Eric Sembrat's Test Bonanza

2021 Halloween Howey Pumpkin Drop, presented by Society of Physics Students (SPS)

Join SPS at Howey on November 5th at 3 pm for our annual pumpkin drop!

The event is free and no RSVP is required — drop by the outside of Howey Physics Building to see frozen and glitter-filled pumpkins explode and learn about the science and physics behind the drops.

You can also purchase a pumpkin here to be decorated, carved, and frozen in liquid nitrogen or frozen fruit by SPS to then be dropped from the top of the building. All pumpkin sales go directly to SPS to support annual programming and club activities.

Virtual option to join:
SPS will also stream this event at: twitch.tv/gatechsps

Email rmahmood9@gatech.edu with any questions!

Dragonfly: In Situ Exploration of Titan’s Organic Chemistry and Habitability

Georgia Tech's Center for Space Technology and Research (C-STAR) hosts Titan Week, featuring days of virtual fun on Saturn's spectacular, intriguing moon, and NASA's plans to explore it. 

At 6:30 p.m. Thursday, Nov. 19, CSTAR hosts Dr. Elizabeth Turtle, a planetary scientist at Johns Hopkins Applied Physics Laboratory, for its 2020 Distinguished Lecture. This year's virtual version will be via BlueJeans. 

Turtle is the principal investigator for NASA's Dragonfly mission, which proposes to use a rotorcraft lander to explore the environment of Titan.

NASA's Dragonfly New Frontiers mission is a rotorcraft lander designed to perform wide- ranging in situ investigation of the chemistry and habitability of this fascinating extraterrestrial environment. Taking advantage of Titan's dense atmosphere and low gravity, Dragonfly can fly from place to place, exploring diverse geological settings to measure the compositions of surface materials and observe Titan's geology and meteorology. Dragonfly will make multidisciplinary science measurements at dozens of sites, traveling 150 km during a three-year mission to characterize Titan's habitability and determine how far organic chemistry has progressed in environments that provide key ingredients for life.

Registration and other information for the 2020 Distinguished Lecture can be found here.

About Elizabeth Turtle

Dr. Elizabeth Turtle is a planetary scientist at Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory. Her research focus is using remote sensing observations and numerical geophysical models to study geological structures and their implications for the surfaces and interiors of the planets on which they formed. The processes of interest include impact cratering and tectonics on terrestrial planets and outer planet icy satellites, mountain formation on Io, creep of ice-rich permafrost on Mars, and dynamics of lakes on Titan. Turtle is the Principal investigator of the Dragonfly mission to Titan and the Europa Imaging System  for NASA's upcoming Europa mission, an associate on the Cassini Imaging Science Subsystem and RADAR teams, and a co-investigator on the Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter Camera.

Without leaving the comfort of your home, on November 19 you can enjoy an evening under the stars, guided by the Georgia Tech Observatory. This is the Observatory's fourth online public night, preceded by many years of in-person public nights on the roof of Howey Physics Building. Tune in here at 8 PM ET to watch the live stream.

Viewers will be treated to a live tour of the Moon, Jupiter, Saturn, and Mars by Observatory Director James Sowell, as shown through the lense of a Georgia Tech telescope to a live stream on YouTube. The stream is dependent on clear weather to happen.

The observatory plans to use two telescopes this time, and that will allow different magnifications and we may be able to see a few additional objects. The main attractions will be the Moon, Jupiter, Saturn, and Mars. Jupiter and Saturn will soon be near the western horizon, so this will be the last chance to see these two worlds via our Public Nights until next Fall.

Read more about the Observatory's inaugural online public night, which took place on May 7, and save the YouTube channel to your calendar for the November 19 online public night.

Last week, College of Sciences faculty, staff, graduate students, and postdocs received a calendar invitation for this Wednesday’s virtual CoS Spring Plenary. Check your inbox for the BlueJeans Events link (search "CoS Spring 2021 Plenary"). The virtual event's agenda includes announcements and updates on our councils, searches, Task Force on Racial Equity, new strategic plan, and finances — plus a recap of our first staff engagement day. An open Q&A will follow plenary presentations. Please join us!

GT SMILE’s Faculty Student Connections Committee is hosting our Second Meet the Teach event for the College of Sciences, THIS WEDNESDAY, April 14th, at 7PM ET! This event aims to bridge the gap between students and faculty by facilitating a “speed dating” event where students and faculty can meet in a virtual environment. Here’s the RSVP form for the event: https://gatech.co1.qualtrics.com/jfe/form/SV_0TH2FXJkepprNhc

Please fill it out by Wednesday at 12pm EDT. You’ll receive a BlueJeans invite from Vivek Garimella (vgarimella8@gatech.edu) closer to the event date!

Thank you,
Mihir Kandarpa
Faculty - Student Connections Committee | SMILE

Stop by for free drop-in math help today! The Outdoor Math Lab is open M-Th 11-6pm and Fri 11-3pm in the Skiles Courtyard. It is staffed by School of Math Teaching Assistants in coordination with Tutoring & Academic Support.

https://tutoring.gatech.edu/drop-in/

The Math Lab will be closed during school breaks. 

Date: Thursday, Nov. 4, 2021

Time: 10:00 am

Bluejeans link: https://bluejeans.com/468395960/5942

Speaker: Otto Muskens

Affiliation: Professor of Physics and Head of the Quantum, Light, and Matter Group, University of Southampton, UK

Seminar Title: Shaping Light Using Ultrafast and Programmable Nano-optics

Bio: Otto Muskens is a Professor of Physics and head of the Quantum, Light, and Matter group at the University of Southampton. He received his PhD from the University of Utrecht in The Netherlands in 2004 and subsequently did postdoctoral research projects in France and the Netherlands. In 2009 he started his position at the University of Southampton. From 2012 to 2017 he held an EPSRC fellowship on development of new concepts in silicon integrated photonics based on ideas from light scattering in complex media. In 2016 he held the Debye visiting chair at the University of Utrecht. His research interests span the domains of nanophotonics, metamaterials, silicon photonics, complex media and bionanophotonics.

Abstract: A variety of applications requires light and infrared radiation to be shaped and controlled actively. In our laboratory we are working on shaping light using silicon photonics on a chip and in free space using metasurfaces. Key to these applications are materials that can be tuned or switched optically, electrically or thermally. In this presentation I will give an overview of cutting edge developments in shaping of light using phase change materials and ultrafast all-optical perturbations. I will also address efforts at modelling these effects using emerging new techniques from the toolbox of machine learning.

Note: Optica is the new name of OSA-the Optical Society of America

Georgia Electronic Design Center Distinguished Lecture Series

Resonances for Spatially Distributed Emitters

Featuring Steven Johnson, Professor of Applied Mathematics and Physics, MIT

Abstract: It’s well known that a resonant cavity can dramatically enhance light emission by a fluorescent particle, via the Purcell effect. A closely related enhancement occurs for ensembles of coherent or incoherent emitters, which arises in many circumstances: lasing, thermal emission, fluorescent media, Raman scattering in fluids, scattering by surface roughness, and even darkmatter axion haloscopes. However, such “distributed” emission problems favor quite different resonant geometries, in part because the role of corner singularities is upended by spatial averaging. Moreover, even though distributed-emission problems tend to be naturally translation invariant, the process of seeking an optimal emission-enhancing geometry leads to spontaneous symmetry breaking. Theoretically, new tools are becoming available to reveal the possible behaviors and upper bounds of light–matter interactions in complex nanostructured geometries. Computationally, the modeling of such systems naively involves an ensemble average of a large number of expensive electromagnetic simulations, but new trace-optimization algorithms now make it possible to perform large-scale “inverse design” of distributed emission over thousands of degrees of freedom.

Biography: Steven G. Johnson is a Professor of Applied Mathematics and Physics at MIT. He works in the field of nanophotonics—electromagnetism in media structured on the  wavelength scale, especially in the infrared and optical regimes—where he works on many  aspects of the theory, design, and computational modeling of nanophotonic devices, both  classical and quantum. He is coauthor of over 200 papers and over 25 patents, including the  second edition of the textbook Photonic Crystals: Molding the Flow of Light. In addition to  traditional publications, he distributes several widely used free-software packages for  scientific computation, including the MPB and Meep electromagnetic simulation tools and  the FFTW fast Fourier transform library (for which he received the 1999 J. H. Wilkinson Prize  for Numerical Software).

Pizza and soda will be available post seminar.

During the Institute Address, President Ángel Cabrera will highlight recent Institute achievements, convey his vision and goals for the upcoming academic year, and answer audience questions. The campus community is invited to join in person or watch live on president.gatech.edu.

Email your questions in advance to townhall@gatech.edu. Questions should be submitted by 5 p.m. on Wednesday, August 31. 

Location: Clough 152 and streaming at president.gatech.edu

Come explore the world of science and learn about the different career opportunities in the science industry. Georgia Tech Research Institute will be hosting scientific demonstrations throughout the event and will happily answer any questions students may have about opportunities in the scientific industry.