Category: Event

I am pleased to announce that this fall, both Jodi and I will be joining the faculty at Southern Methodist University. I will be joining the ATLAS experiment at CERN and Jodi will expand her leadership role in dark matter experiments, starting with the SuperCDMS experiment. This is a big move for us, not just physically  but also professionally. We’ll begin the arc of the rest of our careers, leading research while mentoring students and producing the next generation of leaders, and mapping the frontiers of our respective fields. We will teach, conduct research, work with our funding partners, and do all those other things that faculty do.

This week, I will begin to evolve into a role in ATLAS by attending a “jamboree” at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (LBNL). This three-day workshop will be a chance for me to get to know some of my future colleagues, see current and old colleagues, and learn a LOT about what’s going on in just a part of the overall ATLAS portfolio. I have a vision for my future in ATLAS, but now is the time to add some bone and muscle to the meat of my thinking. I am very excited about this new collaborative opportunity, and am eager to learn so that I can eventually lead.

As I discussed in my personal blog [1], Dr. Steven Chu has been picked by President-elect Obama for Secretary of Energy. The Newshour [2] profiled Dr. Chu, repeating an older story on him. We have to manage our expectations about what this means for curiosity-driven research (CDR) and application-driven research (ADR) in the U.S. However, I think I speak for many of us when I say that a physicist is a welcome Secretary of Energy at a time when energy and research policy are more critical than ever.

[1] http://steve.cooleysekula.net/blog/2008/12/11/a-physicist-in-the-inner-circle/

[2] http://www.pbs.org/newshour/bb/environment/jan-june07/climatechange_05-02.html

The 2008 Nobel Prize in physics has been awarded for work both  “for the discovery of the mechanism of spontaneous broken symmetry in subatomic physics” and “for the discovery of the origin of the broken symmetry which predicts the existence of at least three families of quarks in nature” [1]. The write-up of the background physics for the prize  notes the hard work of the Belle and BaBar collaborations in confirming the mixing matrix model as a complete description of CP violation in the quark system.

While many lively discussions are currently in progress about whether others should or should not have received the prize (I think the ones about the medical Nobel are more heated), the decision has been made and it’s worth taking time to reflect on the insights of the physicists awarded this prize. You can argue about the arbitrariness of awarding just three people a year a prize for work on such a rich subject as physics, and you can debate whether some people did the work first or are more deserving. These are all valid discussions. But in the process, let us not forget that what has been singled out is damn good physics.

[1] http://nobelprize.org/nobel_prizes/physics/laureates/2008/