News & Highlights

NIU physicists Prof. David Hedin and Prof. Michael Eads featured in Fermilab Today story about muon identification and path reconstruction in the Dzero experiment.

New supercomputer cluster saves NIU physicists time, produces remarkable results.

NIU Physics will offer PHYS 162 (Elementary Astronomy) in Summer 2013, in addition to PHYS 210 (General Physics I) and PHYS 211 (General Physics II).

Prof. Philippe Piot has been awarded an NIU Presidential Research Professorship.

Prof. Zhili Xiao has been named an NIU Board of Trustees Professor.

The work of Prof. David Hedin and graduate students Lei Feng and Diego Menezes on detecting ZZ production in the four lepton channel at the Dzero detector at the Fermilab Tevatron is featured in Fermilab Today.

Prominent Rutgers scientist Prof. Eva Andrei gives colloquium on "wonder material" graphene.

Physics major and Research Rookie Gabriela Arriaga featured in NIU Today.

Paper co-authored by Prof. Phillippe Piot chosen for journal's list of top articles. This work showed a new, practical way to make a particle beam's current distribution conform to any desired shape. NIU PhD recipient Marwan Rihaoui was also a co-author of the paper.

Prof. Stephen Martin has been named a Fellow of the American Physical Society, joining NIU Physics Profs. Carl Albright,  Gerald Blazey,  Bogdan Dabrowski, David Hedin, Clyde Kimball, and Thomas Rossing.

Physics majors and Research Rookies Mason Hayward and Joshua Stevens have been named Simmon Scholars. Simmon Scholars are selected based on their academic performance and commitment to the Research Rookies program, in addition to majoring in STEM and/or health fields.

Professor Andreas Glatz receives $4 million Department of Energy grant for superconductor research

The New Muon g-2 Experiment at Fermilab has received "Mission Need" approval from the Department of Energy. NIU faculty members Mike Eads (group leader for NIU g-2), Mary Anne Cummings, Michael Fortner, and David Hedin of Physics and Nick Pohlman of Mechanical Engineering are collaborators on this project, which should measure the anomalous magnetic moment of the muon to unprecedented accuracy, probing the Standard Model and possible new physics extensions.

Adjunct Professor Nestor Zaluzec has received the Microanalysis Society's Presidential Science Award, which honors a senior scientist for outstanding technical contributions to the field.

The Higgs boson has been discovered! NIU physicists played important roles as part of the ATLAS detector collaboration team at the CERN Large Hadron Collider which made the definitive determination, and as part of the Dzero detector at the Fermilab Tevatron collider which provided strong supporting evidence including the crucial fact that the Higgs boson decays to bottom quark-antiquark pairs. The Higgs boson is the first new fundamental particle discovered since the top quark, in 1995.

See the CERN press release, an NIU Today article, the Daily Chronicle article, the AP article, an NIU Today preview from just before the discovery announcement, and the Fermilab press release.

Transit of Venus photographed by the NIU Observatory at public viewing. See  articles in the Midweek and NIU Today.

Pati Sievert, NIU physics alumna, interviewed in the Midweek about science, physics, and outreach

Prof. Suzanne Willis receives Eychaner Award

Prof. David Hedin named APS Fellow. Citation:  For his many important contributions to the D0 muon system design, construction, and operation, and his leadership in exploiting muons in a variety of physics studies at D0 both in Run I and Run II of the Tevatron.

Research Rookie Garrett Wise profiled in the Northern Star

NIU physicists co-author patent for Proton CT system that generates 3D images. Article in Symmetry Magazine!

Pati Sievert elected Vice Chair of new APS Forum on Outreach and Engaging the Public; quoted on the Forum's mission.

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