garmire
  • Apr. 18 - Scott Willenbrock, UIUC,
  • Apr. 25 - Senior Seminar, Awards, & pizza! Starts at 3:00 pm.
  • May 2 - Reading Day

Fall 2013

Spring 2013

Fall 2012

Spring 2012

  • Feb. 10 - Steve Martin, NIU. The Acceleration of the Expansion of the Universe: Physics Nobel Prize 2011.
  • Feb. 17 - Young-Min Shin, NIU. Advanced Microwave and THz Vacuum Electron Beam Devices.
  • Feb. 24 - George Coutrakon, NIU. Quantum Reality and Schrodinger's Cat: An Historical Perspective.
  • Mar. 2 - Sean Mattingly, Bank of America. Business for Poets: Physics Careers Outside of Physics.
  • Mar. 23 - Uwe Bergmann, SLAC. Archimedes' Oldest Writings under X-ray Vision.
  • Apr. 6 - Jianguo Wen, Argonne. Sub-Angstrom Transmission Electron Microscopy with Aberration Correction.
  • Apr. 13 - Bogdan Dabrowski, NIU. Search and Discovery of Strongly Coupled Multi-Ferroic Perovskites Sr1-xBaxMnO3.
  • Apr. 20 - Mark Pankuch, Director of Medical Physics and Dosimetry, CDH ProCure Proton Therapy Facility. The Clinical Use of Accelerated Protons: Proton Radiotherapy.
  • Apr. 27 - Senior Seminar. (1) Michael Wesley (Faculty Mentor: Professor Yasuo Ito). Observation of Fe doped SrRuO3 Thin-Films. (2) Zachary Johnson (Faculty Mentor: Professor Carol Thompson). Magnetic Force Microscopy of Materials. (3) Anthony M. Schroeder (Faculty Mentor: Professor Zhili Xiao). A Guided Inquiry into Nano-Scale Hydrogen Sensors.

Fall 2011

  • August 19 - Safety Orientation.
  • August 26 - LAS State of the College address.
  • Sept. 16 - Welcome picnic for new graduate students, 12-2 pm.
  • Sept. 16 - Prof. Lobat Tayebi, University of Oklahoma. Biomaterial Multilayer Assemblies.
  • Sept. 23 - All-day symposium in honor of Prof. Clyde Kimball.
  • Sept. 30 - Jeffrey Lynn, NIST Center for Neutron Research, National Institute of Standards and Technology. Magnetic Moments in Superconductors: From Assassin to Facilitator.
  • Oct. 14 - Andreas Glatz, Materials Science Division, Argonne National Laboratory. Thermoelectric and Non-equilibrium Phenomena in Mesoscopic Meta-materials.
  • Oct. 21 - Rajendran Raja, Fermilab. Nuclear Energy Using Accelerator Driven Sub-critical Systems - The Thorium Option.
  • Oct. 28 - Michael Turner, University of Chicago. Quarks and the Cosmos.
  • Nov. 4 - Jyotsana Lal, Materials Science Division, Argonne National Laboratory. Slow Dynamics in Complex Systems Measured by High Energy Resolution Neutron Scattering Techniques.
  • Nov. 11 - D. N. Kafle, Argonne National Laboratory. Aerosol Optical Depth Derived from Micropulse Lidar Data at Various ARM Sites World-wide.
  • Nov. 18 - Linda Young, Advanced Photon Source, Argonne National Laboratory. Exploring the frontier of ultrafast/ultraintense x-ray interactions with matter.
  • Dec. 2 - Jian-rong Gao, Advanced Photon Source, Argonne National Laboratory. Phase relations in La-Fe-Si alloys for magnetic refrigeration applications.

Spring 2011

  • Jan. 28 - Roland Winkler, NIU. Graphene: The Ultimate Flatland. The Nobel Prize in Physics 2010.
  • Feb. 4 - Probing Itinerant Ferromagnetism with Spin Waves. Vincent Vlamnick, Argonne.
  • Feb. 18 - Ultrananocrystalline Diamond for MEMS and NEMS: Opportunities and Challenges. Anirudha V. Sumant, Argonne.
  • Mar. 4 - Size Matters: Palladium Nanostructures for Fast and Sensitive Hydrogen Detection. Prof. Zhili Xiao, NIU.
  • Mar. 11 - New Experiments with Antiprotons. Daniel Kaplan, IIT.
  • Mar. 18 - Spring Break.
  • Apr. 1 - Joel Moore, University of California, Berkeley. New Topologically Ordered Phases of Condensed Matter.
  • Apr. 8 - Rocky Kolb, University of Chicago. Taking Sides on Dark Energy.
  • Apr. 15 - Wayne Newhauser, Department of Radiation Physics, University of Texas M. D. Anderson Cancer Center. High Performance Computing for Proton Radiation Therapy.
  • Apr. 22 - Christophe Royon, Commissariat a l'Energie Atomique, Saclay. First Results from the ATLAS Experiment at the LHC and the ATLAS Forward Physics Project.
  • Apr. 29 - Senior Seminar. Talks will be followed by awards ceremony and reception.
  • May 6 - Heinlich Jaeger, University of Chicago. Self-Assembled Nanoparticle Monolayers.

Fall 2010

  • Sept. 3 - Philippe Guyot-Sionnest, University of Chicago. Sparse Density of States in Colloidal Quantum Dots: Tuning Energy Relaxation and Transport.
  • Sept. 17 - David Hedin, NIU. Understanding our Asymmetric Universe: Evidence for an Anomalous Like-Sign Dimuon Asymmetry.
  • Sept. 24 - G. P. Yeh, Fermilab. The Energy Transformation.
  • Oct. 1 - Sidney Nagel, University of Chicago. The Life and Death of a Drop: Topological Transitions and Singularities in Fluids
  • Oct. 15 - James Rabchuk, Western Illinois University. A Mechanical Demonstration Illustrating Parametric Resonance.
  • Oct. 22 - Matt Bellis, Stanford University: Searching for Baryon Number Violation in the BaBar Dataset.
  • Oct. 29 - Alexander Yarin, University of Ilinois at Chicago. Thorny Devil Nanofibers: The Way to Cooling Rates of the Order of 1 kW/cm2.
  • Nov. 12 - Robert Hirosky, University of Virginia. The CMS Detector: Peformance and First Physics.

Contact Us

Department of Physics
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815-753-1772
physics@niu.edu