Category: Travel

Sophomore Nathan Follin and junior Chris Musalo traveled with professor Matt Trawick to Dallas, Texas, to present their research at the annual March meeting of the American Physical Society.  Approximately 5000 physicists from around the world convened there for the five day conference.  Nathan and Chris presented a new technique in atomic force microscopy that enables topographical imaging with nanometer scale accuracy.  The two did their work using the University of Richmond Physics Department’s state of the art atomic force microscope.

Senior Mark Moog is part of a team that is preparing for the “12 GeV Upgrade” at the Thomas Jefferson National Accelerator Facility in Newport News. The upgrade is a $300 million project at Jefferson Lab to explore new territory within the atomic nucleus. Mark has been performing sophisticated simulations of a new detector which will be used in experiments to measure the internal structure of the neutron, a project lead by professor Jerry Gilfoyle. Mark traveled to Santa Fe, NM, this fall to present his work at the fall meeting of the Division of Nuclear Physics of the American Physical Society.

Three Richmond physics students are currently working with professor Jerry Gilfoyle on nuclear physics experiments at the Thomas Jefferson National Accelerator Facility (Jefferson Lab) in Newport News.  From left to right are junior Chris Musalo, senior Mark Moog, and junior Josh Carbonneau in the Machine Control Center there; the displays behind them are used to monitor the functioning of the accelerator during experiments.  All three also traveled to Santa Fe, NM, this fall to present their work at the meeting of the division of nuclear physics of the American Physical Society.

Sophomore Nathan Follin will travel to the annual March meeting of the American Physical Society in Dallas, TX, this spring to present the results of his research with physics professor Matt Trawick.  Nathan has helped develop a new atomic force microscope technique for producing topographical images with nanometer scale accuracy.  The two began working together in the summer before Nathan’s freshman year; they expect to publish a paper on their work soon.

Junior Bernard Wittmaack, ‘11, traveled to San Juan, Puerto Rico this fall to present a talk on his research at a meeting of the American Chemical Society.  Bernard studies halogen bonding in group 14 halomethane analogues with chemistry professor Kelling Donald, using computational chemistry techniques.  The two have performed intensive calculations using a supercomputer cluster here at Richmond, and expect to publish their work soon.  Bernard is majoring in interdisciplinary physics with a chemistry concentration, allowing him to combine courses from both disciplines.

Senior physics major Calina Copos, '10, has been active in research with professor Jerry Gilfoyle, using the Richmond Physics Department’s supercomputer to run computationally intensive simulations to better understand the precision of the experiments they are doing at Jefferson National Laboratory.  The two are part of a team working to measure the distributions of electric charge and magnetic field within a single proton.  Calina traveled to Hawaii this fall to present the results of her work at a national conference of the American Physical Society’s Division of Nuclear Physics.

Physics majors Ben Pauerstein, ’12, and Cain Bonniwell, ’11, traveled to Kona, Hawaii this fall to present their research at the national conference of the American Physical Society’s Division of Nuclear Physics.  The two are working with Professor Con Beausang, studying nuclear structure in the isotopes Gadolinium156 and Terbium 155.

Berta spent her summer working at both Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory and Yale University with Richmond Professor Con Beausang.  Berta worked on two different projects: the first involved calculating transmission efficiency and count rates for detecting fission fragments at the focal plane of the Berkeley gas filled separater.   The second involved analyzing data from an experiment done in Berkeley to populate low spin excited states in Gadolinium 154.  Berta began working with professor Beausang as a freshman, and continues working with him this academic year. 

Whitney Brooks split her summer between Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory and Yale University, working with Richmond professor Con Beausang.  Whitney investigated “pile-up effects” in preamplifier output pulses from the prototype detector for the GRETINA array, the next leading US gamma ray microscope.  Whitney continues her work this academic year.