Munir Hasan Nayfeh is a Palestinian-American particle physicist, renowned for his pioneering work in nanotechnology. Nayfeh was born in December 1945, in the neighborhood of Shweikeh in Tulkarem city, in what was then Mandatory Palestine. Following the 1948 Palestine war and Palestinian exodus, Nayfeh's family was compelled to settle in Jordan, where he received his Thanaweyeh Ammeh (high school diploma). He received his bachelor's degree in 1968, and his master's in physics in 1970 from the American University of Beirut, after which he won a scholarship to pursue his PhD at Stanford University in the US, which he successfully completed in 1974. [1]
Professor Nayfeh joined the Oak Ridge National Laboratory in 1974 as a postdoctoral fellow and research physicist. In 1977 he was appointed as a lecturer at Yale University. He finally joined the University of Illinois at Urbana–Champaign in 1978 as a professor of physics. He published over 130 papers and 10 books, and holds several patents. [2] Nayfeh is most noted for his pioneering work in nanotechnology and in 1974 published a milestone paper with one of the 2005 Nobel Prize Laureate in Physics Theodor W. Hänsch on a precision measurement of the Rydberg Constant. [3] Professor Nayfeh is also the founder of NanoSi Advanced Technology Inc., which commercializes nano-sized silicon particles for solar energy, electronics, solid state lighting, and biomedicine applications. [4] [5]
Laser cooling includes a number of techniques where atoms, molecules, and small mechanical systems are cooled with laser light. The directed energy of lasers is often associated with heating materials, e.g. laser cutting, so it can be counterintuitive that laser cooling often results in sample temperatures approaching absolute zero. Laser cooling relies on the change in momentum when an object, such as an atom, absorbs and re-emits a photon. For example, if laser light illuminates a warm cloud of atoms from all directions and the laser's frequency is tuned below an atomic resonance, the atoms will be cooled. This common type of laser cooling relies on the Doppler effect where individual atoms will preferentially absorb laser light from the direction opposite to the atom's motion. The absorbed light is re-emitted by the atom in a random direction. After repeated emission and absorption of light the net effect on the cloud of atoms is that they will expand more slowly. The slower expansion reflects a decrease in the velocity distribution of the atoms, which corresponds to a lower temperature and therefore the atoms have been cooled. For an ensemble of particles, their thermodynamic temperature is proportional to the variance in their velocity. More homogeneous velocities between particles corresponds to a lower temperature. Laser cooling techniques combine atomic spectroscopy with the aforementioned mechanical effect of light to compress the velocity distribution of an ensemble of particles, thereby cooling the particles.
Carl Edwin Wieman is an American physicist and educationist at Stanford University, and currently the A.D White Professor at Large at Cornell University. In 1995, while at the University of Colorado Boulder, he and Eric Allin Cornell produced the first true Bose–Einstein condensate (BEC) and, in 2001, they and Wolfgang Ketterle were awarded the Nobel Prize in Physics. Wieman currently holds a joint appointment as Professor of Physics and Professor in the Stanford Graduate School of Education, as well as the DRC Professor in the Stanford University School of Engineering. In 2020, Wieman was awarded the Yidan Prize in Education Research for "his contribution in developing new techniques and tools in STEM education." citation.
Samuel Chao Chung Ting is an American physicist who, with Burton Richter, received the Nobel Prize in 1976 for discovering the subatomic J/ψ particle.
Frank Anthony Wilczek is an American theoretical physicist, mathematician and Nobel laureate. He is the Herman Feshbach Professor of Physics at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), Founding Director of T. D. Lee Institute and Chief Scientist at the Wilczek Quantum Center, Shanghai Jiao Tong University (SJTU), distinguished professor at Arizona State University (ASU) and full professor at Stockholm University.
The Daya Bay Reactor Neutrino Experiment is a China-based multinational particle physics project studying neutrinos, in particular neutrino oscillations. The multinational collaboration includes researchers from China, Chile, the United States, Taiwan, Russia, and the Czech Republic. The US side of the project is funded by the US Department of Energy's Office of High Energy Physics.
Gerald Gabrielse is an American physicist. He is the Board of Trustees Professor of Physics and director of the Center for Fundamental Physics at Northwestern University, and Emeritus George Vasmer Leverett Professor of Physics at Harvard University. He is primarily known for his experiments trapping and investigating antimatter, measuring the electron g-factor, and measuring the electron electric dipole moment. He has been described as "a leader in super-precise measurements of fundamental particles and the study of anti-matter."
The Max-Planck-Institute of Quantum Optics is a part of the Max Planck Society which operates 87 research facilities in Germany.
The Department of Physics in Lund is a department that belongs to both the Faculty of Natural Sciences and the Faculty of Engineering at Lund University. The main goals are to expand the understanding of physics, its applications and to share scientific progress to new generations. Research is conducted in most of the physics subdivisions. The department also offers courses and a Masters's degree programs in pure physics and provides physics education for the Master of Science in Engineering programs.
In particle physics, the electron mass is the mass of a stationary electron, also known as the invariant mass of the electron. It is one of the fundamental constants of physics. It has a value of about 9.109×10−31 kilograms or about 5.486×10−4 daltons, which has an energy-equivalent of about 8.187×10−14 joules or about 0.511 MeV.
Riazuddin, also spelled as Riaz-Ud-Din, was a Pakistani theoretical physicist, specialising in high-energy physics and nuclear physics. Starting his scientific research in physics in 1958, Riazuddin was considered one of the early pioneers of Pakistan's nuclear weapons development and atomic deterrence development. He was the director of the Theoretical Physics Group (TPG) of the Pakistan Atomic Energy Commission (PAEC) from 1974 until 1984. Riazuddin was a pupil of the winner of the 1979 Nobel Prize in Physics, Abdus Salam.
Muneer Ahmad Rashid, FPAS, also spelled as Munir Ahmad Rashid, is a Pakistani mathematical physicist and emeritus professor of applied and mathematical physics at the Centre for Advanced Mathematics and Physics of the National University of Sciences and Technology.
Alexander A. Balandin is an electrical engineer, solid-state physicist, and materials scientist best known for the experimental discovery of unique thermal properties of graphene and their theoretical explanation; studies of phonons in nanostructures and low-dimensional materials, which led to the development of the field of phonon engineering; investigation of low-frequency electronic noise in materials and devices; and demonstration of the first charge-density-wave quantum devices operating at room temperature.
Sharon C. Glotzer is an American scientist and "digital alchemist", the Anthony C. Lembke Department Chair of Chemical Engineering, the John Werner Cahn Distinguished University Professor of Engineering and the Stuart W. Churchill Collegiate Professor of Chemical Engineering at the University of Michigan, where she is also professor of materials science and engineering, professor of physics, professor of macromolecular science and engineering, and professor of applied physics. She is recognized for her contributions to the fields of soft matter and computational science, most notably on problems in assembly science and engineering, nanoscience, and the glass transition, for which the elucidation of the nature of dynamical heterogeneity in glassy liquids is of particular significance. She is a member of the National Academy of Sciences, the National Academy of Engineering, and the American Academy of Arts and Sciences.
The Research Institute for Nuclear Problems of Belarusian State University is a research institute in Minsk, Belarus. Its main fields of research are nuclear physics, particle physics, materials science and nanotechnology.
Kam-Biu Luk is a professor of physics, with a focus on particle physics, at UC Berkeley and a senior faculty scientist in the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory's physics division. Luk has conducted research on neutrino oscillation and CP violation. Luk and his collaborator Yifang Wang were awarded the 2014 Panofsky Prize "for their leadership of the Daya Bay experiment, which produced the first definitive measurement of θ13 angle of the neutrino mixing matrix." His work on neutrino oscillation also received 2016 Breakthrough Prize in Fundamental Physics shared with other teams. He also received a Doctor of Science honoris causa from the Hong Kong University of Science and Technology in 2016. Luk is a fellow of the American Physical Society, and the American Academy of Arts and Sciences.
Philip Michael Tuts is an American high-energy experimental particle physicist, and Professor and Chair of the Columbia University Physics Department. Tuts is a Fellow of the American Physical Society. He holds a seat on the executive committees of the United States LHC Users' Association and the American Physics Society Forum on Physics and Society, and is Divisional Councilor of the Division of Particles and Fields of APS. Tuts earned his Bachelor's in Physics from MIT in 1974, and his MA and PhD from the State University of New York at Stony Brook in 1976 and 1979, respectively. He joined the physics department at Columbia University in the City of New York in 1983 and was appointed Chair in 2014. Tuts is currently a member of the ATLAS experiment team at CERN and formerly served as US ATLAS Operations Program Manager.
Michel Davier is a French physicist.
John C. Crocker is an American physicist and chemical engineer. He is a Professor of Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering at the University of Pennsylvania.
Aviad Frydman is a professor in the Department of Physics, Bar-Ilan University, Ramat-Gan, Israel. He has been the Chairman of the Department of Physics since 2022.
Blayne Ryan Heckel is an American experimental physicist, known for his research involving precision measurements in atomic physics and gravitational physics. He is now a professor emeritus at the University of Washington in Seattle.