Colloquia 2018-2019

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

This semester’s colloquia are listed below.  Upcoming colloquia are listed in the left sidebar of this page and under the colloquium category in the department events calendar.

Unless otherwise noted, colloquia are held from 3:45 to 4:45 p.m, with refreshments, including tea, coffee, and cookies, served at 3:30 p.m., in 227 Gallalee Hall.

Fall 2018

Date Title/Abstract Speaker
8/22 No colloquium.
8/29 Recycling at UA Tony Johnson

(University of Alabama)

9/5 Galaxy Disks in Phase Space Matthew Bershady

(University of Wisconsin)

9/12 How to Succeed in Grad School: Review of Timeline and Requirements for Physics and Astronomy Grad Students Conor Henderson

(University of Alabama)

9/19 Faculty & Postdoc Mini-Colloquia:

Are we finally close to discovering the origins of type Ia supernovae?

 

Studying warm, diffuse gas in the outskirts of galaxies

 

CANCELED: Why Circumgalactic Matter Matters for Galaxy Evolution

 

Dean Townsley

(University of Alabama)

Amy Jones

(University of Alabama)

Jessica Werk

(University of Washington, Seattle)

 

9/26 CANCELED:  3Minute Thesis
10/3 Top Down Approach to Quantum Fields Jonathan Heckman

(University of Pennsylvania)

10/10 Better living through computation: Connecting the first stars in the universe to the Milky Way using cosmological simulations Brian O’Shea

(Michigan State University)

10/17 Manipulating light flow with 2D materials plasmons Tony Low

(University of Minnesota)

10/24 Black holes, neutron stars and the birth of gravitational wave astronomy Laura Cadonati

(Georgia Institute of Technology)

10/31 Conductive Atomic Force Microscopy of Magnetic Tunnel Junctions Sara Majetich

(Carnegie Mellon University)

 

11/7 Nuclear physics to the rescue of neutrino physics: electron scattering vs neutrino scattering Camillo Mariani

(Virginia Tech)

11/14 New Physics for Neutrino Mass Generation and Dark Matter in the Universe Digesh Raut

(University of Delaware)

11/21 Thanksgiving Thanksgiving
11/28 The Javalambre-Physics of the Accelerating Universe Astrophysical Survey Renato Dupke

(National Observatory of Brazil)

12/05 New Frontiers of Spintronic Materials: Metallic Antiferromagnets and Insulating Ferrites Satoru Emori

(Virginia Tech)


Spring 2019

Date Title/Abstract Speaker
1/9 No colloquium.
1/16 No colloquium.
1/23 Portals to the Dark Sector Brian Batell

(University of Pittsburgh)

1/30 Faculty Mini Colloquia:

Searches for Extra Dimensions with the CMS Detector at the Large Hadron Collider

and

High-Luminosity Upgrade of the CMS Detector at the Large Hadron Collider

 

Conor Henderson

(University of Alabama)

and

Paolo Rumerio

(University of Alabama)

2/6 No colloquium.
2/13 Faculty Colloquium: Tracing the History of Black-Hole Growth with Photoionization Echos William Keel

(University of Alabama)

2/20 Gamma Rays in the Modern Multi-messenger Astronomy Era Michelle Hui

(NASA MSFC / Huntsville)

2/27 Exploring MeV to TeV Scales with Photons at the CMS Experiment Chris West

(University of Alabama)

3/4

(Monday)

Observation of the Higgs boson decaying to bottom quarks at CMS Chris Palmer

(Princeton University)

3/6 Opportunities for New Physics with Modern Deep Learning Methods for the CMS Experiment Sergei Gleyzer

(University of Florida)

3/7

(Thursday)

From Tens to Tens of Thousands: Supernovae Science in the Big-Data Era Gautham Narayan

(Space Telescope Science Institute)

3/20 Revealing the First Billion Years of the Universe Eli Visbal
3/22

(Friday)

Higgs couplings: GREAT and small Andrew Brinkerhoff
(University of Florida)
3/25

(Monday)

LHC and the quest of understanding the Universe Abdollah Mohammadi

(Kansas State)

3/27 Magnon condensation and exchange-mediated spin flows in magnetic heterostructures Igor Barsukov

(UC Riverside)

4/1

(Monday)

Electroweak and Higgs physics at the LHC: The present and the future Senka Djuric
(Kansas State)
4/3 Non-local nonlinear optics using Rydberg atoms Michael Fleischhauer
(University of Kaiserslautern / KITP UC Santa Barbara)
4/5

(Friday)

Dark Matter, CMS, and the Search for Physics Beyond the Standard Model Jamal Rorie

(Rice)

4/10 Mapping Galactic Evolution Parameters in Chemical Abundance Ratio Distribution Space Duane Lee
(MIT)
4/17 Dirac’s Dream – The Quest for the Magnetic Monopole James Lewis Pinfold

(University of Alberta)

4/18

(Thursday)

TBA Jiangtao Li
4/22

(Monday)

TBA Matthew Penny
4/24 Why Circumgalactic Matter Matters for Galaxy Evolution Jessica Werk

(University of Washington, Seattle)


Previous Years’ Colloquia