SPA Newsletter 2025: Volume One

Letter from the Head

Dear Friends of the School of Physics and Astronomy,

The 2024-2025 Academic Year is in the books, and it is a good time to reflect on the School’s accomplishments during this challenging year.

Four fantastic faculty members were promoted from Assistant Professor to Associate Professor with tenure. Congratulations to Profs. Michael Coughlin, Nadja Strobbe, Andy Furmanski and Zhen Liu, and kudos to new Assoc. Professor Nadja Strobbe, for also being selected for the 2025 Guillermo E. Borja award, given to promising young faculty members of the College of Science and Engineering for their research and scholarly accomplishments during their probationary period as assistant professors.

Speaking of awards, this has been a good year for the School. Assistant Professor Ben Margalit of the Minnesota Institute for Astrophysics (MIfA) received a Scialog award: Early Science from the Legacy Survey of Space and Time at the Vera Rubin Observatory, Asst. Prof. Ali Sulaiman received a NASA Planetary Science Early Career Award (and one of Ali’s graduate students, Nick Kruegler received a competitive Future Investigators in NASA Earth and Space Science and Technology (FINESST) fellowship), Sean Albistson, long-serving Education Program Specialist, received the College of Science and Engineering Outstanding Service Award, new PhD Wen-Han Kao, under the mentorship of Prof. Natalia Perkins, received a 2024 APS Dissertation Award, and Shaul Hanany had a two-fer, receiving a Fulbright Specialist Award, and was part of the team of Physics Force participants that were recognized with the 2025 Societal Impact Award from the University of Minnesota’s Office for Public Engagement.

For forty years, Physics Force has been performing for students, teachers, parents and those long out of school, using large-scale physics demonstrations to share the wonder and enjoyment of science. This milestone was commemorated at a special performance in Northrup Auditorium this January. Prof. E. Dan Dahlberg, the first physics faculty member in the Force, describes the origin and early history of this award-winning outreach program in this newsletter.

One thing we all know from physics is that a universal constant is change. Three new Assistant Professors joined the faculty this year: Hart Goldman, a Condensed Matter Theorist, Xianghan Xu, a Condensed Matter Experimentalist and Yan Liu, a High-Energy Experimentalist. But in some sort of Principle of Conservation of Faculty, three senior professors retired this year: Roger Rusack, Dan Cronin-Hennessy and my predecessor as Head, Paul Crowell. Also retiring is Researcher Professional 7 – Space Physics Yan Song, after 43 years (!) of service in the School. Sadly, we lost two of our Emeritus Professors this past year, Profs. Ed Tang and Allen Goldman, whose obituaries are in this newsletter.

The University Foundation has been a great partner for the School. As this letter was being drafted, I learned that the School, working with the Department of Earth and Environmental Sciences, was selected to be a host institution for the prestigious 51 Pegasi b program of the Heising-Simons Foundation (thanks to Prof. Ali Sulaiman who initiated this effort). Our new Foundation liaison, Allison Stiver, has been a great ally of the School and connected me with alumni Thor Olson, who provided this newsletter with a history of ballooning science at the University of Minnesota.

Whew. That’s a lot for this newsletter, and I haven’t even told you about our new outreach program with MIfA – a Summer of Astounding Astrophysics, where MIfA and SPA faculty gave six free public lectures in Tate Hall on Tuesday evenings in June and July on topics ranging from colliding black holes, solar flares, citizen science, dark matter and the search for the first galaxies. But better to save something for the next newsletter!

On behalf of the faculty, students, and staff of the School, we wish you a healthy and productive summer and fall, and we look forward to hosting you when you next visit the campus. 

Best regards,

James Kakalios

Taylor Distinguished Professor and Head
School of Physics and Astronomy