Physics Department Friday Seminars

Physics department seminars are currently scheduled on Thursdays at 11:00 AM in Building 8, Room 241 (unless otherwise indicated in red) approximately every other week during the school year. Everyone is invited. Seminars offer a great chance for faculty, students, staff, and community members to meet, mingle, socialize over cookies and tea, and hear about the latest research in physics and related fields. (It's all physics!)

Winter 2010		(Index for other quarters)
Date	Speaker	Title
January 14	Matt Eichenfield Dept. of Physics, Caltech	Engineering the Interaction of Light and Sound at the Frontiers of Nanotechnology
January 28	Josh Eisner Dept. of Astronomy and Steward Observatory, University of Arizona	Protoplanetary Disks: Insights into Planet Formation
February 4	Doug Singleton Dept. of Physics, California State University, Fresno	A Brief Introduction to Black Holes
February 11	Oscar Bernal Dept. of Physics and Astronomy, California State University, Los Angeles	NMR/μSR: Spectroscopic Tools for Probing Quantum Criticality and Magnetic Frustration in Condensed Matter Systems
February 18	Danica Marsden Dept. of Physics and Astronomy, University of Pennsylvania	The Atacama Cosmology Telescope: Mapping out Structure in the Depths of our Observable Universe
February 25	Winny Dong Dept. of Chemical Engineering, Cal Poly Pomona	A Materials Science Perspective on the Texture of Cakes - or How to Get Students to Bring You Cake

Schedules from past quarters

Academic Year	Quarter
2005-06	Fall	Winter	Spring
2006-07	Fall	Winter	Spring
2007-08	Fall	Winter	Spring
2008-09	Fall	Winter	Spring
2009-10	Fall

Fall 2009		(Index for other quarters)
Date	Speaker	Title
October 1	Lea Ferreira dos Santos Yeshiva University	How to Control Transport Behavior in Quantum Many-Body Systems
October 8	Doug Johnson, Hector Maciel, Maria Vaughn Physics Department Cal Poly Pomona	The 17th Annual 'Wonderful World of Physics Demonstrations'
October 29	Yongsheng Gao Cal State Univ, Fresno	Road to Discovery of ATLAS/LHC
November 12	Peter Siegel Physics Department, Cal Poly Pomona	The Kaon-Nucleus Story: a small chapter in Medium Energy Nuclear Physics
November 19	Amanda Weinstein Department of Physics and Astronomy, UCLA	Exploring the Extreme Universe with Very High Energy (VHE) Gamma Rays

Spring 2009		(Index for other quarters)
Date	Speaker	Title
April 10	Sam McKagan AAPT	Developing and Researching PhET simulations for Teaching Quantum Mechanics
April 17 3-2137	Jay Pasachoff Williams College and Caltech	Syzygies: Eclipses, Occultations, and Transits
April 24	Sulakshana Thanvanthri Louisiana State University	A New Twist in Matter-wave Gyroscopy
May 1	Mark Massie Nova Sensors	Night Vision Technology, Or What It's Like To See The World Through Infrared Eyes
May 15	Ertan Salik Dept. of Physics Cal Poly Pomona	Sensing with Light: Physical, Chemical, and Biological Sensing Applications
May 22	Jorge Moreno Haverford College	Do Mergers of Dark Matter Halos Trigger Quasars?
May 29	Cal Poly Pomona Physics Faculty	4th Annual Physics Education Seminar
June 5	Cal Poly Pomona Physics Majors	Student Research Project Posters

Winter 2009		(Index for other quarters)
Date	Speaker	Title
January 16	Alex Small Physics Department Cal Poly Pomona	Optics Beyond the Diffraction Limit, or, Don't Believe Everything You Hear in Physics 122!
January 30	Jessica Lu Dept. of Astronomy California Institute of Technology	Star Formation Around the Supermassive Black Hole at the Center of our Galaxy
February 13	Nathan Tung Department of Physics Cal Poly Pomona	Unification of Fundamental Forces: Universal Constants of Physics and the Story They Tell
February 27	Lute Maleki CEO and President OEwaves, Inc.	Physics and Industry in 21st Century

Fall 2008		(Index for other quarters)
Date	Speaker	Title
October 10	Doug Johnson, Anatol Hoemke, Hector Maciel, Maria Salazar Physics Department Cal Poly Pomona	The 16th Annual 'Wonderful World of Physics Demonstrations"
October 17 12:30 – 5:30 4-1-314	Summer Science Students Cal Poly Pomona	Cal Poly Science Student Summer Research Symposium
October 24	Anna Cai Department of Mathematics UC Irvine	Multi-scale Modelling for Threshold Dependent Cellular Differentiation
November 7	Raymond Hall Physics CSU Fresno	Demarcation: Is there a Sharp Line Between Science and Pseudoscience?
November 14	Jose Lopez Department of Applied Science and Technology Physics Division, Saint Peter’s College, NJ	Improving the World, one Microplasma at a Time
November 21	Karen Felzer U.S. Geological Survey Pasadena, C	Can Earthquakes Be Predicted?

Spring 2008		(Index for other quarters)
Date	Speaker	Title
April 11	Villanapur Ravi, Department of Chemical & Material Engineering Cal Poly Pomona	Materials Science and Engineering -- Case Studies Illustrating an Interdisciplinary Field
April 25	Tom Gage President & CEO AC Propulsion	Electricity: Transportation Without Petroleum
April 28 Mon, 11 AM 8-48	Paul Wellin Wolfram Research	Mathematica 6 in Education and Research
May 2	Brian Holmes Physics Department San Jose State Univ.	The Physics of Brass Musical Instruments or What do horn players do with their right hands, anyway?
May 9	Ozdal Boyraz Dept. of Elec. Eng. and Computer Science UC Irvine	Silicon/Non-Silicon Based Optical Pulse Shaping and Optical Signal Processing
May 16	Thomas Lohse Physics Department Humboldt University Berlin, Germany	TeV-Gamma-Astronomy with the H.E.S.S. Telescopes in Namibia – Cosmic Gamma Rays from Exploding Stars and Black Holes
May 23	Cal Poly Pomona Physics Faculty	3rd Annual Physics Education Seminar
June 6	Cal Poly Pomona Physics Majors	Senior Projects Posters

Winter 2008		(Index for other quarters)
Date	Speaker	Title
January 18	Richard Haskell Physics Department, Harvey Mudd College	Campus Sustainability: A Local Response to Global Warming and Peak Oil
February 8	Adrian Parsegian National Institutes of Health	DNA Packaging and Interactions in vitro and in viro
February 22	Zuoyue Wang Dept. of History Cal Poly Pomona	In Sputnik's Shadow: American Science Policy during the Cold War and Beyond
February 29	Kyler Kuehn Center for Cosmology and AstroParticle Physics Ohio State University	The Search for High-Energy Neutrinos from Gamma-Ray Bursts with AMANDA
March 7	Ed Prather Dept. of Astronomy and Ctr. for Astronomy Education University of Arizona	Using Research to Create a Learner-Centered Science Classroom
March 19 Wed, 4 PM 4-1-314	William Wootters Physics Department Williams College	Quantum Entanglement

Fall 2007		(Index for other quarters)
Date	Speaker	Title
October 5	Doug Johnson, Hector Maciel, Maria Salazar, Anatol Hoemke Physics Department Cal Poly Pomona	The 15th Annual "Wonderful World of Physics Demonstrations" [PICTURES of event]
October 26	Phil Lukeman Dept. of Chemistry Cal Poly Pomona	DNA Nano: Self-assembling Structures - Scaffolding Science
November 2	Shenda Baker Dept. of Chemistry Harvey Mudd College and Managing Partner BioSTAR West	Neutrons and Biological Structures - a Multidisciplinary Approach to Materials Science
November 16	Nuh Gedik Dept. of Chemistry, Caltech and Dept. of Physics, MIT	Ultrafast Structural Dynamics Observed with Atomic Scale Resolution

Spring 2007		(Index for other quarters)
Date	Speaker	Title
April 13	Douglas Singleton Fresno State University	Hawking and Unruh Radiation Made 'Easy'
April 24 Tues, 12 PM	Steve Strom National Optical Astronomy Observatory	Science with Next Generation Telescopes
April 27	Suketu P. Bhavsar University of Kentucky	*A Method to Determine the Largest True* Structures in the Universe**
May 4	Timothy C. Corcoran Chemistry Department Cal Poly Pomona	Fluorescence in Biotech: An Old Dog with a New Trick
May 11 Joint Physics/Math Seminar	Jeffrey L. Vaughn Senior Scientist the Optical Sciences Company	Adaptive Optics
May 18	Physics Faculty Cal Poly Pomona	Physics Education Seminar
June 1	Senior Physics Majors Cal Poly Pomona	Senior Projects Poster Session

Winter 2007		(Index for other quarters)
Date	Speaker	Title
January 19	K.E. Wilson Jet Propulsion Lab	Inter-planetary Laser Beam Communications
February 2	Barbara Hoeling Pomona College	Looking beneath the surface: An Optical Coherence Microscope for imaging biological tissue
February 6 Tues, 11 AM 4-1-314	MacKenzie R. Stetzer University of Washington	Using research to guide instruction: New insights into student understanding
February 9	Mohsen Shiri Harvard and Pace Universities	Finite Quantum Theory
February 13 Tues, 11 AM 4-1-314	Homeyra Sadaghiani University of Washington	Student mathematical and conceptual difficulties in learning quantum mechanics
February 16	Joseph Carson Jet Propulsion Lab	Population Studies of Planets and Brown Dwarfs Orbiting Nearby Stars
February 20 Tues, 11 AM 4-1-314	Alexander Small National Institututes of Health	A biophysical Model of Angiogenesis: How Do Growing Tumors Feed and Breathe?
February 23	Kingshuk Majumdar Berea College	Ultracold bosons in an optical lattice
February 27 Tues, 11 AM 4-1-314	Joseph A. Barranco Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics	Planet Embryos in Vortex Wombs: The Origin of Planetary Systems

Fall 2006		(Index for other quarters)
Date	Speaker	Title
September 29	Doug Johnson Physics, Cal Poly Pomona	The Wonderful World of Physics Demonstrations
October 6 CANCELLED	Steven Strom National Optical Astronomy Observatory	Science with Next Generation Telescopes
October 13 MOVED from November 3	Kai Lam Physics, Cal Poly Pomona	Chern-Simons, Anyon? Why Knot?
October 27	Everett Lipman Physics, UCSB	Measuring Individual Biological Molecules with Visible Light
November 17	Lee Schumann Aerospace Corporation	From the Infinitesimally Small to the Infinitely Large: Mankind's Search for Understanding of the Universe Around Him

Spring 2006		(Index for other quarters)
Date	Speaker	Title
April 7	Graciela Brelles-Mariño Biology, Cal Poly Pomona and Nina Abramzon Physics, Cal Poly Pomona	Biofilms: How can we use plasma to get rid of these guys?
April 21	William Degraffenreid Physics, CSU Sacramento	Structure of lithium: What we looked for, what we found, what we discovered en route, and what we discovered looking back
May 5	Slava Turyshev NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory	The Pioneer Anomaly: The Puzzle, New Data and New Investigation
May 19	Alex Rudolph, Ertan Salik, and Nina Abramzon Physics, Cal Poly Pomona	Presentation on student response systems
June 2	Senior Physics Majors Physics, Cal Poly Pomona	Senior Projects Poster Session

Winter 2006		(Index for other quarters)
Date	Speaker	Title
January 20	Peter Siegel Physics, Cal Poly Pomona	Tangling Helium's Twin Electrons
February 3	John Milton Computational Neuroscience, Claremont Colleges	Stick balancing at the Fingertip: Insights into the Neural Control of Balance
February 17	Snezana Bogdanovich Advance Technology Division, Hologic, Inc.	Designing X-ray Detectors for Medical Imaging
March 3 (Cancelled)	Jose Lopez Mathematics & Physics, St. Peter's College	Improving the World One Microdischarge at a Time

Fall 2005		(Index for other quarters)
Date	Speaker	Title
October 7	Doug Johnson Cal Poly Pomona, Physics	The Wonderful World of Physics Demonstrations
October 21	Tom Donnelly Harvey Mudd College Physics	Production and Application of an Aerosol of Micron-scale Particles
October 28	James Rego Cal Poly Pomona, Chemistry	Unconventional Applications of Liquid Crystals: From Scarab Beetles to Solar Cells
November 18	Robert Hicks UCLA Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering	Physics and Chemistry of Atmospheric Pressure Plasmas for Materials Processing

Last modified on January 5, 2010

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Physics Department Friday Seminars

Winter 2010

Fall 2009

Spring 2009

Winter 2009

Fall 2008

Spring 2008

Winter 2008

Fall 2007

Spring 2007

Winter 2007

Fall 2006

Spring 2006

Winter 2006

Fall 2005