SPA Newsletter 2020
Letter from the Head
The School of Physics and Astronomy has faced some unprecedented challenges in the last eight months, as the COVID-19 pandemic forced us to transition to remote instruction in March and has also had a significant impact on our research activities. Our faculty, staff, and graduate students have risen to the task, however, and not only were we able to complete the spring semester successfully, but we began the fall with the benefit of innovations developed over the spring and summer. We have been able to offer all of our regular undergraduate and graduate classes, and, after adaptations for safety, research activities in the School have largely restarted. In a couple cases highlighted in this newsletter, resourceful faculty have initiated new efforts focused on either the pandemic itself or providing opportunities for students and the general public, who may have more time to participate in activities such as citizen science.
In spite of these challenges, the work of the School has gone on, and we have been lucky to do so with the benefit of four new faculty members: Michael Coughlin, Andrew Furmanski, Maxim Pospelov, and Nadja Strobbe, who are profiled in this issue along with Aleksey Cherman, who joined us a year previously. Michael is a member of the Minnesota Institute for Astrophysics, and Maxim has joined the William I. Fine Institute for Theoretical Physics. Nadja and Andrew are the newest members of our experimental high-energy physics group, and Alexey has joined our nuclear theory group. New programs are also underway, including the National Science Foundation Traineeship in multi-messenger astrophysics. As you will also read about in this issue, instruments such as the Parker Solar Probe have been completely unperturbed by the pandemic, and new data from it and other experiments are generating particular excitement in our Space Physics Group. I continue to be amazed by the research accomplishments of all of our faculty, staff, and students.
Three members of the faculty, Professors Yuichi Kubota and Larry Rudnick and Regents Professor Allen Goldman retired at the end of the academic year. We thank them for their collective 127 years of service to the School and University. Allen’s 55 years on the faculty also included 13 as Head of the School, and he mentored over 65 graduate students. Unfortunately, we also suffered the unexpected loss of Professor Misha Voloshin, who passed away in March. Misha, who held the Gloria Lubkin Chair in Theoretical Physics, was a pioneer in the theory of heavy quarks, and was widely admired by both theorists and experimentalists around the world. We will also miss Emeriti Hans Courant, Walter “Cork” Johnson, and Cecil J. “Jake” Waddington, who are also remembered in this issue.
This newsletter is, in effect, a double-issue, as the combination of the School’s leadership transition and the pandemic delayed publication. In the future, please look forward to a new format of shorter, quarterly updates that link directly to stories on the School’s new web page: cse.umn.edu/physics. Among other features, the web page includes Zoom links to the School’s colloquium and many of our seminars, in addition to updates on our research, teaching, and outreach activities. Please join us for any of our online events. Of course we are looking forward to the return of the face-to-face interactions that are so important to education and the advancement of physics and astronomy. I will be updating you in the months ahead as we meet the challenge of restoring normal activities. Your support in this effort is valued by all of us in the School.
In the meantime, please stay well, and I look forward to seeing members and friends of the School in person again as soon as conditions permit.
-Paul Crowell