Events

David Hogg, Professor of Physics & Data Science, NYU

Sailing as Momentum Transport

Sailboats represent an ancient (but newly relevant) sustainable form of transportation. They work off the relative velocity between the air and the water. Sailboats can sail upwind (by tacking), they can sail downwind faster than the wind (also by tacking), and they can sail crosswind much faster than the wind.

I present the simplest possible momentum transport model of a sailboat, and explain all of these capabilities. In this (spherical scow) model, the sailboat is defined by three dimensionless numbers: the sail-to-keel area ratio, a lift ratio for the sail, and a lift ratio for the keel. The model makes a number of amusing "predictions" that explain the properties of commercial and competitive sailboats. There are many connections to sustainable energy.

The event flyer is available here.

UWM Physics Post docs, graduate student, and faculty

Spring 2025 APS Preview Talks

Members of the UWM Physics department will present their preview talks in preparation for the upcoming APS meetings

The event flyer is available here.

Shashwat Sardesai, PhD Candidate, UWM Physics

Cosmic Orchestra: The Gravitational Wave Background

In the last year and a half, the North American Nanohertz Observatory for Gravitational Waves, and their collaborators, have detected the presence of a gravitational wave background using pulsar timing arrays. These gravitational waves likely arise from supermassive black hole binaries (SMBHBs) and have periods spanning years or decades.

In this talk, I will go over the basics of PTAs, the different methods to analyze the background, as well as the projects I have worked on as a member of the NANOGrav collaboration to try and resolve aspects of the GWB.

The event flyer is available here.

Sheng Ran, Assistant Professor of Physics, Washington University

Strongly Correlation and Topology in Kondo Lattice Systems

Quantum materials with both strong correlations and nontrivial band structure topology can have novel physics properties that do not exist in the non-correlated counterparts. Recent theoretical work has demonstrated that combination of Kondo physics and nonsymmorphic crystal symmetries can give rise to such strong correlated topological systems.

In this talk, I will present our recent experimental exploration this direction. In one case, we found intrinsic anomalous Hall effect that seems to break the Fermi liquid scaling relation. In another case, we have discovered a candidate for topological Kondo insulator.

The event flyer is available here.

Speaker: Gabriel Freedman, PhD Candidate – UWM Physics Low-frequency Gravitational Wave Searches and Data Analysis with Hamiltonian Sampling The pulsar timing array community has found evidence for a correlated stochastic signal following the Hellings-Downs pattern indicative of an isotropic stochastic …

Speaker: Ned Budisa, Professor & Research Chair, Dept. of Chemistry, University of Manitoba Expanding the Genetic Code via Directed Evolution: Tools for Biophysicists, Materials Science, and Beyond Reprogramming the genetic code to include non-canonical amino acids (ncAAs) is a powerful …

Speaker: Dr. Katey Alatalo, Assistant Astronomer, Space Telescope Science Institute The Life-cycle of Gas in Dying Galaxies Modern day galaxies populate a bimodal distribution, in both morphology and color space. Their morphological and color properties are also inter-related, with lenticular …

Speaker: Justin A. Trujillo, PhD Candidate - UWM Physics Implementing Novel Data Analysis Methods to Enhance Biophysical Studies Studying the structure, motions, and interactions of proteins as they perform their functions is greatly important in biophysics research. Time-resolved serial femtosecond …