The Spectrum - 2022

U astronomers tackle decade’s biggest questions

Message from the Chair

This semester, we have made another big step towards a return to normal academic life. Faculty and students enjoy working together, and it’s wonderful to fully operate with inperson lectures and events again.

Astronomers and astrophysicists in the U’s Department of Physics & Astronomy have been driving discoveries in the field for years. The innovative research from the department is making an impact in all areas that the national astro-physics community has determined as priorities. These priorities have been outlined in a once-in-a-decade report that guides the direction of astro-research for years to come. The Decadal Survey was commissioned by the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering and Medicine to identify goals and challenges for the exploration of the cosmos. Over the past several decades, our department faculty has pushed forward in an increasing number of research areas in astronomy, astrophysics and particle physics. Now these separate initiatives are coming together, in focus, and aligned with the decadal survey’s top priorities.

Construction has begun on the University of Utah’s new Applied Science Building Project. The project will restore and renovate the historic William Stewart building and construct an addition to the building on the west side, adjacent to University Street. This important project will provide new and updated space to serve the University of Utah’s educational and research mission, serving as the new home for the Department of Physics & Astronomy as well as the Department of Atmospheric Sciences. The building is expected to be completed in August 2024. The move of the Department of Physics & Astronomy is planned to take place in different phases, starting in December 2023 and ending in August 2024, following the successive completion of different building sections.

Our faculty continues to receive many prestigious awards. Both Ramón Barthelemy and I were elected fellows of the American Physical Society and we are both excited about this honor. There have been many more prestigious awards and recognitions in our department, though, as described on the following pages.

Every fall we announce our year-end campaign, and we are grateful for our alumni and friends of the department who support our efforts. This year, we are asking for donations to student scholarships. For more information, please see the article on page 28.

Sincerely,

U astronomers tackle decade’s biggest questions

Innovative research at the U’s Department of Physics & Astronomy is underway in the areas identified as priorities in a new report by the National Academies of Science, Engineering, and Medicine . The once-in-a-decade report will guide the direction of astro-research for years to come .

Astronomers and astrophysicists at the University of Utah have been driving discoveries in the field for years. Now, a new report by National Academies of Sciences, Engineering and Medicine identifies priorities in astro-research that will help guide the field in years to come. The good news for the U’s Department of Physics & Astronomy: U scientists are making an impact in all these priority areas.

The Decadal Survey was commissioned by the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering and Medicine to identify goals and challenges for the exploration of the cosmos. Unraveling the secrets of the universe requires vision and extensive planning— astronomers and astrophysicists use massive ground

observatories and sophisticated space telescopes for projects that need years of preparation. The guidance of the Decadal Survey is crucial to this effort.

Released in early November, the Decadal Survey highlights three key research areas ripe for discovery:

• Worlds and Suns in Context focuses on stars and planets;

• Cosmic Ecosystems describe galaxies and the cosmic web they form; and

• New Messengers and New Physics provides a new view of the universe through high-energy particles, gravitational waves, and deep sky surveys.

Scientists in the U’s Department of Physics & Astronomy are leaders in each of these areas .

Kyle Dawson, Professor of physics & astronomy, chairs the national Astronomy and Astrophysics Advisory Committee (AAAC) in the first full year following the release of the Decadal Survey. The AAAC is a national panel of experts who advise the National Science Foundation, NASA, and the Department of Energy on issues within the fields of astronomy and astrophysics that are of mutual interest.

“We meet regularly with leadership from the federal agencies that sponsor research in astronomy and astrophysics,” said Dawson. “The Decadal Survey gives our panel a guide to working with those agencies to assess progress toward new programs that will allow the United States to maintain its role as a leader in astronomy and astrophysics research.”

Dawson said, “Over the past several decades, department faculty pushed forward on an increasing number of research areas in astronomy, astrophysics, and particle physics. Now these separate initiatives are coming together, in focus, and beautifully aligned with the Decadal Survey’s top priorities.”

Worlds and suns in context

The sun hosts a rich system of planets, from the massive gas giant Jupiter and the icy dwarf planet Pluto, to Earth, the only body in the universe known to sustain life. Recent observations from space and the ground have revealed thousands of other worlds around distant stars. Some are so large as to dwarf Jupiter; others appear to be exotic water worlds. A precious few may even harbor life. A key priority of the Decadal Survey is to understand the nature and origin of these worlds and the stars that host them. Driving this quest is a profound question: whether we are alone in the cosmos.

The Sloan Digital Sky Survey (SDSS), an international effort to chart the cosmos, is mapping stars across our galaxy, the Milky Way. Scientists at the U are in leadership roles in this large-scale, ongoing collaboration. With detailed measurements of millions of stars, SDSS will provide an understanding of their chemical composition, how the elements are spread throughout the galaxy, and the connection between stars, their composition, and the planets they host. This world-class project is integral to the Decadal Survey’s scientific goals.

Research at the U also focuses on planet formation and how worlds emerge from the gas and cosmic dust that encircle all observed young stars. Simulations on high-performance computers track this process. The simulations show how planetary building blocks come together, sometimes through violent collisions, to grow into the planets like those in our solar system and around other stars in the cosmos.

Cosmic ecosystems

Looking beyond the stars visible in the night sky, astronomers have discovered a wealth of exotic objects, including neutron stars, with the mass of the sun packed into a region the size of a small city, and black holes, where matter is so concentrated that space and time warp to form an event horizon, from which nothing, not even light, can escape. Telescopes also reveal galaxies, like our own Milky Way, with hundreds of billions of stars, even supermassive black holes in their centers, strewn across space. Neighboring galaxies, drawn together by gravity, form enormous clusters, the most massive objects in the universe. They are permeated by dark matter, an unidentified, ethereal substance known only through its gravitational influence. Together with galaxies and galaxy clusters, the dark matter sea forms patterns – knots, sheets and walls in a vast cosmic web. A second top priority of the Decadal Survey is to understand this cosmic web, the structures it contains, and how these structures formed out of the hot, dense early universe.

At the U, researchers are studying the ecosystems that produced this diversity of cosmic structure. With theoretical and computer studies, as well as observations from the ground and space, Utah

faculty are probing the nature of galaxies, the central supermassive black holes they harbor, and how stars, gas, and dark matter interact to produce the cosmic structures we observe today. Research on nearby small galaxies, including satellites of our Milky Way and other nearby massive galaxies, will help us understand their formation histories and the role of dark matter in that formation.

Upcoming observations with NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope, the most sophisticated observatory ever launched, will help university researchers discover supermassive black holes in the central regions of galaxies to learn how these exotic beasts formed. At larger distances and earlier times, large clouds of gas— the precursors of galaxies—provide key diagnostics for researchers at Utah to identify the underlying physics of galaxy formation.

Galaxy clusters, with up to thousands of galaxies bound together, are also in focus at Utah as researchers take advantage of NASA’s NuSTAR mission to study the hot X-ray emitting gas trapped in these massive objects. These separate research threads are weaving together a more complete and more compelling picture of cosmic structure formation.

New messengers and new physics

Studies of the universe began with optical telescopes, using our eyes to capture the signal from distant sources. As technology advanced, we used cameras to record this light, thus allowing for longer integrations and deeper insights into the cosmos. We soon began to explore the cosmos with light not visible to our eyes, from radio waves to X-rays to light with even higher energies. The scientific community has continued to add new messengers from the cosmos beyond the electromagnetic spectrum: high-energy particles, neutrinos, and gravitational waves. Combining these multiple messengers is key to understanding the underlying physics of the most extreme events in the cosmos such as stellar explosions, collisions between black holes or neutron stars, and the dramatic forces in the regions surrounding supermassive black holes. Our understanding of the universe has advanced with each new way of observing the sky.

The faculty at the U helped introduce some of these new messengers to the field of astrophysics. The Telescope Array near Delta, Utah, is the most recent in a series of Utah experiments to study very high-energy particles. The highest-energy particle on record was detected from this sequence of experiments in Utah.

The U faculty round out the full suite of messengers with significant contributions to the LIGO interferometer that is used to detect gravitational waves, the IceCube Neutrino Observatory at the South Pole, and the Veritas and HAWC (High-Altitude Water Cherenkov) observatories, and the future CTA and SWGO observatories used to detect the highestenergy photons. The U faculty also leverages national facilities to use everything between radio and X-rays to explore the physics behind the most dramatic events in the universe.

This theme within the Decadal Survey also includes new physics, particularly the unknown physical natures of dark matter and dark energy. The possibility for discovering new fields, new particles, new laws for gravity, or new particle interactions motivated the construction of the Vera C. Rubin Observatory in Chile and the Dark Energy Spectroscopic Instrument in Arizona. Faculty at the U use the data from these observatories to constrain models of fundamental physics and hunt for the signatures of new physics. U faculty are also making theoretical predictions for new signatures that dark matter or other new physics may introduce into the full suite of astronomical detectors that are used to track the multiple messengers from the cosmos.

Out with a bang: explosive neutron star merger captured

for the first time in millimeter-wavelength light

Scientists using the Atacama Large Millimeter/ submillimeter Array (ALMA)—an international observatory co-operated by the U.S. National Science Foundation’s National Radio Astronomy Observatory (NRAO)—have for the first time recorded millimeter-wavelength light from a fiery explosion caused by the merger of a neutron star with another star. The team also confirmed this flash of light to be one of the most energetic short-duration gamma-ray bursts ever observed, leaving behind one of the most luminous afterglows on record. The results of the

research will be published in an upcoming edition of The Astrophysical Journal Letters.

Gamma-ray bursts (GRBs) are the brightest and most energetic explosions in the universe, capable of emitting more energy in a matter of seconds than our sun will emit during its entire lifetime. GRB 211106A belongs to a GRB sub-class known as short-duration gamma-ray bursts. These explosions—which scientists believe are responsible for the creation of the heaviest elements in the universe, such as platinum and gold— result from the catastrophic merger of binary star systems containing a neutron star.

“These mergers occur because of gravitational wave radiation that removes energy from the orbit of the binary stars, causing the stars to spiral in toward each other,” said Tanmoy Laskar, who recently joined the U as Assistant Professor of Physics & Astronomy. “The resulting explosion is accompanied by jets moving at close to the speed of light. When one of these jets is pointed at Earth, we observe a short pulse of gammaray radiation or a short-duration GRB.”

According to Laskar, a short-duration GRB usually lasts only a few tenths of a second. Scientists then look for an afterglow, an emission of light caused by the interaction of the jets with surrounding gas. They’re difficult to detect—only half a dozen short-duration GRBs have been detected at radio wavelengths, and until now none had been detected in millimeter wavelengths.

In a first for radio astronomy, scientists have detected millimeterwavelength light from a short-duration gamma-ray burst. This artist’s conception shows the merger between a neutron star and another star (seen as a disk, lower left) which caused an explosion resulting in the short-duration gamma-ray burst, GRB 211106A (white jet, middle), and left behind what scientists now know to be one of the most luminous afterglows on record (semi-spherical shock wave, mid-right). Credit: National Radio Astronomy Observatory.

Laskar, who led the research while an Excellence Fellow at Radboud University in The Netherlands, said that the difficulty is the immense distance to GRBs and the technological capabilities of telescopes. “Short-duration GRB afterglows are very luminous and energetic. But these explosions take place in distant galaxies,

which means the light from them can be quite faint for our telescopes on Earth. Before ALMA, millimeter telescopes were not sensitive enough to detect these afterglows.”

Having occurred when the universe was just 40 percent of its current age, GRB 211106A was also difficult to observe. The light from this short-duration gamma-ray burst was so faint that, while early X-ray observations with NASA’s Neil Gehrels Swift Observatory saw the explosion, the host galaxy was undetectable at that wavelength, and scientists weren’t able to determine exactly where the explosion was coming from.

“Afterglow light is essential for figuring out which galaxy a burst comes from and for learning more about the burst itself,” Laskar said. “Initially, when only the X-ray counterpart had been discovered, astronomers thought that this burst might be coming from a nearby galaxy.” Laskar said a significant amount of dust in the area also obscured the object from detection in optical observations with the Hubble Space Telescope.

Each wavelength added a new dimension to scientists’ understanding of the GRB, and the ALMA millimeter array telescope, in particular, was critical to uncovering the truth about the burst. “The Hubble observations revealed an unchanging field of galaxies,” Laskar said. “ALMA’s unparalleled sensitivity allowed us to pinpoint the location of the GRB in that field with more precision, and it turned out to be in another faint galaxy, which is farther away. That, in turn, means that this short-duration gamma-ray burst is even more powerful than we first thought, making it one of the most luminous and energetic on record,” he said.

Wen-fai Fong, an Assistant Professor of Physics & Astronomy at Northwestern University added, “This

short gamma-ray burst was the first time we tried to observe such an event with ALMA. Afterglows for short bursts are very difficult to come by, so it was spectacular to catch this event shining so bright. After many years of observing these bursts, this surprising discovery opens up a new area of study, as it motivates us to observe many more of these with ALMA and other telescope arrays in the future.”

Joe Pesce, National Science Foundation Program Officer for NRAO/ALMA said, “These observations are fantastic on many levels. They provide more information to help us understand the enigmatic gamma-ray bursts (and neutron-star astrophysics in general), and they demonstrate how important and complementary multi-wavelength observations with space- and ground-based telescopes are in understanding astrophysical phenomena.”

And there’s plenty of work still to be done across multiple wavelengths, both with new GRBs and with GRB 211106A, which could uncover additional surprises about these bursts. “The study of shortduration GRBs requires the rapid coordination of telescopes around the world and in space, operating at all wavelengths,” said Edo Berger, Professor of Astronomy at Harvard University and researcher at the Center for Astrophysics | Harvard & Smithsonian. “In the case of GRB 211106A, we used some of the most powerful telescopes available— ALMA, the National Science Foundation’s Karl G. Jansky Very Large Array (VLA), NASA’s Chandra X-ray Observatory, and the Hubble Space Telescope. With the now-operational James Webb Space Telescope (JWST), and future 2040 meter optical and radio telescopes such as the next generation VLA (ngVLA), we will be able to produce a complete picture of these cataclysmic events and study them at unprecedented distances,” Berger said.

Laskar added, “With JWST, we can now take a spectrum of the host galaxy and easily know the distance. In the future, we could also use JWST to capture infrared afterglows and study their chemical composition. With ngVLA, we will be able to study the geometric structure of the afterglows and the star-forming fuel found in their host environments in unprecedented detail. I’m very excited about these upcoming discoveries in our field.”

Boom!

A meteor crashes across Utah’s sky

On the morning of August 13, 2022, a mysterious loud BOOM rattled windows and Utahns’ nerves across the Wasatch Front . Immediately, people speculated on social media: Was it thunder? Construction? Jets from Hill Air Force Base? The answer came via grainy video feeds from residential security cameras—it appeared that a meteor had crashed into Earth’s atmosphere to produce what has been called a “sonic boom .”

Ben Bromley, a University of Utah Professor of astronomy who researches planetary formation, spoke about the meteor .

When you heard the sound, did you know immediately that it was a meteor?

No. I was getting ready to run some Saturday morning errands when I heard what I thought was a rocket boom. I went through a list of possibilities: loud neighborhood kids, my own kids, road construction, thunder. I guess I should have thought of a meteor impact, given that I study these impacts on other planets, but I didn’t.

Are we sure that a meteor caused the noise?

I’m certain. People’s security cameras caught a visible trace in the sky that was the meteor coming through the atmosphere. We have weather satellites that caught light flashes that are consistent with a meteor hitting the atmosphere, and that boom noise is an expected outcome of something like this.

Why did it make that boom noise?

The noise comes from the meteor. This thing is cruising in, going tens of thousands of miles per hour, until it crashes into our atmosphere. The extreme friction between the meteor and the air rapidly heats up the material in the meteor until it explodes in a fiery airburst.

Is this type of impact rare?

We get inundated with tiny micro-meteors and meteorites constantly. Tons of them fall on the Earth every year. Something that could make the noise we heard had to have been the size of a mini fridge or so. We can guess that this meteor was around three feet long by the amount of energy required to hit the Earth’s atmosphere, creating an airburst as loud as the one we heard.

We know it wasn’t the size of a bus, as was the case in the Chelyabinsk meteor that exploded over the Russian region in 2013. Saturday’s event didn’t have the signature characteristics of a meteor crash that big. The Chelyabinsk meteor flashed across the sky as bright as the sun before plunging through the atmosphere with such power that windows in local buildings shattered.

Was the sound a ‘sonic boom’?

A sonic boom occurs when an object is moving faster than the speed of sound, displacing the air as it tears through the atmosphere. The boom happens because all sound made by the supersonic object is bunched into a single pressure wave when it reaches us. I’d feel better calling the noise we heard a blast wave rather than a sonic boom. The meteor was certainly moving faster than the speed of sound, but I think the airburst itself likely contributed to the boom.

How often do big meteors hit the Earth?

There is lots of debris floating around in the solar system that hits our atmosphere constantly. Most are too small to make a noise—instead, they burn up upon entering the atmosphere and produce the falling stars that you may see in Utah’s dark skies. Collisions that are big enough to produce a boom like this happen about once per year—they’re not too destructive because they blow up tens of miles in the upper atmosphere. The bus-sized objects like the Chelyabinsk meteor, which was about 65 feet across, happen once every 50 years. When these hit the atmosphere, they produce energy equivalent to 20 to 30 times the energy of an atomic bomb. Even rarer are those like the Tunguska event in 1908, which happen roughly once every 500 years. This meteor is estimated to have been about 200 feet across. When it exploded over the sparsely populated Eastern Siberian region, the blast leveled around 80 million trees in 800 square miles of forest.

Luckily, the miles-in-diameter-meteor that caused the dinosaur extinction was even rarer, an event that happens once in tens of millions of years.

How does this meteor event coincide with your research?

One of the things that I liked about this event is that I study planet formation in the solar system. Planets form when stuff hits other stuff in space—it’s all about collisions. My students and I work on techniques, data science strategies, and code that have applicability to problems that are important here on Earth. But it doesn’t really feel on a day-to-day level that we’re studying something that’s relevant to us humans. Then on Saturday, it happened. Yes. For that brief windowshaking moment, all the relevance became clear.

NASA selects mission proposal submitted by U astrophysicist

Dan Wik and the STAR-X team for further study

NASA has selected four mission proposals submitted to the agency’s Explorers Program for further study. Daniel Wik, a U astrophysicist and Assistant Professor in the Department of Physics & Astronomy, is a member of the STAR-X Proposal Team, which proposed one of the “Medium Explorer” missions. (Two “Missions of Opportunity” proposals were also selected.) The four proposals describe missions that would study exploding stars, distant clusters of galaxies, and nearby galaxies and stars.

After detailed evaluation of those studies, NASA plans to select one Mission of Opportunity and one Medium Explorer Mission in 2024. The selected missions will be targeted for launch in 2027 and 2028, respectively.

“The fact that STAR-X has passed this competitive milestone is a testament to the hard work and vision of both the hardware and science teams,” said Wik. “It has been enormous fun for me to contribute to this effort and collaborate with such a talented and convivial group of scientists. I hope this collaboration will continue for years.”

Wik is an X-ray astronomer who primarily works with observations conducted by the NuSTAR mission, along with data from other X-ray observatories, such as XMM-Newton , Chandra , and the soon-to-launch XRISM, studying galaxies and galaxy clusters. Before joining the U in 2017, he was a research scientist at the NASA Goddard Space Flight Center outside Washington, D.C.

“NASA’s Explorers Program has a proud tradition of supporting innovative approaches to exceptional science, and these selections hold that same promise,” said Thomas Zurbuchen, Associate Administrator for NASA’s Science Mission Directorate at NASA Headquarters in Washington. “From studying the evolution of galaxies to explosive, highenergy events, these proposals are inspiring in their scope and creativity to explore the unknown in our universe.”

NASA Explorer missions conduct focused scientific investigations and develop instruments that fill scientific gaps between the agency’s larger space science missions. The proposals were competitively selected based on potential science value and feasibility of development plans.

The Explorers Program is the oldest continuous NASA program. The program is designed to provide frequent, low-cost access to space using principal investigator-led space science investigations relevant to the NASA Science Mission Directorate’s astrophysics and heliophysics programs.

Since the launch of Explorer 1 in 1958, which discovered the Earth’s radiation belts, the Explorers Program has launched more than 90 missions, including the Uhuru and Cosmic Background Explorer (COBE) missions that led to Nobel prizes for their investigators.

The Explorers Program is managed by NASA Goddard for NASA’s Science Mission Directorate in Washington. The Directorate conducts a wide variety of research and scientific exploration programs for Earth studies, space weather, the solar system, and the universe.

For more information about Wik and the STAR-X team, visit: http://star-x.xraydeep.org/.

The four Explorers program mission proposals

Medium Explorer proposals

The two Medium Explorer teams selected at this stage will each receive $3 million to conduct a nine-month mission concept study. Astrophysics Medium Explorer mission costs are capped at $300 million each, excluding the launch vehicle. The selected Medium Explorer proposals are:

Survey and Time-domain Astrophysical Research Explorer (STAR-X). The STAR-X spacecraft would be able to turn rapidly to point a sensitive wide-field X-ray telescope and an ultraviolet telescope at transient cosmic sources, such as supernova explosions and active galaxies. Deep X-ray surveys would map hot gas trapped in distant clusters of galaxies. Combined with infrared observations from NASA’s upcoming Roman Space Telescope, these observations would trace how massive clusters of galaxies built up over cosmic history. Principal investigator: William Zhang at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland.

UltraViolet EXplorer (UVEX). UVEX would conduct a deep survey of the whole sky in two bands of ultraviolet light, to provide new insights into galaxy evolution and the lifecycle of stars. The spacecraft would have the ability to repoint rapidly to capture ultraviolet light from the explosion that follows a burst of gravitational waves caused by merging neutron stars. UVEX would carry an ultraviolet spectrograph for detailed study of massive stars and stellar explosions. Principal investigator: Fiona Harrison at Caltech in Pasadena, California.

Mission of Opportunity proposals

The two Mission of Opportunity teams selected at this stage will each receive $750,000 to conduct a ninemonth implementation concept study. NASA Mission of Opportunity costs are capped at $80 million each. The selected proposals are:

Moon Burst Energetics All-sky Monitor (MoonBEAM). In its orbit between Earth and the Moon, MoonBEAM would see almost the whole sky at any time, watching for bursts of gamma rays from distant cosmic explosions and rapidly alerting other telescopes to study the source. MoonBEAM would see gamma rays earlier or later than telescopes on Earth or in low orbit, and astronomers could use that time difference to pinpoint the gamma-ray source in the sky. Principal investigator: Chiumun Michelle Hui at NASA’s Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Alabama.

LargE Area burst Polarimeter (LEAP). Mounted on the International Space Station, LEAP would study gamma-ray bursts from the energetic jets launched during the formation of a black hole after the explosive death of a massive star, or in the merger of compact objects. The high-energy gammaray radiation can be polarized—that is, vibrate in a particular direction—which can distinguish between competing theories for the nature of the jets. Principal investigator: Mark McConnell at the University of New Hampshire in Durham.

Physics professors named APS fellows

Two professors in the U’s Department of Physics & Astronomy— Christoph Boehme, Professor and Chair of the department and Ramón Barthelemy, Assistant Professor, have been elected fellows of the American Physical Society (APS). The APS Fellowship Program was created to recognize members who may have made advances in physics through original research and publication, or made significant innovative contributions in the application of physics to science and technology. They may also have made significant contributions to the teaching of physics or service and participation in the activities of the society.

Election to the APS is considered one of the most prestigious and exclusive honors for a physicist—the number of recommended nominees in each year may not exceed one-half percent of the current membership of the Society. APS is a nonprofit membership organization working to advance the knowledge of physics through its outstanding research journals, scientific meetings, and education, outreach, advocacy, and international activities. The APS represents more than 50,000 members, including physicists in academia, national laboratories, and industry in the United States and throughout the world.

“I am profoundly honored by my selection as an APS Fellow. Receiving this recognition is an excellent opportunity to look back at my research career, starting with my first experiments as an undergraduate researcher more than 25 years ago. When I think about all the discoveries and inventions I have had the chance to contribute to, I realize that none of them would have happened without the collaboration, support, and collegiality of many others. These include my former research advisors, all the students and postdocs who have worked in my research labs, my colleagues at the University of Utah (both staff and faculty), and other institutions. I am very much indebted to all these wonderful people.”

Boehme was born and raised in Oppenau, a small town in southwest Germany, 20 miles east of the French city of Strasbourg. After obtaining an undergraduate degree in electrical engineering, and committing to 15 months of civil services caring for disabled people (chosen to avoid the military draft), he moved to Heidelberg, Germany in 1994 to study physics at Heidelberg University.

In 1997, Boehme won a German-American Fulbright Student Scholarship, which brought him to the United States for the first time, where he studied at North Carolina State University and met his spouse. In 2000, they moved to Berlin, Germany, where they lived for five years while he worked for the HelmholtzZentrum Berlin, a national laboratory. He finished

his dissertation work as a graduate student of the University of Marburg in 2002 and spent an additional three years working as a postdoctoral researcher.

Boehme moved to Utah in 2006 to join the Department of Physics & Astronomy as an Assistant Professor. He was promoted to Associate Professor and awarded tenure in 2010; three years later, he became a professor. During his tenure at the U, Boehme received recognition through a CAREER Award of the National Science Foundation in 2010, the Silver Medal for Physics and Materials Science from the International EPR Society in 2016, as well as the U’s Distinguished Scholarly and Creative Research Award in 2018 for his contributions and scientific breakthroughs in electron spin physics and for his leadership in the field of spintronics.

He was appointed Chair of the department in July, 2020 after serving as interim chair. Previously, Boehme served as associate chair of the department from 2010-2015. His research is focused on the exploration of spin-dependent electronic processes in condensed matter. The goal of the Boehme Group is to develop sensitive coherent spin motion detection schemes for small spin ensembles that are needed for quantum computing and general materials research.

Ramón Barthelemy

“When I started graduate school you couldn’t even ask the LGBT question in physics without ending your career,” said Barthelemy. “Although homophobia and transphobia are still rampant in physics, a few of us are lucky enough to ask the question and still continue in the field. It is amazing to get this recognition for my work considering the history of queer people in physics, from Alan Turing’s death

to the ending of Frank Kameny’s astronomy career, and the inability of people like Sally Ride and Nikola Tesla to be public with all of their relationships. I am both humbled and full of gratitude to pursue funded work giving voice to queer people in physics and, importantly, changing policy.”

Barthelemy is an early-career physicist with a record of groundbreaking scholarship and advocacy that has advanced the field of physics education research as it pertains to gender issues and lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender (LGBT)+ physicists.

The field of physics struggles to support students and faculty from historically excluded groups. Barthelemy has long worked to make the field more inclusive—he has served on the American Association of Physics Teachers (AAPT) Committee on Women in Physics and on the Committee on Diversity—and was an early advocate for LGBT+ voices in the AAPT. He co-authored LGBT Climate in Physics: Building an Inclusive Community, an influential report for the American Physical Society, and the first edition of the LGBT+ Inclusivity in Physics and Astronomy Best Practices Guide, which offers actionable strategies for physicists to improve their departments and workplaces for LGBT+ colleagues and students. He also recently published the first peer reviewed quantitative study on LGBT+ physicists which received national attention.

In 2019, Barthelemy joined the U’s College of Science as its first tenure-track faculty member focusing on physics education research (PER), a field that studies how people learn physics and culture of the community. Since arriving, he has built a program that gives students rigorous training in physics

concepts and in education research, qualities that prepare students for jobs in academia, education policy, or general science policy. He founded the Physics Education Research Group at the University of Utah (PERU), where he and a team of postdoctoral scholars and graduate and undergraduate students explore how graduate program policies impact students’ experiences; conduct long-term studies of the experience of women in physics and astronomy and of Students of Color in STEM programs; and seek to understand the professional network development and navigation of women and LGBT+ PhD physicists.

In discussing Barthelemy’s election as a fellow to the APS, two of his mentors, Geraldine L. Cochran and Tim Atherton, commented on his work: “Barthelemy has provided an excellent example for how research on the educational experiences of people from marginalized groups can center the voices of the research participants,” said Cochran, Associate Professor at Rutgers University. “Indeed, Dr. Barthelemy was among the first—if not the first—in physics education research to use Feminist Standpoint Theory in his research.”

“Fellowship is one of the highest honors that that American Physical Society can bestow and is normally reserved for scientists much further along in their careers,” said Atherton, Associate Professor of Physics at Tufts University. “Ramón’s election is a signature of the incredible esteem in which his fellow physicists hold him and points to the significance of his work. This kind of work is necessary to transform the culture of physics to fully include LGBTQ+ people. As one of these people myself, and as someone who has not always been included by the academic community, I’m thrilled that Ramón has been given this incredible honor.”

Barthelemy earned his Bachelor of Science degree in astrophysics at Michigan State University and received his Master of Science and doctorate degrees in PER at Western Michigan University. “Originally, I went to graduate school for nuclear physics, but I discovered I was more interested in diversity, equity, and inclusion in physics and astronomy. Unfortunately, there were very few women, People of Color, LGBT or firstgeneration physicists in my program,” said Barthelemy, who looked outside of physics to understand why.

Other awards

In 2022, Earlier he received the 2022 WEPAN (Women in Engineering ProActive Network) Betty Vetter Research Award for notable achievement in research related to women in engineering.

In 2021, Barthelemy received the Doc Brown Futures Award, an honor that recognizes early career members who demonstrate excellence in their contributions to physics education and exhibit excellent leadership.

He received the 2020 Fulbright Finland award but wasn’t able to travel to Finland to give his lectures until 2022.

In 2020, he and his U colleagues Jordan Gerton and Pearl Sandick were awarded $200,000 from the National Science Foundation to complete a case study exploring the graduate program changes in the U’s Department of Physics & Astronomy. In the same year, Barthelemy received a $350,000 Building Capacity in Science Education Research award to continue his longitudinal study on women in physics and astronomy and created a new study on People of Color in U.S. graduate STEM programs. Later, he received a $120,000 supplement to continue the work.

He also co-received a $500,000 grant with external colleagues Dr. Charles Henderson and Dr. Adrienne Traxler to study the professional network development and career pathways of women and LGBT+ PhD physicists in academia, the government, and private sectors. Lastly, Barthelemy was selected to conduct a literature review on LGBT+ scientists as a virtual visiting scholar by the ARC Network, an organization dedicated to improving STEM equity in academia.

In 2014, Barthelemy completed a Fulbright Fellowship at the University of Jyväskylä, in Finland where he conducted research looking at student motivations to study physics in Finland. In 2015, he received a fellowship from the American Association for the Advancement of Science Policy in the United States Department of Education and worked on science education initiatives in the Obama administration. After acting as a consultant for university ministrations and research offices, he began to miss doing his own research and was offered a job as an assistant professor at the University of Utah.

Evans & Sutherland Internship

U students create new presentations during planetarium internship .

This past summer Keegan Benfield, Ethan Lamé, and Christian Norseth, in the U’s Department of Physics & Astronomy, participated in an internship program at Evans & Sutherland, a Cosm company.

Cosm/E&S, considered the world’s first computer graphics company, has developed advanced computer graphics technologies for more than five decades.

Their technology developed Digistar 7, the world’s leading digital planetarium system, with full-dome programs and production services, giant screen films formatted for fulldome theaters, premium-quality projection domes, and theater design services.

The Physics Department had an opportunity to chat with the students about the internship.

How did you learn about the internship?

Benfield - senior: physics, mechanical engineering

I learned about it through an email from my U of U physics advisor, Cyri Dixon, the day before the internship closed. The email introduced me to Cosm. I was excited and applied right away.

Lamé - senior: physics

I first heard about the internship with Cosm from Cyri Dixon. It sounded interesting, so I thought I might as well apply.

Norseth - graduate 2021: physics

My advisor, Dan Wik, told me about the internship during one of our meetings.

What problem were you trying to solve at Cosm/E&S?

Lamé

We were given the task of creating shows using their software, Digistar. We each picked a topic to research, and then we used Digistar to program the show as if it were to be shown to a planetarium audience.

Norseth

My understanding is that Cosm/E&S put a lot of effort into adding accurate astronomical data and surveys into their planetarium software, and they wanted a way to show planetariums how to use the data.

Benfield

The astrophysics interns were assigned two projects: designing two presentations on astrological objects and compiling a research paper that complemented the productions. The goal was to demonstrate the Digistar 7 system capabilities.

How did you go about developing a solution?

Norseth

I selected two topics and researched them. I chose Extrasolar Systems and Stellar Formation Regions. We had a general outline of what kind of information we should include in our 5-10-minute planetarium show. I compiled a lot of information and then wrote out a “storyboard” with each element I wanted to include. I then designed the show in Digistar by writing automated scripts in the Digistar Command Language that controlled where you were in space and other visual elements on the dome. We could test our shows out on a projector dome that you would have in a planetarium.

Benfield

During the first week, we were instructed on how to use the Digistar 7 systems and were given a general tour of the company facilities, including their three domes. We learned the operations and usage of the medium dome so that we could test our

presentations. We used the remaining nine weeks to research, develop code, and collaborate on the shows.

Lamé

After the first week of training using the Digistar software, we all jumped into using the scripting language to code our own movements and animations. After I did some research on my topic, I created a sort of story that I wanted to tell the audience, and then used the Digistar code to show the audience exactly what I wanted to show them.

Did you collaborate while still working on your own projects?

Lamé

We each worked on different topics throughout the internship, but we still helped each other. There are a lot of functionalities that the Digistar software has that we found through experimentation on our own topics, so if one of us had a question on how to do something, the others would often have an answer.

Benfield

Each astrophysics intern selected their own two topics to investigate and research on their own time. However, we regularly met at the offices to discuss our code, receive help in coding, and peer review each presentation. We could easily rely upon each other when a problem occurred. Due to the variety of options that the Digistar 7 systems offered, each intern developed a unique method of

generating various celestial objects so that each of our presentations were different.

Norseth

We all worked on our own shows individually, but we helped each other figure things out. We would help each other with framing certain information or give suggestions on how to create an element in our shows.

Tell us about your daily routine .

Benfield

My work day usually started around 9 a.m. and ended at 3 p.m. The day was broken up into sections depending on the number of meetings I had that day. For the days with fewer meetings, I spent my time in the computer lab or medium dome, developing my presentations and aiding or receiving coding aid from other interns. We also reviewed each other’s content in the dome. On days with multiple meetings, I spent my time preparing and conducting a little bit of coding.When I wasn’t at Cosm’s facilities, I was at the Marriott Library, conducting online research or scouring the library for research books.Each intern was assigned a Cosm buddy—an older company member. I met bi-weekly with my buddy to discuss any problems and to review my and practice my presentations. We did have internship week, where all of the interns traveled to the facilities here in Utah. We had multiple activities, ranging from an airplane competition, designing a Cosm event, and having dinner and a movie in the large dome. We also received tips about hiring and using LinkedIn as a networking tool.

Norseth

Every week I’d come into the office on Monday, Wednesday, and Thursday and get to work in a shared computer space. If I needed to test any content on the dome, I’d export my scripts and head down to the bottom floor where I could use the projector dome.

Lamé

Typically, I would arrive just before 9 a.m. and jump into working on whatever work I had from the previous day. There were occasionally meetings during the day that we were able to join from our laptops, but for the most part, we stayed in the computer lab working on our shows. Most people were there most days, so I was rarely the only one in the room. Often, we would go to a planetarium projection dome in the office and play our shows to see how the movements/animations worked and fix any bugs that popped up. I would often be doing research on the internet while working on these projects to make sure that the information I had was correct and to search for more engaging stories to tell.

Future plans?

Norseth

I’m hoping to attend graduate school in astrophysics. This is my second year applying, but I should have a published paper under my belt this time. After my Ph.D., I’m not sure what I’ll do, probably try to become a professor or conduct some kind of astronomy-related research.

Lamé

I’m planning to apply to some graduate school programs in astrophysics and maybe even an engineering program or two. I’d love to dive deeper into a related field in grad school and once I know that I enjoy working with that skill set, eventually move into an industry job.

Benfield

I love learning and developing skills that are desirable for my career path. I want to enter the field of defense contractors or work at a national lab. I also plan on continuing my education by earning a master’s or a Ph.D. in engineering, computer science, and physics. Eventually, I want to start my own company based on some inventions that I have semi-planned out.

Ramón Barthelemy receives national Betty Vetter Research Award

Ramón S . Barthelemy, Assistant Professor of Physics & Astronomy at the University of Utah, has been awarded the 2022 Betty Vetter Research Award presented by the Women in Engineering ProActive Network (WEPAN). The national award recognizes notable achievement in research related to women in engineering. The award is named in memory of Betty M. Vetter, longtime director of the Commission on Professionals in Science and Technology, who served as the first treasurer of WEPAN and was a founding member of its board of directors.

“WEPAN is an impactful member society that hosts the ARC STEM Equity Network, an intersectional effort supporting equity research in STEM,” said Barthelemy. “I am humbled and honored to have my work recognized by an organization that works so tirelessly to enhance inclusion with considerable focus on the various intersections of identity one can have. I’m looking forward to continuing to work with both WEPAN and the ARC STEM Equity Network.”

Barthelemy recently served as co-lead author on a study of LGBT+ physicists that detailed the difficulties, harassment, and other behaviors that induce many to leave the profession. “LGBT+ people often feel shunned, excluded and are continually having to readjust and twist themselves to fit into the physics community,” said Barthelemy. “LGBT+ people are inherently a part of this field. If you want physics to be a place where anyone can participate, we have to talk about these issues.”

Based in Washington, D.C., WEPAN was founded as a nonprofit educational organization in 1990. It is the nation’s first network dedicated to advancing cultures of inclusion and diversity in engineering higher education and workplaces. The WEPAN Awards honor key individuals, programs, and organizations for accomplishments that promote WEPAN’s mission to advance cultures of inclusion and diversity in engineering education and professions.

Cyri Dixon

named outstanding new advisor by national organization

Cyri Dixon, the Undergraduate Academic Advising Coordinator for the Department of Physics & Astronomy, has won the Outstanding New Advisor Award—Primary Role Category presented by the National Academic Advising Association (NACADA). Award selection is extremely competitive and designed to honor and recognize professionals who have made significant contributions to the field of academic advising in higher education. Candidates are nominated by their institution, and each application is carefully reviewed by NACADA committee members. All outstanding advisor nominations include a comprehensive list of the nominee’s professional qualifications, academic accomplishments, letters of support, and documented advising success.

“I am very honored to receive this award,” said Dixon. “I am grateful to work with such fantastic students, staff, and faculty. This award really highlights the strides we have been able to make in our department to create a better student experience and build a community where all students feel welcome and successful. Advising is challenging, but working with my wonderful students makes it all worth it.”

Dixon was previously recognized for her exemplary advising work when she was named Outstanding New Academic Advisor in 2021 by the University of Utah Academic Advising Community (UAAC). She serves as the only undergraduate advisor for the department and has proven to be a valuable resource to undergraduate physics students in all areas of academic advising. She meets regularly with 236 physics major students, and she takes pride in knowing each student by name. She helps each develop a course plan that fits their interests, and she connects them to research and internship opportunities, campus resources, and the department community.

A first-generation graduate of Utah State University, with a degree in Physical Sciences Education, Dixon also has minor degrees in physics and chemistry teaching. She recently earned a Master of Public Administration degree from the University of Utah. Originally from Idaho, she returned to Utah after living in the Midwest and teaching middle school science and engineering in Arizona. She loves hot air ballooning, Wonder Woman, and her dog, Roka.

know

According to Star Trek ’s Captain James T . Kirk , space is the final frontier (although oceanographers might have something to say about that). Beyond the Earth’s atmosphere, there is a vast area of the universe that we will likely never completely understand, despite the best efforts of mathematicians, physicists, and astronomers.

However, rather than being a source of frustration, space represents infinite possibility, which is why astronomers like Gail Zasowski, an astronomer based at the U’s Department of Physics & Astronomy, enjoy what they do in their professional lives. Gail is an astronomer with a particular interest in understanding where and when our Milky Way galaxy formed its 100 billion stars. Her research is helping explain how the infant Milky Way grew into the massive spiral galaxy that we see today.

Zasowski responded to questions posed in an article first published by futurum, a free online resource and magazine aimed at encouraging 14–19-year-olds worldwide to pursue careers in STEM, medicine and social sciences, humanities, and the arts.

What are our current limitations regarding understanding the history of our galaxy?

Ironically, the main limitation to our understanding is closely related to the main advantage: that we are embedded inside the galaxy. It can be thought of as the difference between looking at a map of a city and standing on a street in that city. Looking at a map is like looking at other galaxies—we can see the overall shape and structure, where the business and residential areas are, and so on. But standing in that city has historically been like studying the Milky Way—we can’t see the pattern of streets or what the next neighborhood looks like, but we can see the people and the shop windows, smell the smells, hear the sounds.

Gail Zasowski: to boldly

what no one has known before

However, in recent years, astronomers have been able to peer farther into the Milky Way than ever before. A lot of the difficulty in observing our galaxy is because of the thick clouds of gas and dust that fill the disc part of the Milky Way and block the starlight behind them. But some surveys, including the second generation of the Apache Point Observatory Galactic Evolution Experiment (APOGEE) in the Sloan Digital Sky Survey III and IV projects, use infrared light to study the stars, which are much less affected by the intervening dust. The problem of perspective still exists, but astronomers are getting closer to being able to characterize the Milky Way in the same way as external galaxies.

Why is the Milky Way so important?

We can observe the Milky Way at a higher resolution than other galaxies because of our proximity to it. Although there are some challenges as previously noted, we can observe the small-scale building blocks of galaxies, such as individual stars and small gas clouds. These observations have shaped our understanding of a large fraction of astrophysics, from what happens in the interiors of stars to the ways a whole galaxy can change over billions of years. We then apply this understanding to interpret our observations of other galaxies—where we can’t see things at the same level of detail—and create a picture of how galaxies in the universe, and the universe itself, have evolved since shortly after the Big Bang.

“Big picture” questions include: Where and when did the Milky Way’s stars form? What are the main sources of heavy elements in today’s Milky Way stars, and when and how were they synthesized? What is the best way to apply what we learn in our galaxy to understanding what happens in other galaxies?

Addressing these questions involves answering smaller ones, like: How old are the stars in a specific part of the Milky Way and what is their chemical makeup? What series of evolutionary events could give us this pattern of stellar ages and chemistry? How does the gas and dust between the stars move around throughout these events?

What are some of the methods you use in your research?

To uncover what elements are in a star, we measure the star’s light at different wavelengths. Atoms of different elements absorb that light at different wavelengths, so models are fitted to the pattern of absorption compared with wavelength to determine how much of each element is present in the star. These same models also account for the star’s temperature, surface gravity, and other properties that are necessary for computing distances and ages.

We work to link detailed measurements that can be made in the Milky Way with global measurements that can be made in other galaxies (which are less detailed but cover a higher number of galaxies in different environments with different histories). It has been very exciting to see many different analyses on stars in different parts of the Milky Way come together in a comprehensive picture of where and when its stars formed, including the influence of gas accretion events billions of years ago, which strongly affected the regions near the sun and which probably happened before the sun formed!

It has also been extremely gratifying to see the students and post-doctoral researchers in my group taking ownership of their work and leading their own projects, often collaborating with each other and with very little input from me. I value the success of the scientific work for increasing our understanding of the universe and for launching the careers (in and out of academia) of so many hard-working scientists.

What are the long-term plans for your research?

Many of the upcoming datasets—including for the SDSS-V, the next data releases from ESA’s Gaia mission and NASA’s Roman Space Telescope— will provide ever-larger troves of measurements of the stars in our Milky Way and nearby galaxies. I am excited to work on recreating the history of our galaxy—playing the movie of its life, backwards—by mapping out where and when the stars form, how they release their new elements back into the galaxy, and how those new elements move around between the stars before being incorporated into the next stellar generations. I love learning things that no one has ever known before.

Astronomy is something that surely interests all of us to some degree and is a field that is ready for new discoveries. Only around 400 years ago, Galileo was chastised for championing Copernican heliocentrism—the belief that the Earth revolved around the sun. This demonstrates just how ready the field of astronomy is when it comes to new and novel ideas that could fundamentally change our understanding of the way things are.

What do you find most rewarding about your research in astronomy?

In many ways, astronomy is not centered on answering questions, but on asking questions that no one has thought to ask before. What I find particularly rewarding is getting to learn all these things about some of the biggest, most beautiful, and most unfathomable objects in the universe.

I don’t mean un-understandable, but rather that we can’t truly picture their size, we can’t hold something that big or that hot or that

old in our minds. Even stars, which we see every night with our eyes, and which are on average rather small and cool compared to other things in the universe—our brains just aren’t set up to imagine those regimes.

What challenges will the next generation of astronomers face?

There are always technical challenges: think about the difficulties of studying space without a telescope! Then think about the first telescopes and how primitive they were. Now think about the telescopes that we have presently and consider how they will one day be seen as primitive! It is a basic fact that we will be able to understand more about space with time simply because of access to improved and better tools.

There are also data challenges. Our datasets, observational and simulated, are getting increasingly larger, and being able to store this information and access it already requires specialized knowledge. In addition, data is more complex, so understanding how to put all that data into a meaningful physical understanding is a challenge that is unlikely to be solved any time soon, but it’s exciting to think that one day it will be.

How have outreach and education initiatives, at the University of Utah and elsewhere, helped encourage young people to study STEM?

One of the things our team tries to do with these kinds of programs is to emphasize that science is something that shows up in everyday life. It’s not some obscure knowledge that only genius people in lab coats have access to. It affects all of us every day and is something we can all learn about. We try to do fun projects that show how scientific knowledge, math, and computing manifest themselves in objects and activities that everyone can contribute to.

We want to convey the idea that studying STEM prepares people for a wide range of things in life—not just jobs! If you want to study science as a career, you can do it, even if you don’t fit the stereotypical image of what, say, the movies tell us a “scientist” looks like.

What were your interests when you were growing up?

I’ve always loved reading, especially science fiction and historical novels. In school, I enjoyed science and language classes the most—I love learning how systems work, both the physical system of the universe and human systems of language and communication. I’m also an avid outdoor enthusiast and love camping and spending time in nature, especially here in Utah, with its red-rock canyons, deserts and incredibly dark nighttime skies!

Who or what inspired you to become an astronomer?

It wasn’t until I was at university that I understood that “astronomer” was a job that people could have. My earlier schools didn’t really push science as a career. I took an introductory astrophysics course during my first year at university, and the combination of the enormity and beauty of the universe, coupled with actually being able to understand pieces of it with math and physics, was irresistible.

What attributes have made you successful as an astronomer?

Being detail-oriented has been very helpful, I think. A lot of my dayto-day work involves writing code, reading and writing papers, and understanding all the nitty-gritty details of a dataset that might influence our interpretation of our results. Not being able or interested in submerging oneself in those details would make the daily work much more challenging.

Being a people person has also been helpful. Much of the astronomical progress currently is made in collaboration with other people, as simulations and datasets get larger and more complex, and just require so many more individuals to create them. I love working with a team of people on a common project and doing my part to make sure the team is a fun and inclusive place to be, which almost always leads to better science, too.

What are your proudest career achievements so far?

I am very proud of the scientific knowledge that my team and I have contributed to our understanding of the universe. I am also proud of what I have been able to do in the classroom and broader environment in the field and my department. Both of these were recognized with a Cottrell Scholar Award in 2021, which honors early-career faculty who have shown excellence in both research and education.

Department of Physics & Astronomy hosts NuFact

International Workshop at Snowbird

Professor Carsten Rott and colleagues from the Department of Physics & Astronomy hosted an international workshop on neutrinos at Snowbird. Known as NuFact , the workshop brought together experimentalists, theorists, and accelerator physicists from all over the world to share their knowledge and expertise in the field. NuFact had more than 150 in-person participants and numerous virtual contributions.

A neutrino is a subatomic particle that is similar to an electron but has no electrical charge and a very small mass. Neutrinos are one of the most abundant particles in the universe, but they are difficult to detect because they have very little interaction with matter.

“NuFact is one of the most important conferences in the field of neutrino physics . It was an honor and a great opportunity that the scientific program committee selected Utah as the venue for the 23rd conference in this workshop series ”

Professor Pearl Sandick and Assistant Professor Yue Zhao served as coorganizers of the conference. The team also included Rebecca Corley and other graduate students, who were dedicated to making this event a success.

One of the pre-workshops called “Multi-messenger Tomography of the Earth” encouraged experts from earth science and neutrino physics to explore the possibility of using neutrinos to understand the composition of the inner Earth. “I enjoyed the open exchange of ideas in this interdisciplinary workshop,” said Rott. “This work may one day significantly enhance our understanding of the Earth’s composition and dynamics.”

At this year’s workshop, a new working group was created called Inclusion, Diversity, Equity, Education, & Outreach (IDEEO). “We’re excited to establish this as a permanent working group associated with the NuFact conferences,” said Sandick. “This year’s sessions were incredibly productive. We already see meaningful, positive changes, and I anticipate more to come as our scientific community continues to work on IDEEO.”

The conference was supported by the University of Utah (Department of Physics & Astronomy, the College of Science, and the VPR Office), the National Science Foundation, Caen Technologies Inc., the Center for Neutrino Physics @ Virginia Tech, and MPDI Instruments.

Nick Borys

Nick Borys, who received his Ph.D. in Physics from the U, is now Assistant Professor of physics at Montana State University (MSU) in Bozeman, Montana. He has had an interesting journey from receiving an undergraduate degree in mathematics and computer science at the Colorado School of Mines to leading an experimental condensed matter physics and materials science research group at MSU. The Borys Lab researches materials that consist of two-dimensional sheets of atoms and their potential applications in quantum technologies that use the quantum properties of light for sensing, secure communication, and computing.

In the lab, Borys and his team perform investigations by studying how new material systems interact with light on very small length scales, very fast time scales, and ultra-cold temperatures. In addition to his research group, he co-led the team that established the MonArk NSF Quantum Foundry at MSU. Borys is presently a co-associate director of MonArk and runs its day-to-day operations at the university. MonArk is a multi-institute, multi-state team focused on developing and researching 2-D materials for quantum technologies as well as innovating new technologies to accelerate the pace of research on 2-D materials. Borys is also the instructor for an upper-division quantum mechanics course in the Department of Physics at MSU.

He was raised in the Rocky Mountain Front Range in Colorado and considers Longmont and the surrounding rural farming area his original home, because that’s where he attended middle school and high school.

Throughout his later school years, he developed a strong interest in computer-based technologies. He taught himself several programming languages, became proficient in many different operating systems, and of course, learned how to build his own systems. While studying at the Colorado School of

Mines, he was certain that he wanted to be a software engineer and computer scientist, and he received a bachelor of science degree in 2004.

Pivotal experiences

During his undergraduate education, two pivotal experiences ultimately directed his interest to physics. He was working on a construction team, remodeling office space for a local software company. While installing rubber molding one day, the CEO of the company stopped by, and he and Borys began talking about computers and software. The CEO was delighted that Borys had taught himself programming languages, and he hired him on the spot as a part-time software engineer. Over a year, the part-time job transitioned to full-time, and the first company was purchased by another.

“By my junior year, I was moonlighting as a full-time software engineer in the evenings while pursuing my undergraduate degree in the daytime,” said Borys. “Looking back, I’m not sure how I managed both.” By the spring of 2004, he graduated with an undergraduate degree and three years of professional software engineering experience. He had a sense of what a software engineering career would be like, and he looked forward to pursuing the next steps in his career at a larger company.

But fate intervened when he took several courses in the Department of Physics just before graduation. Thanks to inspired teachers, he fell head-over-heels

in love with quantum mechanics. “Unfortunately, it was too late to change my major, and I had to settle for just taking a few additional physics classes that allowed me to deepen my passion,” he said.

After graduation, he accepted a new position at Boeing to develop software for the military, but realized within six months that he missed thinking about physics. One day while talking with a colleague who was working on an interesting problem, Borys asked how he could get involved with such projects, and the colleague he told him to get a Ph.D., preferably in computer science or physics. At that point, Borys decided to attend graduate school and pursue a Ph.D. in physics.

At the U and favorite professors

He wanted to study at the University of Utah first and foremost because of the program and the research. “I knew that I wanted to perform experimental work, and I remember being excited by the research efforts of Professor Jordan Gerton and Distinguished Professor Valy Vardeny,” he said. In addition to the research program, he was also enamored with Salt Lake City and the Wasatch mountains. Growing up in Colorado, he had a love for mountaineering and had just started rock climbing. So, the University of Utah and Salt Lake City were an excellent fit.

He has fond memories of his classes with Professor Oleg Starykh, Professor Mikhail Raikh, Distinguished Professor Alexei Efros, Professor Eugene Mishchenko, and Werner Gellerman, Adjunct Professor of Ophthalmology & Visual Science. He also loved his conversations with Christoph Boehme , Professor and Chair of the Department of Physics & Astronomy, as well as Jordan Gerton. “All of these professors are excellent physicists, and my interactions with them motivated me to want to be their colleagues one day,” he said. “But undoubtedly, Professor John Lupton, my Ph.D. advisor, made the strongest impact on me and, on a near-daily basis, demonstrated how fun and exciting research could be. Without experiencing John’s passion, excitement, creativity, and professionalism, I am not sure I would have continued on the academic track. Working with him was inspiring and very formative for my excitement for scientific research in academia.”

Post-graduate career

After Borys obtained his Ph.D., he continued working in the same lab under the direction of Lupton, who had just moved to the University of Regensburg and offered Borys a postdoc position in his group as the rest of the graduate students finished their degrees. Lupton gave him significant latitude to work independently and help colleagues finish their projects. “The autonomy and independence of this period were great experiences for me, and by working with John and his vibrant team of students and postdocs, I continued to develop a strong passion for academic-style research,” said Borys.

As things wound down at the U, he began looking at national labs for his next position and landed a non-permanent scientist position at the Molecular Foundry at Lawrence Berkeley National Lab. At the Molecular Foundry, he honed the skills he had developed at the U in optical spectroscopy of nanoscale systems and took the opportunity to learn several new experimental and fabrication techniques in the field of nano-optics. The experience deepened his love for academic-style research and gave him a great opportunity to develop a talent for mentoring younger colleagues and graduate students. After five years at the Molecular Foundry, he moved to MSU.

Value of U education

Borys says the U gave him countless opportunities to develop his passion for physics into a career. The vibrant community of professors, especially his advisor, demonstrated how fun and engaging high-end science can be. “It was not my intention to become a professor when I entered graduate school,” said Borys. “I just wanted a more interesting job. But after seeing the interactions among the professors in the Department of Physics & Astronomy at the U and the type of problems they were working on, I was hooked on the prospect of working in physics fulltime at the professor level. They inspired me to pursue an academic career that allowed me to perform the same type of very creative and innovative research.”

Support Physics & Astronomy Students

Donor funded scholarships allow the Department of Physics & Astronomy to provide life-changing educational and research experiences at an exceptional value . For a limited time, the University is offering some matching incentives for new multi-year scholarship pledges and/or new endowed scholarships .

Please consider helping our students through a scholarship contribution today. Online gifts can be made at: giving.utah.edu/physics

For more details about the matching incentive please contact TJ McMullin at travis .mcmullin@utah .edu or 801-581-4414 .

If you have ever considered naming a permanent scholarship to support physics and astronomy students, now is the perfect time to do so.

We support Physics & Astronomy

Welcome to the Crimson Laureate Society . Thank you for your dedication to the Physics & Astronomy Department .

Members of the Crimson Laureate Society are advocates for the department and science, making their voices heard in ensuring that the work of our faculty, researchers, graduate, and undergraduate students continues

Patrons $500,000 - $999,999

Astrophysical Research Consortium

Associates $100,000 - $499,999

Research Corporation for Science Advancement

Samsung Electronics Co Ltd.

Founders Club $50,000 - $99,999

Willard L. Eccles Charitable Foundation

Deseret Club $25,000 - $49,999

Dane R. Hoffman

Presidents Club $2,500 - $9,999

Jim Hanson

David Kieda, Ph.D., and Lisa Kieda

George Lowe III

Dennis Parker, Ph.D., and Anne Parker

Deans Circle $1,000 - $2,499

Benjamin Bromley, Ph.D.

Xiaodong Chen

John and Sally Crelly

Frances Muir

Xiao-rong Zhu, Ph.D., and Ping Hou, Ph.D.

Deans Club $500 - $999

David Ailion, Ph.D., and Janie Ailion

Christoph Boehme, Ph.D., and Kristie Durham

Steven and Kimberley Condas

Karla Gilbert

Kevin and Patty Moss

The Schwab Fund for Charitable Giving

Pearl Sandick, Ph.D., and Kyle Kaiser, JD

Cameron J. Soelberg

Warner Wada

Collegiate Club $250 - $499

Diane Bentley

Juan Gallegos-Orozco, MD

Richard G. Hills, Ph.D., and Ruth Ann Hills

James and Leeann Moffett

Marvin L. Morris, Ph.D., and Sharron Lee Morris

Brian C. Narajowski

Marcus and Sara Nebeling

William and Shanna Parmley

Century Club $100 - $249

Adobe Systems, Inc.

Richard Barrett

Ramón Barthelemy, Ph.D.

The Benevity Community Impact Fund

Harvey and Elizabeth Cahoon

Ralph Chamberlin, Ph.D.

Shenlin Chen, Ph.D

Rebecca Christman

Matthew DeLong, Ph.D

Jordan Gerton, Ph.D., and Brenda Man

Linda Goetz

Roy Goudy

William Hewitson, MD and Colonel (retired)

Gary Kanner, Ph.D, and Cynthia Kanner

Paul Kingsbury, Ph.D.

Hamilton John Lucas

William Manwaring and Priscila Osovski

Larry and Sharma Millward

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John Roberts, Ph.D.

Michele Swaner and Tom Vitelli

Larry and Sydney Whiting

Zheng Zheng, Ph.D.

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Phone 801-581-6901

Crimson Laureate Society

Join the Crimson Laureate Society at the College of Science! Society members advocate for science, gain exclusive benefits, and drive the future of research and education at the University of Utah Your annual membership will start today with any gift of $100 or more to any department or program in the College .

For more information, contact the College of Science at 801-581-6958, or visit www science utah edu/giving .