We are greatly saddened to learn that Debbie Jin at JILA, a towering figure in atomic physics and a pioneer in the studies of ultracold Fermi gases, passed away on September 15, 2016. Our condolences go to her family and to John Bohn, a friend and colleague.
ITAMP News
It's with great sadness that we report the passing of Dr. Katharine Blodgett Gebbie (1932-2016) on August 19. She was 84. For many years, she led the NIST Physical Lab (later Physical Measurement Lab) with grace and dedication. During her tenure, the Lab produced four Nobel prizes in physics. An amazing record. She was also a friend of ITAMP. From 2008-2011, she sat on the Advisory Board for ITAMP. We benefited tremendously from experience and insightful ideas on best move ITAMP forward. She will be greatly missed.
Dr. Igor Pikovski has been selected as one of nine recipients of a 2016 Branco Weiss Fellowship, a fellowship for outstanding postdoctoral researchers awarded by the ETH Zurich (Swiss Federal Institute of Technology). The fellowship grant is unique in that it can be used at any research institution throughout the world. As a Branco Weiss fellow, Pikovski will study novel quantum devices and methods to manipulate and control their quantum properties. His main goal is to explore how such systems can help probe the interplay between quantum physics and gravity. (For more details see the CfA announcement.)
See presentations from the latest ITAMP conference, "Connecting Few-body and Many-body Pictures of Fractional Quantum Hall Physics."
View here.
Several ITAMP members presented invited and contributed talks and posters at the 47th Annual Meeting of the APS Division of Atomic, Molecular and Optical Physics (DAMOP).
The list by speaker can be found here.
An ITAMP sponsored research on large carbon-containing molecules has been featured for the Center for Astrophysics Science Update ("Simulating the formation of carbon-rich molecules on an idealized graphitic surface," David W. Marshall and H. R. Sadeghpour, MNRAS; 455, 2889, 2016.)
ITAMP is proud to announce the creation of a new lecture series, honoring Alex Dalgarno. The Dalgarno Lecture Series will inaugurate in Spring 2016. A committee to select a prominent lecturer has formed. The first lectures will be given in May 2016 by Prof. Tilman Pfau at Harvard and MIT. Nominations for this lecture series are welcomed and should be sent to H. Sadeghpour at hrs@cfa.harvard.edu.
The deadline for submission of all application materials for the ITAMP Postdoctoral Fellowship, including letters of reference, is Monday, November 23, 2015. For the application and more information see the ITAMP Postdoctoral Fellowship site.
This year's Julius Springer Prize for Applied Physics will be awarded to Prof. Mikhail Lukin (Harvard University), one of the world’s leading scientists in quantum optics and nanophotonics. Read more here.
Three ITAMPers (past and present) were elected as the 2015 American Physical Society Fellows: James Babb, Vasili Kharchenko and Roman Krems. We wish these jolly good fellas well.
Their citations can be read here: http://www.aps.org/programs/honors/fellowships/archive-all.cfm.
It's with great excitement that I announce the selection of ITAMP as a "new" NSF-funded center for AMO theory in the U.S. That the Institute has existed for more than 25 years is known to everyone, but its selection in an open competition and the new round of funding for its activity is not only a reflection of support by the AMO community for its activities, but is certainly a call for action on our part to further engage the AMO physics and outreach to the broader scientific community and the public.