By Whitney Hale

The University of Kentucky Office of Nationally Competitive Awards has announced that senior Benjamin Riley, of Louisville, Kentucky, has been awarded the Barry M. Goldwater Scholarship. Riley is among 240 students nationwide awarded the Goldwater Scholarship this year. This year's Goldwater Scholars were selected on the basis of academic merit from a field of 1,286 mathematics, science and engineering students who were nominated by the faculties of 470 colleges and universities nationwide.

Additionally, two other UK students, Aaron Mueller, of Louisville, and Connor VanMeter, of Lexington, were among 307 students to receive honorable mention recognition from the esteemed scholarship program.

The Barry M. Goldwater Scholarship and

By Jenny Wells

Lithospheric magnetic field. Video courtesy of European Space Agency (ESA)

A University of Kentucky geophysicist is helping an international team of scientists reveal dramatic new information about the Earth’s magnetic field.

Two years ago, Dhananjay Ravat, who is a professor in the UK Departments of Earth and Environmental Sciences and Physics and Astronomy, was asked by the leader of the Swarm Satellite Constellation Application and Research Facility of the European Space Agency (ESA) to collaborate with their team to create a map of the magnetic features of the Earth’s lithosphere. Ravat, who has worked on geophysical data from several space missions around the Earth, Mars and the moon, was intrigued by the Swarm project, and his

By Kathryn Macon

The University of Kentucky Department of Physics and Astronomy will host a public lecture on cosmology next week for a general audience. Presented by UK Physics Professor Ganpathy Murthy, "History of the Universe from the Big Bang to Now" will begin 7 p.m. Tuesday, March 7, in the William T. Young Library.

The lecture is designed to be accessible to everyone without sacrificing scientific accuracy. This event is free and open to the public and a question and answer period will follow the presentation.  

Murthy received his doctoral degree from Yale University and his research is in condensed matter theory. In recent years, he has been focused on "strongly correlated electron systems," in which the interactions between electrons play a dominant

By Lori Minter

A record number of students made the University of Kentucky Dean's List for the fall 2016 semester. The 7,408 students were recognized for their outstanding academic performance.  That's an increase of more than 200 over the previous record reached in fall 2015 when the number of students on the UK Dean's List surpassed 7,000 for the first time.  Last semester's Dean's List includes over 700 more students than the spring 2016 semester's list.

To make a Dean’s List in one of the UK colleges, a student must earn a grade point average of 3.6 or higher and must have earned 12 credits or more in that semester, excluding credits earned in pass-fail classes.  Some UK colleges require a 3.5 GPA to make the Dean’s List.

The full Dean's List can be accessed by visiting www.uky.edu/PR/News/

Mukut Kalita,  Ph.D. ’15
Advisor: Korsch
Field: Nuclear Experiment
Thesis Title: Search for a Permanent Electric Dipole Moment of 225Ra
Current employment: Post-doc, TRIUMF, precision atomic/nuclear physics

Mukut Kalita, working under Prof. Wolfgang Korsch’s supervision at Argonne National Lab, extracted, for the first time ever, an upper limit on the electric dipole moment (EDM) of radium-225. The basic concept of the experiment is shown in the figure below. Atoms of radium-225 are laser-cooled to a temperature of about 45 μK and captured in an optical trap. They precess in a magnetic field while a strong electric field is applied. Any change in polarization which is correlated with the E-field direction would indicate the existence of a non-zero EDM; however, no such correlation was found, and Dr. Kalita was able to extract a

By Jenny Wells

Michael Kovash, a professor of physics and astronomy in the University of Kentucky College of Arts & Sciences, has received a $341,000 grant from the U.S. Department of Energy’s Office of Nuclear Physics to study internal structures of high energy gamma rays and protons and neutrons. 

Both protons and neutrons possess internal structures which determine the form and strength of their interactions with each other, and with external probes such as the electromagnetic field. By measuring the characteristics of the interaction between high energy gamma rays and protons and neutrons, scientists can infer detailed information about these internal structures. Kovash and his team will use the energetic gamma ray beams at the High Intensity Gamma-Ray Source at Duke University to study both proton and neutron

The Society of Postdoctoral Scholars at the University of Kentucky is hosting a symposium to feature the work of postdoctoral scholars in Kentucky and surrounding areas. The event will feature a keynote presentation by UK's Dr. Hollie Swanson, a professor in the College of Medicine's Department of Pharmacology and Nutritional Sciences, oral presentations by Kentucky postdocs, a poster session and a panel discussion on interviewing techniques. 

The symposium will allow for the exchange of ideas across a broad range of fields and abstract submissions are welcome from any discipline. Postdocs from Kentucky and Ohio are especially encouraged to submit abstracts and graduate students are also welcome to participate. The objective of the symposium is to share research across many different fields and talks should be general and accessible to an audience outside of the speaker's area