News
6/14/2016
By Whitney Harder
University of Kentucky Professor Madhu Menon, of the Center for Computational Sciences and Department of Physics and Astronomy, has been awarded a $50,000 Short Term Innovative Research (STIR) grant from the U.S. Army Research Office.
The grant will fund Menon's work to synthesize the new 2D material he predicted using theoretical simulations. In February, he predicted that a new one atom-thick flat material — made up of silicon, boron and nitrogen — could upstage the wonder material graphene and advance digital technology.
Menon will collaborate with an experimental group at the University of Louisville, led by Professor Mahendra Sunkara.
The
5/31/2016
By Whitney Harder
An international team of scientists, including the University of Kentucky's Renbin Yan, has uncovered a new class of galaxies, called "red geysers," with supermassive black hole winds so hot and energetic that stars can't form.
Over the last few billion years, a mysterious kind of “galactic warming" has caused many galaxies to change from a lively place where new stars formed every now and then to a quiet place devoid of fresh young stars. But the mechanism that produces this dramatic transformation and keeps galaxies quiet has been one of the biggest unsolved mysteries in galaxy evolution.
"These galaxies have the necessary ingredients for forming new stars but they are not doing it — why?" said Yan, an assistant professor of physics and astronomy at UK.
Researchers compare it to having deserts in densely clouded regions; rain and
5/11/2016
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
4/27/2016
Steve Yates, a professor in the Departments of Chemistry and Physics & Astronomy and Director of the University of Kentucky Accelerator Laboratory (UKAL), recently received two grants. One of these awards [1] is a renewal of funding from the National Science Foundation (NSF), which extends continuous NSF funding of work at UKAL to greater than fifty years. This research is focused on advancing our fundamental understanding of the atomic nucleus. The nucleus, composed of protons and neutrons, is billions of times smaller than is visible with the human eye. Some nuclei are spherical in shape, while others are deformed in oblate (like a Frisbee) or prolate (like a football) shapes; the shape of the nucleus is unique for each isotope of each element. Because we cannot take an ordinary photograph of the nucleus to investigate its
4/27/2016
By Blair Hoover
(April 27, 2016) — Provost Tim Tracy honored five faculty members and four teaching assistants with Provost's Outstanding Teaching Awards at the 2016 UK Faculty Awards Ceremony. The William B. Sturgill Award and the Albert D. and Elizabeth H. Kirwan Memorial Prize were also awarded at the ceremony. The ceremony took place Thursday, April 21, in the Lexmark Public Room in the Main Building.
The William B. Sturgill Award was awarded to Carl Mattacola, a professor in the rehabilitation sciences program in the College of Health Sciences.
The Albert D. and Elizabeth H. Kirwan Memorial Prize was awarded to Gary J. Ferland, a physics and astronomy professor in the College of Arts and Sciences.
Annual
4/26/2016
By Terrence Wade
(April 26, 2016) — The University of Kentucky Colleges of Arts and Sciences and Engineering are proud to have Nobel Prize Winner Frank Wilczek on campus this week as he delivers his lecture “Some Intersections of Art and Science.” The lecture will take place at 7:30 p.m. Thursday, April 28, at Memorial Hall. The event is free and open to the public.
The lecture will cover topics of profound reasons rooted in the nature of human cognition and perception and why art and science have a lot to offer one another. Wilczek will display some important historical examples of their synergy and point out some emerging opportunities. Several striking images will be an integral part of the presentation.
Wilczek is
4/22/2016
By Gail Hairston
(April 22, 2016) — Two University of Kentucky faculty members were honored yesterday at the 2016 Provost Outstanding Teaching Awards ceremony with awards recognizing their outstanding contributions to teaching and scholarship at UK.
Gary J. Ferland, professor of physics and astronomy in the UK College of Arts and Science, was awarded the 2016 Albert D. and Elizabeth H. Kirwan Memorial Prize, given each year to a faculty member in recognition of outstanding contributions to original research or scholarship.
Carl G. Mattacola, professor of rehabilitation sciences and division director of the graduate athletic training program in the UK College
4/21/2016
By Whitney Hale
(April 21, 2016) – The University of Kentucky Office of Nationally Competitive Awards has announced that 12 of the university's students and alumni have been selected to receive government-funded National Science Foundation (NSF) Graduate Research Fellowships. The fellowships award more than $100,000 to use toward research-based master's or doctoral degrees. In addition, four other UK students and alumni received honorable mention recognition from the NSF.This year's selection of a dozen UK students and alumni for NSF Graduate Research Fellowships is believed to be the largest in the school's history and is four times the number of selections for 2015. To put more of emphasis on the fellowship,
4/11/2016
By Ashley Cox
(April 11, 2016) — The University of Kentucky Department of Physics and Astronomy is hosting Kentucky native and NASA civil servant Pamela Marcum April 14-15 for a Sky Talk titled "NASA’s SOFIA Observatory: Exploring the Universe from 42,000 Feet” and a meet-and-greet.
Marcum’s Sky Talk is open to the public and will take place 8 p.m. Thursday, April 14, in the Chemistry-Physics Building room 155. Her meet-and-greet will take place from 12-1:30 p.m. Friday, April 15, at the UK Appalachian Center, located at 624 Maxwelton Ct. The meet-and-greet is open to university
4/6/2016
By Whitney Harder
(April 6, 2016) — Often containing more than a billion times the mass than our Sun, supermassive black holes have perplexed humans for decades. But new research by University of Kentucky astrophysicist Isaac Shlosman and collaborators will help to understand the physical processes at the edge of time and space, providing the details of how supermassive black holes formed 13 billion years ago.
Shlosman, as well as Jun-Hwan Choi at the University of Texas at Austin, Mitchell Begelman at the University of Colorado Boulder, and Kentaro Nagamine at Osaka University (Japan), ran simulations where supermassive black holes are seeded by clouds of gas falling into potential wells of dark matter — the invisible matter that astronomers believe makes up 85 percent of the mass in
2/29/2016
By Whitney Harder
View the video above to hear more about the new material discovered by Menon that could upstage graphene. Video by REVEAL Research Media.
(Feb. 29, 2016) — A new one atom-thick flat material that could upstage the wonder material graphene and advance digital technology has been discovered by a physicist at the University of Kentucky working in collaboration with scientists from Daimler in Germany and the Institute for Electronic Structure and Laser (IESL) in Greece.
Reported in Physical Review B, Rapid Communications, the new material is made up of silicon, boron and nitrogen — all light, inexpensive and earth abundant elements — and is extremely stable, a property many other graphene alternatives lack.
"We used
2/24/2016
Lisa Lockman, Kristie Law
(Feb. 24, 2016) — Twenty-three women at the University of Kentucky have been nominated for the 2016 Sarah Bennett Holmes Award, and registration is underway now to attend the award ceremony and luncheon 11:30 a.m. Thursday, March 10, at the Hilary J. Boone Center. Visit www.uky.edu/womensforum/sbhal.html for more information. The registration deadline is Monday, Feb. 29. Due to the change of venue and the limited space, registrations will be taken on a first come, first served basis.
Coordinated by UK Women's Forum, the Sarah Bennett Holmes Award is granted annually to women working at UK who promote the growth and
9/9/2015
By Whitney Harder
(Sept. 9, 2015) — Founding project scientist for the Hubble Space Telescope, Robert O'Dell, will speak on the University of Kentucky campus Sept. 10. He is the guest for Sky Talk, a series of astronomy related presentations organized by the UK Department of Physics and Astronomy and the MacAdam Student Observatory.
The presentation, "Traveling Through the Orion Nebula," will take place at 8 p.m. Thursday, Sept. 10, in Room 139 of the Chemistry-Physics Building. The program will include a Japanese National Television documentary of O'Dell and his studies of Orion Nebula, followed by a question and answer period with O'Dell.
He
8/12/2015
By Whitney Harder
(Aug. 12, 2015) — Sung S. Ambrose Seo, assistant professor in the Department of Physics and Astronomy at the University of Kentucky, has received the prestigious five-year National Science Foundation (NSF) Faculty Early Career Development (CAREER) award totaling $672,981.
The CAREER award is given in support of junior faculty who exemplify the role of teacher-scholars through outstanding research, excellent education, and the integration of education and research within the context of the mission of the university.
Funds from the award will allow Seo to investigate iridium oxides and unveil exotic collective phenomena, such as nontrivial topological states that are latent in bulk crystals, but emerge in
8/10/2015
By Alicia Gregory, Whitney Harder
(Aug. 10, 2015) — Computer science and the St. Chad Gospels. Physics and Spanish. Math and international studies. The combination of these don't seem to make a lot of sense, but it is these interests that have shaped the undergraduate career of one UK senior.
Stephen Parsons, a computer science and international studies major, with minors in physics, Spanish and mathematics, has thrived in a range of studies during his time at UK.
He has also worked in research that merged the fields of computer science and humanities. Parsons, who is a
5/13/2015
By Sarah Schuetze
They conduct lab research and teach classes, but they are neither faculty nor graduate students. Postdoctoral scholars, or postdocs, serve an important role at UK, a research institution. However, they are scattered across various departments and have not always had an opportunity to meet and share their work.
Professor Susan Odom in Chemistry said, “Most postdocs don’t have any kind of formal gatherings that are specifically targeted toward them.“ In 2014, Odom collaborated with Matt Casselman, a postdoc in Chemistry, to organize UK’s Society of Postdoctoral Scholars (SOPS). SOPS offers weekly activities like professional development workshops or research presentations.
On Friday, June
5/12/2015
By Jenny Wells
(May 8, 2015) — The University of Kentucky Board of Trustees today approved University Research Professorships for 2015-16 for four faculty members. The professorships carry a $40,000 award to support research. Funds for these annual awards are provided by the Office of the Vice President for Research.
Now in its 39th year, the University Research Professors program's purpose is to enhance and encourage scholarly research productivity, to provide an opportunity for concentrated research effort for selected faculty members, and to recognize outstanding research achievement by members of the faculty.
The 2015-16 University Research Professors are:
Lance E. De Long, a professor in the Department of Physics and Astronomy in the UK College of Arts and Sciences, has had
5/4/2015
By Whitney Harder
(May 4, 2015) — In the fall of 2014, a group of 235 incoming students became the first class of STEMCats at the University of Kentucky. This week, they are not only wrapping up their first year at UK, but also a semester of original research; an unusual experience for many college freshmen.
The STEMCats living learning program, sponsored by the Howard Hughes Medical Institute and directed by UK Department of Biology Chair Vincent Cassone, was launched to increase retention of STEM (science, technology, engineering and mathematics) majors at UK.
A key component of the program is an authentic research experience for the freshmen, in addition to pre-fall "
4/22/2015
By Gail Hairston, Whitney Harder
(April 22, 2015) — The University of Kentucky College of Arts and Sciences will honor its faculty at 4 p.m. today at the William T. Young Library Auditorium.
The recipients of this year's college faculty awards are:
Charles Carlson, psychology, 2015-16 Distinguished Professor. For more information, visit http://uknow.uky.edu/content/carlson-honored-teaching-research-and-service
Beth Guiton, assistant professor of chemistry ‒ Distinguished Undergraduate Research Mentoring Award
Guiton leads a materials chemistry group in the Center for Advanced Materials, investigates chemistry at the nanometer length scale, working at the intersection between solid
4/17/2015
By Kelli Elam, Amy Jones-Timoney, Whitney Harder
(April 17, 2015) — What makes a university thrive as a community and a center for knowledge? At the University of Kentucky, it's the people, and not only the outstanding faculty, staff and students, but the alumni who create and continue a legacy of excellence. This year, the UK Alumni Association is recognizing 23 former UK students — leaders who have impacted the Commonwealth, the nation and the world through their work — with induction into the 2015 Hall of Distinguished Alumni.
This year’s class will be honored tonight, Friday, April 17, at the Hilton Lexington Downtown Hotel,
