I hope everyone had a Happy Thanksgiving. The fall semester is winding down with finals starting in less than two weeks.

There are a couple of quick shout outs to some recent accomplishments and service by Physics students:

• Congratulations to Sarah Murczek as a member of the Loyola Women’s Volleyball team. Her team won the conference title and are headed to the NCAA tournament for the first time in 20 years!!!
• Congratulations to Kiet Anh Nguyen as the recipient of the President’s Medallion for the College of Arts and Sciences!
• Thanks to Zach Long and Themis Tzellos for helping with the CLC Canned Food Drive last week!

The Department has several fun events this week and next week:

Tonight!!! - Physics Club Trivia Night @ 5 – 7 PM on Wednesday (11/30) in Cudahy Science 3^rd Floor Space

All students and faculty are invited to test your knowledge of science, music and pop culture with trivia night. There will be food.

Women in Physics Club Meeting on Thursday (12/1) @ 6:30 PM in Cudahy 208

WiP will introduce the officers, talk about upcoming events, and have a special treat. All students are invited.

Department Winter Party is next Friday (12/9) @ 4 – 8 PM in Information Commons 4^th Floor

The Physics Department’s annual Winter Party is returning this year. All students and faculty are invited and encouraged to attend. There will be live music by the Physics All-Star Blues band (Musical Director Dr. Gordon Ramsey, Dr. Willetta Green-Johnson, Dr. Walter Tangarife, and physics students), games, and dinner. Please RSVP with Nelda in the Physics Office ASAP.

Here are the latest flyers regarding summer research and graduate programs. Please check previous newsletters for additional postings.

Admission to Graduate Engineering Programs at WUSL

As a reminder to our seniors, any graduating student with overall and STEM GPAs above 3.25 is eligible for admission to the +2 (BS) and +3 (MS) programs at the McKelvey School of Engineering at Washington University in St. Louis. Please see the attached flyer.

Physics PhD Program at Arizona State University

The Physics PhD program at Arizona State University invites graduating seniors to consider our Department for their graduate studies.  The attached document contains information about our program, our Department and ASU in addition to web addresses for those who would like to learn more.

US CMS Summer Undergraduate Research Internship Program

As a part of our commitment to diversity and inclusion, U.S. CMS is excited to announce the 2nd edition of the Program for Undergraduate Research SUmmer Experience “PURSUE” program. The PURSUE program is intended to address the under-representation of women and minoritized students in STEM fields and is open to students pursuing physics, engineering, computer science, math, chemistry, and related fields. See  the link to our program Website at: https://sites.google.com/upr.edu/uscms-pursue/. It is a 10-week paid internship program, which offers female and minority undergraduate students an opportunity to perform a project under the mentorship of scientists working at the frontier of Physics at one of the 50+ institutions in the United States. The internship program is open to students pursuing physics, engineering, computer science, math, chemistry, or related majors. We aim to strengthen our research by increasing diversity. This immersive research internship opportunity will cover areas in instrumentation, technology, and computing projects. Students will use computational tools and data-science methods to learn about fundamental particles and their interactions, by analyzing data obtained from the CMS experiment at the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) located at CERN, Switzerland. The pool of mentors are physicists from U.S. institutes affiliated with the CMS experiment at the LHC and at the rank of university faculty, scientists from national labs, postdoctoral fellows, and advanced graduate students. The program is funded by the U.S. Department of Energy and National Science Foundation funds awarded to the U.S. CMS Operations at Fermilab and the University of Nebraska-Lincoln, and additionally the IRIS-HEP program. Questions about the U.S. CMS internship program can be directed to Prof. Meenakshi Narain meenakshi_narain@brown.edu, chair of the U.S. CMS Collaboration Board.

There will be informational webinars  on November 30, 2022 (4-6pm) or December 9, 2022 (4-6pm). During the Webinar, students will learn about the program, the application process. In addition,  interns and research mentors from the 1st edition of the program will share their experiences at their Webinar. This would be a great opportunity for prospective students to learn first hand from program alumni. The link to agenda and registration information for the webinars can be found at the link USCMS PURSUE Webinars (https://sites.google.com/upr.edu/uscms-pursue/webinars)

The program will last a period of 10 weeks between June 5, 2023, and August 11, 2023. Students will be paid $600 per week during the 10 weeks of the internship. The internship will be offered both in virtual and in-person mode. For those selected for in-person internship, housing will be provided. The application will open at the beginning of December until end of January 2023. The link to the program details and application for the internships https://internships.fnal.gov/u-s-cms-undergraduate-internship/ and will be updated as soon the application opens. 

NSF- Research Experience for Undergraduates (REU) program in Nanoscience and Nanoengineering at Vanderbilt University

We are now accepting applications for the summer 2023 NSF REU program in Nanoscience and Nanoengineering at Vanderbilt University. The application deadline is February 15^th.  The Vanderbilt Institute for Nanoscale Science and Engineering (VINSE) focuses on interdisciplinary nanoscale research at the interface of chemistry, physics, biology and engineering. More than 50 faculty participants from the School of Engineering, College of Arts and Science, and the School of Medicine inspire students by creating an atmosphere of excitement and creativity. Each REU participant will work directly with VINSE faculty members and their research groups and be part of the larger VINSE community. Please see the attached flyer.

Graduate Program at the Department of Earth, Atmospheric, and Planetary Sciences (EAPS) at Purdue University 

Any students who might be interested, please email Emjai Gregory (egregor@purdue.edu). We are always seeking talented students from the Earth Sciences as well as Physics, Chemistry, Engineering, and other STEM fields.  Many students are not aware that they can apply their talents to study the Earth or planets in graduate school and get great jobs afterwards.

As a reminder, the Loyola Physics website has links to lots of summer REUs. If you don’t know what that means – click on the link to find out.