News from the UBC Physics and Astronomy Department


	Bonn, Semenoff receive Canadian Association of Physicists Medals Professor and Department Head Douglas Bonn, and Professor Gordon Semenoff, will be awarded Canadian Association of Physicists Medals. The 2012 CAP/DCMMP Brockhouse Medal will be awarded to Douglas Bonn for his contributions to the field of high temperature superconductivity. The purpose of this award is to recognize and encourage outstanding experimental or... read more...
	Hasinoff, Liao, and Zhao receive Faculty of Science Awards Faculty of Science announced the recipients of the 2012 Achievement Awards. Congratulations to Dr. Michael Hasinoff, Theresa Liao, and Eric Zhao for receiving the awards in faculty, staff, and student categories respectively! These awards recognize staff, students and faculty whose contributions in areas such as service, administration, leadership and... read more...
	Javed Iqbal and Mark Van Raamsdonk win Killam Teaching Prizes Congratulations to Dr. Javed Iqbal and Dr. Mark Van Raamsdonk for receiving the Killam Teaching Prizes this year. The prizes are awarded annually, from the Killam Endowment Fund, to faculty nominated by students, colleagues, and alumni in recognition of excellence in teaching. Dr. Javed Iqbal is the director of the UBC Science Co-op Program, and was the... read more...
	WMAP tops Thomson Reuters' “Hottest Research” list for 2011 Thomson Reuters recently released their “Hottest Research of 2011” list. Three WMAP (Wilkinson Microwave Anisotropy Probe) reports top the list – the most cited paper, “Seven-year Wilkinson Microwave Anisotropy Probe (WMAP) observations: Cosmological interpretations,” has been cited more than 500 times before the end of its first year of publication. The... read more...
	Ultra-fast laser pulses shed light on elusive superconducting mechanism An international team that includes UBC physicists has used ultra-fast laser pulses to identify the microscopic interactions that drive high-temperature superconductivity. In the experiment, to be outlined this Friday in the journal Science, electrons in a prototypical copper-oxide superconductor were excited by extremely short 100-femtosecond (0.... read more...
	Plotkin group develops algorithm to predict protein misfolding mechanisms Proteins are the main building blocks of our cells and are involved in many important cellular functions. So, What happens when proteins don’t behave? In certain cases, there are dire consequences: several neurodegenerative diseases, such as Alzheimer’s and ALS (Lou Gehrig’s disease), are caused by the body’s own misfolded proteins recruiting healthy... read more...
	Beyond First Year Open House - Thurs March 22, 12:30-1:45pm Join us at our beyond first year open house to learn more about programs and student involvements in Physics & Astronomy. Free lunch and door prizes! Agenda read more...
	Department receives 2011/12 Alfred Scow Award for Student Development The Department of Physics & Astronomy has been awarded UBC's Alfred Scow Award. This annual award is given to "an undergraduate program or department that has had a significant positive impact on student life and student development at UBC." The award is in recognition of the many initiatives we have been taking over the years in our undergraduate... read more...
	ALPHA team gains first glimpse of an "anti-atomic" fingerprint A little more than a year after the ALPHA collaboration trapped anti-hydrogen atoms (the anti-matter partner to normal hydrogen) for the very first time in history, another groundbreaking scientific advance was made by the team. In their latest paper published online by the journal Nature, the ALPHA collaboration at CERN reported on a measurement,... read more...
	New Planck results reveal unseen details throughout the Milky Way Maps generated using data from the Planck satellite were presented at the conference “Astrophysics from the radio to the submillimetre – Planck and other experiments in temperature and polarization” held from February 13 to 17 in Bologna, Italy. These new results include an unambiguous detection of the Galactic Haze – a mysterious, diffuse emission from the... read more...