Papers published

• Undergraduate student Nhat Nguyen (Physics Minor 2023), together with  Andrés Aragoneses, and  Carleton College Professor, Arjendu Pattanayak, have recently published a paper:
  • “TARDYS: Extracting Temporal And Reversible DYnamical Symmetries” Published in Photonics (MDPI), open access: https://pubs.acs.org/doi/abs/10.1021/acs.organomet.2c00353

Faculty candidate seminar and teaching demonstration

• Biochemistry candidate Steven Karpowicz, from Eastern New Mexico University, will deliver a seminar titled “Taurine metabolism: How to make an abundant molecule” on Thursday 12th of January at 14:00, at Patterson 128.
• Biochemistry candidate Steven Karpowicz, from Eastern New Mexico University, will deliver a teaching lecture on “The role of thiamine in metabolism” on Friday 13th of January at 11:00, at Patterson 128.

Coming outreach

• Suds & Science: On February 4th, at 7 PM at the Golden Handle Brewery (154 S. Madison, Spokane), Rene Buell and Andrés Aragoneses will be talking about the science in the movie The Martian.

Physics Teatime

• Physics will continue with its usual social teatime. This term it will be Fridays from 2PM to 3 PM.

Nobel Prize 2022 (not to the department this year)

• Physics: Alain Aspect, John F. Clauser, and Anton Zeilinger “for experiments with entangled photons, establishing the violation of Bell inequalities and pioneering quantum information science”
• Chemistry: Carolyn R. Bertozzi, Morten Meldal, and K. Barry sharpless “for the development of click chemistry and bioorthogonal chemistry”

Grant awarded

• Ashley Lamm has received a 1.5 million dollar Track 1 NSF Noyce Grant entitled “Expanding collaborations that recruit, prepare, and retain diverse and highly-qualified STEM teachers in Eastern Washington”.

This grant provides scholarships to recruit and prepare STEM majors to become K-12 teachers. The program seeks to increase the number of K-12 teachers with strong STEM content knowledge who teach in high-need school districts.

Physics Teatime

• Physics is hosting “tea & cookies” for physics students & faculty every Wednesday at 3 PM (CEB 318).

Outreach to the community

• Faculty and students from Chemistry & Physics will be present at the American Physics Society Division of Plasma Physics outreach event, on Thursday 20th in Spokane.
• Jason Stoke will be giving a presentation about “Solar Energy Science” .
  • • Spacetime coordinates:
      • Golden Handle Project in downtown Spokane (111 S. Cedar st.).
      • Saturday October 22nd at 7 PM.

Student’s research at international conference

• Andrés Aragoneses presented research done with two EWU students (Nhat Nguyen and David Spichak) at Dynamics Days Europe in Aberdeen (Scotland) in August.

Grant awarded

• Ashley Lamm has received a 1.5 million dollar Track 1 NSF Noyce Grant entitled “Expanding collaborations that recruit, prepare, and retain diverse and highly-qualified STEM teachers in Eastern Washington”.

This grant provides scholarships to recruit and prepare STEM majors to become K-12 teachers. The program seeks to increase the number of K-12 teachers with strong STEM content knowledge who teach in high-need school districts.

Alumni panel

• What do Physics do? A panel of EWU Physics alumni will share with our undergraduate students, and faculty, their experiences and perspectives as physicists after college. Tea and pastries will be served.
  • Spacetime coordinates:
    • ISC 009.
    • Friday June 3rd at 2 PM.

Outreach to the community

• Jason Stoke and Andrés Aragoneses, together with  Jessica Allen and Javier Ochoa-Reparaz (from Biology), will be giving a presentation about the Science of Star Wars: “May the Science be with you!” .
  • • Spacetime coordinates:
      • Golden Handle Project in downtown Spokane (111 S. Cedar st.).
      • Saturday June 4th at 7 PM.

Promotion

• Berenice Emehiser got promoted to Senior Lecturer, effective next academic year.

Outreach to the community

• Andrés Aragoneses will be giving a presentation about the physics of time travel, “Come time travel with Doctor Who” .
  • • Spacetime coordinates: Golden Handle Project in downtown Spokane (111 S. Cedar st). Saturday May 7th at 7 PM.

Undergraduate Women in Physics

• Undergraduate students Layla Abrams and Taylor Mundel have been accepted to and registered for the APS Conference for Undergraduate Women in Physics at the University of California, Santa Cruz, on January 21 – 23, 2022

New publications

• Andrés Aragoneses and David Spichak (EWU undergraduate) published a new paper on the journal Chaos, Solitons, and Fractals (Elsevier), under the title Exploiting the impact of ordering patterns in the Fisher-Shannon complexity plane, where they characterize complexity in chaotic systems and unveil hidden structure, such as self-similarity.

Faculty on Campus

• Amber McConnell was just approved to be an Affiliated Faculty with the Gender, Women’s, & Sexuality Studies Department at EWU. Affiliated Faculty are faculty who express a commitment to the advancement of Gender, Women’s & Sexuality Studies at EWU and are approved through an application and committee review process.

Science Outreach

• Andrés Aragoneses will give a presentation on the Science in the work of Salvador Dalí, at Suds and Science, at the Golden Handle Project (a brewery on downtown Spokane), on Saturday December 11th at 19:00. Part of the benefits go to help medical research and education.

Alumni summer research

• Joel Price (’21) did a presentation at the American Vacuum Society (AVS) 2021 conference about the optical properties of LaNiFeO3, based on his research this summer at PNNL with Dr. Stoke. He won first place for the undergraduate presentations.

Science Outreach

• Andrés Aragoneses will give a presentation on the Science in the work of Salvador Dalí, at The Hive (Spokane Public Libraries), on Saturday October 23rd at 14:30.

Nobel price 2021

• Not to the department, but we’ll continue working hard:
  • Chemistry The Nobel Prize in Chemistry 2021 was awarded jointly to Benjamin List and David W.C. MacMillan “for the development of asymmetric organocatalysis.”
  • Physics The Nobel Prize in Physics 2021 was awarded “for groundbreaking contributions to our understanding of complex systems” with one half jointly to Syukuro Manabe and Klaus Hasselmann “for the physical modelling of Earth’s climate, quantifying variability and reliably predicting global warming” and the other half to Giorgio Parisi “for the discovery of the interplay of disorder and fluctuations in physical systems from atomic to planetary scales.”

Eagle Graduate Awardees 2021:

• Joel Price (’21) did a presentation at the American Vacuum Society (AVS) 2021 conference about the optical properties of LaNiFeO3, based on his research this summer at PNNL. He won first place for the undergraduate presentations.

Outreach Coming On:

• Andrés Aragoneses will give a presentation on the Science of Salvador Dalí at The Hive (Spokane Public Library), on Saturday, October 29 at 2:30 p.m.

Join us June 2nd, 2021 for the spring research symposium featuring the Social Justice in Research Panel McNair Alumni Plenary Session, more than 50 student presentations, and a brown bag lunch with EWU alumni pursuing careers in research.

You must register for the symposium to receive the zoom link!

View the full schedule of events here: 2021 EWU CSTEM McNair Spring Research Symposium Program.

March 2021

New publications:

• Jamie Manson has been awarded a grant from the National Science Foundation, from the Division of Materials Research. $395,482 for the project “Bespoke low-dimensional magnets:  from chiral chains to skyrmion candidates”. Dr. Manson is the sole PI of this project that starts in June 2021 and lasts for three years. The grant includes money to cover summer stipends for research students, their travel to user experimental facilities as well as travel  to present their results at professional conferences. 

Outreach:

The May edition of Merging the Frontiers of Knowledge will debate about Game of Thrones. With faculty from History (Monica Stenzel), Philosophy (Christopher Kirby), and Physics (Andrés Aragoneses). Thursday May 6th at 19:30. Link to be announced soon.