About
The Department of Physics and Astronomy hosts a colloquium every Wednesday afternoon in 227 Gallalee Hall during the fall and spring semesters (excluding holidays and exam week). Speakers include UA faculty and graduate students as well as researchers from other universities, research institutes, and government agencies. The subject matter ranges from information about the University and department to topics of recent interest in physics and astronomy. Talks are typically 45–50 minutes in length followed by ~10 minutes of questions.
Attendance is free and open to the public. Physics and astronomy graduate students are required to attend colloquia regularly, as determined by their advisors; more information about this requirement may be found in the department’s Graduate Handbook.
Visitor information, including directions and parking details, can be found on our Directions and Parking page.
Schedule
Find this year’s colloquia here. Upcoming colloquia are listed in the left sidebar of this page and under the colloquium category in the department events calendar.
Fall 2015
Unless otherwise noted, fall colloquia will be held on Wednesdays from 3:45–4:45 p.m. in 227 Gallalee Hall. Refreshments, including tea, coffee, and cookies, will be served at 3:30 p.m. in 227 Gallalee Hall.
| Date | Title/Abstract | Speaker |
|---|---|---|
| 8/26 | Review of Timeline and Requirements for Physics and Astronomy Graduate Students | Dean Townsley, Graduate Chair, University of Alabama |
| 9/2 | Faculty Interests Mini-Colloquia: Off-axis combinatorial sputtering and characterization for complex magnetic materials Quantum Matter in Low-Dimensions |
Adam Hauser & Wang-Kong Tse, University of Alabama |
| 9/9 | Faculty Interests Mini-Colloquia: Fading active galaxies, feedback, and the demographics of growing black holes Resolved galaxy studies with Sloan Digital Sky Survey IV |
Bill Keel & Preethi Nair, University of Alabama |
| 9/16 | Faculty Interests Mini-Colloquia: Holography near and far from equilibrium The restart of the CMS data taking at the LHC and the activities of the UA CMS group |
Matthias Kaminsky & Paolo Rumerio, University of Alabama |
| 9/23 | Understanding the physics of galaxy clusters | Andrea Morandi, UA Huntsville |
| 9/30 | Postdoc Mini-Colloquia: Building a Holographic Model of the Kondo Effect Dark Matter Halo Shapes in Cosmological Simulations |
Jackson Wu & Owain Snaith, University of Alabama |
| 10/7 | Next Questions in Neutrino Physics and the NOvA Experiment | Mark D. Messier, Indiana University |
| 10/14 | Berry phase effect in crystals: From anomalous Hall effect to Valleytronics | Di Xiao, Carnegie Mellon University |
| 10/21 | Black holes vs quantum mechanics: who is winning? | Herman Verlinde, Princeton University |
| 10/27 | Einstein Centenary Public Lecture: Foundations: The Formulation of General Relativity |
Robert Wald, University of Chicago |
| 10/28 | Einstein Centenary Special Colloquium | Robert Wald, University of Chicago |
| 11/4 | Einstein Centenary Special Colloquium | Heino Falcke, Radboud University Nijimegen |
| 11/5 | Einstein Centenary Special Colloquium: Black Hole Horizons | Heino Falke, Radboud University Nijimegen |
| 11/11 | Characterization of Magnetic Nanostructures for Spintronics with Polarized Neutron Scattering | Valeria Lauter, Oak Ridge National Laboratory |
| 11/18 | Uncovering the physics and chemistry of complex oxide surfaces | Roshan Mishra, Washington University, St. Louis |
| 12/2 | The Persistence of Memory: What Supernova Remnants Can Tell Us about Type Ia Supernova Progenitors | Carles Badeness, University of Pittsburg |
Spring 2016
Unless otherwise noted, spring Colloquium will be held on Wednesdays from 4:00–5:00 p.m. in 227 Gallalee Hall. Refreshments, including tea, coffee, and cookies, will be served at 3:45 p.m. in 223 Gallalee Hall.
| Date | Title/Abstract | Speaker |
|---|---|---|
| 1/13 | Review of Timeline and Requirements for Physics and Astronomy Graduate Students “Just A Minute” Ph.D. Candidate talks |
Dean Townsley, Graduate Chair, University of Alabama |
| 1/20 | UA Benefits | Rainer Schad, University of Alabama |
| 1/27 | Non-Perturbative Results for Itinerant Ferromagnetism in Multi-orbital Systems | Yi Li, Princeton University |
| 2/1 | Shining X-ray Light on Strongly Correlated Materials | Cheng-Chien Chen, Argonne National Lab |
| 2/10 | Transport of charge and heat in disordered many-body systems | Georg Schwiete, Johannes Gutenberg Universitat Mainz |
| 2/17 | LIGO-themed mini colloquia: IceCube’s search for neutrinos in coincidence with LIGOs first gravitational wave detection Expectations and constraints for binary black hole populations |
Dawn Williams & Dean Townsley, University of Alabama |
| 2/24 | From tenths of eV to tens of TeV: Casting a wide net for New Physics | Igor Ostrovskiy, Stanford University |
| 2/29 | DAMIC: a direct dark matter search with CCDs | Alvaro Chavarria, KICP, University of Chicago |
| 3/2 | Low-energy probes of high-energy physics | David Moore, Stanford University |
| 3/9 | Searching for Dark Matter with Noble Liquids | Richard Saldanha, KICP, University of Chicago |
| 3/23 | Playing with protons in Flatland | Nathaniel Stern, Northwestern University |
| 3/28 | LIGO Colloquium: The birth of gravitational wave physics | Marco Cavaglia, University of Mississippi |
| 3/30 | String Holograms | Diana Vaman, University of Virginia |
| 4/13 | Galactic Resonances and the Shapes of Galaxies | Ron Buta, University of Alabama |
| 4/13 | Tracing Galaxies by their Shadows: Quasar Absorption Lines as Probes of Galaxy Evolution | Varsha Kulkarni, University of South Carolina |
| 4/20 | First Results from DragonFly | Roberto Abraham, University of Toronto |
| 4/27 | A PHAT New Measurement of the High-Mass Stellar IMF | Daniel Weisz, University of Washington |