Dear Physics Community,

Breaking news – Feds drop charges against Gang Chen!  Letter from LRR and Universal Hub article.

The cold weather is really here, and IAP progresses.  The Globe declares, “Omicorn has peaked in Mass.” Deer Island (Globe article on Biobot founders here) continues to drop, slowing slightly.  The mRNA rate in the wastewater still exceeds that of the peak from a year ago — about double.  More people have COVID-19, but also Omicron generates many more virons per person, one reason for Omicorn’s virulence.  While the numbers seem to improve, I think many of us remain a ways from feeling at all safe.

We all hope the number of cases will ease and allow us more freedom to gather, eat together, and so on.  I make risk trades right now: I won’t go into Simons for a cup of hot chocolate because I want to allocate that risk increment for a trip to the tailor.  For me, this will be the way things remain for a time, and I think I will feel I have more risk to allocate.  I’ll have to recalibrate a lot when the term starts, and we all will spend more time on campus.  I felt different a year ago — the vaccine was on the way, and then everything would be fine.  I’ve learned differently.

After reading this comic (while waiting for Mathematica to do something), I looked up the word charge, as in electrical charge, and I wanted to know the entomology.  The QED defines charge as “A material load; that which can be borne, taken, or received” with the verb form meaning “A material load; that which can be borne, taken, or received,” perhaps related via old French to “cargo.”  Very exciting, making “charge” a gerund.

https://fisherp.mit.edu/wp-content/uploads/2022/01/MIT-Deshpande-Grants-Available-Please-forward-to-faculty.pdf

Above the Fold

• MIT tries to do a lot more in professional development for students, faculty, and staff.  Human Resources has just announced their classes and trainers for the Spring term.  I try to do one of these a month and find they are generally pretty good. Their Active Listening Workshop is quite helpful.

Announcements

• Junior faculty position at Northern Arizona University – here
• Last call for Alumni Class Funds – proposals due Jan. 28
• Desphande Grant applications are due Feb. 18.

Physics

• Observation of the X particle at CMS from Yen-Jie Lee and the Heavy Ion Group
• TESS observes 5,000th exoplanet, all opportunities for new friends

Dear Physics Community,

Today is Martin Luther King Jr. Day.  I always read something he wrote on this day, today will be “Letter from a Birmingham Jail.”  If you are looking for smoother way of marking the occasion, the Boston Globe has suggestions here.

IAP continues – the Department and MIT are doing okay.  Not great, but okay.  At the 8 am meeting Friday (slides here), we heard that MIT intends to continue in-person instruction into the Spring term, hopefully relaxing COVID protocols as the term proceeds.  The contingency plan consists of isolation in place, additional testing, etc. but remote learning or sending people home was not discussed.  The Deer Island, a ten day leading indicator of the case rate,  rate has plummeted, leading us to hope things improve in the coming week.  The MIT rate has also gone up, reaching over 6% positivity two weeks ago and is coming down, now at 2.5%.

So, we are doing okay.  Not great, but okay.  I think we need to be cool for another two weeks.  Then something else will happen.

This week, I learned Sav-Mor liquors on the McGrath Highway in East Cambridge will move to Assembly Square.  Sav-Mor always had a message on their sign, the last one is here.  I liked their signs, but never bought liquor there.

Peter

Announcements

• Repperger Research Intern Program here
• Proposals for Alumni Class Funds due January 28 here
• Agilent Early Career Professor Award due Jan. 25, 2022 here
• Graduate Students’ Career and Professional Development here
• Alumni Class Funds proposals due January 28 here

Physics

• Martin Zwierlein makes cold tornados here
• Quantum solution to math problem in Quanta

Dear Physics Community,

Welcome to 2021!  We’re starting the year with an MIT News story on Prof. Kerstin Perez.

Other news is the Omicron variant, Deer Island tells the story.  Our five IAP subjects will all be remote, but MIT will be open for in-person lab work and some events, subject to increased COVID protocols, here. Good luck to all of us.

Update: Did a meteor explode over Pittsburgh?

During this IAP, please try out the Basic Service Pilot, subMIT, to access High Performance Computing, see the announcement below.  The Department will have to decide how to implement the Basic Service this term and user experience will subMIT will be important.  Please try it out and tell us what you think.

Peter

Above the Fold

• High Performance Computing for Physics – The recently inaugurated subMIT computing facility is a login pool that is designed to provide access to the basic research computing resources of the physics department and beyond.We would like to invite members of the physics department and their friends to take note and consider our offer to help to get set up and start attacking your hardest computing challenges. We are collecting input for problems for our one-day workshop on January 26, 2022 [1] and hope you will register for this workshop [2]. The agenda is for still wide open and will fill up during the first week of January.The workshop will present a number of in depth examples of more experienced users and includes detailed explanation and discussion of applications of new or simply interested users. If you have a specific computing intensive task you want to resolve even on the time scale of the workshop or if you are interested to purchase hardware and include it into the existing system, please send an email to <submit-help@mit.edu>.[1] workshop coordinates https://indico.cern.ch/event/1108229/
  [2] registration at https://indico.cern.ch/event/1108229/registrations/

Announcements

• DOE NNSA SSGF Applications Due 1/5/2022 – here
• IAP subject in High Performance Computing here
• Simons fopoundation grants in Mathematics and Physical Sciences here
• Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs) for Launching Early-Career Academic Pathways in the Mathematical and Physical Sciences (LEAPS-MPS) NSF 22-503 here

Physics

• Sensor based on quantum physics could detect SARS-CoV-2 virus from Paola Cappallero here
• “Newer, nimbler, faster:” Venus probe will search for signs of life in clouds of sulfuric acid from Sara Seager here.
• Could acid-neutralizing life-forms make habitable pockets in Venus’ clouds? Sara Seager –  news story, website
• Quanta has a couple of interesting graphic explanations of recent science stories from Ph.D. ComicsL g-2 explained here and Solar Parker Probe here.
• Fusion’s time may be nearing here

Dear Physics Community,

CORRECTION: the previous version of the Weekly Message congratulated Laura Cui for winning the Goldwater Scholarship.  This was incorrect and my fault – Laure has been nominated by MIT for the Goldwater Scholarship.  I apologize for any embarrassment my mistake caused.

Good luck to everyone for finals week, the last hurdle before a well-earned break.  Somehow, this term seemed more difficult than the last.

Congratulations and thanks to Ed Bertschinger, Michelle Tomasik, Byron Drury, and Christina Andujar and all the mentors in the Mentoring Program for finishing the semester.  Physics provided around 80 mentors to over 300 students in our early subjects.

Peter

Announcements

• School of Science Quality of Life Awards, deadline Jan. 14 here
• Alumni Class Funds Call for Proposals, deadline January 28 here
• Call for nominations for the Springer Thesis Awards here and here
• APS Advancing Graduate Leadership here

Physics

Dear Physics Community,

I think everyone looks forward to the end of the term — much has happened, and most of you and I need a break.

Today we had an 8 am zoom meeting; slides are here.   Iain asked that our instructors ensure they have plans in place in case students in their subject test positive.  Physics instructors did this at the start of term, and I’m asking that instructors remind their students just now.  We also heard about different scenario planning and that MIT does not plan any additional restrictions.  Indeed, the discussion centered on relaxing the current restrictions during Spring.  Stay tuned.

I learned from Peter Dourmashkin that our technical instructor Caleb Bonyun maintains a viral site with Physics demos. For example,

@tasteslikechaos

Let’s start the week off with some physics! #MIT #MITPhysics #physicsfun #science #physics #planets #physicstok #sciencetok

♬ original sound – PhysicsIsFun

Thanks for this to Caleb for showing off his group’s work.

Peter

Announcements

• DOE Computational Science Graduate Fellowship here
• Air Force Research Lab Scholars Program Summer 2022 Internships – Application Now Open! application webinar

Physics

• TESS discovers a planet the size of Mars but with the makeup of Mercury from George Ricker, Roland Venderspek, and Sara Seager here

• A Massachusetts company leads as the race for fusion energy heats up, led by MIT NSE here.

• Electrons for neutrinos from Or Hen, here
• Quanta Magazine article on quantum simulation with Valdan Vuletic here

Dear Physics Community,

I hope you all had a restful Thanksgiving Day yesterday.

Just after we sent last week’s message, we learned form Ike Chuang that Gabe Mintzer, ‘200, had been critically injured in a hit and run accident and had been unconscious for more than two weeks.  Just yesterday, we heard form Karna Morey that Gabe had regained consciousness, which is very good news.  His family is here in Boston to help Gabe with his recovery and they had his friends have set up a Give in Kind site here for anyone who wants to help.  The Department wishes Gabe a speedy recovery.

Here’s the best thing about the present moment I’ve seen.

Peter

Announcements 

• on Thursday, December 2 at 4:00 pm in 10-250, just prior to the start of next week’s Colloquium talk, we will hold a short ceremony to recognize a number of our graduate students for awards they were named to at the end of spring 2021.   We will be recognizing five students for achievements in teaching or research, and seven students for meritorious service to the Physics Department.We hope that many of you will choose to be present in 10-250 for this brief ceremony preceding the talk by Ana Maria Rey of JILA/NIST, which is being sponsored by our Graduate Womxn in Physics group, with Sarah Geller serving as individual host.
• Grateful for  new GOAT: Scott Hughes
• Air Force Office of Scientific Research Talk 12/6 2-3 pm Harvard, details here
• Nonproliferation and National Security student opportunities at Brookhaven National Lab here
• Funding opportunity from the Open Research Association here

Dear Physics Community,

Our budget request went to the Dean’s office last week.  In response to our solicitation, we received about 30 thoughtful suggestions from all over the Department.  We consolidated many of them into items in our request, and we will meet with the School of Science this week to discuss our request.  We may be asked to make revisions and then resubmit our budget that will go to the Provost.  We will hear Provost’s decisions in February or March for the budget year that starts July 1, 2022.

I will produce a list of all the suggestions we received and let the community know which ones went forward in the next two weeks (I have a trip coming up next week).  Having the list will be helpful as other funding opportunities arise.  Thank you to our students, postdocs, staff, and faculty for their participation.

In the meantime, much is going on, the days are getting shorter, and the holidays approach…

Peter

Physics

• MIT News: Simulating Galaxies from Mark Vogelsberger here
• MicroBOONE results from Janet Conrad and Or Hen summary paper here, four other supporting papers referenced in the summary
• Mysterious waves from the center of the galaxy
• New measurement of the neutron lifetime

Dear Physics Community,

We are now at the peak of Fall with beautiful days – when it is not raining.  Deer Island’s waste water analysis continues to provide interesting results: in the post-vaccine/delta variant epoch, from late summer until now, the mRNA rate have varied by a factor of two with a period of about 40 days (five full cycles in about two months).  Deer island samples the Northern and Southern areas separately and the South runs about a week ahead of the North.  This could be catchment transit times.  Something interesting to ponder…

Peter

Above the Fold

• Phil and Erik’s Accelerated AI Algorithms for Data-Driven Discovery (A3D3) Institute

Announcements

• Air Force summer scholars program
• Post-doctoral position at Berkeley here
• Monday COVID call slides

Physics

• Quantum Kelvin-Helmhotz instabilities from Martin and Richard F. here
• Quanta article on neutrino anomalies with Janet here

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