June 2008
Physics Department Chairs Make Their Case on Capitol Hill More... APS.org
June 2008
Sun Might Hold Secret of Dark Matter More... space.com
June 2008
The Casimir effect - Much ado about nothing, as featured in The Economist, refers to an experiment in Prof Ho Bun Chan's lab More... The Economist
June 2008
 Scientists edge closer to unlocking secrets of mysterious Crab Pulsar
More... UF News
May 2008
 The U.S. Department of Energy has named Assistant Professor Ivan Furic an Outstanding Junior Investigator (OJI) (OJI awards are the equivalent of NSF's CAREER awards). These competitive and prestigious awards are given to tenure track faculty and are meant to identify the best young researchers in high energy physics. Ivan's award will support his research on "TeV Muons - Heralds of New Physics at the LHC". The DOE will provide $82,000 per year in support of his research. This is the third OJI in the department, following on Darin Acosta's in 2001 and Konstantin Matchev's in 2004. Congratulations Ivan!
April 2008
 Professor Darin Acosta has been selected to receive a 2008-2010 University of Florida Research Foundation Professorship. These three-year professorships recognize faculty who have established a distinguished record of research and scholarship that is expected to lead to continuing distinction in their field. Congratulations to Darin for a well-earned distinction!
March 2008
 OUTSTANDING REFEREES The American Physical Society has named Professors Mark Meisel (L) and Richard Woodard (R) as "Outstanding Referees". This is the first year of this recognition, so Mark and Richard are among 534 in the inaugural group. According to the APS, "The highly selective award program recognizes scientists who have been exceptionally helpful in assessing manuscripts for publication in the APS journals. The program will annually recognize approximately 130 of the 42,000 currently active referees, but in the inaugural year a larger group of 534 referees has been selected for the Outstanding Referee designation." The full list of Outstanding Referees, along with details about the program, can be found at http://publish.aps.org/outstandingreferees.
February 2008
 Asst Professor Ivan Furic has been named an Alfred P. Sloan Research Fellow. These extraordinarily competitive awards are designed to "stimulate fundamental research by young scholars of outstanding promise". Ivan will receive $50,000 over a two year period in support of his research. For the full list of recipients, see http://www.sloan.org/programs/fellowshiplist.shtml Congratulations Ivan!
January 2008
 Distinguished Professor Pierre Ramond has been selected as the 2007 recipient of the Lise Meitner Prize presented by the Physics Center. More...
December 2007
 Professor Mark Meisel has been named the 2008 Colonel Allan R. and Margaret G. Crow Term Professor in the College of Liberal Arts and Sciences. These professorships recognize a select group of faculty who have demonstrated excellence in scholarship, teaching, and service. Congratulations to Mark on receiving this well-earned distinction!
November 2007
 After nearly 50 years of distinguished service, Professor Gene Dunnam will retire at the end of this semester. Retirement Photos
October 2007
 Professor Andrew Rinzler and his former graduate student, Zhihong Chen (now on permanent staff at the IBM T.J. Watson Research Center, Tarrytown, NY) have been awarded United States Patent #7,261,852 titled "Transparent electrodes from single wall carbon nanotubes" More...
hebardOctober 2007
 Distinguished Professor Art Hebard (together with Jun Akimitsu of Aoyama-Gakuin University and Robert Haddon of UC Riverside) will receive the 2008 James C. McGroddy Prize for New Materials from the American Physical Society. The award citation reads "For the discovery of high temperature superconductivity in non-oxide systems."
More... (CLAS News)
August 2007
The department welcomes new faculty, Professor Heather Ray and Professor Ivan Furic
July 2007
 Physicists: Quantum dance draws unexpected guests More... (UF News)
July 2007
Professor Jacobo Konigsberg is quoted in a July 24 New York Times story New York Times Article

September 2007
 He is also quoted in Scientific Showdown a Sept 5 Chicago Tribune Article (Tribune)


September 2007
 Quoted in an MSNBC article on the race for the Higgs Inside the SubAtomic Race (MSNBC)
July 2007
 Professor Ho Bun Chan was highlighted in a recent "News Feature" in Nature ("Feel the Force", Nature Vol 447, pp 772-775, 14 June 2007). Read Article
July 2007
 Professor Ivan Furic, new to the Physics department, is one of the three recipients of the 2007 "Young Physicist" Prize, awarded by the High Energy and Particle Physics Division of the European Physical Society. The announcement may be found at http://eps-hepp.web.cern.ch/eps-hepp/other-prize-awards.php . The citation reads: 2007 I. Furic, G. Gomez-Ceballos and S. Menzemer "For outstanding contributions displaying individual creativity and collaborative effort to the complex analysis which provided the first measurement of the frequency of Bs oscillations."
July 2007
Faculty Promotions include Art Hebard, Distinguished Professor; Darin Acosta, Full Professor; Yoonseok Lee, Konstantin Matchev and Guido Mueller, Associate Professor (with tenure) and Robert DeSerio, Senior Associate In.
April 2007
 Professor Peter Hirschfeld
Peter Hirschfeld has been selected to receive a 2007-2010 University of Florida Research Foundation Professorship. These professorships recognize faculty who have established a distinguished record of research and scholarship that is expected to lead to continuing distinction in their field.
February 2007
 Professor David Reitze has been elected spokesperson of the Laser Interferometer Gravitational Wave Observatory (LIGO) Scientific Collaboration. LIGO is one of the most important and one of the most ambitious science experiments in the world, looking for gravitational waves from the Universe and testing some of the most intriguing predictions of Einstein's theory of general relativity. It is the largest experiment ever funded by NSF. LIGO Scientific Collaboration includes over 500 members including some of the best scientists from many US universities and from all over the world. LIGO is also a part of the UF Strategic Plan.

January 2007
 Professor Ho Bun Chan will receive the National Science Foundation Faculty Early Career Development (CAREER) Program Award. The CAREER award is the NSF's most prestigious honor for junior faculty members. Ho Bun will receive $500,000 over a five year period in support of his proposal "CAREER: Activated Escape in Nonequilibrium Micromechanical Oscillators - Research and Education Program "

December 2006
 Professor John Yelton has been selected as Fellow of the American Physical Society (Division of Particles and Fields) . Citation: For discovery and study of many baryon states, which contributed to our understanding of the quark structure of hadrons.

December 2006
 Professor David Reitze has been selected as Fellow of the American Physical Society (APS General). Citation: For leadership in the applications of lasers to diverse areas, from the detection of gravitational waves to the ultrafast response of matter.

November 2006
 Professor Guido Mueller has been selected as one of the recipients of the 2006 International Educator of the Year Award (junior category). He received his award at a ceremony in the Keene Faculty Center. More
November 2006
UF is part of $30 million effort to expand science "cyber infrastructure" to continue research and development on a powerful, new international computing tool, including $425,000 for work on the project at the University of Florida. Paul Avery, UF Physics professor, is one of the five principal investigators.
See full article in November PROTON
October 2006
Fermilab Discoveries
Several new discoveries have been made at Fermilab (near Chicago).
The most recent discovery relates to the conversion between matter and anti-matter. The discovery was made at the Collider Detector at Fermilab (CDF); this large collaboration of several hundred physicists is led by Jacobo Konigsberg, who is a faculty member in the Department of Physics, and co-spokesperson for the collaboration.
Press Release

Another discovery is two rare types of particles, exotic relatives of the much more common proton and neutron.
Press Release