Dear Physics Community,

Welcome to a rainy Tuesday.  Thank you for all the budget ideas.  Matt and I will ask PVC for their view next.

Peter

Above the Fold

• Congratulations to Martin for the Junior BEC award here
• Congratulations to Kerstin Perez for her Committed to Caring Award

Physics

• If you want to make gold, its better to collide two neutron stars than a neutron star and a black hole, from Salvo and Hsin-Yu here
• Interesting article on ultra-precise clocks and quantum gravity here

Dear Physics Community,

From the announcements below, you can see that a great deal is going on.  In addition to the APS awards and Fellowships mentioned in the last post, the TEAM-UP Task Force led by Ed Bertschinger received an Excellence in Physics Education Award.  This is a tribute to Ed’s leadership.

In the last few days, we sent out a request to all the groups in our community to suggest things for our budget this year.  Our budget is due a week from today, so we ask for responses by Monday from Christina (candujar@mit.edu) and the PVC (physics-values@mit.edu). For details, the letter template is here.

As across much of MIT, the Department has experienced staff turnover over the past few weeks.  We currently have several openings across both the Headquarters and Academic Programs offices.  We are working hard to fill these positions, but during this transition, I ask that we all show patience with the current staff, many of whom are taking on extra duties and responsibilities to cover tasks outside their regular duties.

The weekend looks like a beautiful Fall weekend – please make sure to get outside.

Peter

Above the Fold

• This week, we learned of the passing of Norma Bertozzi, the wife of our colleague Bill. Their daughter Andrea sent a nice obituary here. We send our love and condolences.
• The MIT Department of Physics is collecting images to be used for our annual Physics Holiday Card potentially. Typically we reach out to faculty for images of their latest research, and this year we are opening up this call for images to our entire community. The requirements are that the image is related to your work in the department, has a title, and can be made to a 3:2 ratio. Please make your submissions by Monday, November 1^st here.

Announcements

• Tenure-track assistant professor position at Princeton University here 
• PLEASE REMIND: CALL FOR CONCEPT PAPERS: Singapore-MIT Alliance for Research and Technology (SMART) Call for Concept Papers for Large-Scale Research Programs here
• Faculty position at Caltech here
• Quantum Ph.D. program at Chicago here

Physics

• Smashing Planets from EAPS Colleagues

Dear Physics Community,

At the end of a totally bizarre week, some news of five from our community honored by APS awards.  They are:

• Bob Jaffe -2022 Joseph A. Burton Forum Award
• Peter Fritschel – 2022 Richard A. Isaacson Award in Gravitational-Wave Science
• Sean Robinson -2022 Jonathan F. Reichert and Barbara Wolff-Reichert Award for Excellence in Advanced Laboratory Instruction
• Nikta Fakhri – 2022 Early Career Award for Soft Matter Research
• Gene Dresselhaus – 2022 Oliver E. Buckley Condensed Matter Physics Prize

Congratulations to Bob, Peter, Sean, and Nikta.  Gene passed away two weeks ago.  There full list of APS awards is here.

Also last week: MIT learned the endowment performed very well in the last year and that MIT would be giving 3% raises, in addition to the usual merit increases.  Complications for those paid by grants will be handled soon.  In addition to the raise, new funds from the endowment will allow MIT to address priority needs and some of these funds will be available to Departments for their priorities as set forth in their strategic plans.  These funds would come through the annual Departmental budgeting process.  We plan to include funds for the mentoring program, DEI or Community officer, and basic computing service, and funds for staff and faculty development.  We also want to hear from across the Physics Community of other good ideas for the budget, so please look for a follow up message about this in the next day or two, when we undersrtand the timeline and process better.

A good week last week!

Peter