Before any scientific question can be answered, it must be dreamed up. What happens to cause a healthy cell or tissue to change, for instance, isn’t fully understood. While much is known about chemical exposures that can lead to genetic mutation, damaged DNA, inflammation and even cancer, what has rarely been asked is how physical stressors in the environment can cause a cell or tissue to respond and adapt. It’s a piece of the puzzle upon which future medical breakthroughs might depend.

Homeostasis refers to a state of equilibrium; at the cellular and tissue level, any changes in environment will spur a response that balances or accommodates it. “Mostly people think of chemical changes, exposure to drugs, for instance,” says Schwarz, principal investigator on the project. “Here we ask, what if you squeeze a cell—or a group of cells or tissue—mechanically? Can it still carry out its functions? Maybe not. Maybe it needs to adapt.”

�����Ի� , both professors in the �����Ի� members of the��, have been awarded a four-year National Science Foundation grant from Physics of Living Systems, for a project titled “.”

From left, Alison Patteson and Jennifer Schwarz

As co-principal investigator Patteson notes, describing the idea this way is a new use of scientific language. “As physicists, we are proposing this idea that there is a mechanical version of homeostasis,” she says. “We have proposed a framework for that.”

Drawing upon previous collaborations that have examined specific scales (such as chromatin molecules, individual cell motion, and collective cell migration through collagen networks), the investigators will work to build a multiscale model to capture how chromatin remodels from physical stressors at the cell- and tissue-level. They will conduct experiments involving mechanical compression, and working with the��, observe detailed microscopic images of the cells in action.

3D reconstruction of a collection of cells, called a cell spheroid, with individual nuclei in yellow. This is an example of a detailed microscopic image used to study cell motility. (Photo credit: Minh Thanh of the Patteson Lab and Blatt BioImaging Center)

The Alfred P. Sloan Foundation, a private, nonprofit grantmaking organization, started its to begin to answer some of them. The program’s stated goal is “To sharpen our scientific understanding of the physical principles and mechanisms that distinguish living systems from inanimate matter, and to explore the conditions under which physical principles and mechanisms guide the complexification of matter towards life.”

To that end, the program awarded (left) and (right), professors in the in the and members of the BioInspired Institute, a three-year grant to explore what they’ve described as a fundamental unanswered question about the functionality of cells and the energy and entropy landscape of cell interiors.

Jennifer Ross (left) and Jennifer Schwarz, professors in the Department of Physics, received a three-year grant from the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation’s Matter to Life program.

“There is a lack of quantitative understanding of the principles governing the non-equilibrium control knobs inside the cell,” Ross and Schwarz explained in their proposal. “Without this knowledge, we will never understand how cells work, or how we can replicate them in synthetic materials systems.”

They’ve chosen to focus their work on one very particular aspect of the biology of cells, the concentrations of protein molecules within them known as protein condensates, and specifically their liquid-liquid phase separation, which they describe as the “killer app” for the sculpting of energy and entropy in the cell.

“Liquid-liquid phase separation is when two liquids separate, like oil and water,” Ross says. “The proteins separate out [into droplets] and make what we think of as membrane-less organelles. We’re interested in how both energy-using systems and entropy-controlling systems can help to shape those organelles.”

They’re hoping to gain an understanding of how cells self-organize without a “manager”—in this case, a membrane to act as a physical containment system—as well as how they react and adapt to their environment.

“This droplet formation is so sensitive to temperature and its surroundings,” says Schwarz. “The cell knows, ‘A ha!’ The temperature is increasing, so the environment is slightly different. So…I’m going to adapt.”

Ross is serving as principal investigator, and with graduate student assistance, will be performing reconstitution experiments to explore these processes, while co-principal investigator Schwarz and her team will be delving into the theoretical side of the science using predictive simulations. The three-year grant will also fund a paid undergraduate and two local high school students through summer programs.

The hope is that a better understanding of cell behavior at this level could ultimately lead to breakthroughs in the development of smart synthetic materials. “Imagine a road-paving material that could identify when a pothole develops and heal itself,” Ross says.

It’s just one example of countless possibilities for learning from biological systems.

Story by Laura Wallis

The 2024 cohort of Syracuse-area high school students who took part in the Syracuse University Physics Emerging Research Technologies Summer High School Internship Program.

Thanks to a new National Science Foundation grant, Syracuse University’s physics department doubles the number of Syracuse-area high school participants in their paid summer internship program.

STEM jobs are quickly becoming the backbone of America. By 2031, STEM occupations are��, while non-STEM occupations will grow at about half that rate at 4.9%. Therefore, it’s essential for today’s students to gain a solid foundation in math, science and engineering subjects. Syracuse is about to see its own boom in STEM jobs, as the arrival of the Micron chip manufacturing facility will include 9,000 high-paying positions at the Central New York campus.

Federal funding organizations like the National Science Foundation (NSF) have acknowledged this workforce shift and are seeding and supporting initiatives aimed at growing a diverse STEM workforce. Since 2022, the Department of Physics has hosted one such program, bringing in Syracuse-area high school students to participate in a paid research internship. In support of that program, the NSF recently pledged nearly $1 million to Syracuse University through their Experiential Learning for Emerging and Novel Technologies (ExLENT) campaign, which will fund the physics internship over three years.

Ruell Branch

Originally known as Syracuse University Research in Physics (SURPh) during its first two summers in 2022 and 2023, the program seeks to create STEM career pathways for historically excluded groups by involving them in authentic research experiences and providing mentoring and peer networks. SURPh was the brainchild of former physics student Ruell Branch ’24, who pitched the idea to his professors as a way to strengthen the University’s connection with the local community and inspire local students to pursue STEM.

“I wanted Syracuse high school students who have interests in physics to see what it’s like to work as a paid scientist,” says Branch, who graduated from the Syracuse City School District. “I think it’s extremely important for students to get experience conducting research in an actual science lab.”

Expanding the Program

With the help of physics professor��, Henninger High School science teacher Melanie Pelcher, and fellow Syracuse alum and Henninger High School graduate Devon Lamanna ’23, G’24, SURPh was born. Now, thanks to the NSF funding awarded to Ross and fellow physics professor and department chair , the summer program will be funded through the summer of 2026.

“The new NSF support is a game-changer,” says Soderberg. “It signifies to the students who participate that not only those of us in the SU physics department and Syracuse city schools, but also policymakers in the federal government, see value in helping them get excited about STEM disciplines and see the potential for them as future professionals who will someday help drive innovation and discovery.”

The three-year grant, totaling nearly $1 million, allowed the program to grow from 12 students in 2023 to 24 in 2024 and brought in additional faculty mentors. SURPh was made possible in past years thanks to funding from the John Ben Snow Foundation and internal support from the Engaged Humanities Network and the physics department.

“This program could not have achieved NSF funding without these other sources to prop us up,” says Ross.

Now called the Syracuse University Physics Emerging Research Technologies Summer High School Internship Program (SUPER-Tech SHIP), the program just wrapped its summer session with a closing ceremony and poster session.��Through SUPER-Tech SHIP, students were exposed to skills and concepts related to computational physics, biophysics and particle physics during the six-week program.

Read the full story on the��.

Eduardo Kac

, an internationally recognized contemporary artist and poet, will speak on��, at 4:30 p.m. in the Life Sciences Complex atrium. His talk, “Rockets for the Sake of Poetry,” will feature highlights of his 40-year artistic career, his development of bio art and insights about his space artworks. This year’s lecture is hosted by the and its research focus group.

‘Bio Art’ Developer

Kac uses biotechnology and genetics to create and explore scientific techniques. In the early 1980s he created digital, holographic and online works that anticipated today’s global culture of information that is constantly in flux. In 1997, he coined the term “bio art,” which launched a new art form.

“GFP Bunny,” a rabbit bred to glow a fluorescent color under special lights

Among his famous works are the transgenic rabbit , for which he used and a jellyfish protein to create a live rabbit that glows a fluorescent green color under blue light.��In “,” he combined his own��DNA with that of a petunia flower to form a new “plantimal.”

“Natural History of the Enigma,” transgenic flower with artist’s own DNA expressed in the red veins

His pieces have been shown around the world and, in one��instance, out of this world: his , “,” was . Kac’s “” was also realized in outer space with assistance from French astronaut Thomas Pesquet.

His career also spans poetry, performance, drawing, printmaking, photography, artist’s books, early digital and online works, holography, telepresence and space art. He is a professor of art and technology at the and a Ph.D. research fellow at the Centre for Advanced Inquiry in Interactive Arts at the University of Wales in Newport, Wales.

BioInspired Focus

As an institute for material and living systems, BioInspired hosts researchers who examine topics in complex biological systems and develop and design programmable smart materials to address global challenges in health, medicine and materials innovation. They include faculty, undergraduate and graduate students, and postdoctoral scholars from life sciences, engineering, physics and chemistry who work in three focus areas: �� and��

Last year, the institute added a fourth focus area, Posthumanities: Arts and Sciences, to push the boundaries of traditional scientific inquiry through activities and collaborations between the arts and humanities and the science-based disciplines.

The Posthumanities’ focus area coleaders, Boryana Rossa, of the College of Visual and Performing Arts, and G. Douglas Barrett, of the S.I. Newhouse School of Public Communications, spearheaded the proposal to invite Kac as the 2024 Wali Lecture keynote. They worked with BioInspired leaders Jay Henderson, institute director; Heidi Hehnly-Chang, associate director, and Jeremy Steinbacher, operations director.

The Wali Lecture represents a partnership of the Department of and the Syracuse University . It is part of the 2024-25 Syracuse Symposium “.”

Kameshwar C. Wali

The lecture was established in 2008 by his daughters to commemorate Wali’s vision and leadership to recognize their parents’ dedication and contributions to the University and the greater community. Wali was the Steele Professor of Physics Emeritus in the College of Arts and Sciences and internationally recognized as a theorist for research on the symmetry properties of fundamental particles and their interactions, as well as for his work as an author. He joined the University in 1969. He previously was at Harvard and Northwestern Universities, the University of Chicago, Ben-Gurion University of the Negev in Israel, Institut des Hautes Études Scientifiques in France and the International Center for Theoretical Physics in Italy. As a fellow of the American Physical Society, whose India Chapter named him Scientist of the Year in 2022, he received Syracuse’s Chancellor’s Citation for exceptional academic achievement and was one of the founding members of the .

His latest role is another opportunity to break new ground, and it’s also a homecoming for the double alumnus.

The OSPO is a multidisciplinary, cross-campus initiative intended to accelerate research and creative work by leveraging the use of open-source software code and adherence to open-source best practices. It is one of only about a dozen such offices operating at U.S. universities, so offers a chance to make high impact in that academic space and enhance the University’s research reputation through information and transparency, Capano says.

Capano earned bachelor’s and doctoral degrees in physics at Syracuse University. (Photo by Jeremy Brinn)

Also a physics research associate professor in the , Capano will continue his research in gravitational-wave astronomy while he directs OSPO, he says.

After earning bachelor’s and doctoral physics degrees at Syracuse, he gained more than a decade of experience in open-source code development and extensive experience in multi-messenger data analysis, statistics and high-performance computing. He has worked as a member of the LIGO (Laser Interferometer Gravitational-Wave Observatory) Scientific Collaboration as a postdoctoral scholar at the University of Maryland and as a high-performance computing facilitator and affiliate physics and math faculty member for the at the University of Massachusetts, Dartmouth.

Perhaps his most distinctive “right place/right time” opportunity came in 2015 at the in Hannover, Germany, the largest research institute in the world specializing in general relativity, where he did postdoctoral research. Serendipitously, he was among the first scientists to observe the first from a long-ago collision of black holes in space. It was a monumental discovery that confirmed part of developed 100 years prior.

Capano, who grew up in the Adirondack town of Corinth, recently discussed plans for OSPO, his current research and what that breakthrough gravitational wave detection moment was like.

What led you back to Syracuse?

I was invited to apply for the OSPO director position and it sounded very interesting. It also presented a great opportunity to be closer to family again and for my daughter to grow up near her grandparents. And the things going on in Syracuse right now—Micron coming in and the Route 81 redevelopment—are exciting. The region is beginning a Renaissance, and the University is on an upswing too. ��I’m excited to be part of the changes and see how the investment and growth plays out. It seems like a once-in-a-century thing.

What has been accomplished at OSPO so far? What’s ahead?

Over the past year, I got the office up and running. Now, I’m promoting open-source culture across the University and encouraging faculty and researchers from all disciplines to make their source code and research data available beyond campus and to the public. That transparency helps instill confidence in their research results and can gain wider recognition for the work.

We’re now developing workshops for faculty, students and staff on coding processes and tools; campuswide seminars and speaker presentations; perhaps a student code hackathon. I’m also working to have open-source code development as part of the standard considered for faculty promotions.

How did you become interested in physics research? What drew you to astrophysics and gravitational wave research?

My dad, who had a master’s degree in physics and was an electronics engineer, used to tell me fascinating things about relativity and quantum mechanics, and that piqued my interest.

In my second year of graduate school, I needed to pick a research advisor. I was a teaching assistant for a course on electricity and magnetism, but I wasn’t sure what I wanted to do. It was also ’s first semester as a professor here, and one night we sat together as we graded exams. Duncan [now a world-renowned gravitational wave expert, the University’s vice president of research and Charles Brightman Endowed Professor of Physics] asked if I’d like to do an independent study. I did, and I’ve stayed with it.

I already knew of the gravitational wave group and the idea of doing experimental gravity appealed to me. If it weren’t for the two of us grading exams that night, I might have gone an entirely different route. I’m very glad I didn’t; I have been part of some once-in-a-lifetime experiences.

What do your two National Science Foundation research projects examine?

My research focuses on testing basic principles of gravity and nuclear physics using gravitational waves.

explores Einstein’s theory of relativity by testing it in extreme conditions near black holes using data from the to see whether the waves match Einstein’s predictions or if they reveal unexpected patterns. involves creating a cluster of Apple computers to accelerate the search for gravitational waves using LIGO data. That can help make gravitational wave research less costly, allowing for more ambitious searches, and making it possible for more researchers to contribute to the field.

Capano says his father’s interesting stories about relativity and quantum mechanics helped develop his interest in the field of physics. (Photo by Jeremy Brinn)

What was it like at the front line of the first gravitational wave detection—one of the greatest physics discoveries of all time?

I was at , which was affiliated with LIGO and worked closely with the Syracuse gravitational wave analysis group. On that day a couple of colleagues in the office next to mine got an automated alert about a detection of the in space. They excitedly banged on my wall; I came over and they showed me a plot of the data that showed the characteristic “chirp” signal.

We were some of the , and the moment was surreal. My first reaction, and that for many others, was that it was a mistake. The lab could simulate those signals and did so regularly to test the infrastructure. When the control room confirmed that they hadn’t done a test, that’s when the reality sank in. The whole thing was a whirlwind! As co-chair of the LIGO subgroup devoted to exactly that type of signal, I was later in charge of compiling the data analysis on the event.

[Capano was one of 1,000 LIGO-affiliated scientists whose contributions were recognized for detection of the waves, earning them the and the . In 2017, three LIGO scientists were awarded the Nobel Prize for Physics for the discovery.]

What next for gravitational wave research?

It’s a very bright and exciting future. Syracuse is a big part of it. We are laying the groundwork to build the next-generation detector, Cosmic Explorer, that will be able to detect every black hole merger occurring in the universe.

Pushing the frontiers of physics can lead to new, practical things in life—like how the discoveries surrounding magnetism and electricity affected the entire modern world. My hope is that future discoveries about gravitational waves will do the same and that over the next 20 years, we’ll uncover new fundamental findings about the universe.

, professor of physics in the , was recently awarded a grant from NASA for his project entitled, “Extragalactic Outbursts and Repeating Nuclear Flares From Tidal Disruption Events.” The three-year, $346,000 award will support his research on tidal disruption events (TDEs)­—one of the cosmos’ most extreme occurrences where a star is completely or partially destroyed by the gravitational field of a supermassive black hole (SMBH).

Eric Coughlin

By examining the formation of accretion flares—the very hot, bright shredded stellar material that falls into the black hole during a TDE— astrophysicists can gain novel insights about the evolution of SMBHs, including such demographics as their mass and spin distributions. With improvements in technology like NASA’s NICER telescope, scientists have been able to detect more TDEs than ever. While these telescopes allow scientists to make direct observations of TDEs, theoretical models are necessary to relate observations to the physical properties of the disrupted star (e.g., its mass) and the disrupting black hole (e.g., its mass).

With this grant, Coughlin will work to advance TDE theory and modeling, so they are accurate and in agreement with observations. Specifically, he will numerically simulate TDEs of individual stars to generate a repository of accretion rates, which can then be used to compare to observations and infer the physical properties of black holes.

An artist’s concept of a tidal disruption event that happens when a star passes fatally close to a supermassive black hole, which reacts by launching a relativistic jet. (Credit: NRAO/AUI/NSF/NASA)

Part of the project will also be dedicated to understanding the production of repeating partial TDEs. A partial TDE occurs when a star is stripped of some of its mass by a SMBH but is not completely destroyed, while a repeating partial TDE is one in which the star orbits the black hole (similar to the Earth orbiting the Sun) and is stripped of mass—and fuels an electromagnetic outburst—once per orbit.

Coughlin notes that this aspect of his research shows specific promise for measuring quantities that normal tidal disruption events cannot. For example, in a TDE, there is an amount of time that passes after the star is partially disrupted and when accretion begins, known as the fallback time, and this period is “dark”, meaning no observable emission is produced before debris rains down onto the black hole. TDEs that generate only one accretion flare cannot be used to measure this timescale.

Repeating partial TDEs, on the other hand, enables a direct detection of the fallback time through the electromagnetic disturbances that arise as the star orbits the SMBH. The fallback time can also be reliably measured from simulations, but its value changes as a function of the star’s and the black hole’s mass, meaning that repeating partial TDEs provide a unique test of the theoretical understanding of strong tides and probe the properties of black holes (and stars in distant galaxies).

“Our goal is to develop an enhanced understanding of the variability in the accretion rates onto black holes that can be generated by tidal disruption events, ultimately to better inform our physical modeling of observations,” says Coughlin. “Our results will support the mission of NASA’s Physics of the Cosmos program: to understand the behavior of matter in extreme environments and the evolution of the Universe.”

This is the second NASA grant currently held by Coughlin, with his other entitled, “Continued Swift Monitoring of Repeating Stellar Tidal Disruption Events: Towards a Legacy Dataset.” This proposal uses data from the Neil Gehrels Swift Observatory (an optical-UV+X-ray telescope) to probe the properties of repeating partial TDEs. His research is also funded by a $330,000 National Science Foundation grant for a project entitled, “Understanding the long-term evolution of tidal disruption events.”

Syracuse City School District students work on an experiment

The initiative, Syracuse University Physics Emerging Research Technologies Summer High School Internship Program (SUPER-Tech SHIP), is a partnership between the Department of Physics in the College of Arts and Sciences and the Syracuse City School District (SCSD). , professor and chair of physics, is principal investigator. The co-principal investigator is , professor and associate chair of physics.

“This program will allow us to really increase the impact we can have on both the local community of high school students who might be interested in future STEM careers, and also on our Syracuse University undergraduate and graduate students who work alongside them and use the experience to develop as mentors, teachers and scientists,” Soderberg says.

Jennifer Ross

Through SUPER-Tech SHIP, student interns will be exposed to skills and concepts related to quantum information, semiconductors and biotechnology during a six-week program. It’s based on a run by the physics department during the summers of 2022 and 2023. That program, Syracuse University Research in Physics (SURPh), engaged SCSD students and recent graduates in six-week, paid internships, during which they worked alongside faculty researchers in physics labs and classrooms. Ross developed it after then-student Ruell Branch ’24 told her that his former classmates at SCSD’s Henninger High School would love to experience hands-on learning in the University’s physics lab.

“I am very invested in exposing people to the positives of physics and science—especially people who have been historically excluded from the field due to cultural stereotypes,” Ross says. “I want people to have opportunities, and this program is a way to give people opportunities to learn about other career paths.”

SUPER-Tech SHIP, like SURPh, seeks to create STEM career pathways for historically excluded groups by involving them in authentic research experiences and providing mentoring and peer networks. The SCSD student body is 48% Black, 15% Latino and 1% Indigenous; 85% of students are economically disadvantaged. To recruit students to the program, physics faculty members will visit SCSD classrooms to promote participation. Applications will be evaluated based on a student’s persistence and grit, rather than science experience.

Mitchell Soderberg

Following an orientation “boot camp,” interns will work in pairs on long-term research projects in the labs. Ross says interns may work on biotechnology in biophysics labs, looking at the mechanical nature of bacteria; particle detection, using semiconductor technology and novel detection schemes; or astrophysics, working to understand how black holes collide and tear apart stars.

Past participants in the SURPh project will return to serve as peer mentors and participate in research with current interns. The interns will also benefit from seminars on science topics, professional development workshops, lunch-and-learns with speakers from the University and the industry and weekly activities to introduce them to different areas of campus. The six weeks will conclude with a poster session and a celebration event attended by the interns’ friends, family members and teachers.

Ross says encouraging the next generation of creative problem-solvers to work in tech is essential in order for the U.S. to remain competitive in the high-tech industry, and that “creativity requires diversity in thought and that often comes from diversity in thinkers.”

She also notes the program’s synergy with the impending arrival of Micron Technology in Central New York. “Micron will need many workers for the fabrication and production factory, and the exposure the students will get will help them to understand the fundamental science and the cutting-edge technologies that microchips support,” she says. “It is the right thing to do to develop our local economy by training the folks in our community who have outstanding potential to make the world a better place through high-tech solutions to the world’s problems. Syracuse is the right place for this development to take place.”

“This eclipse will be a beautiful, once-in-a-lifetime event in the sky that will bring us all together,” says Walter Freeman, an associate teaching professor of physics in the College of Arts and Sciences. (Photo by Angela Ryan)

“Introduction to Astronomy” classes always end the same way they began, with Freeman advising his students that, ultimately, “we look at the stars because they are pretty and they illuminate who we are as humanity.”

That humanity will be on full display at 3:23 p.m. on Monday, April 8, when the University campus community and Central New York will experience a total solar eclipse—a naturally occurring phenomenon when a new moon finds itself precisely between the Earth and the sun—creating nearly 90 seconds of pure darkness during the middle of the afternoon.

The philosophy Freeman instills in class varies greatly from when humanity’s first encounters with solar eclipses, when people believed the sun powered their lives, and the events in the sky were closely associated with religion and mythology. Since the timing of the sun, moon and stars’ motions were documented to both keep time and navigate, anything that led to the sun’s disappearance, even for a few seconds, “served as harbingers of doom and gloom, an omen of terror,” says Freeman, an associate teaching professor of physics in the .

Walter Freeman

Freeman uses stargazing and phenomenon like the upcoming solar eclipse to demonstrate to his students how the advancement of astronomy over time teaches us a valuable lesson on “the development of our capabilities as people,” Freeman says. As scientific advances are made, society has come to comprehend the sheer brilliance on display during a total solar eclipse.

“This will be a beautiful, once-in-a-lifetime event in the sky. Science gives us a means to predict and understand eclipses. But beyond that, physics takes a back seat here. The eclipse isn’t a scientific event as much as it is a human event. Everyone will be able to appreciate what happens in a poetic and artistic way. That will be beautiful, and it will bring us all together,” Freeman says.

Campus community members are invited to participate in this rare occasion—the next total solar eclipse in Syracuse isn’t predicted to happen for another 375 years—through a series of on-campus events.

The Department of Physics, in collaboration with the College of Arts and Sciences, is hosting various on the Quad from 1:30-4 p.m. Physics students will lead assorted make-and-take projects and demonstrations across different locations. Telescopes will be available by Carnegie Library, and guided and eclipse-related presentations are being offered in the Stolkin Auditorium. Be sure to visit the for more helpful information.

Additionally, join the Barnes Center at The Arch and Hendricks Chapel on the Quad from 2:30-4 p.m. for an featuring a sound bathing experience and guided meditation, a viewing of the total solar eclipse, and a celebration of Buddha’s birthday ritual with the Buddhist chaplaincy.

Leading up to the eclipse, Freeman spoke with SU News about what makes this total solar eclipse different, where the optimal viewing areas are for experiencing maximum totality and why people should focus on who they’re watching the eclipse with instead of striving for that perfect social media post.

The campus community is invited to participate in a variety of solar eclipse-themed activities on April 8.

It’s been nearly 100 years since the Central New York region experienced a total solar eclipse, but on Monday, April 8, Syracuse University will find itself situated along the for this once-in-a-lifetime event.

Beginning at 3:23 p.m., a new moon will find itself precisely between the Earth and the sun, creating roughly 90 seconds of pure darkness during the middle of the afternoon.

University community members are invited to participate in this rare occasion—the next total solar eclipse in Syracuse isn’t predicted to happen for another 375 years—through a series of on-campus events and celebrations in Syracuse. Students can pick up their solar eclipse glasses through their residence hall.

Special note: All Parking and Transportation vehicles will suspend service on Monday from 3:15-3:30 p.m., after the total eclipse, they will resume their normal service.

College of Arts and Sciences Eclipse Celebration

The Department of Physics, in collaboration with the College of Arts and Sciences, is hosting various on the Shaw Quad from 1:30-4 p.m. Physics students will lead assorted make-and-take projects and demonstrations across different locations. Telescopes will be available by Carnegie Library, and guided and eclipse-related presentations are being offered in the Stolkin Auditorium. Complimentary eclipse glasses and pinhole projectors will be provided while supplies last.

To allow blind members of the campus community a chance to participate in and enjoy our eclipse watch party, has secured a device that turns light into sound. There will be speakers on the Quad to project the sound from the eclipse, and there will be information, provided by the , on how you can make your own device.

Of course, we will all (safely) peer skyward to view the total solar eclipse between 3:23-3:25 p.m. Be sure to visit the for more helpful information.

Solar Eclipse Sound Bathing and Drumming

Join the Barnes Center at The Arch and Hendricks Chapel on the Quad from 2:30-4 p.m. for an , featuring a sound bathing experience and guided meditation, a viewing of the total solar eclipse, and a celebration of Buddha’s birthday ritual with the Buddhist chaplaincy.

David B. Falk College of Sport and Human Dynamics

The Falk College is hosting a viewing party for students, faculty and staff from 3-4 p.m. outside of the Falk Complex, MacNaughton and White halls. Eclipse glasses and snacks will be provided.

College of Law

The College of Law is holding an admitted student event and will be passing out eclipse glasses to members of the College of Law community.

Maxwell School of Citizenship and Public Affairs

The Maxwell School is holding an in the Lincoln Courtyard of Maxwell Hall from 2:50-3:50 p.m. and will provide glasses to attendees.

Solar Eclipse Festival at the MOST

Enjoy tabling activities, food trucks and free eclipse glasses during the Milton J. Rubenstein Museum of Science and Technology’s (MOST) from noon-4 p.m.

Solar Eclipse Spectacular With the Liverpool Public Library

and participate in guided learning activities starting at 2 p.m. at Onondaga Lake Park. Free eclipse glasses will be provided while supplies last.

Solar Party on Solar Street

on Solar Street of the Syracuse Inner Harbor from 11 a.m.-6 p.m. There will be food trucks, live music and free eclipse glasses.

As vice president for research, supports and empowers Syracuse’s internationally recognized creative and scholarly excellence, advancing centers and institutes that are global leaders in their fields.

In this role, Brown helps faculty and students pursue research and creative activities across the natural sciences, humanities, engineering, education, arts, social sciences and law fields. Brown also leads the and its component units, which serve as the backbone of the University’s research, scholarship and creative support enterprise. Collectively, these efforts help students and faculty expand their knowledge through innovation, creativity and discovery.

Duncan Brown, vice president for research.

Brown, who is in his second year as vice president for research, has been a physics faculty member since 2007 and is an accomplished physics researcher, recognized as an international leader in gravitational-wave astronomy and astrophysics before taking on this latest position.

“The main vision is to empower and amplify and tell the stories of the amazing research that’s happening here and the amazing creative activities that our faculty are pursuing. Faculty really want to do research and creative activities, and they want to engage our students and our students want to be part of this,” says Brown, who also serves as the in the .

On this “’Cuse Conversation,” Brown elaborates on his vision for the research enterprise at Syracuse University, explains what makes Syracuse a premier research institution, examines the impact of the research being done by faculty and students and reveals where his passion for research came from.

Check out podcast featuring Brown. A transcript [PDF]��is also available.

Vice President for Research Duncan Brown supports and empowers the University’s internationally recognized creative and scholarly excellence, advancing centers and institutes that are global leaders in their fields.

Jennifer Schwarz

, professor of physics in the College of Arts and Sciences, has been named a Fellow of the American Physical Society (APS). She joins�� to receive the distinction over the 100 years that the award has existed. The fellowship recognizes members who have made advances in physics through original research and publication or who have made significant contributions in the application of physics to science and technology.

The APS honors each of the Fellows with a dedicated citation for their work. Schwarz’s reads:��“For influential contributions to the statistical physics of disordered systems, particularly in the development of models concerning correlated percolation, as well as models related to rigidity transitions in both living and nonliving matter.”

Schwarz is a trailblazer in her research, an inspirational teacher and mentor, and a leader in her commitment to diversity, equity and inclusion. A professor of physics at Syracuse since 2005 and a member of the��, her research examines rigidity and shape transitions in living and nonliving matter as well as the emergent properties of learning in physical networks to make apt comparisons with the more established neural networks. By advancing knowledge of the morphology and mechanics in what is known as disordered systems, this work has implications ranging from understanding how the structure of human-derived brain organoids differs from the structure of chimpanzee-derived brain organoids to how cancer cells move throughout the body to predicting when avalanches in a frictional granular packing will occur.

To date, Schwarz’s body of work includes more than 70 publications/pre-prints and she has served as principal investigator (PI) or co-PI on federally funded grants totaling more than $3 million. She was among a team of researchers awarded an�� in 2021 to explore the use of anti-vimentin antibodies to block cellular uptake of the coronavirus. She was also awarded an Isaac Newton Award for Transformative Ideas During the COVID-19 pandemic from the Department of Defense in 2020 to build multiscale computational models for brain organoids early on in development.

As a longstanding advocate for diversity and inclusion in STEM, Schwarz led an initiative in 2022 establishing Syracuse University as a partnership institution of the��. This effort aims to increase the number of physics Ph.D.s awarded to students from traditionally underrepresented groups by creating sustainable transition programs and providing students with research experience, advanced coursework and coaching to prepare them for a graduate school application.

, professor and current department chair of physics, who was named an APS Fellow in 2018, says: “Jen Schwarz is the most collaborative member of the department, having worked with almost the entire soft matter and biophysics group. She is also highly creative and versatile in the theoretical and simulation techniques she applies to problems. Indeed, I feel it is not an overstatement to say she is a genius working on varied topics such as brain form and function, active matter, cells and tissues, and sand piles! In addition to her outstanding research contributions, Jen has also been a leader advocating for social justice and equity in the physics department.”

Along with Schwarz, other recent APS Fellows from Syracuse include Stefan Ballmer, professor of physics (2021), Lisa Manning, William R. Kenan, Jr. Professor of Physics (2019) and Christian Santangelo, professor of physics (2019).

Learn more about this year’s class of��.

University researchers received over $1.5M in NSF funding to study gravitational waves and design next-generation observatories. (NSF LIGO; Sonoma State University; A. Simonnet)

Billions of years ago in a distant galaxy, two black holes collided sparking one of the universe’s most extreme cosmic events. The occurrence was so powerful that it bent the fabric of spacetime, sending out ripples called gravitational waves.

These waves would eventually be detected on Earth by Advanced Laser Interferometer Gravitational-Wave Observatory (LIGO) detectors, with Syracuse University faculty playing a leading role in that monumental discovery. While members of the University’s Gravitational-Wave Group took a moment to celebrate the incredible feat, they immediately began wondering how they could build a new observatory that would allow them to explore even more of the Universe with gravitational waves.

Enter Cosmic Explorer, a next-generation gravitational-wave observatory being devised by the Syracuse University��Center for Gravitational Wave Astronomy and Astrophysics (CGWAA). Established this fall, CGWAA is a hub for students and faculty at the University to play a principal role in the design and operation of gravitational-wave observatories. Working with scientists from Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Pennsylvania State University, California State University, Fullerton, and the University of Florida, the CGWAA team hopes that Cosmic Explorer will be searching the universe by the mid-2030s.

Artist’s impression of Cosmic Explorer. (Eddie Anaya, California State University Fullerton)

To put the capability of Cosmic Explorer in perspective, while Advanced LIGO has made around 100 detections of colliding black holes since 2015, Cosmic Explorer will be able to detect every collision in the visible universe–about 100,000 per year, or one every five minutes. Cosmic Explorer will also see around one million neutron star mergers each year, allowing scientists to understand the nature of nuclear matter and the creation of heavy elements.

Gravitational wave detectors, like Cosmic Explorer, are large-scale interferometers. Interferometry is an extremely sensitive measurement technique that uses mirrors, laser beams and interference (the adding or canceling of combined beams) to measure the displacement of a mirror caused by the ripples from gravitational waves. The advanced detectors help researchers map black holes in the universe, something not previously possible with telescopes since, unlike stars, black holes do not produce light.

Physicists from Syracuse University, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Pennsylvania State University, California State University, Fullerton, and University of Florida during a proposal-writing workshop at Syracuse University’s Minnowbrook Conference Center.

In October 2022, Cosmic Explorer project collaborators came together for a proposal-writing workshop at Syracuse University’s Minnowbrook Conference Center, resulting in over $9M of federal funding to the project. Syracuse University is receiving $1.64M of funding over the next three years as part of that NSF commitment.

Syracuse University’s College of Arts and Sciences (A&S) continues to be at the forefront of astrophysics research with the opening of the�� (CGWAA). The center will create a hub for students and faculty to participate in gravitational-wave astronomy, including the design of , the next-generation observatory. The CGWAA will develop new technologies in quantum optics and precision measurement to build new detectors, advance knowledge of the universe through linking gravitational wave and electromagnetic observations and educate the next generation of scientists who will use gravitational-wave observations to explore supernovae, neutron stars and black holes.

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“I am thrilled that we are launching the Center for Gravitational Wave Astronomy and Astrophysics,” says A&S Dean Behzad Mortazavi. “A&S is already a part of history with the role our researchers played in the breakthrough discovery of gravitational waves in 2015, garnering worldwide acclaim. Now as we establish the Center, Syracuse researchers will continue working with partners around the globe to expand the collective knowledge of the nature of matter and the origins of our Universe.”

Stefan Ballmer, an expert in the design and construction of gravitational-wave observatories, will serve as the inaugural director of the center. Ballmer and Duncan Brown, vice president for research at Syracuse University, were an integral part of the team that made the first detection of gravitational waves in 2015.

“Syracuse has been at the forefront of gravitational-wave astronomy since the beginning of the field,” says Brown. “Syracuse had the first LIGO [Laser Interferometer Gravitational-Wave Observatory] research group in the U.S. outside the LIGO Laboratory. Peter Saulson, Pomerantz Professor of Physics Emeritus, started the experimental group and made foundational contributions to the design and construction of LIGO. Peter served for four years as the spokesperson at of the LIGO Scientific Collaboration and he recruited both Stefan and me to Syracuse. Under Peter’s leadership, our students were part of the team during the first discoveries and Syracuse continues to advance the field.”

There are three new A&S faculty hires joining Ballmer and Brown, making the CGWAA one of the largest groups in experimental gravitational-wave physics in the United States: Georgia Mansell, assistant professor and an expert in quantum optics, Craig Cahillane, assistant professor and expert in high-power lasers, and Alexander Nitz G’15, associate professor and expert in using gravitational waves to understand their astrophysical sources. Eric Coughlin, an assistant professor who joined A&S in 2021, brings expertise in the way that sources of gravitational waves can also generate light observable with ground and space telescopes. Also joining the Center is Steve Penn, associate professor of physics at Hobart and William Smith Colleges, an expert on the optical coatings needed for future observatories. And finally, with the search for suitable sites for the next-generation observatory Cosmic Explorer becoming a priority, two faculty members of the Syracuse University Department of Earth and Environmental Sciences have also joined the Center: Joshua Russell, assistant professor of seismology, and Christopher Scholz, professor of paleolimnology and rift basin evolution.

Read More on National Science Foundation Grants Funding Researchers’ Work With Cosmic Explorer.

Syracuse University has a long history in physics with a direct lineage to Albert Einstein himself, going back to when it became a research university after World War II. Several star physicists were hired, including Peter Bergmann, who had worked with Einstein as a research assistant on both the unified field theory and relativity prior to A&S as a professor. Syracuse was one of the first universities in the country to study the general theory of relativity and try to reconcile it with quantum theory. Bergmann’s student, Joshua Goldberg G’50, ’52 Ph.D., who taught at Syracuse for over 50 years, became an expert on Einstein’s theory and helped bring some of the world’s greatest physicists to the University, including Sir Roger Penrose, winner of the 2020 Nobel Prize in Physics. He was also instrumental in starting the first serious experimental efforts to directly observe gravitational waves.

When the experimental efforts became concrete with the National Science Foundation’s LIGO project, Syracuse was the first university outside the LIGO laboratory to invest in the field, and hired Saulson, Martin A. Pomerantz ’37 Professor of Physics. Before moving to Syracuse University Saulson had been part of the LIGO team at MIT, and was the first person to realize that binary neutron stars could become LIGO’s standard sources. He went on to hire Brown and Ballmer, setting the seeds for today’s center.

“With the breakthrough discoveries of Advanced LIGO our field has transitioned from a cutting-edge fundamental physics experiment to an observation phase,” says Stefan Ballmer. “Today, Advanced LIGO observes gravitational waves from a black hole merger about every third day. But as exciting as this is, it pales in comparison to what the next-generation detectors of Cosmic Explorer promise: new observations every few minutes, with a reach to the earliest stages of the universe. Cosmic Explorer will be able to observe black holes merging in the most distant galaxies that even the James Webb Telescope can barely reveal as a red smudge. Gravitational-wave observations have truly become the new frontier in astrophysics.”

Heading up the CGWAA as the first director, Ballmer has been at Syracuse since 2010. Leading up to his contributions to LIGO’s Nobel Prize-winning work, he received an NSF CAREER Award in 2013 to support detector technology in the era of gravitational wave astrophysics. He was named a  (APS) in 2021 for his critical role in the design and commissioning of the Advanced LIGO detectors and the scientific interpretation of their observations, leadership in the development of third-generation gravitational-wave detectors and mentoring of the next generation of gravitational-wave experimenters. A native of Switzerland, Ballmer has held a visiting associate professor position at the University of Tokyo; a postdoctoral fellowship at the National Astronomical Observatory of Japan; and a Robert A. Millikan Fellowship at Caltech. He earned a Ph.D. from MIT.

“Syracuse physics has gravity in our blood. The essential, but theoretical, contributions from Bergmann and Goldberg were actualized with the first gravitational waves detections, and we have moved from a theory on the chalkboard to an actualized experimental phenomenon,” says Jennifer Ross, professor and chair of the physics department. “With the creation of the Center and the group’s recent funding to design the Cosmic Explorer detector, Syracuse Physics will continue with its tradition of high impacts that will explore the inner workings of the cosmos.”

The center will open on Friday, Oct. 13, with a slate of programming from 1-4:30 p.m., in the Heroy Auditorium and in room 202 of the Physics Building. The event, open to the public, will include a scientific program, the center launch and a reception. �����Ի� distinguished speakers will join from Princeton University, Harvard University and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT):

“Open Questions on the Dynamics of Black Holes”
, Professor of Physics, Princeton University

“All That Glitters Is Gold: Gravitational Waves, Light, and the Origin of the Heavy Elements”
, Professor of Astronomy, Harvard University

“Keynote address – Gravitational Waves: A New Window into the Universe”
, Dean of the School of Science, MIT, and Professor of Physics.

For all of the information about the opening of CGWAA, including time and location, visit the .

Henderson has served as associate director of BioInspired for the past three years, working in conjunction with founding director , the William R. Kenan Jr. Professor of Physics in the College of Arts and Sciences. Henderson assumed the director role July 1.

Brown also announced that , Renée Crown Professor in the Sciences and Mathematics and associate professor of biology at the has been appointed to succeed Henderson as associate director of the Institute.

New BioInspired Institute leaders Jay Henderson and Heidi Hehnly

BioInspired is an interdisciplinary research institute whose members examine complex biological systems, developing and designing programmable smart materials to address global challenges in health, medicine and materials innovation. The Institute supports researchers from life sciences, engineering, physics and chemistry disciplines who work on complex biological systems focused on ,�������Ի���.

BioInspired projects have included collaborations with the SUNY College of Environmental Science and Forestry, SUNY Upstate Medical University and other educational institutions and industry partners. Syracuse University is completing a substantial renovation of laboratory space in the Center for Science and Technology that will provide physical space for new and existing collaborations.

“Syracuse University is enthusiastic to support the BioInspired Institute’s faculty, its world-class research projects and the new initiatives and opportunities that will flourish under Jay Henderson’s leadership. We are also very pleased to have a researcher of Heidi Hehnly’s acclaim join with him to help lead the Institute,” Brown says. “We are also extremely grateful to founding director Lisa Manning for her innovative and tenacious leadership in launching BioInspired efforts and maintaining robust research activity for faculty and students despite the challenges of the COVID-19 years.”

Jay Henderson has been named director of the BioInspired Institute. (Photo by Alex Dunbar)

Henderson joined Syracuse University in 2008 as a member of the Syracuse Biomaterials Institute. He has been a member of the BioInspired Institute’s executive committee since 2019. He holds a courtesy appointment as an associate professor in the College of Arts and Sciences’ Department of Biology and as an affiliate at the Syracuse VA Medical Center. He has been part of the University’s Aging Studies Institute since 2014. For several years he directed the graduate program in bioengineering and has been a member of SUNY Upstate Medical University’s Cancer Research Institute since 2010. His research group uses imaging, cell biomechanics, mechanobiology and computational tools to develop and apply functional pe-memory materials to mechanical and bio-mechanical cell and tissue function and repair.

Heidi Hehnly is the new associate director of the BioInspired Institute. (Photo by Marilyn Hesler)

Hehnly came to Syracuse University from SUNY Upstate Medical University in 2018 as an assistant professor of biology. She was promoted to associate professor in 2021 and was named one of two inaugural Renée Crown honors professors in fall 2022. Her research specializes in the mechanics of cellular division and how and when cells in the body choose to divide.

Brown says Manning has guided BioInspired “from its earliest stages to its current incredible level of nationally and internationally acclaimed scholarship and achievements. The Institute has become one of the University’s most successful and prolific research institutes and is a prime example of the value and promise of interdisciplinary, co-located labs and researchers.”

“I am very grateful for Lisa Manning’s support in aiding my transition to this position,” Henderson says. “Her expertise as an individual scientist and as a leader at BioInspired has helped establish one of the most successful research institutes on campus. I look forward to ensuring that investment in material and living systems through BioInspired continues to distinguish Syracuse University as a leading research institution.”

Hehnly says she “is honored to be offered the opportunity to help lead the BioInspired Institute. The Institute has been a great asset to the scientific community at Syracuse University in promoting research and education. As associate director, I aim to expand upon the good work that has already been done with the hope of creating more opportunities for scientific research to flourish here.”

M. Lisa Manning, BioInspired Institute founding director

“I was honored to serve as the founding director of the BioInspired Institute and help to launch��innovative interdisciplinary programs over the past five years,” Manning says. “I am really looking forward to seeing the Institute continue to grow and excel under the outstanding leadership of Professors Henderson and Hehnly.”

New Initiatives, New Spaces

Henderson says future initiatives include creating new lab spaces uniquely designed to enhance collaborative research by co-locating faculty from different departments and colleges. He also plans to work with the to establish a new model for core research facilities on campus and with nearby institutions.��Henderson also wants to pilot a new undergraduate program supporting underserved groups in STEM activities, research and education.

“The collaborative programs and labs from which this institute has been built have always provided a fantastic environment for training. These new endeavors will strengthen the University’s ability to offer undergraduate and graduate students and postdoctoral trainees a world-class, uniquely collaborative environment to pursue science interests in a way that isn’t possible at many places,” he says.

Key Achievements

Key Institute achievements of the last several years include bringing in more than $40 million in sponsored research, researchers receiving more than 45 patents and faculty having 650-plus peer-reviewed articles published in top journals.

Researchers have been named to journal editorial boards and as guest editors and have been awarded numerous prestigious grants and fellowships, including 10 National Science Foundation Early Career awards and Sloan Fellowships. Faculty have also been recognized for teaching excellence at departmental, university, and external levels and have been named to advisory boards of established and startup companies such as Ichor Therapeutics, Xeragenx, Balchem Corp. and the Central New York Research Corporation.

Stemming from intense astrophysical events like exploding stars, neutrinos are notoriously tricky to pin down and detect since they rarely interact with other particles.

Neutrinos can come from many sources, but Benevides Rodrigues studies the ones that come out of nuclear reactions and those that are made in particle accelerators.

Whenever a neutrino is formed, it comes in three different types: electron, muon and tau (this is where the vanilla, chocolate and strawberry analogy comes into play). But unlike those ice cream flavors, which exist in one primary flavor, neutrinos can change as they travel through space.

Starting with an internship with Fermilab, the country’s renowned particle physics and accelerator laboratory in Batavia, Illinois, Benevides Rodrigues’ research has concentrated on studying how neutrinos interact and why they change from one state as they travel.

After successfully defending her physics dissertation, Benevides Rodrigues, a Ph.D. candidate in in the , has been selected as marshal for Syracuse University’s 2023 Commencement.

Ohana Benevides Rodrigues G’22

“It is such an honor to be recognized,” Benevides Rodrigues says. “It’s special because I do physics in an unconventional way. Most physicists are very mathematically driven and always start with formulas and equations. I start with the opposite end. I have to think about what is going on in a given system and only then I put together the formula in a kind of intuitive way.”

The Universitywide honor recognizes outstanding academic achievement, inspired research, campus and community involvement and��Orange spirit and pride. Benevides Rodrigues will lead the graduate student procession and walk the stage during Commencement.

“The Graduate School congratulates Ohana on her excellent academic achievements and innovative, distinctive research. She has been a dedicated, hardworking doctoral student and accomplished scholar. We look forward to her representation of the Graduate School at Commencement and wish her all the best in her future career path,” says .

Currently a postdoctoral senior research associate at the Illinois Institute of Technology, Benevides Rodrigues plans on pursuing a permanent position in the field of reactor neutrinos and MeV-scale neutrino physics.

Benevides Rodrigues currently works on three different experiments. One is located near a research reactor at Oak Ridge National Laboratory in Oak Ridge, Tennessee, observing and studying how the neutrinos coming out of the high flux isotope reactor change when arriving at the facility’s detector. She’s also involved in a project called Mobile Anti-Neutrino Demonstrator, developing a detector that could be used as an extra tool for nuclear safeguards and surveillance. Lastly, she uses the MicroBooNE detector at Fermilab to search for MeV-scale neutrinos coming from the neutrinos at the main injector beam.

“When I was growing up, my dad was a lawyer who eventually became a judge. I always wanted to follow my dad’s footsteps, so I wanted to go to law school and become a prosecutor. I always had a sense of justice and I think I still have that sense of justice. I consider myself an activist in many ways, including the research I’m currently doing,” Benevides Rodrigues says.

Ohana Benevides Rodrigues G’22 prepares the anode plane assembly, a major component of the short-baseline near detector, for installation at Fermilab.

It’s a career path that got off to an inauspicious start. Growing up in Petropolis, a city in Brazil north of Rio de Janeiro, Benevides Rodrigues initially struggled with math since her school didn’t have a math teacher. Eventually, a high school physics teacher helped her realize her potential.

While her math skills weren’t on the same level as her classmates, Benevides Rodrigues enjoyed an advantage over her peers: Rather than memorizing formulas and equations and relying on math to solve problems, Benevides Rodrigues employed a more intuitive approach to physics.

“I love thinking about physics that way, of looking at systems and trying to figure out what was going on there by observing and looking out for patterns and behaviors. Eventually I understood I could use math to describe those patterns and behaviors, but that’s not the only way you can think of physics,” Benevides Rodrigues says.

After earning a bachelor’s degree in physics from the State University of Campinas in Brazil, Benevides Rodrigues was drawn to Syracuse University for her doctoral degree. She credits her advisors, especially , her graduate school advisor, and , associate teaching professor of physics, for inspiring and motivating her to press forward with her research.

“I was lucky to have great mentors around me that supported me through my failures,” Benevides Rodrigues says. “I’m a people-driven person who connects with people and science requires that. Science is a game where we’re supposed to fail all the time. You come up with a hypothesis and you test it. It doesn’t work and you try again. That’s rule 101 of science. You just keep doing it until you get it right, so having people supporting you throughout the failures is essential,” Benevides Rodrigues says.

Col. (Ret.) Frederick Gregory

Gregory will tour campus and meet with student groups, then give a talk in which he will share his experiences in space flight and discuss the future of space exploration. He will also recognize Alexander Metcalf ’22, G’23 and Matt Cufari ’23, two recent University recipients of the Astronaut Scholarship.

The event, sponsored by the (CFSA), will be held from 4-5 p.m. in the K.G. Tan Auditorium in the National Veterans Resource Center at the Daniel and Gayle D’Aniello Building. The event is free and open to the University community and the public. For questions or to request accommodations, email cfsa@syr.edu.

A native of Washington, D.C., Gregory attended the U.S. Air Force Academy, where he received a bachelor’s degree in military engineering. He earned his wings after helicopter school, flew in Vietnam, transitioned to fighter aircraft, attended the Navy Test Pilot School, and then conducted testing as an engineering test pilot for both the Air Force and NASA. He received a master’s degree in information systems from George Washington University.

During his time in the Air Force, Gregory logged approximately 7,000 hours in more than 50 types of aircraft as a helicopter, fighter and test pilot. He flew 550 combat rescue missions in Vietnam.

In 1978, Gregory was chosen by NASA as a member of the first class of Space Shuttle astronauts. He became the first American with African lineage to pilot a spacecraft, the orbiter Challenger, on mission STS-51B. This flight was the second flight for the laboratory developed by the European Space Agency for scientific experiments on the space shuttle.

Gregory was also the first person of African lineage to command any space mission with the launch of STS-33 in 1989 on the orbiter Discovery. He then commanded STS-44 on Atlantis, which in addition to deploying a Department of Defense satellite, DPS 15, also conducted extensive studies to evaluate medical countermeasures to long-duration space flight.

Gregory also assumed the roles of associate administrator for safety and mission assurance and associate administrator for space flight before becoming NASA’s deputy administrator. As the leader of the agency’s human space flight program and as deputy administrator, one of his central goals was to have humans leave low Earth orbit on a journey in which Mars was the first step.

Gregory to Recognize Astronaut Scholars

Alexander Metcalf ’22, G’23

During his visit, Gregory will recognize the most recent Syracuse University recipients of the Astronaut Scholarship awarded by the Astronaut Scholarship Foundation (ASF).

Founded by the Mercury 7 astronauts, the foundation awards scholarships to students in their junior or senior year who are pursuing studies in science, technology, engineering or mathematics and who plan to pursue research or advance their field upon completion of their final degree. Nominees are selected based on their exemplary academic performance, ingenuity and unique aptitude for research. Syracuse is a university partner of the ASF.

Matt Cufari ’23

In addition to funding for educational expenses of up to $15,000, the scholarship includes the opportunity for scholars to represent their institutions and present their research at the Scholar Technical Conference; professional mentoring for one year by scholarship alumni, a C-suite executive or an astronaut; the opportunity to participate in a professional development program and foundation events; and membership in the Astronaut Scholar Honor Society.

The honorees are:

• Alexander Metcalf ’22, G’23, a master’s degree aerospace engineering student in ECS. Metcalf was named a 2021-22 Astronaut Scholar.
• Matt Cufari ’23, a senior physics major in the College of Arts and Sciences, a computer science major in ECS, a Coronat Scholar and a member of the Renée Crown University Honors Program. Cufari was named a 2022-23 Astronaut Scholar.

Tripti Bhattacharya, Thonis Family Professor and a member of the Earth and environmental sciences faculty, and Alison Patteson, assistant professor of physics, have been presented with the prestigious honor.

The fellowships recognize “extraordinary U.S. and Canadian researchers whose creativity, innovation and research accomplishments make them stand out as the next generation of leaders,” according to the . More than 1,000 researchers are nominated each year for 126 Sloan Fellowship slots. Winners receive a two-year, $75,000 fellowship to help advance their research.

’s research focuses on and how cells navigate and respond to the physical features of their environment. Through a five-year from the National Institutes of Health, Patteson and her team are currently investigating how the structural protein vimentin affects cell migration. They are also exploring the properties that control the growth of biofilms, which are slimy clusters of microorganisms, including bacteria and fungi, that can adhere to wet surfaces.

uses evidence from the geological past to understand how rainfall will change in the future as a result of global warming. The Sloan Fellowship will support her work using past instances of climate change as natural experiments to explore the fundamental dynamics that shape the response of rainfall to climate change. Using isotopic analyses of plant biomarkers and climate model experiments, her research team seeks to understand how ocean warming patterns are likely to shape rainfall changes in the future.

“I congratulate Professors Patteson and Bhattacharya on being named Sloan Fellows,” says Arts and Sciences Interim Dean Lois Agnew. “In the five years since they joined the College of Arts and Sciences, they have done incredible work in advancing our understanding of the fields of cellular behavior and paleoclimate dynamics. This distinction is a rightful recognition of their innovation and vision in research and teaching.”

Tripti Bhattacharya uses a gas chromatograph, equipment that quantifies concentrations of leaf waxes in ancient sediments.

Rainfall Studies

The Sloan Fellowship comes at a crucial time for her research team, says Bhattacharya. “We are currently working in settings as diverse as western North America, southern Africa and the tropical Andes, and are hopeful that the results of our studies will provide valuable insights that are directly relevant to understanding changes in extreme drought and extreme flooding in the future.”

Since joining Syracuse University in 2018, Bhattacharya has been awarded over $2 million in research funding. Among many distinctions, she was recognized with the University’s Meredith Teaching Recognition Award in 2021 and has been an invited presenter at the American Geophysical Union Annual meeting in 2019, 2020 and 2022. She also served as one of eight leading climate scholars at a workshop organized by the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering and Medicine.

Cell Migration, Biofilms

“From identifying and developing therapeutic treatments for cancers and infectious diseases to developing a framework to understand what promotes or hinders the growth of biofilm, this fellowship will help our group be at the forefront of these emerging fields,” says Patteson. The Sloan Fellowship will support Patteson’s research in all these areas, creating new knowledge that will lead to new societal impacts.

The fellowship comes on the heels of a 2023 Cottrell Scholar award for Patteson, which was presented by the Research Corporation for Science Advancement. She also has received a National Science Foundation (NSF) Rapid Response Research grant to study cellular uptake of SARS2; an NSF EAGER (Early-Concept Grant for Exploratory Research) award to examine emergent collective behavior of bacteria; and an NSF Collaborative Research grant for her work with biofilms. She has been a faculty member in the Department of Physics since 2018.

Alison Patteson prepares a petri dish as part of her study of biofilms and biophysics. (Photo by Marilyn Hesler)

Leaders of Great Promise

According to the Sloan Foundation, “the fellowships are one of the most prestigious awards available to young researchers, in part because so many past fellows have gone on to become towering figures in science.”

Past recipients include numerous Nobel prize winners and other renowned researchers and scientists. Candidates are nominated by fellow scientists. The winners are selected by independent panels of senior scholars on the basis of research accomplishments, creativity and potential to become a leader in their field. The fellowships are open to scholars in the fields of chemistry, computer science, Earth system science, economics, mathematics, neuroscience and physics.

“Professors Bhattacharya and Patteson are stars in their fields and superb leaders and mentors to their students. Their work in climate science and biophysics is highly regarded and well-recognized,” says University Vice President for Research . “These Sloan fellowships confirm the impact that their research has on the world and shows outstanding promise for future careers. The University and its students are very fortunate that Syracuse is their research and teaching home.”

are presented by the , a 121-year-old foundation that recognizes excellence and innovation in research along with academic leadership skills. Selection introduces scholars to a national network of outstanding scholar-educators and mentors who meet yearly to discuss research, pedagogy and student development.

Pathways to Science Careers

Patteson’s award comes with funding of $100,000 over three years. With the Cottrell award support, Patteson and her team will explore the growth of biofilms, which are slimy clusters of microorganisms including bacteria and fungi that can adhere to wet surfaces.

For the award’s educational component, Patteson will mentor Syracuse City School District high school students by bringing them into labs on campus for a physics department open house and recruiting students to the , a key step on the pathway to STEM careers. She will also develop a new course for undergraduate and graduate students at Syracuse University, Public Engagement in Physics and STEM. The class will help students create their own demonstration materials, disseminate them in a public setting, then self-assess their impact.

Alison Patteson and her research team study biofilm growth and cell migration in the physics department’s PattesonGroup Lab.

Advancing Teaching�����Ի� Research

Three other faculty at Syracuse have earned Cottrell Scholar awards. Duncan Brown, University and was recognized as a Cottrell Scholar in 2010; , director of the University’s and William R. Kenan, Jr. Professor of Physics, was selected in 2015; and , professor and chair of the , received the honor in 2010 while at the University of Massachusetts-Amherst before coming to Syracuse.

“The Cottrell Scholar award reflects Professor Patteson’s outstanding commitment to teaching excellence and research innovation,” says Brown. “Professor Patteson’s dedication to inclusion and excellence in teaching exemplifies how our faculty create outstanding experiential learning for our students while conducting research that bolsters the University’s reputation as top-tier research institution.”

“This is such a well-deserved award for Professor Patteson,” says Manning. “She is a world-renowned researcher plus she cares deeply about teaching well and about broadening the diversity of students in physics through her teaching and outreach efforts. Her work exemplifies Syracuse’s commitment to providing a great liberal arts education while driving Carnegie R1-level research forward.”

Ross says, “This is not only a major award and a��significant��grant,��being a Cottrell Scholar is also about a set of values that we embody as professors—the ideal teacher-scholar��that demonstrates excellent teaching in addition to research innovation.��The Cottrell Scholars are also��a wonderful network of mentors��for both research and teaching since they are from both��research-intensive universities,��like Syracuse, as well as from predominantly undergraduate institutions.”

Biofilm, Cell Activity

Patteson’s research team examines the mechanical effects of substrates on biofilms to assess how various surface types promote or hinder biofilm growth. The project will allow researchers to gain a better understanding of how bacteria can fundamentally remodel the world around them to grow and survive, which could have implications for better predicting how they spread. Patteson is also studying the behavior of bacteria through a grant from the National Science Foundation and a recent five-year from the National Institutes of Health to understand how the protein filament vimentin functions in cells as they move, which has implications during processes like cancer growth and wound healing.

Patteson’s award ranks Syracuse in the top four universities in New York State having multiple faculty members named as Cottrell award winners. At present, only two other universities in New York have more Cottrell-awarded faculty: Columbia and Cornell.

This illustration shows a glowing stream of material from a star as it is being devoured by a supermassive black hole in a tidal disruption flare. When a star passes within a certain distance of a black hole – close enough to be gravitationally disrupted – the stellar material gets stretched and compressed as it falls into the black hole. Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech

With luminosities exceeding entire galaxies (i.e., billions of times brighter than our sun) for brief periods of time (months to years), accretion events enable astrophysicists to study supermassive black holes (SMBHs) from cosmological distances, providing a window into the central regions of otherwise-quiescent – or dormant – galaxies. By probing these “strong-gravity’’ events, where Einstein’s general theory of relativity is critical for determining how matter behaves, TDEs yield information about one of the most extreme environments in the universe: the event horizon – the point of no return – of a black hole.

TDEs are usually “once-and-done” because the extreme gravitational field of the SMBH destroys the star, meaning that the SMBH fades back into darkness following the accretion flare. In some instances, however, the high-density core of the star can survive the gravitational interaction with the SMBH, allowing it to orbit the black hole more than once. Researchers call this a repeating partial TDE.

A team of physicists, including lead author Thomas Wevers, Fellow of the European Southern Observatory, and co-authors Eric Coughlin, assistant professor of physics at Syracuse University, and Dheeraj R. “DJ” Pasham, research scientist at MIT’s Kavli Institute for Astrophysics and Space Research, have proposed a model for a repeating partial TDE. Their findings, published in��, describe the capture of the star by a SMBH, the stripping of the material each time the star comes close to the black hole, and the delay between when the material is stripped and when it feeds the black hole again. The team’s work is the first to develop and use a detailed model of a repeating partial TDE to explain the observations, make predictions about the orbital properties of a star in a distant galaxy, and understand the partial tidal disruption process.

To read the full piece, visit .

Ross and Wiles join a list of other distinguished professors in the College of Arts and Sciences who have been named AAAS Fellows over the past two decades, along with Alan Middleton (2016), associate dean of research and scholarship; George Langford (2013), dean emeritus and professor emeritus of biology; M. Cristina Marchetti (2013), a former professor of physics who is now at UC Santa Barbara; Donald Siegel (2012), professor emeritus of Earth and environmental sciences; and William Starmer (2011), professor emeritus of biology.

“Through their dedication to teaching, research and increasing diversity in STEM, Jennifer and Jason’s work is making a difference in our campus classrooms and labs today, and is also creating a path forward for future scientists,” says Alan Middleton, associate dean. “They are both extremely deserving of this prestigious scientific honor.”

Established in 1848, AAAS is the world’s largest general scientific society as well as the publisher of the well-known scientific journal Science.��Fellows are elected by the AAAS Council through a careful deliberation process to preserve the honor attached to this recognition. Each Fellow is acknowledged with a citation recognizing their contributions to the scientific community.

Jennifer Ross (AAAS Section Affiliation: Physics)

Ross’ citation reads: “For distinguished contributions to biophysics, particularly for experimentally elucidating regulatory mechanisms in intracellular transport.”

An award-winning biophysicist, Ross focuses her research on how cells produce motion and force. By harnessing the fundamental and autonomous physics principles of biological cells, her group is working toward designing and creating next-generation materials inspired and empowered by biology.

Throughout her career, Ross has also remained committed to diversifying STEM. She has been part of the EUREKA! summer program, working with middle and high school girls to teach them about science, health and self-care, and this past summer helped organize the��, which invited students and recent graduates from the Syracuse City School District to Syracuse University to take part in a six-week paid internship.

A faculty member at the University since 2019, Ross has been awarded grants by government agencies including the National Institutes of Health, the National Science Foundation, and private foundations. Her awards and professional honors include Fellow of the American Physical Society, Research Corporation’s Cottrell Scholar, winner of the Margaret Oakley Dayhoff Award from the Biophysical Society, and winner of the National Science Foundation INSPIRE Award. Ross has also served as chair of the physics department at Syracuse University since 2020.

Jason Wiles (AAAS Section Affiliation: Education)

Wiles’ citation reads: “For distinguished contributions to science education, particularly for research on and advocacy for evolution education and innovative leadership in recruiting and retaining underrepresented populations in science.”

An internationally recognized researcher, Wiles has been involved in various projects to help recruit and retain underrepresented students in STEM fields through his work with programs and grants including an��NSF-funded ERRUPT grant,��SUSTAIN�����Ի���. In the classroom, Wiles teaches core introductory courses for students in the life sciences, and upper-division courses exploring evolution and the intersections of biology and other areas such as politics, religion and education.

While primarily appointed in the biology department, Wiles also holds courtesy appointments in the�������Ի� the��. In recognition of his teaching, advocacy and research, he has been honored by the��Technology Alliance of Central New York, the Linnean Society of London, the�������Ի� the��.

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Many Syracuse-area youth dream of one day following in the footsteps of their Syracuse University athletic heroes like Carmelo Anthony, Donovan McNabb and ’Cuse women’s basketball coach Felisha Legette-Jack. Ruell Branch grew up with a different source of inspiration.

During his years at Henninger High School in Syracuse, New York, a passion for science set his sights on studying physics at Syracuse University. Branch wanted to be part of the monumental and life-changing discoveries taking place within the department, such as cutting-edge exploring the origins of the universe and technological breakthroughs paving the way for of the future.

Physics major Ruell Branch at the SURPh poster presentation. Branch, who is a graduate of the Syracuse City School District, helped organize the program to inspire other SCSD students to study physics at Syracuse University. (Photo by Michaela Marino)

Motivated by pride in both his high school alma mater and his current university, Branch, a rising junior majoring in physics in the College of Arts and Sciences, pitched an idea to bring local high school scientists to campus to conduct research in biophysics, computational physics and astrophysics. Through faculty mentoring and training in advanced lab techniques, the program would act as a recruiting tool to attract Central New York scholars to the University.

“I wanted local Syracuse city high school students who have interests in physics to see what it’s like to work as a paid scientist,” says Branch. “I think it’s extremely important for students to get experience conducting research in an actual science lab.”

With the help of physics professor and chair , Henninger High School science teacher Melanie Pelcher and fellow Syracuse student and Henninger High School graduate Devon Lamanna, the Syracuse University Research in Physics (SURPh) internship, a collaboration between the A&S physics department and the Syracuse City School District (SCSD) science department, was established. Thanks in part to funding from the National Science Foundation, SCSD students and recent graduates participated in a six-week paid internship over the summer.

During the program, students collaborated with physics professors Ross, , and on a variety of physics projects. The first two weeks consisted of science bootcamps where all students engaged in an array of lab work. They learned the basics of analyzing and testing biological samples and conducted computational mathematical research on a range of astrophysics topics. As the summer went on, students took part in more focused research based on their scholarly interests.

Bacteria

Nottingham High School student Maya Montena (right) explaining her research on bacteria growth. (Photo by Michaela Marino)

Students in the Patteson lab used optical equipment and image analysis software to investigate how physical features on surfaces (substrates) where bacteria grow affect the growth of four different bacterial species. The students conducted their own experiments, prepared growth substrates and evaluated how bacteria colonies grew on the substrates over time.

Cell Structure

Students in the Ross lab explored different elements of biophysics, learning about self-organization of microtubules, which are a major component of a cell’s cytoskeleton and help it maintain strength, shape and integrity. Students used fluorescence microscopes to directly image microtubules as they formed their organizations and utilized an image analysis program called ImageJ to quantify their data.

Cosmic Rays

Students in the Whittington group investigated energetic subatomic particles called muons, which are produced by cosmic ray interactions in the upper atmosphere. Cosmic rays are atom fragments that constantly pass through Earth. While harmless to humans or any other life on the planet, researchers have been unable to locate their source. Students worked with Whittington to develop and evaluate a prototype cosmic ray detector, helping to fabricate detector elements and compare different detector materials using signals from cosmic ray muons.

Stars

Two students worked with the Coughlin group on a theoretical astrophysics project related to the destruction of stars by supermassive black holes, known as tidal disruption events. Students measured the rate at which these tidally destroyed stars feed supermassive black holes and illuminate distant galaxies. Their work used computational methods to evolve stars from birth to death to determine time-dependent properties (e.g., the density, temperature and chemical profiles) of 27 stars that differ in their initial mass. Their results demonstrated that the properties of the destroyed star have profound effects on this feeding rate, highlighting the need for sophisticated and detailed theoretical models.

The program wrapped up with a poster session where students presented their research to their peers, faculty and families in the Physics Building on the Syracuse University campus.

“I am hopeful that the students had a positive experience with physics and science research in general,” Ross says. “I also hope the program piqued their interest and got them thinking that science, especially physics, is for them and that they can see themselves here. We anticipate that many of this year’s participants will continue to work in our labs and will serve as ambassadors to recruit students for summer 2023. This experience has opened a doorway to more interactions with the Syracuse community for physics, the college and the University.”

Two professors in the were among 41 researchers from around the country selected as recipients of ��from the Oak Ridge Associated Universities (ORAU).��, assistant professor of physics, and��, the Cobb-Jones Professor of Clinical Psychology, each received grants of $5,000, matched by the College of Arts and Sciences and the University’s Office of Research, making the total prize worth $10,000.

According to��, associate dean of research and scholarship in the College of Arts and Sciences, the Powe Awards, coupled with a ��from the National Science Foundation, affirm the research prowess newer faculty in the College are already showing.

“Professors Scheer and Coughlin have started their careers here with speed and energy. They have immediately brought research grant funding to Syracuse while starting initiatives in teaching and mentoring students,” says Middleton.

The Powe Awards are named for Ralph E. Powe, who served as the ORAU councilor from Mississippi State University for 16 years, and provides funds to enrich the research and professional growth of young faculty. In their 32nd year, 840 grants have been awarded, totaling more than $4 million. Syracuse University’s most recent Powe Awards winners��were��, assistant professor of chemistry, and , assistant professor of mechanical and aerospace engineering in the College of Engineering and Computer Science, who each received the honor in 2020-21.

Exploring Stars Destroyed by Supermassive Black Holes

A 3D illustration of a black hole, left, absorbing a star. (Alex Mit / Shutterstock Inc.)

“What can physics offer biology?” This was how��, assistant professor in the College of Arts and Sciences’ physics department and a faculty member in the , began the explanation of why her physics lab was studying bacteria.

Serratia marcescens biofilms grown on soft (left) and stiff (right) polyacrylamide (PAA) hydrogels. These images reveal the conclusion that biofilms grow faster as substrate stiffness increases.

In a paper published by��, a new journal from Oxford Academic, Patteson and graduate student , along with the collaboration of Professor�� of the biology department, describe the surprising findings from their recent work with bacterial colonies that has potential to help shape further understanding of all living systems and improve outcomes in medicine and health.

Patteson and her team wanted to investigate what makes a biofilm—or a colony of microorganisms that bond together—grow and flourish on some kinds of surfaces but not others.

In the past, scientists investigating this question typically grew the colonies on gels made from agar, an extract of red algae. “It’s a substance popular in culinary applications because it makes things gelatinous and adds texture,” says Patteson. “We call it a complex material because it is a solid but has properties like a fluid.” This mixture of properties, she explains, means that teasing out exactly which aspects make the bacteria behave a certain way more difficult. “Are they sensing the solid part or the fluid part?” she says.

Tiny creatures, big surprises

“One of the things we found is that when a biofilm grows out, it’s actually strong enough to exert force on the substrate,” Patteson continues. “We typically think of biofilms as really slow-growing things, but if they’re on something soft, they can actually disrupt it.” This has implications for disease; it means that tissue damage during and following infection might not just be caused by reactions of the body’s immune system, but from the bacteria exerting strain on it.

The left image depicts how each small part of the hydrogel moved based on the movement of embedded fluorescent beads. To the right, a mathematical model of an elastic solid is used to calculate the stress exerted by the bacteria.

Besides design and manipulation of the gels, Patteson and Asp apply physics to biology in the ways that they process the images, measure the boundaries of the biofilms, and calculate how quickly the boundaries expand. “We study mechanics and soft matter systems, so we have equations that describe how something deforms under certain amounts of stress,” says Patteson. Unlike with the less controllable agar, Patteson’s team can now make calculations to measure the forces that the biofilms are putting on the gels. Indeed, by mapping the stress, the team was able to show how biofilms exert more pressure on a stiff surface than on a softer one. “It makes sense, in a way,” says Patteson, “if you tried to climb a sticky wall instead of a slippery wall, you could exert more force on it. We don’t exactly know why in the case of the biofilms, but it makes sense that they’re able to exert more force and move faster.”

“Bacterial organisms, by biomass, are the most predominant life form on the earth,” says Patteson, acknowledging this overlap in interest with Welch, from whose lab they procured the strains of bacteria. “We’re motivated to study them because they intersect with the human world,” says Asp. “Biofilms will grow and be very sturdy, sometimes in places that we don’t want them, whether that’s in patients with disease that are immunocompromised, or in water treatment plants, or on the hulls of ships.”

The College of Arts and Sciences (A&S) mourns the loss of Kameshwar C. Wali, Steele Professor Emeritus of Physics, who passed away Jan. 14 at the age of 94. An eminent theoretical physicist, Wali was internationally recognized for his research into the symmetry properties of fundamental particles and their interactions. Wali was predeceased by Kashi Wali, his wife of 69 years, and is survived by three daughters, Alaka, Achala and Monona Wali, six grandchildren and a great-granddaughter.

Kameshwar C. Wali

Born in Bijapur, India, in 1927, Wali studied mathematics and physics at Raja Lakhamagouda Science Institute and Banaras Hindu University, earning a bachelor’s and master’s degree, respectively. Wali moved to the United States in 1955 to pursue a Ph.D. in physics at the University of Wisconsin, Madison. After earning his doctorate in 1959, Wali held appointments as a research associate at Johns Hopkins University and assistant scientist at Argonne National Laboratory in Illinois. At Argonne, Wali was promoted to senior scientist of the organization’s high energy physics division. Concurrently, he also taught courses at Northwestern University (1964-66), the University of Chicago (1967-69) and was a visiting scientist at the International Center for Theoretical Physics, Trieste, Italy (1967).

Wali joined the physics faculty at Syracuse University in 1969, teaching for nearly 30 years until his retirement in 1998. Among his career appointments, Wali was a fellow of the American Physical Society (APS) and was designated Scientist of the Year by the APS’ India chapter in 2001. At Syracuse, Wali was named the J.D. Steele Professor of Physics (1996-98) and was a recipient of the Chancellor’s Citation for exceptional academic achievement in 1980.

During his distinguished career as a physicist, Wali was author of numerous research papers, which were recently compiled into a book, ““ (World Scientific Press, 2021).

Simon Catterall, professor of physics, says Wali left an indelible mark on the physics department during his three-decade long career and was a driving force behind its continued growth.

“Kamesh was a much-loved scholar and colleague both within the physics department and the broader Syracuse University community,” says Catterall, who joined the department in 1993. “He led the high- energy theory research group from 1969 to 1993 and was chair of physics from 1986 to 1989. His friends and colleagues from around the world will miss him greatly.”

Jennifer Ross, professor and chair of physics, notes that Wali will be remembered for his caring attitude toward students.

“He mentored many students who were from historically excluded groups and made them feel at home,” says Ross. “After news of his passing came out, many of them reached out to the department to share their stories of how much his gestures of open acceptance helped them succeed in graduate school.”

Alongside his contributions to theoretical physics was a deep interest in the humanities. Wali thoughtfully combined scientific and humanistic inquiry into his work as an author. In addition to publishing numerous physics papers, Wali wrote about topics ranging from the physics of violin acoustics, in his book titled, “” (World Scientific, 2010) to biographies and memoirs illuminating the work of legendary physicists including Satyendra Nath Bose, S. Chandrasekhhar and Robert Green Sachs.

Eric Schiff, professor of physics in A&S, says Wali’s integration of humanistic and scientific thought leadership enriched the academic diversity at Syracuse.

“Very unusually, Kamesh Wali’s career combined outstanding research in theoretical physics with important accomplishments as a humanist,” notes Schiff. “My first long conversation with him occurred at the University of Chicago, where I was a physics postdoc. He was visiting from Syracuse to interview Subramanyan Chandrasekhar, the future physics Nobelist and the subject of Wali’s 1990 book entitled “” (University of Chicago Press). At Syracuse, he befriended some stellar writers–Tess Gallagher and Ray Carver in particular. It has been wonderful and inspiring to have this irreplaceable person amongst us at Syracuse.”

Wali was also instrumental in bringing top thinkers and leaders from various fields to Syracuse University for speaking engagements. He was a founding organizer of the , a cross-disciplinary series featuring talks by notable guest speakers each spring and fall. The premier lecture series brings high-profile guests, such as Daily Show host Trevor Noah, to campus to share their talents, experiences and perspectives. In 2007, Wali’s daughters, Alaka, Achala and Monona, founded the Kameshwar C. Wali Lecture series in honor of their father’s commitment to science and the humanities. The series, which was renamed the Kashi and Kameshwar C. Wali Lecture in 2021 in remembrance of Wali’s wife, features presentations by scientists and researchers whose scholarship spans the sciences and humanities.

The Wali Lecture is put on in partnership with the Syracuse University Humanities Center. “Professor Wali’s longtime passion for thinking across cultural and historical boundaries, convening people for intellectual exchange and bridging disciplines has offered an important model of scholarly community to continue to build upon,” says Vivian May, director of the Humanities Center and the CNY Humanities Corridor. “His interest in and ability to link scientific and humanistic inquiry will be greatly missed.”

Donations in honor of Wali can be made to the Kashi and Kameshwar C. Wali Lecture in the Sciences and Humanities at Syracuse University. They can be mailed to the Office of Advancement and External Affairs, 640 Skytop Road, second floor, Syracuse, New York 13244.

Do you remember how you became interested in your favorite subject at school? Chances are, it was because of an enthusiastic teacher who presented the lessons in a compelling and memorable way. In the Syracuse area, high school teachers of physics have a special resource to help them connect the wonders of this science with the minds of their students.

For more than 30 years, the Central New York Physics Alliance (CNYPA), a community engagement project of the College of Arts and Sciences (A&S) Department of Physics, has been dedicated to putting physics within the reach of everyone through a partnership with area schools. The program brings together A&S physics faculty with high school teachers from Syracuse for workshops about four times a year.

Sam Sampere, demonstrating an experiment in 2019, knows what will get students’ attention.

CNYPA is a long-standing program that provides opportunities for teachers to network and share resources, so they can stay up-to-date and enthusiastic about developments in the field—and pass along that passion to their students.

Emeritus professor�� was among the founders of the CNYPA program and continues to participate to this day. From the program inception, “several side benefits emerged right away,” says Miller. Notably, the opportunity for the high school teachers to network and compare notes.

“Most high schools only have one physics teacher. So they don’t have associates who are thinking about the same problems. During the meetings, there’s a lot of buzz and conversation between teachers.”

Josh Buchman, a physics teacher at nearby Fayetteville-Manlius High School, has attended the sessions since the early ’90s. “They’re awesome,” he says. “You get different takes on something you may have seen before, but in this context, it becomes totally new. You can stay current on different kinds of pedagogy or things happening in the physics community.”

During the CNYPA sessions, participants discuss new research in the field and work on the popular “make and takes,” which Sam Sampere, laboratory manager for the department, describes like this: “The teachers come in, and we provide all the materials needed to build some piece of apparatus. We build it together, then they take it home and it lives in their school collection.”

The experiments are designed to pique the interest of high school students and make physics relatable. “One of the most popular is called a ‘ring flinger,’” says Sampere. “It’s a big coil of heavy wire, and you put an aluminum ring around it. The device is powered by electricity, although there are no electrical connections to the ring. But when you turn on the device, the ring goes flying. Why? That’s where the lesson comes in.”

Buchman, the high school teacher, concurs on the power of these demonstrations. “The students absolutely get inspired by the things that we build and share,” he says.

Jennifer Ross (left, in green) with students at the stadium for air pressure experiments, pre-COVID.

Miller and his colleagues work to keep CNYPA’s emphasis on current-event concepts. “For the October 2020 meeting, we talked about how the six-foot requirement for social distancing was calculated,” says Miller. “We’re now planning on constructing experiments that demonstrate the physics of climate change.”

Relevant, relatable experiments such as these both stir the imaginations of high school students and captures grants from the John Ben Snow Foundation, instrumental in helping keep costs low, or even free, for the teachers.

, who became chair last year, has been impressed by the other ways the department has been connecting with the community. Beyond CNYPA, physics has several programs to work directly with local high school students as well; Ross herself is designing a summer course to bring high school students into Syracuse University’s physics labs, and new faculty Eric Coughlin has gone into high school art classes to work on joint physics-art projects.

Ross hopes to build on this trend of public engagement. She says, “CNY Alliance is just the start. There’s a lot of opportunity to connect with young people from diverse backgrounds who might not see themselves doing this work. I want to make sure they have that chance.”

Story by Lesley Porcelli

Alison Patteson (left) and Davoud Mozhdehi

Researchers from the College of Arts and Sciences’�������Ի��� have been awarded Maximizing Investigators’ Research Award (MIRA) grants from the National Institute of General Medical Sciences (NIGMS), part of the National Institutes of Health (NIH). The funding, awarded to Alison Patteson, assistant professor of physics, and Davoud Mozhdehi, assistant professor of chemistry, supports research that increases understanding of biological processes and lays the foundation for advances in disease diagnosis, treatment and prevention.​

Patteson and Mozhdehi, both members of the��, a collaboration of researchers from Syracuse University addressing global challenges through innovative research, are working to learn more about the function and design of proteins that play a key role in diseases such as cancer. Each MIRA award will fund research in their labs over the next five years.

Understanding a Key Structural Protein

Since coming to Syracuse University in 2018, physics professor�������Ի��� have led cutting-edge studies on the structural protein vimentin. Often expressed in a cell’s cytoskeleton during cell motility (movement), vimentin plays a key role in protecting the cell’s nucleus and DNA from damage as it migrates through dense tissue during processes like cancer growth and wound healing. By knowing more about vimentin’s role in protecting cancerous cells as they spread through the body, Patteson says her group’s research could help pinpoint drugs that could slow the growth of cancer.

Collective cell migration through a collagen matrix. The red dots indicate cells’ nuclei enmeshed in an actin filament network (blue). (Photo courtesy of Minh Thanh)

With her��, Patteson seeks to broaden understanding of vimentin’s function in cells as they move. She says the grant will help her team tackle three objectives: determine how vimentin affects the cytoskeleton (structure that helps cells maintain shape) during migration; explore how vimentin helps the cell adhere to its surroundings; and identify the mechanisms by which vimentin helps facilitate collective cell migration through the three-dimensional network surrounding cells called the extracellular matrix.

“Our aim with this grant is to understand how vimentin regulates cell motility,” says Patteson. “We’ve seen proof that it does but we don’t understand why.” She says their research will answer important questions including: Why do motile cells express vimentin? And, what advantage does vimentin give to the cell?

“Vimentin is very understudied and this funding will help us answer some big questions about how this protein is influencing the cell and in turn how biological processes such as cancer and wound healing are affected,” says Patteson.

Thanks in part to her MIRA grant, Patteson and her colleagues recently developed one of the first��3D simulations capturing how cells containing vimentin move through body tissue. In the absence of vimentin, their model showed a breakdown of the cell’s nucleus as it moved through narrow channels. In simulations with vimentin, the cell was much more resistant to deformation and the inside of the nucleus and its DNA was protected.

Physicists from the College of Arts and Sciences’ (A&S’) are at the leading edge of exploring the universe with gravitational waves. From designing and building gravitational-wave observatories to studying the science of current detections from the Laser Interferometer Gravitational-wave Observatory (LIGO), A&S researchers have played a key role in addressing fundamental questions about the physics of our universe.

, professor of physics, and , Charles Brightman Endowed Professor of Physics, are part of a team working on a next-generation gravitational-wave observatory capable of better sensitivity and higher precision than ever before. Called , Ballmer says it could observe the collisions of the remnants from the first stars that formed in the universe.

Artist’s impression of Cosmic Explorer. (Credit: Eddie Anaya, California State University Fullerton)

The idea for Cosmic Explorer was devised by a team of collaborators from Syracuse University, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Pennsylvania State University and California State University, Fullerton. Their ideas recently received a resounding endorsement in the National Academies’ Astro2020 Decadal Survey. The survey, assembled over a three-year span by a 20-member steering committee and 13 expert panels who review proposals for major projects, sets the funding priorities for the next decade on behalf of the astrophysical sciences community. A favorable endorsement carries great weight with Congress and the three federal agencies that fund most U.S. astrophysical research: NASA, the National Science Foundation and the Department of Energy.

Regarding Cosmic Explorer, the Astro2020 survey states: “Gravitational wave astrophysics is one of the most exciting frontiers in science. One of the survey’s key priorities is the opening of new windows on the dynamic universe, with gravitational wave detection at the forefront. The continued growth in sensitivity of current-generation facilities, such as LIGO, through phased upgrades and planning the next-generation observatory, such as Cosmic Explorer, is essential. This will require investment in technology development now. The survey committee strongly endorses gravitational wave observations as central to many crucial science objectives.”

Ballmer and Brown were among an international team of scientists in 2015 who made the first observation of gravitational waves—the result of the collision of two black holes in the distant universe about 1.3 billion years ago–which confirmed a major piece of Albert Einstein’s theory of general relativity. That discovery was made by the Advanced LIGO detectors, located in Livingston, Louisiana, and Hanford, Washington. Since that time, gravitational-wave astronomy has seen significant advancements. In November, the LIGO Scientific Collaboration announced the discovery of 32 new pairs of black hole collisions and two events where a black hole swallowed a neutron star, bringing the total number of events seen to over 220 since 2015.

Arts and Sciences physicists Duncan Brown, left, and Stefan Ballmer.

A&S physicists and their collaborators have been designing Cosmic Explorer, which according to Brown will have 10 times the sensitivity of Advanced LIGO and could detect every black hole collision in the visible universe.

“Cosmic Explorer will push the reach of gravitational-wave astronomy towards the edge of the observable universe,” says Brown. “Cosmic Explorer’s observations of merging neutron stars will explain the build-up of the chemical elements that are the building blocks of our world and make discoveries that cannot yet be anticipated, especially since gravitational waves reach into regions of the universe that electromagnetic observations cannot explore.”

Ballmer says that the Syracuse University Gravitational-Wave Group sits at the intellectual core of the Cosmic Explorer project, whose conceptual design phase alone is expected to exceed $60 million over the next five years. The team aims for Cosmic Explorer to be operational in the mid 2030s, but for that to happen they say investment in technology development is needed now.

“The National Academies’ strong endorsement of Cosmic Explorer adds to the momentum that we have built to move Cosmic Explorer towards its final design and construction,” says Brown. “With its long history in experimental gravitational-wave physics, Syracuse is well positioned to contribute to Cosmic Explorer’s development and construction.”

Read more about the and .

Sheldon Stone, distinguished professor of physics in the College of Arts and Sciences, passed away Oct. 6 after battling a chronic illness for many years. He is survived by his wife and close colleague Marina Artuso, also a professor of physics at Syracuse University, and his four children Jay, Rosalinda, Adam and Tamara.

Sheldon Stone was a faculty member in the Department of Physics for 30 years.

Stone was renowned as a particle physicist, and among just a handful of leaders guiding the design and use of enormous particle detectors operating at accelerator laboratories in New York, Illinois and Switzerland. The international scientific collaborations at these laboratories have involved thousands of scientists, engineers and technicians. On a daily basis, they produce a zoo of particles beyond the electrons, protons and neutrons of atoms. These exotic particles are essential to understanding stars, galaxies and the universe.

The research at these laboratories led to the confirmation of the astoundingly successful “standard model” for explaining the properties of particles based on quarks. Stone also sought to illuminate the profound problems that remain. One is the paucity of antimatter compared to ordinary matter throughout the observed universe.

Arts and Sciences Dean Karin Ruhlandt says, “With his colleagues, Sheldon Stone led Syracuse University to its position as one of the world’s leading institutions in experimental particle physics. It is a splendid legacy, and he’ll be sorely missed.”

Stone, a native of Brooklyn, received a B.S. in physics from Brooklyn College in 1967 and a Ph.D. in physics from the University of Rochester in 1972. He was a physics professor at Vanderbilt University from 1973-79. In 1979, Stone became a senior research associate at Cornell University, which was then developing the CLEO experiments at its Wilson Synchrotron Laboratory. In 1991, Stone began his 30-year career at Syracuse University as a professor of physics. He was designated a distinguished professor in 2012. Over his career, Stone was the advisor and mentor for hundreds of doctoral students and postdoctoral researchers, many of whom have gone on to distinguished careers around the world.

Stone’s professional honors have included his selection as a Fellow of the American Physical Society and his Chancellor’s Citation for Exceptional Academic Achievement at Syracuse. In 2019 he was awarded the annual��. Several previous recipients later won the Nobel Prize. The citation for Stone’s prize reads “for transformative contributions to flavor physics and hadron spectroscopy, in particular through intellectual leadership on detector construction and analysis on the CLEO and Large Hadron Collider beauty (LHCb) experiments, and for the long-standing, deeply influential advocacy for flavor physics at hadron colliders.”

Chris Parkes, spokesperson for the ongoing ��collaboration of about 1,000 physicists at the CERN laboratory in Switzerland, has written: “Sheldon was a huge force across all aspects of the experiment. He leaves behind him an enormous legacy of innovations and important contributions to our field. More than this he was a great friend and colleague to all of us.”

A public celebration of Sheldon Stone’s life and career will be held later in the year. In the meantime, friends and colleagues are invited to��.

Top physicists from five institutions from around the United States, including Duncan Brown, Charles Brightman Endowed Professor of Physics in the College of Arts and Sciences, will come together to explore the physics of neutron stars—the densest form of matter observed in the universe. The establishes a collaborative research group that will investigate the properties of dense, strongly interacting matter present within neutron stars. By understanding neutron stars, physicists hope to learn more about the similarly dense properties of atomic nuclei.

Artist’s illustration of two merging neutron stars. The rippling space-time grid represents gravitational waves that travel out from the collision. (Credit: NSF/LIGO/Sonoma State University/A. Simonnet)

Neutron stars and the merging of neutron stars play a critical role in the cosmos. When massive stars exhaust their nuclear fuel and die, their cores collapse and the outer layers explode away. What was once a star many times larger than the sun becomes the most dense matter in the universe: a neutron star, which packs one and a half times the mass of the sun into a ball the size of Manhattan.

When two neutron stars orbit one another, they spiral inward due to gravitational radiation until they collide, sending out gravitational waves throughout the galaxy. The gravitational waves generated by these collisions are detected using observatories like the National Science Foundation’s (LIGO). The colliding neutron stars can also create bright flashes of light which can be seen by telescopes on Earth and in space. Multi-messenger astronomy, which combines these “messenger” signals in light and gravity, can help researchers answer one of the most fundamental open questions in science: what is the physics that governs the structure of atomic nuclei?

Brown is principal investigator for the Syracuse University team. Other NP3M institutions include University of Tennessee-Knoxville, Pennsylvania State University, the University of Houston and Indiana University. Another 13 senior investigators from other U.S. institutions will contribute, along with 26 international groups.

The NP3M research hub will assemble a diverse range of scholars, including nuclear theorists, computational astrophysicists, gravitational-wave astrophysicists and multi-messenger observers. The members’ expertise will enable the development of nuclear models and astrophysical simulations to understand electromagnetic and gravitational-wave observations of merging neutron stars.

Duncan Brown

Brown brings to the NP3M research hub expertise in gravitational-wave astronomy. In 2017, he was among a team of researchers who : the process of gold being created. Using LIGO observations of neutron star collisions, Brown has studied the nature of matter at extremely high densities and pressures—far higher than can be created in a laboratory on the Earth. Observing these collisions has revealed key information about how the nucleus behaves, but researchers say there are still many unanswered questions that NP3M will look to resolve.

“A complete description of matter at the densities found in atomic nuclei still eludes scientists,” says Brown. “Discovering this ‘nuclear equation of state’ would transform our understanding of dense matter. Multi-messenger astronomy—observations with both gravitational waves and light—are one of the NSF’s ‘Ten Big Ideas’ for research that will advance science and technology in the United States. Multi-messenger observations give us unique insights into the nature of matter and energy and help to answer some of the most profound questions before humankind.”

The NP3M research hub will also play a significant role in training the next generation of physicists, from students to post-doctoral researchers. The grant will fund post-doctoral scholars at Syracuse University who will use gravitational-wave observations of neutron star mergers to study the nature of extremely dense matter.

“Syracuse scientists will bridge nuclear theory and computer models to gravitational-wave observations made by Advanced LIGO,” Brown says. “They will work closely with hub scientists from across the U.S. with the expertise needed to unlock the secrets of the nucleus using neutron star mergers.”

According to Brown, another key part of this project is guiding the development of Cosmic Explorer, the next-generation gravitational wave observatory currently under development that will profoundly change researchers’ gravitational-wave view of the cosmos. Syracuse University is one of the lead institutions globally in the development of Cosmic Explorer.

Through a coordinated effort over the next five years, NP3M will make significant breakthroughs in gravitational-wave astrophysics, advance the understanding of dense matter, and educate future researchers. Together, their collaboration will help to unlock some of the universe’s most hidden secrets.

Congenital heart defects are the most common type of birth defect, affecting nearly 1 percent of births in the United States each year, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Doctors have been unable to lower that number due to a lack of knowledge about their source. Thanks to a ��from the National Institutes of Health, an interdisciplinary team of researchers will work to advance the understanding of causes of birth defects.

Panel A shows the usual organization of the notochord (green) and the KV (red) in a developing embryo. In panel B, a laser was used to destroy cells in the notochord near the KV, to test the hypothesis that the notochord pushing contributes to KV motion.

The team includes principal investigator (PI) Lisa Manning, the William R. Kenan, Jr. Professor of Physics and founding director of the BioInspired Institute; co-PI Jeff Amack, Upstate Medical University; co-investigator Heidi Hehnly, assistant professor of biology; and Paula Sanematsu, postdoctoral research associate, physics. Manning, Amack and Hehnly are all members of the��, an interdisciplinary team of faculty scholars that research complex biological systems and develop and design smart materials to address global challenges in health, medicine and materials innovation.

While past research has centered on the potential biochemical sources of birth defects, Manning says their research looks to pinpoint mechanical forces that could be causing defects during the early stages of embryo development.

“Our goal is to locate new targets for therapy,” says Manning. “Right now, it’s hard to know which drugs to use because researchers don’t know what’s causing the problem, and if you don’t know the cause then you don’t know how to fix it. If we can identify some mechanical mechanisms at play, in addition to the standard biochemical mechanisms, that could lead us to a whole new way of treating congenital heart defects.”

Panels C shows the same embryo in Panel A at a later stage, illustrating normal embryonic development, and Panel D shows the embryo in B at a later stage, highlighting a change to tail shape caused by the laser, but otherwise fairly normal development.

To understand what is happening, you must first go back to the very early stages of an organism’s development. Embryos start out as a simple pair of cells. As they grow, their cells multiply and start to take on specific functions. In order to make sure internal organs are positioned correctly, there is one organ responsible for what is known as left-right (LR) patterning in all vertebrates including fish, mice and humans. This organ ensures, for example, that the heart is correctly positioned on the left side of the body and the liver on the right. This is known as LR asymmetry.

The researchers have focused their studies on the zebrafish, which is a transparent vertebrate, making it ideal to study under a microscope. The specific organ responsible for LR patterning in the zebrafish is the Kupffer’s vesicle (KV), and microscope images from the Amack laboratory demonstrate that the organ moves through the body of the fish as it develops.

The team believes the mechanical forces of that organ moving through the tissue could change cell shapes and drive LR asymmetry in zebrafish embryos. Therefore, defects in this mechanical force generation process could prevent organs such as the heart from developing properly in some cases.

In Manning’s lab, she and Sanematsu have been developing computational models to explore what is happening from a mechanical standpoint during embryonic development. They are producing three-dimensional models of whole tissues to simulate the mechanical forces and determine how motions of the KV could generate shape change.

Paula Sanematsu, a physics postdoctoral research associate in Lisa Manning’s lab, runs computer-modeled simulations to determine what is happening from a mechanical standpoint during embryonic development. [Please note, this image was taken prior to the COVID-19 pandemic and does not reflect current public health guidelines.]

For Sanematsu, this work utilizes the skills she developed in scientific computing during her graduate school work and postdoctoral appointment at Louisiana State University. There, she developed computational fluid dynamics (CFD) simulations to describe nanoparticle transport in porous media, which is important in environmental problems like groundwater contamination. She shifted from fluid dynamics to soft matter when she joined Manning’s lab, but says those areas of research have surprising similarities.“I now work on models to study how cells and tissues behave during embryonic development,” she says. “These models are generally not used, if ever, in CFD, but there is actually a good blend of my previous experience because I am using a lot of the CFD tools to analyze how tissues can behave similarly to a fluid.”The team is now confirming their computer-modeled calculations using physical experiments to determine the effects of mechanical forces on an organism’s development.

Joshua Goldberg (Photo courtesy of Syracuse University Archives, Special Collections Research Center)

The Syracuse University community mourns the recent passing of Professor Emeritus of Physics Joshua Goldberg G’50, ’52 Ph.D. Goldberg left an indelible mark on the department as both a student and then longtime professor. An expert in Einstein’s general theory of relativity, Goldberg helped bring some of world’s greatest physicists to the University, including Sir Roger Penrose, winner of the 2020 Nobel Prize in Physics.

Originally from Rochester, New York, Goldberg received a bachelor’s degree in physics from the University of Rochester in 1947, followed by a master’s degree and doctoral degree in physics at Syracuse University. At Syracuse, Goldberg worked closely with renowned physicist Peter Bergmann, who had worked with Albert Einstein as a research assistant at the Institute for Advanced Study before joining the College of Arts and Sciences (A&S) faculty in 1942. Bergmann, with his background in relativity, influenced Goldberg’s research specialization, serving as his thesis advisor at the University.

In 1962, Goldberg and his collaborator Ray Sachs found a property of the Einstein equations now known as the Goldberg-Sachs Theorem. This theorem was integral to the discovery of the Kerr metric, the solution of Einstein’s equations that describes all black holes in the universe, from the black holes formed by exploding stars to the giant “supermassive” black holes lurking in the center of galaxies.

“Only a year after Einstein published his theory, scientists found a solution that predicts non-rotating black holes,” says Charles Brightman Professor of Physics Duncan Brown. “But real black holes rotate, like the Earth rotates about its axis. Scientists spent decades in a futile attempt to pry the rotating black hole solution from Einstein’s equation.” The Goldberg-Sachs Theorem guided scientists in the right direction. Only a year after the theorem was published, Roy Kerr found the long-sought solution that describes the black holes that we see in the universe today.

Before Goldberg joined the physics faculty in 1963, he was a research scientist at the Armour Research Foundation from 1952-56 and then worked at the Aerospace Research Laboratory at Wright Patterson Air Force Base, where he assembled a group working on relativity. According to Emeritus Professor of Physics Peter Saulson, Goldberg’s years working for the Air Force kept research in the field of gravitation alive, allowing it to blossom further in subsequent years.

Goldberg was specifically in charge of disbursing Air Force funding in support of research in general relativity to many research groups around the United States and Europe. “This was a position with a great deal of responsibility, where the Air Force relied on his broad technical knowledge and good judgment to support this important field of scientific research,” says Saulson.

Goldberg sponsored the first international conference on General Relativity and Gravitation at Chapel Hill in 1957, leading directly to the launching of the experimental program, sponsored by the National Science Foundation, to detect gravitational waves that culminated in the Laser Interferometer Gravitational-Wave Observatory (LIGO). “Josh’s work was in relativity theory, but he always took an active interest in the experimental group at Syracuse that he helped create,” says Associate Professor of Physics Stefan Ballmer.

Researchers at LIGO, including A&S physicists, made the first-ever detection of gravitational waves, produced by the merging of two black holes. That monumental discovery in 2015 finally confirmed Einstein’s theory of general relativity. Saulson says, “Of my many fond memories of Josh, one that stands out is of the joy he took in LIGO’s discovery of gravitational waves, for which he helped to lay the groundwork decades before.”

In his over half-century as a professor at Syracuse, Goldberg served as the department chair for seven years, published more than 60 papers, and was a visiting professor at King’s College University in London, the University of Paris VI and The Technion–the Israel Institute of Technology. Just as Bergmann was to him, Goldberg served as a mentor to up-and-coming young student physicists as well as new faculty, like Abhay Ashtekar, who was a professor of physics at Syracuse from 1980-93. Ashtekar, now the Evan Pugh Professor of Physics and holder of the Eberly Chair at Penn State University, says that Goldberg fostered a supportive and collaborative community in the physics department and always encouraged colleagues to take chances.

In a memoir about Goldberg written by Ashtekar, he says, “It is thanks to his openness, and unwavering support of good ideas, that I gathered courage to make bold proposals and Syracuse was able to take full advantage of opportunities that were under the radar at the time. This led to the hiring of, for example, Demitrios Christodoulou in mathematical general relativity, Roger Penrose on a Distinguished Visiting Chair and Peter Saulson in gravitational wave physics. As history shows, these initiatives paid off handsomely both for Syracuse and for our field in general.”

Britton Plourde

Britton Plourde is used to applying for funding for his lab’s . The physics professor writes grants and polishes proposals that help his team take the next steps in the journey from theory and basic design to modeling to initial prototypes to testing, replication and validation of new technologies. It’s a competitive process, but one that often doesn’t include hearing from your competition and answering rapid-fire questions from potential funders.

That changed for Plourde’s team in early September, when more than 1,000 experts and interested parties from around the world attended a first-of-its-kind live virtual event that included a “Million Dollar International Quantum U Tech Accelerator” supported by the Air Force Office of Scientific Research and Office of Naval Research. His team—one of about 250 in the competition—became one of just 18 finalists for startup funding to support his lab’s research into new designs that will allow quantum communication inside and between quantum computers.

“We’re really fortunate to have this unique partnership very close to Syracuse in Rome, New York, at the Air Force Research Lab. The new located there brings together public and private partners to create a facility with labs, offices and collaboration space that is less than an hour’s drive from campus,” said Plourde. “The opportunity to collaborate with an organization that is rapidly becoming a center for quantum information science research is very exciting—as is being selected as finalists from an extremely competitive field.”

Instead of writing a grant and waiting for reviewers’ comments and a program manager’s decision, Plourde and his team submitted a proposal, created a poster presentation and pitched their ideas for using metamaterial ring resonators to interact with qubits—the fundamental building blocks of quantum information—to transmit quantum information between nodes on a chip, and eventually, when combined with other quantum technologies, between quantum computers in a lab or over even longer distances. Metamaterial ring resonators are structures made from superconducting metamaterial transmission lines. The Plourde lab recently developed linear transmission lines made from these metamaterials—engineered to have wave properties not found in naturally occurring materials. Bending these lines into a ring configuration allows researchers to explore their novel resonant properties.

“It was a much faster process than a normal grant application and, to become a finalist, we had ten minutes to pitch our ideas to a panel of judges,” Plourde said. “But it was also a chance to get to know the partners working together at Innovare and understand the potential for collaboration—for our faculty, graduate and undergraduate students—right here in our region.”

Quantum information science has the potential to drive breakthroughs in materials science, drug design and other fields where solving key problems involves organizing and analyzing almost unimaginable amounts of data—problems that our current computing technology would take centuries to solve.

Plourde’s research is at the frontier of transmitting and processing quantum information on a chip, with the eventual possibility of forming a distributed quantum network over large distances. His team’s proposal involves designs for processing nodes that would serve as waystations where quantum information, encoded in qubits, is processed and relayed to a new endpoint.

“I hope that this is just the first step in building partnerships with Innovare, the Air Force, the Navy and others in the public and private sectors who are as excited about the potential of this field as we are here at Syracuse University.”

Quantum information science is one of that Syracuse University has identified to promote collaboration between disciplines, attract and retain top faculty and drive research innovation.

“Emergence is a very broad term that can be applied to many complex systems where they have many interacting parts, but yet a collective behavior appears,” says Patteson. “Despite the fact they are very complicated kind of networks, these interactions seem to be going on. The idea of emergence is an active area for the physics department here at Syracuse.”

Patteson’s research includes observing the bacteria Myxococcus xanthus exhibiting emergent behavior. Investigating living systems has led to interdisciplinary collaboration with the biology department. “We collaborate closely with biology professor Roy Welch on this project,” says Patteson. Welch and Patteson began collaborating shortly after she arrived in Central New York two years ago. “We were both interested in collective behavior and bacteria systems. I have physics approaches and he has biology approaches, but I think actually some of the questions we’re trying to answer are the same.” Welch helped review early drafts of the proposal submission and has an array of 3D-printed video microscopes that will allow researchers to observe and document collective behavior like swarming and predation.

Undergraduate and graduate students also have an opportunity to contribute to Patteson’s research. In addition to possibly crowdsourcing some aspects of data collection like having students review video, students are also helping speed the processing of data by writing code. Undergraduate students are aiming to automate observations by developing algorithms that will help recognize emergent behavior.

“Syracuse University is a place that’s really strong in this area. It is not surprising that I found people to work with,” says Patteson. “One of the reasons I was really attracted to Syracuse is because it is very supportive of interdisciplinary research.”

Sam Sampere

A celestial showcase will be visible this week, as the Lyrid meteor shower will likely peak Wednesday morning. For those who may be a Lyrids layperson, Sam Sampere from the Department of Physics in the College of Arts and Sciences provides six helpful things to know:

1)������������The Lyrids are a result of meteor’s passing through the orbit of the Comet Thatcher, which passes near the sun only once every 415 years. This is one reason we are still discovering comets. Just think, no cameras 415 years ago. Unlike Haley’s comet, which passes every 76-ish years, this comet occurred so frequently that we have enough written history.

2)������������Look toward the star Vega, which is part of the constellation Lyra, and one of the stars of the Summer Triangle. Look high in the sky to the northeast after 10 p.m. Vega is easily apparent if you know where to look.

3)������������Where to look? is a great sky map.

4)������������As it gets later, Vega rises higher in the sky.

5)�� �� �� As it’s a New Moon, the sky will be dark and only polluted by artificial lights. The viewing, if the skies are clear, will be excellent!

6)�� �� �� The next meteor shower is coming in a few weeks—the Eta Aquarid shower appears the first week of May.

Jessica Stelzel, a former undergraduate researcher, performs an experiment to map the shape of crumples on a plastic balloon.

Research by Assistant Professor�������Ի� Distinguished Professor����from the����was recently featured in scholarly physics journals. Paulsen’s work on predicting how soft materials crumple and wrinkle was published in the journal Physical Review X. Stone’s research on the structure of matter inside elementary particles known as baryons was featured in the journal Physical Review Letters.

The Science Behind Soft Materials

Many people would think the difference between the smooth wrinkles on skin and sharp creases in a crumpled ball of paper are based on the material itself, but researchers from the Paulsen lab have determined that this is not necessarily the case. The team concluded that the way a material is handled is just as important as the makeup of the material in producing and reproducing sharp features known as crumples. Their research, “,” is featured in the journal Physical Review X.

The research group, led by assistant professor and ��faculty team member Joseph Paulsen, along with postdoctoral researcher Yousra Timounay, graduate students Raj De, Zac Schrecengost and Monica Ripp, and former REU undergraduate researcher Jessica Stelzel, carried out the work by squeezing and inflating plastic and rubber sheets in a variety of experiments. They developed methods to turn “wrinkles,” which are wavy undulations on a surface, into “crumples,” which are sharper and more focused undulations, and then back.

While previous research on wrinkles focused on how they behave on otherwise flat surfaces, the team determined that wrinkles may not even form when their underlying surface is curved. As a flat material is curved, they found that wrinkles are replaced by sharp crumples that distribute forces in the sheet in a much different way. This could be important for real-life applications like designing synthetic skin or trying to understand the mechanics of biological tissue.

In addition, they found that crumples don’t discriminate based on size as they observed them in polymer films floating on water and large inflated balloons. As Paulsen explains, studying crumples on one scale is a great way to understand them on another scale. The physics of a crinkled candy wrapper or a birthday balloon can teach researchers things that are important for designing deployable satellites or understanding ripples in a cell membrane or the Earth’s crust.

The Universe’s Building Blocks

Jennifer Ross, professor and associate chair of physics, sports a homemade mask.

Faculty, staff and students from the Department of Physics in the College of Arts and Sciences are using their free time to brush up on their sewing skills and help check the spread of COVID-19. Members of the department are making masks and distributing them to physics faculty, staff and students, with plans to donate the rest to Upstate University Hospital.

“We decided to take on this project after reading articles online and having discussions with colleagues about how masks should be worn to limit the spread when we have to go out to get groceries or medicine,” says Jennifer Ross, professor and associate chair of physics. “People are happy to be helping the effort to fight COVID-19 in some way.”

Due to an increased demand for personal protective equipment during the COVID-19 pandemic, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has approved the use of homemade masks at hospitals when the usual supply has been depleted. Upstate University Hospital and many others are currently accepting homemade masks made to the .