Archived News

1,275 Visit "Space Science Day" at Insights El Paso.  UTEP Physics was there!

Two Summer Programs Bring Local Students to the Physics Department

In July, the NOAA sponsored summer Weather Camp, brought local high school students to UTEP.  The director of the program, Dr. Rosa Fitzgerald, and her coordinator, Ms. Barbara Levine showed participants some of the mathematics and science that underlie meteorology. In June, the NSF funded Noyce Program, brought high school and undergraduate students interested in science & mathematics together to consider high school teaching as a career option.  Faculty member Dr. Eric Hagedorn organized and ran this two week workshop with the help of colleagues at YISD and EPISD and the UTEP Noyce Scholars.

Spring 2012

Congratulations to Physics Majors Making Spring Dean's List:

Armando Garcia

Brandan Garcia

Punam Ghimire

Sebastian Gomez

Kevin Hatch

Kevin Honsaker

Youssef Khamsi

Isaac Lopez

Joshua Morris

Jessica Salazar

Jeremiah Steed

Emma Sundin

Eduardo Urias

 Your outstanding academic efforts make us very proud!!

Congratulations to Physics Students and Faculty Honored at Pre-Commencement

Academic Excellence-Undergraduate Student:  Jose "Tony" Rodriguez

Research Excellence-Undergraduate Student:  Jason Keith

Academic Excellence – Graduate Student:  Karla CarmonaPhysics

Department Honors Award Undergraduate Student:  Enrique Ramirez

Outstanding Thesis for the College of Science:  Churna Bahadur Bhandari

Dr. Eric Hagedorn received an award for "Excellence in Teaching" from the College of Science

Congratulations to all!

One HUGELY Successful Physics Outreach Event!

The Physics Circus presented a special half-hour program to over 3800 elementary school children for Opportunity Days in the Memorial Gym.  The 33 foot bowling ball pendulum, roaring PVC pipes, non-Newtonian fluid jumping, and bed of nails demonstrations were well received.  Thanks to our students Richard Flores, Armando Garcia, Celia Garcia, Alex Price, Matt Quiroz, Enrique Ramirez, Jose "Tony" Rodriguez, and Jesus Valdez.  Thanks also to Drs. Jessica Dunmore and Eric Hagedorn.  Special thanks to Tai Subia from Geology!

Real Physics LIVE Engages 200 High School Students

USA Science & Engineering Festival Team Wows Washington!

Congratulations to COURI Symposium Presenters and our two Award Winners!

• Armando Garcia: Super Resolution Microscopy with Stimulated Emission and Ground State Depletion, with Dr. Chunqiang Li*
• Jason P. Keith: Equation of State of a Strongly Coupled Fermion System, with Dr. Efrain J. Ferrer*
• Joshua L. Morris: Superspin Relaxation Times in Fe3O4 / Hexane Magnetic Fluids Measured by Frequency-Resolved AC Susceptibility, with Drs. Michael P. Eastman, and Cristian E. Botez *
• Andres Ortiz: Derivation of Hill's Equation from Scale Invariance, with Dr. Vladik Kreinovich*
• Leo Paez: Optical Photometry of the Black Hole Candidate SWIFT J1753.4-0126, with Drs. Edward L. Robinson, Amanda J. Bayless, and Paul A. Mason*
• Alex Price: Observations of Ellipsoidal Variations in the LMXB V1727 Cygni, with Drs. Edward L. Robinson, and Paul A. Mason*
• Paul Springsteen: Electric Susceptibility for Strongly Magnetized Electron-positron Plasma at Finite Temperature and Density, with Drs. Efrain J. Ferrer *, and Angel Sanchez.

Department Seminars Completed for Spring Semester 2012

UTEP Team begins final preparations for USA Science & Engineering Festival

New Physics Circus Performers Entertain over 50 Home Schooled Visitors

Our students busy between March 22nd and 24th

UTEP Chapter of Society of Physics Students receives national recognition!

Dr. Jorge López invited to give talk to prestigious Mexican Academy of Sciences

Dr. Hagedorn invited to address the Arkansas Junior Science and Humanities Symposium

 On Friday March 9th, Dr. Eric Hagedorn, gave the keynote address to over 100 high school students from across Arkansas who have completed original research in STEM (science, technology, engineering or mathematics).  His talk is entitled:  "A Job that Gives you Goose Bumps!."  This was the 46th annual Arkansas Junior Science and Humanities Symposium.

Dr. Incera invited to PhysTEC Conference

Best wishes to Liz Rodriguez!

Congratulations to Physics Majors who made Dean's List during Semester

Fall Semester 2011

Department End-of-Semester/Holidays Party

Dr. Jorge López elected to Mexican Academy of Sciences!

On November 7th, the Membership Committee of the Academia Mexicana de Ciencias (AMC), elected Dr. Lopez a corresponding member.  For more information about this great honor see:  UTEP News & Achievments or this article in El Diario.  Congratulations Jorge!

Physics major Enrique Ramirez-Homs presents at national APS meeting!

Enrique traveled to East Lansing, Michigan to the APS Division of Nuclear Physics 2011 meeting to present his research entitled:  "Characterization and development of photocathodes using laser induced time-of-flight spectroscopy."  Way to go Enrique!!

Physics Students Present at Texas Section APS Meeting in Commerce, TX

Undergraduate Posters:

Lorena Monroy (with Paul A. Mason and E. L. Robinson): McDonald Observations of J1118+480.

Aurelio Paez (with Paul A. Mason and E. L. Robinson): Optical Observation of Low Mass X-Ray Binary J1753.4-0126.

Alex Price (with Paul A. Mason and E. L. Robinson): Optical Observation of Low Mass X-Ray Binary V1727 Cygni.

Jason Keith (with Efrain Ferrer): Equation of State in a Strongly Interacting Relativistic System.

Graduate Presentation:

Israel Portillo, Masters student in Physics (with Efrain Ferrer): Equations of state of a system of fermions in a uniform magnetic field at finite density.

Graduate Posters:

Luis Basurto, Ph.D. student in Computational Science (with Tunna Baruah, Rajendra Zope, Jose Rodriguez): Photoinduced Charge Transfer Process.

Young Yun, Ph.D. student in MASE (with Felicia Manciu, William Durrer, James Howard &  Chintalapalle Ramana):  Spectroscopic analysis of temperature dependent growth of WO3 and W0.95Ti0.05O3 thin films.

Physics Major, Armando Garcia, Honored at NSHP & NSBP Conference

Armando's poster entitled: The Hartree-Fock Molecular Orbital Method as Applied to the Coronene Molecule" was recognized at the Joint Conference of the National Society of Black Physicists and the National Society of Hispanic Physicists from 9/21-24/2011

Congratulations to Dr. Rosa Fitzgerald for Grant with Howard University

Department member Dr. Rosa Fitzgerald is receiving roughly $204,000 from Howard University over the next two years to investigate the: "Measurements and modeling of the effects of black carbon on photolysis rates and regional air quality under a warming climate."  Congratulations Rosa!

Physics Department Homecoming Picnic Well Attended on Friday, Oct 21st!

Close to 50 physics alumni, students, faculty, staff, and their families joined for a lovely evening of socializing and eating discada (a Northern Mexican dish prepared in a large disk-like pan).  It was GREAT to see the alumni and our students together!

Society of Hispanic Professional Engineers Honors Jorge Lopez

 The Society of Hispanic Professional Engineers announced recently that Dr. Jorge A. Lopez, UTEP professor of physics, is its 2011 Educator of the Year. The society will present its awards during a black-tie gala Oct. 29 in the Anaheim (Calif.) Convention Center. The celebration is part of the organization's annual conference.  Congratulations Jorge!

Small Grant Represents BIG Opportunity

Congratulations to Dr. Felicia Manciu for her new research agreement with the Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Minnesota.  Dr. Manciu's study "Raman Detection of Neurotransmitters at the Physiological Level" is supported with $14,556 over one year, but represents a very valuable new relationship for a department with a Medical Physics program.

Undergraduates Present Research on Wednesday, October 5th.

At 4:30 pm in Room 208, our undergraduates will share, through 10 minute presentations, their experiences with research:  either off-campus during summer internships or REU's, or at UTEP with our faculty.  All our undergraduates are encouraged to come to this special seminar!!

The Department Welcomes All New & Returning Students!

This fall semester, 2011 is an exciting one!  We welcome 15 new physics majors and 6 new physics graduate students.  We also welcome a new lecturer:  Dr. Jessica Dunmore.  This year we are offering critical courses more often:  those that were every other year will be offered yearly, some that were offered in only Spring or Fall will be offered during both semesters.  Several of our faculty members have received new research grants (details forthcoming).  All in all, we are off to an excellent year!

Four Physics Majors visit Indio Mountain Research Station

From July 29th through the 31st, undergraduate physics majors Ed Lattner, Isaac Lopez, Richard Gutierrez, and Rudy Gonzalez visited UTEP's 40,000 acre desert field station.  The 10 in  reflecting telescope they brought was very popular with the field biologists working at IMRS.  At night, the lack of light pollution leads to unbelievably clear skies.

2010-2011

Physics Department Seminars end for 2010-2011 Academic Year

Heartfelt thanks to our many wonderful speakers during Fall 2010 and Spring 2011!

UTEP Physics Students Present at First Annual COURI Symposium

On Saturday April 16th, four Physics Department Undergraduate students presented their research at the First Annual COURI (College Office of Undergraduate Research Initiatives) in the UGLC.

Jason Keith presented a poster entitled: Equations of State of a Strongly Interacting Dense Fermion System

Andres Ortiz presented a poster entitled: Mathematical Analysis of the Quantum Mechanical Model of the Hydrogen Atom

Jose "Tony" Rodriguez' poster was entitled: Modeling of Solvent Electrostatic Effects

Jesus Valdez' poster was entitled: Two-photon-excited Tryptophan Microscopy for Leukocytes & Cancer Cells Imaging

Congratulations to Jose for winning an Honorable Mention Award!

Congratulations Tu!

On March 26, 2011 our masters student Tu (Kanokporn Chattrakun) received a gold level "President's Volunteer Service Award" from the President's council on service and civic participation for her work in the local Thai community during 2010.

Congratulations to John Briceño!

On Friday, March 25, 2011 John Michael Briceño, was awarded a "Miner Hero Award" for "Philanthropy/ Community Service." John is a masters student in our Medical Physics Program. We are very proud of you John!!

Congratulations to Graduate School Banner Bearer!

Physics Master's student Mr. Churna Bhandari has been selected to be the Spring 2011 Graduate School Banner Bearer. He will march at the 7 p.m. ceremony on Saturday, May 14, 2011.

Congratulations to Marco Olguin!

Marco Olguin, doctoral student in Computational Sciences, was awarded the best poster presentation at the March Meeting of the American Physical Society in Dallas, TX. His poster was entitled: "Charge transfer energies of tetraphenyl-porphyrin-fullerene dyads." Marco is the student of Dr. Raj Zope and Dr. Tunna Baruah. In addition to the honor, Marco won a $250 prize.

Department Professor on the Airwaves!

Dr. Jorge A. López is part of a team that received an American Physical Society Outreach Mini-Grant. Quoting from the APS site:

"One of the successful proposals, by Ixlan Communications and the University of Texas at El Paso, is for their "Hispanic Physics Radio Education Project." The program will produce a series of one- and two-minute long radio stories about physics in both English and Spanish. They will distribute the pieces to English and Spanish language radio stations in markets across the country, as well as post the stories as downloadable podcasts that can be accessed by the general public and educators.

"The main idea is that Hispanics don't have too many role models to get inspired about studying science," said Jorge López, a professor at the University of Texas at El Paso. "It's going to be composed of capsules that will be distributed to many radio stations showcasing Hispanic scientists and telling what they do."

Dr. Lopez was also recently interviewed about the nuclear threat of the damaged Japanese reactor on "Breaking it Down with DT" on AC Nation.

UTEP Students present at Texas Section American Physical Society Meeting

On March 4th and 5th, four UTEP students advised by Dr. Tunna Baruah and Dr. Raj Zope presented at the Texas Section AAPT/APS/SPS meeting at Stephen F. Austin State University, in Nacogdoches, Texas. On Friday, March 4th, Jose Antonio Rodriguez Lopez (Physics UG) presented a poster entitled: "Electronic Structure and Stability Study of ZnS Nanocages." On the same day, Luis Basurto (Computational Science Doctoral Student) presented a poster: "Simulating Solvent Effects on Excited States. " On Saturday morning, Rubén Casillas (Chemistry UG) presented a talk entitled: "Density Functional investigation of competition between planar and non-planar structures of neutral and charged B21 clusters." Immediately following, Marco Olguin (Computational Science Doctoral Student) presented: "Orthogonality-Constrained DFT Excited State Method for Charge-Transfer Excitations." Congratulations to these students and their very capable mentors!

COURI Awardees

Congratulations to Physics Majors Jason Keith (working with Dr. Ferrer), Jose Rodriguez-Lopez (working with Dr. Baruah), and Jesus Valdez (working with Dr. Li) for receiving College Office of Undergraduate Research Initiatives grants! More details soon!!

Congratulations to Drs. Incera & Ferrer!

Dr. Vivian Incera and Dr. Efrain Ferrer recently received news that they had been awarded a $182,000 U.S. Department of Energy Grant for their project: "Quark Matter under Extreme Conditions." The purpose of this project is to continue and expand the PIs investigations on the phase space of quark matter under a variety of extreme conditions that can include temperature, density and a magnetic field. The project activities are divided in two areas, depending on the region of the QCD phase diagram that will be explored. The outcome of the first set of activities will be relevant for the physics of neutron stars and for the next generation of heavy ion experiments that will explore higher baryon density regions like FAIR in GSI, and NICA in JINR. The other group of tasks aims to unveil new exotic states of matter in the presence of very strong magnetic fields occurring at the technically challenging region of intermediate densities and temperatures being explored in heavy ions collision experiments at RHIC and other collaborations. The need of doing the proposed studies in the presence of an external magnetic field is supported by recent evidence of the generation of very strong magnetic fields during non-central collisions by the STAR Collaboration.

Change in Undergraduate Advisor

The Department of Physics would like to thank Dr. Rosa Fitzgerald for her service as Undergraduate Advisor as well as welcome Dr. Eric Hagedorn to the position. Dr. Marian Manciu remains undergraduate advisor to Medical Physics students.

Congratulations to new graduate: Mario Bencomo!

Mario Bencomo, a dual physics and mathematics major, MARC scholar, and active SPS member, graduated on Saturday, December 11th. He will be with us one more semester while taking several graduate classes. Congratulations!!

Congratulations to Juan Gustavo Arias Ugarte!

Congratulations to Juan Gustavo Arias Ugarte on receiving his M.S. this December 11th. Gustavo received his Masters in Environmental Science under the supervision of Dr. Rosa Fitzgerald. He has also been a TA for the department. Congratulations!

Congratulations Dr. Mason!

Dr. Paul A. Mason, Research Associate and Astronomy Lecturer at UTEP has been awarded a $570,000 grant from the National Science Foundation as part of the Partnerships for Astronomy and Astrophysics Research and Education program. The grant is a partnership between the UTEP Department of Physics and the University of Texas at Austin Department of Astronomy and McDonald Observatory. Dr. C. Li (UTEP) and Dr. E.L. Robinson (UT-Austin) are Co-Investigators on the project to conduct observational astrophysics research on interacting binary stars, especially black hole and neutron star accreting binaries and to support astronomy and astrophysics education within the UTEP Physics Department. Hector Noriega-Mendoza will lead the operation of the campus observatory for the project. Lorena Monroy and Aurelio Paez are undergraduate students working on the project.

UTEP Physics Honored by Distinguished Visitor.

The Department of Physics was honored to have been visited by Dr. Douglas Osheroff, the J. G. Jackson and C. J. Wood Professor of Physics at Stanford University and the 1996 Nobel Prize winner in Physics. During the two days that Prof. Osheroff was here, he interacted very kindly with our students, faculty, and staff. His public lecture on Wednesday, Nov 17th was very well attended. His lecture to the department on Thursday, Nov 18th provided a more technical look at his work, but was equally delightful. The Department is very grateful to the American Institute of Physics, for funding Dr. Osheroff's travel, to Dr. Diana Natalicio for all the assistance that she and her office provided, and finally to Jocabel Michel Reyes for her behind the scenes help.

UTEP participates in USA Science & Engineering Festival!

Four UTEP Physics students: Enrique Ramirez-Homs, Jose Tony Rodriguez, Jesus Valdez and Mario Bencomo and three faculty members: Drs. Sergio Flores, Eric Hagedorn and Mr. Felipe Tovar shared The Physics Circus at a booth in the Freedom Plaza with hundreds of visitors to the USA Science and Engineering Festival, in Washington, D.C.. They also presented Quantum Theater, a 20 minute skit on the strange world of electrons on the Freedom Plaza Stage on Saturday 10/23 and on the Woodrow Wilson Plaza Stage on Sunday 10/24. Congratulations!

While the team was in Washington, department member Dr. Jorge López was at the Austin Science & Engineering Festival, one of close to fifty regional events held in conjunction with the USA Science & Engineering Festival. Dr. López coordinated the excellent lecture series at this event. Congratulations Dr. López and thank you for your hard work!

Research by Physics Department faculty member included in graduate textbooks

Research work done by Dr. Rajendra Zope when he was a graduate student [R. R. Zope, Phys. Rev. A 60, 218–223 (1999) ] has been included almost entirely in a recent book on the density functional theory. The work extends the new local effective-potential-energy theory of electronic structure called the quantal DFT to the two-component electron-positron system. A review of the book by Steven Valone of the Los Alamos National Laboratory published in the Journal of the American Chemical Society recommends it for both the beginner and advanced graduate students. The book is entitled "Quantal Density Functional Theory II. Approximation Methods and Applications" by Viraht Sahni. Other recent work by Dr. Zope on the development of an efficient electronic structure calculation method for large molecules and nanocrystals (analytic DFT) has also been incorporated in another recommended textbook entitled "Electronic structure modeling: Connections between theory and software" by Carl Trindle and Donald Shillady. Both the books are available in the UTEP library.

News release on nanotechweb.org highlights Dr. Botez' recent Nanotechnology article

Dr. Cristian Botez' paper "Evidence of low-temperature superparamagnetism in Mn3O4 nanoparticle ensembles" has been selected by the editors of Nanotechnology among the "Latest Journal Highlights Articles" and a news release emphasizing the main results of this work was placed on nanotechweb.org, the sister website of Nanotechnology journal. Nanotechweb.org receives over 45,000 unique visits every month and has a weekly newswire audience of more than 24,000 subscribers, from academia, industry, and funding agencies. We are delighted to have research done in our Physics Department put in front of such a great audience. Please take a look at the news release "Researchers from the University of Texas at El Paso re-examine the superparamagnetic behaviour of Mn3O4 nanoparticles" at http://nanotechweb.org/cws/article/lab/43746.

Congratulations to Department Grant Awardees

Dr. Murat Durandurdu was awarded a $199,023 grant from the Office of Naval Research. The grant, titled: "Pressure-induced phase transformation of metallic glasses" was funded Feb 1, 2010 and will run until January 31, 2013. Description: An understanding of the atomic structure of metallic glasses at ambient and extreme conditions (high temperatures and pressures) is very important for their technological applications. In this project, we propose a unique approach to model metallic glasses and study their amorphous-to-amorphous phase transformations using constant pressure ab initio simulations. The success of this proposal will be a major step forward in our capabilities to understand the metallic glasses at ambient and extreme pressure conditions.

Dr. Tunna Baruah was recently awarded $120,000 by the U.S. Department of Energy. Her grant is titled: "Solvent effects on charge transfer excited states of organic donor-acceptor molecular systems." Description: A realistic description of light harvesting molecules requires the inclusion of solvent molecules that can play a very important role in stabilizing charge transfer excited states. These states generally have large dipoles that can polarize the solvents. The solvent molecules in turn produce a reaction field that stabilizes the excited state. This effect is significant and cannot be ignored if one strives to obtain accurate excitation energies. We propose to develop a method to extend our successful excited state method to include solvent polarization effects.

Dr. Eric Hagedorn was recently awarded $1.2 million by the National Science Foundation to recruit, prepare, and support new science & mathematics high school teachers. The grant is titled: "Robert Noyce Scholarships for Teaching Miners." Because the Texas Education Code has recommended all high school graduates take four years of science, the need in Texas for physics teachers is great. This grant will allow the department to support physics majors seeking high school teacher certification. Helping Dr. Hagedorn are Drs. Laura Serpa (Geosciences), Amy Wagler (Mathematical Sciences), Ron Wagler (Teacher Education), and Olga Kosheleva (Teacher Education).

Congratulations to new Associate Professors!

Drs. Cristian Botez, Felicia Manciu and Marian "Mickey" Manciu have recently received tenure and have been promoted to Associate Professor. Congratulations!

Physics Professor is awarded MAES Outstanding Maestro Award

The Society of Mexican American Engineers and Scientists has selected Prof. Jorge Lopez for the "Outstanding Maestro Award 2010". The Outstanding MAEStro Award seeks to recognize individuals for their proactive and supporting efforts to increase the number of Latino students successfully completing high school and continuing on to pursue undergraduate and graduate degrees. It also recognizes those individual's academic achievements, research portfolio, and commitment to diversity. The award will be presented on Friday, October 1, 2010, in Anaheim, CA. ¡Congratulations Jorge!

Liz Rodriguez wins President's Staff Scholarship!

Lizabeth Rodriguez, our department Administrative Assistant, won the President's Staff Scholarship for the 2010-2011 Academic Year. She was formally awarded by Dr. Natalicio at the Staff Council Info Fair on August 18th. Congratulations Liz!