Physics Highlights 2020, Harvey Mudd College

PHYSICS HIGHLIGHTS 2020 Letter from the Chair Dear Friends of the Department of Physics, Were this a normal year, I would open this update by trumpeting Jason Gallicchio’s NSF Career grant and Mark Ilton’s NSF grant to study latch-mediated spring-actuated systems (think mantis shrimp and trap-jaw ants). I would go on to tell you all about the great research that the amazing summer research fund helped our faculty conduct with students this past summer—thanks so much to all our friends who have donated, and we would appreciate any help in raising the final third to our target. To contribute to the Physics Summer Research Fund, contact me or Nicole Ouellette (nouellette@hmc.edu); we appreciate it.

Perhaps even more to the point, were this a normal year, I wouldn’t be writing you at all, but we decided that Theresa Lynn had more than earned a sabbatical, and I agreed to pinch hit for her before anyone explained to me that the COVID-19 pandemic might upset a few plans. In light of the heroic efforts of my colleagues to cope with the year from hell, I wish to shine the spotlight there.

When the colleges closed for spring break, we had two weeks to prepare for the new online reality. Several faculty members, including Vatche Sahakian, previewed available platforms and shared their insights, helping everyone develop a repertoire of tricks that work great—until family members hog Internet bandwidth; or we notice that some students lack the technology to handwrite smoothly in a sharable electronic medium; or that our classes run until the wee small hours of the morning; or start at 5 a.m. Somehow, everyone made it work. Far-flung students shifted their sleep schedules; faculty juggled teaching and childcare; and we managed to graduate (over Zoom) an amazing group of physicists bound for graduate studies,

Class of 2020 celebration held via Zoom in May.

gainful employment and independent research. We’ll share with you some of their stories in the following pages as well as Nicholas Breznay’s imaginative way of using a novel online platform to make Advanced Laboratory possible in a remote learning environment. I shudder to imagine what we could possibly have done 10 or 20 years ago in a pandemic. Hibernate?

Diversity, Equity and Inclusion Fund We have also been profoundly affected by the currents buffeting the country in this incredibly fraught year. Inspired by recent calls for more equitable, just, and humane treatment of people of color, we are pleased to announce the creation of the Physics Diversity, Equity and Inclusion Fund. To recognize and celebrate the invaluable role students play in helping create an environment in which all are welcomed, valued, supported and can

thrive, this fund will endow a new annual award to recognize the student or students most responsible for building a vibrant and close-knit community of physicists. It will also support students to attend appropriate conferences.

As of this writing, department faculty and staff have pledged $10,000, and we expect the fund to grow, allowing us to support more students and activities. To contribute to the Physics Diversity, Equity and Inclusion Fund, contact me or Nicole Ouellette (nouellette@hmc.edu). We welcome your thoughts, suggestions and participation in this effort. Stay safe and stay well!

Peter N. Saeta

Interim Chair, Department of Physics saeta@g.hmc.edu

DEPARTMENT NEWS

Remote Adlab (Physics 181) in Fall 2020 Over the summer, physics and other academic departments planned for a “hybrid” semester, with most classes online and a few inperson physically distanced labs. The senior experimental physics course, Physics 181 or Adlab, was one of the few planned in-person labs. Summer work included adding flexibility for remote components and provisions to facilitate all members of a team safely getting hands-on time with the equipment.

In Adlab, students typically work in pairs for three to four weeks on a set of three experiments over the semester, each one featuring advanced experimental instruments such as: a pulsed Nuclear Magnetic Resonance (NMR) spectrometer, a UV-VISIR spectrophotometer, beta- or gamma-ray radiation detection equipment, high-vacuum and cryogenic systems, optical and atomicforce microscopy, and a sophisticated entangled-photon source and single-photon detection bank.

One week before classes began, courses were moved entirely online, creating a major challenge for a class that aims to engage students as experimental scientists, obtain real-time experience with advanced instrumentation and to conduct and present studies in a peer-reviewed-journal format!

To accomplish this Nicholas Breznay ’02, assistant professor of physics, re-envisioned Adlab for fall 2020 to be a fully remote experience that could still capture the fun of being “in the lab.” This began with a virtual laboratory space for students to explore, hosted

on the site Gather.Town. In this platform, the video chatting is distance-dependent and naturally allows users to enter and leave conversations by using arrow keys to move around the “lab” space. Student-characters were able to sit around a virtual conference table for the start-of-lab workshop.

As part of the Adlab “town,” live webcams show the real-time state of the lab, including equipment and instructors. Whiteboards around the lab link to live collaborative whiteboards for discussions and problem solving that have attracted occasional annotations from touring visitors, like Madeleine Kerr ’20, Maya Martinez ’20 and Josh Morgan ’20. In addition, Zoom call links are embedded throughout the “town.” These let students enter private Zoom meetings with remote-operable equipment (like the AFM or Cary spectrophotometer) or a remotecontrolled pan-zoom-tilt (PZT) camera. For projects that require manual interaction with the instrumentation, such as the β-decay and γ-γ correlation nuclear physics experiments, the PZT camera allows the students to direct the “lab techs” (B.J. Haddad and Professor Breznay), monitor the equipment (such as the oscilloscope and gaussmeter visible using 10x optical zoom below), and record observations and measurements in real time.

Altogether, these interfaces allow for students to retain full “control” of four separate experiments. Remote desktop integration in Zoom allows for hands-on operation of Cary spectrophotometer and AFM. The PZT camera,

as noted above, lets students carrying out the two nuclear physics experiments, studying beta decay in Tl204 and probing the spin state of excited Ni60 nuclei, as well as collaborating on optical microscopy of solid-state materials like graphene. Finally, Professor Breznay also created a fifth “remotely deployable” hands-on experiment centered on computer-controlled data acquisition via Python, finite-frequency measurements, Fourier spectroscopy and electrical properties of materials. Kits shipped to students have already arrived, and several students have now tested this “pilot” experiment as we go to press. Among other challenges, they were able to report a fundamental measurement of Boltzmann’s constant using temperature-dependent voltage noise measurements of resistors with a commercial data-acquisition interface board.

Happily, many Adlab traditions continue, such as the mid-afternoon coffee/tea break and start-of-class workshops on communication, academic publishing and the scientific process.

Most importantly, Adlabbers are continuing to review the prior literature (both in published journals and submitted by previous years’ classes) and make steady progress at understanding a fundamental physics question.

If you are an Adlab alum, rest assured that your hard work lives on; student bibliographies routinely cite reports from the 2000s as well as the last few years! If you’d like to learn more, or see what is happening this week in Adlab, get in touch with Prof. Breznay and be sure to follow the class’s Instagram account: hmc_adlab.

Remote-controlled pan/zoom/tilt camera

HARVEY MUDD COLLEGE | PHYSICS HIGHLIGHTS 2020

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DEPARTMENT NEWS

In Memoriam

Richard Olson ’62

Marjorie Stoddard

James Andrew Wehrenberg ’72

June brought the sad news that Richard Olson ’62 died. Dick was one of the earliest student members of the Department of Physics, one of nine physics majors in the second graduating class. Dick took his HMC-nourished interest in the interactions between science and society to Harvard, where he earned a PhD in the history of science, writing a dissertation on “Science and Science Education in 18th-century Scotland.” Dick began his teaching career at the University of California at Santa Cruz, where he rose to associate professor and chair of the History Board of Studies before being lured back to Harvey Mudd in 1976.

He was a faculty member at HMC for 35 years until his retirement in 2011.

Dick was a prolific scholar and author of more than 60 published works, including a number of books on the history of science.

During his time on the faculty, he chaired the Department of Humanities and Social Sciences (as it was then known), as well as the faculty. He was a tireless champion of diversity and equity; a pillar of the 5C program in Science, Technology and Society; and loads of fun to interact with in Hixon Forum reading groups, with which he continued to be involved until a year or two ago. Dick had an encyclopedic knowledge of both the history of science and the history of Harvey Mudd College.

I will miss his optimism, his ready chuckle and his great wisdom. – Peter Saeta

Marjorie Stoddard, wife of former physics professor Alonzo (Ted) Stoddard, passed away on Tuesday, Sept. 22. Marjorie was a long-time supporter of the College and a member of the Galileo Society. She and her husband, Ted, joined the Harvey Mudd community in 1960, and Ted taught in the physics department for 26 years, including a term as department chair, before his death. The physics department’s A.E. Stoddard Laboratory was named in his honor.

James Andrew “Andy” Wehrenberg ’72 died on Oct. 13. After receiving a bachelor’s in physics from HMC, he did his graduate work in nuclear engineering at the University of Washington. He worked in the design of the initial construction of nuclear power plants in Madrid, Spain, and Augusta, Georgia, for Bechtel Corp. He also worked for Southern Company Services as a consulting engineer. In retirement, he enjoyed playing bridge, working on home projects, reading all genres, listening to classic rock, spending time with family and friends, traveling, keeping the Cahaba River clean and “discussing” politics. He volunteered to help seniors do their taxes through AARP. Memorial contributions can be made to the Flick and Jack Wehrenberg Scholarship, an endowed scholarship that Andy established at HMC in honor of his parents to support a deserving student who has demonstrated financial need each year.

HARVEY MUDD COLLEGE | PHYSICS HIGHLIGHTS 2020

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DEPARTMENT NEWS

Q-and-A with Professor Brian Shuve Q. In your opinion, what is the most interesting thing happening in physics today?

A. Right now, the most interesting development is gravitational wave astronomy. Gravitational waves were first observed only four years ago, and we’ve already learned so much about the types of black holes and how abundant they are, how neutron star mergers can be responsible for the formation of heavy nuclei and all sorts of other cool things that we would have had no other ways of knowing! It is also mind boggling that we’re able to see these cataclysmic events that in some cases happened billions of years ago. I think we have a lot more to learn about the universe through gravitational waves.

Q. What research are you following (besides your own)?

A. I have been following with some interest the emerging literature on COVID-19. It’s fascinating to see how analytical methods from biology, medicine and the social sciences can come together to teach us about a new and emerging threat, one that has a huge impact on all of our lives right now.

Q. What is on your reading list?

A. I have been reading Vexy Thing: On Gender and Liberation by Imani Perry, an African-American Studies professor at Princeton who also has affiliations in law and public affairs, gender and sexuality studies, and jazz studies. It’s an amazing book that looks at the history of European colonialism and racism through the lens of patriarchy, and it’s both incredibly illuminating and accessible. It’s helped me come to a better understanding of a lot of the things we’re experiencing now in the world. For fiction, I’ve started reading Murakami’s 1Q84 (I bought it ages ago and recently found it hiding on a bookshelf!). I love Murakami’s work, although finishing it may have to wait for winter break.

HARVEY MUDD COLLEGE | PHYSICS HIGHLIGHTS 2020

Q. What fascinates you most about particle physics?

A. I was never very interested in mechanical systems but found things like the inner workings of atoms or the theory of electromagnetism fascinating.

Once I discovered that there was an entire field devoted to understanding how these tiniest things work, I was hooked. I still find it amazing that we can understand the elementary particles and forces of nature, but perhaps more than that, I find it cool how these ideas can be applied to cosmology, allowing us to understand the structure and composition of the universe as a whole. (Read more about Shuve’s research on page 4.)

Q. What is something most people wouldn’t know about you?

A. I used to be very shy, and I don’t like confrontations of any kind. This may come as a surprise to some of my colleagues and students, who I’m sure have noticed that I talk a lot. It took me a very long time (well into my post-college years) to feel comfortable opening up to people and to find ways of advocating for my perspective (whether in physics or life in general).

Q. What would you be if you were not an HMC physics professor?

A. I think I’d like to do something that is public facing and where I get to help people. Back in my more religious days, I thought about being a minister, and that still sticks with me sometimes. Counselor, teacher, community organizer, public health worker—all are things I could imagine doing. My cousin is a nonprofit lawyer who advocates on behalf of foster children. I greatly admire her work— I think something like that would have been a fulfilling possible path for me.

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DEPARTMENT NEWS

Uncovering New Signals of Long-Lived Particles Brian Shuve began studying long-lived particles (LLPs) five or six years ago, when the concept was somewhat of a fringe idea. Was it possible that particle collisions within the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) were throwing off new particles that slipped unnoticed past LHC detectors and that those particles could hold answers to unsolved mysteries about the nature of the universe? Unlike most signals of new particles at colliders, this particular class of particles is tricky to spot, they pass undetected through different parts of the detector (hence, “long-lived”). Instead, they decay randomly in unexpected places well away from where they are produced, making them hard to re-construct and potentially looking like “noise” in the detector. In the past two years he’s published three papers on the topic.

“The reason I started going in this direction of LLPs was that it seemed like no matter what question I was working on theoretically, whatever new forces or particles we were considering, they fell into this new category.”

“Known physics can’t yet explain why the universe contains more matter than antimatter, because we have an incomplete understanding of the nature of forces that exist. We suspect answers might be hiding in plain sight within the massive data sets recorded during LHC experiments.”

physics can’t yet explain why the universe “ Known contains more matter than antimatter, because we have an incomplete understanding of the nature of forces that exist. We suspect answers might be hiding in plain sight within the massive data sets recorded during LHC experiments.

”

–Professor Brian Shuve “We led a large collaboration of approximately 20 editors and 200 other physicists, both theorists and experimentalists, to do a comprehensive study of how to look for these kinds of particles. The research is already making an impact, driving new experimental and theoretical studies of LLPs. Given the non-standard nature of LLPs, a comprehensive overview of LLP signatures at the LHC is beneficial to ensure that possible avenues of new physics discoveries are not overlooked.” “‘Long-Lived Particles at the Energy Frontier: The MATHUSLA Physics Case’ is the work of a large collaboration of theorists working to figure out exactly what theories predict the existence of long-lived particles and why those theories predict LLPs. Apart from doing

HARVEY MUDD COLLEGE | PHYSICS HIGHLIGHTS 2020

some of the theory work, I also was a co-editor responsible for one of the main sections of the paper (on theories predicting neutrino masses).”

“I worked with a theorist at CERN and several experimentalists who are part of the Large Hadron Collider beauty experiment (LHCb) collaboration there. In ’Discovering True Muonium at LHCb’ published in Physical Review D,’ we showed that a particle called true muonium, which is predicted by the current theory of particle physics but has not yet been discovered, can be detected as a longlived particle at the LHCb experiment. It’s

the first study showing that this can be done realistically.”

“I saw that I could make more impact by organizing a group like the LHC LLP community than by just doing my own research alone. Being at Harvey Mudd allowed me to do that.”

“It’s about creating a community-wide effort that gives all the theoretical motivations for why these particles are out there.”

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DEPARTMENT NEWS

Sahakian and Helliwell Co-author Textbook Professor Vatche Sahakian and Thomas Helliwell (professor and dean emeritus) have co-authored the textbook Modern Classical Mechanics. In this modern and distinctive textbook, Helliwell and Sahakian present classical mechanics as a thriving and contemporary field with strong connections to cutting-edge research topics in physics. The particular approach aims to connect classical mechanics with modern physics, including special and general relativity and quantum mechanics, and other areas of contemporary research. Each part of the book concludes with a capstone chapter describing various key topics in quantum mechanics, general relativity and other areas of modern physics, clearly demonstrating how they relate to advanced classical mechanics, and enabling students to appreciate the central importance of classical mechanics within contemporary fields of research.

Numerous and detailed examples are interleaved with theoretical content, illustrating abstract concepts more concretely. Extensive problem sets at the end of each chapter further reinforce students’ understanding of key concepts and provide opportunities for assessment or self-testing. A detailed online solutions manual and lecture slides accompany the text for instructors. Often a flexible approach is required when teaching advanced classical mechanics, and, to facilitate this, Sahakian and Helliwell have outlined several paths instructors and students can follow through the book, depending on background knowledge and the length of their course.

The physical copy of the book is expected to be published in January 2021, and a digital format is being used in Brian Shuve’s fall 2020 Theoretical Mechanics (Physics 111) course.

HARVEY MUDD COLLEGE | PHYSICS HIGHLIGHTS 2020

Harvey Mudd Donates PPE Supplies to Local Hospital As the pandemic unfolded this spring, Sharon Gerbode led an effort among HMC faculty to gather excess personal protective equipment (PPE) supplies from their labs and donated them to Huntington Memorial Hospital for the healthcare workers.

Gerbode learned about PPE Link, a service created by STEM faculty that identifies donors and their PPE resources and connects them with medical facilities that need equipment. She searched her own lab for excess supplies and rallied her colleagues to contribute to the effort. Gerbode collected items and arranged to donate them to Huntington Memorial in Pasadena, California, which serves COVID-19 patients.

“HMC donated about 35 boxes of nitrile gloves, one box of masks, two large bottles of hand sanitizer, two large containers of disinfectant wipes and one lab coat,” says Gerbode. “All items were new, in original, unopened packaging. It was a wonderful campus collaboration that really speaks to the College’s mission of impacting society, and the collection volunteers at the hospital were thrilled by the bounty!”

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DEPARTMENT NEWS

Gallicchio Receives NSF CAREER Grant The National Science Foundation (NSF) awarded a Faculty Early Career Development (CAREER) grant to professor Jason Gallicchio, an expert in experimental cosmology, the study of the origin and evolution of the universe. His project, “Using Astronomy to Improve Tests of Quantum Mechanics,” is a quest to record the time of arrival of individual photons from quasars and pulsars.

“This high level of coordination that photons can exhibit, which cannot be simulated by classical (non-quantum) means, is called entanglement,” says Gallicchio. “In addition to being of great fundamental importance, this coordination forms the basis for the emerging technologies of quantum cryptography and quantum computing, so it is important to probe for any limits of this coordination in the most extreme conditions over (literally) astronomical distances.”

One of the three projects funded by the CAREER grant will focus on astronomy rather than quantum mechanics. It will use the hardware Gallicchio developed for earlier quantum tests to record arrival time increments from individual photons from pulsars, or fast-spinning neutron stars with extremely strong magnetic fields that produce beams of radiation across the electromagnetic spectrum. Measurements of those time increments will then allow Gallicchio and his students to examine various models related to pulsar emission and provide measurements of certain aspects of Einstein’s theory of general relativity.

The project is divided into three categories: Development and Optimization of Entangled Photon Sources, Tests of Quantum Fundamentals, and Pulsar Astronomy and General Relativity. The projects will overlap, but will be developed over five-years. All

experiments involve fast manipulation and detection of individual photons or pairs of entangled photons.

The grant allows Gallicchio to modernize the College’s electronics lab course (Physics 133) by tasking students with building custom electronics for the project and actively assisting with design rather than passively analyzing, building, debugging and recording results from standard circuits.

“We’ll start with small, well-defined design tasks but will deliberately scale up to an open-ended final project,” Gallicchio says. “Many research groups would benefit from new or improved instrumentation. Small instrumentation projects solicited from researchers across the HMC science departments will form the core of the list of suggested final projects.”

NSF Funds Ilton’s Evolutionary Biomechanics Research Mark Ilton has received funding from the

National Science Foundation to study the evolutionary biomechanics of extremely fast, small systems.

He’s examining the causes, consequences and evolution of biomechanical variation in latch-mediated spring actuated (LaMSA) systems and the transitions between motordriven and spring-driven movement within and across organisms.

During the next few years, research in Ilton’s Physics of Soft Matter Lab (PoSMLab) at Harvey Mudd will focus primarily on two guiding questions: What properties determine the maximum kinematic performance of elastic materials? And what principles govern the mechanics of biological LaMSA systems?

Ilton, who studies the dynamics of energy release in elastomers and impulsive biological systems, uses the example of an archer’s bow to describe LaMSA motion: “First a motor (the archer’s muscles) loads elastic energy into a spring-like element (the bow), which is held in place

HARVEY MUDD COLLEGE | PHYSICS HIGHLIGHTS 2020

by a latch (the archer’s fingers). Upon releasing the latch, the stored elastic energy is rapidly converted into kinetic energy of motion. Some organisms have this combination of a loading motor, spring and latch built into their anatomy and can use it to perform ultra-fast movement.”

“What’s perhaps even more impressive is that the performance of some of these biological LaMSA systems exceeds that of current engineering capabilities for repeatable kinematic performance at small sizes,” Ilton says. “By understanding the physical principles that govern these systems, our aim is to contribute to a better understanding of the evolutionary dynamics of these organisms and inform future engineering design.”

The $118,971 NSF grant includes support for two student researchers in the PoSMLab each summer for three years. Students working on this project will help to further develop the model, write open-source software for the comparative biomechanics community and work with collaborators in biology (at Duke and the University of Hawaii, Manoa) and engineering (at University of Massachusetts, Amherst) to answer questions about mantis shrimp biomechanics.

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DEPARTMENT NEWS

Physicists Publish Evidence of Spin Memory Effect Nicholas Breznay ’02 co-authored a paper

that has been published in npj Quantum Materials.

In “Persistence of spin memory in a crystalline, insulating phase-change material,” researchers report a new way to measure a key quantum-mechanical property of electrons in disordered solid materials: their spin. “We investigated a really cool class of compounds called phase-change materials, which are already used in next-generation computer memory to encode information (binary 1’s and 0’s) within the material’s local atomic structure (a 1 bit will be in a crystalline, ordered arrangement, while a zero bit is highly disordered, like glass),” says Breznay.

He and his co-authors—Johannes Reindl, Hanno Volker and Matthias Wuttig from the RWTH Aachen University in Germany— studied the compound tin-antimony-tellurium, SnSb2Te4 using electrical measurements at cryogenic temperatures and under intense magnetic fields, tracking how the electrons’

HARVEY MUDD COLLEGE | PHYSICS HIGHLIGHTS 2020

quantum spins affect their ability to move around.

“What we found was evidence for really surprising behavior: a ‘spin memory effect,’” says Breznay. “When electrons in the strongly disordered materials travel by ‘hopping’ from one spot to another, they remember their spin state and can either be more or less likely to move depending on an externally applied magnetic field. The upshot is that the effect is hard to miss, can be used as a route to study electron spin lifetimes in disordered materials, and perhaps may pave the way to encoding spin information in a material that is already commercially useful and viable.”

Breznay and Wuttig met while Breznay was a late-year PhD student at Stanford, and the pair has collaborated on several projects since then. Breznay used this project as the centerpiece of several grant proposals he has recently submitted and plans to continue this work with HMC students.

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STUDENT NEWS

Madeleine Kerr ’20 Many HMC physics majors have performed in the annual Shakespeare play, including some memorable performances in recent years by Morgan Mastrovich ’16 and Shanel Wu ’16 in Twelfth Night and Luke Mastalli-Kelly ’14 as Sir John Falstaff in Henry IV. Kerr found several ways to become involved in the theater.

She directed a December 2019 all-Mudd production of Lucas Hnath’s 2013 play Isaac’s Eye, about a young Isaac Newton and his intellectual battles with Robert Hooke, most notably, to argue that light was formed of particles, not waves. Besides the battle of egos and the exploration of love and belonging, the play culminates in a rather uncomfortable scene in which the young Isaac inserts a needle into his (her?) eye seeking experimental evidence for his view on the particle nature of light. The production starred an unflinching Anna Barth ’21 in the demanding role of Newton and was performed to an enthusiastic audience in the Drinkward Recital Hall on the HMC campus.

Kerr was just getting started. As part of her physics and theater double major, she starred as Macbeth in a rollicking genderbending production of Shakespeare’s bloody tale of political ambition run amok and the psychological toll it takes on a leader burdened with a conscience. The Pomona production

Madeleine Kerr '20 (left) as macbeth

of “The Scottish Play” featured some of the weirdest sisters one could hope to see and an intense title character determined to outrun the consequences of his bloody deeds. The performances ran in Pomona’s Seaver Theater March 5–8, just before the colleges closed for the pandemic. The house was packed, and the applause was long and well-deserved. Kerr’s performances came off without a hitch.

One senior project down, one to go. Kerr’s senior physics thesis developed from a summer project conducted at Scripps Oceanographic Institute with Prof. Dave Stegman and explored a mystery of the Venusian surface.

Specifically, she asks “If the lithosphere of

Matthew Fox ’20

Kaveh Pezeshki ’21

Fox has recently published three single-author papers in leading theoretical physics journals as an HMC undergraduate and, by the time you read this, will have posted a fourth paper that he has written in collaboration with math-CS and physics double major Chai Karamchedu ’21. Fox’s papers on general relativity published in Physical Review D and the Journal of Mathematical Physics explore Palatini f (R,Lm,RμνTμν) modified theories of gravity and how black holes in higher dimensions develop electric multipole hair. Until COVID-19 chased all the students from the department, Fox was a fixture of the Stauffer lounge. He’s continuing to conduct original research in Denver.

Pezeshki was named an Astronaut Scholar for the 2020–2021 academic year by the Astronaut Scholarship Foundation. He is the 27th Harvey Mudd student to receive the honor.

The ASF selects college students pursuing careers in science, engineering and mathematics who exhibit initiative, creativity and excellence in their chosen field and provides opportunities for mentorship and professional development with industry professionals as well as a $10,000 scholarship prize.

Pezeshki is actively involved with research groups on campus and is interested in pursuing a career in physics and engineering. While at Mudd, he has pursued opportunities to work in chip design and electronics, both in academic and personal work.

He is a member of the Department of Engineering’s Clay-Wolkin Fellowship program, advised by David Harris, Harvey S. Mudd Professor of Engineering Design and associate

HARVEY MUDD COLLEGE | PHYSICS HIGHLIGHTS 2020

Venus is as thin as that of Earth, then why doesn’t this planet have fractures and active plate tectonics?” Using two-dimensional Stokes equations models, she showed that “two distinct types of thermal upwellings which would produce different surface volcanism can exist in the same mantle with a partial covering of the core-mantle boundary with low-temperature, high-viscosity lithospheric slabs.” Her thesis was co-advised by Professor Greg Lyzenga ’75 and received the 2020 Brown Award. She is beginning graduate studies at Scripps Oceanographic Institute.

department chair. The program provides students with opportunities to pursue basic and applied research initiatives in very-largescale integration design. Pezeshki joined the fellowship program as a first-year student and has worked with Harris on digital and chip design.

After graduation, Pezeshki plans to pursue a PhD in applied physics and engineering and specialize in solid-state devices.

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STUDENT NEWS

Department Awards Thomas B. Brown Memorial Award Tom Brown taught physics at the college from 1958 until his death in 1962. The Brown Award was established after his death by his friends and colleagues in the department. It is awarded for senior research in physics: for research results, originality in conception or in execution of research, diligence and clarity of oral and written reports.

In her senior thesis work, Madeleine Kerr ’20 (also see page 8) modeled the planetary crust of Venus and a new proposal for how exactly it renews itself over time. The project was undertaken with great diligence throughout her senior year and leading up to it. Kerr’s work is the first of its kind, opening the doors for further study of this renewal

Alfred B. Focke Award Al Focke was the first chair of the physics department, joining the college in 1959. The Focke award celebrates excellence in experimental physics research. It is given to the graduating senior who, in the opinion of the physics faculty, has done the most noteworthy piece of experimental research as a senior project.

Rachel Barcklay ’20 and Harry Fetsch ’20

created an RF plasma reactor and replaced a microwave plasma reactor whose associated difficulties and dangers made it tricky to operate and allowed it to run for very limited hours, cramping the range of research that could be done with it in the Donnelly and Dato groups. Their RF reactor design was careful and creative. Their work throughout the year as lab partners was dedicated and yielded its

mechanism. The thesis was advised by USCD/ Scripps Oceanographic Institute professor Dave Stegman, along with Professor Greg Lyzenga ’75. Kerr coordinated her work with a Scripps grad student working on a related project, taking full advantage of a collaborative yet independent research approach. In her fall thesis talk, her enthusiasm and the early results were impressive. Kerr’s thesis explained the subject to a general physics reader, from the planetary science to brief conceptual explanations of the fluid dynamics equations.

first science result (fortunately or unfortunately) just before we all dispersed at spring break.

Clearly the results could have developed quite a bit more if we had been present in person after break, but the trajectory of this work through the year was very impressive and its legacy will be important. The two theses complemented each other very nicely as an intro to plasma physics and thorough exposition of their project.

Jon A. Wunderlich ’67 Prize

Richard C. Haskell Student Conference Travel Award

Established in 1994 with gifts from the class of 1967 and Jon’s widow.

Awarded to a physics major who has demonstrated remarkable creativity.

Established in 2019 by David Liao ’05 and his family, to honor Professor Emeritus Dick Haskell by supporting student research and presentation skills, which Dick values highly.

Holly Frank ’20 spearheaded a project in

engineering professor Lori Bassman’s group, to computationally model structural aspects of novel iron-chromium-manganese-aluminum alloys that affect the alloy strength at high temperatures. The novel alloys Holly studied are of interest as possible cost-effective alternatives to stainless steel and, in fact, Frank’s work contributed to a recent patent (on which she is an author) from the Bassman group and collaborators.

Frank identified her thesis project on her own, reflecting on other work she had done in the Bassman group and on experimental results from summer 2018 and 2019. She formulated the plan to pull together the experimental data and use them to inform a computational model, based on density functional theory, of the brittle and strong phases in these alloys and how they depend on composition. Frank’s work is leading immediately to several summer 2020 projects in the Bassman group pursuing this direction that Frank first envisioned to bring a computational component into this particular research.

HARVEY MUDD COLLEGE | PHYSICS HIGHLIGHTS 2020

Matthew S. Fox ’20 has undertaken completely

independent research, for at least the last two years, in novel classical theories of gravity and higher-dimensional black holes. He has published his work in a pair of single-author papers (in Physical Review D and the Journal of Mathematical Physics), with a fourth manuscript currently under review. This award is specifically for his talk at the APS Far West Meeting in November 2019, where he spoke on the topic of his second paper in a submitted talk titled “Multipole Hair of Schwarzschild-Tangherlini Black Holes.” Fox’s talk won him the APS Far West Section’s Helen Quinn Award for Education or Undergraduate Research Theory. Fox also presented a very well-received, seminar-length talk on this research at UC Riverside in December 2019. Numerous physics faculty members attended practices for at least one of these two talks and can report firsthand on Fox’s completely independent work as well as the engaging and accessible way in which he presented it.

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FACULTY NEWS

Retired Faculty Updates Chih-Yung Chen In my first two years of retirement (2018 and 2019), I spent a lot of time traveling and enjoyed it very much. In the spring of both years, I spent six weeks in China. Based in Shanghai, I took a number of trips visiting various places and reunited with my college schoolmates. In the fall of those two years, I visited Europe and Canada, respectively.

As you would expect, I have stayed at home this year. I hope the pandemic will be under control soon, and I can travel again.

Richard Haskell Life as an emeritus professor has turned out to be rewarding, educational—and surprisingly—even busier than life as an active faculty member! Let me explain: I’ve had a chance to write two journal articles— both outcroppings of Clinic projects and written with faculty and Clinic team co-authors. The first was an exploration of barium titanate nanoparticles as a potential medium for highdensity energy storage and was published in PhysRev B in August 2018. The second, in progress, is a validation of recently patented solar technology that is touted as a paradigm shift in the industry.

Initially skeptical, Peter Saeta and I have learned a lot!

I’ve also enlisted nearly full-time in the fight to mitigate climate change and all of its associated challenges. I’m up to my eyebrows in a local, non-profit organization, Sustainable Claremont, whose focus is gradually becoming more regional in recognition of the regional problems it is addressing. I’ve jumped headlong into local politics, building efficiency, land use and development, renewable energy (the solar theme again), and all the connections with social justice issues.

I worked with three Pomona and three Mudd students in a deep-dive study of net-zero-energy for a new addition to the Claremont Village area. To say that I have learned a lot is the understatement of the year. Finally, I have managed to overcommit myself by joining the city of Claremont’s Sustainability Committee. I clearly have never learned to say “no”; some say it’s a personality flaw, but it certainly is exciting and fulfilling!

book Special Relativity in 2010, published by University Science Books, which is a greatly updated and expanded version of my previous book, Introduction to Special Relativity, which was published in 1966 and used by generations of old-time Mudders.

More recently, Vatche Sahakian and I have worked on a quite different book, Modern Classical Mechanics (see page 6), which covers Lagrangian and Hamiltonian mechanics, plus many other topics from the department’s long-time, junior-level course “Theoretical Mechanics.” We were happy to receive very positive evaluations from several anonymous reviewers. As we are nearing the end of this five-year writing project, the book is already being used in the fall semester in online form by Brian Shuve and will be published in printed form by Cambridge University Press in January 2021. Watch for it on the New York Times Best Seller list!

Aside from professional activities, I have indulged in numerous hobbies, including travel with my wife, Bonnie, to Europe or the East Coast in the summers, and to a yearly Bach Festival in Carmel, California, although this summer we stayed at home, hiding out like many of you. Best wishes to all former students.

Patti Sparks This has certainly been a year for celebrating the best laid plans and all that. My retirement plans had three spokes: visit the grandchildren, quilt and hang out with Jim Eckert and the students in the research lab.

The grandchildren are in Maryland, and we Zoom every day. The lab is still active, but I really miss sitting on the comfy chairs and hearing what the students are up to. The quilting is going really well!

I have been designing quilts with an emphasis on using fabulous fabric in simple, modern settings.

Thomas Helliwell I retired from teaching in 2005 but have seen no reason to stop doing research or writing textbooks. The research is on the topic of quantum singularities in general relativistic spacetimes, all of which has been carried out with Deborah Konkowski ’77, professor of mathematics at the U.S. Naval Academy. I also finished a first-year-level

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11

FACULTY NEWS

Retired Faculty Updates

(CONTINUED)

John Townsend On May 3, 2019, I taught my last class as a Harvey Mudd physics faculty member. The subject was how overall phase invariance in quantum mechanics can be generalized to a local symmetry called local gauge invariance, which allowed me to derive Maxwell’s equations from “pure thought” in a way that I hoped would be a fitting conclusion to a sophomore year that had started with Physics 51 and ended with Physics 52. If you graduated some time ago and are curious as to how Physics 52 has evolved since your days at Mudd, you might like to look at my book Quantum Physics. I was especially pleased that my wife and some of my tennis friends chose to attend my last lecture.

This was the start of a hectic period. The following month we were notified that we could put our house up for sale and plan the move to Mt. San Antonio Gardens, a life-care retirement community located a mile from where we were living in Claremont. We were happily adjusting to life at the Gardens when just six months later we were faced with a global pandemic, which has severely limited our interactions with our fellow Gardens residents and has allowed us to only see our two daughters and two-year-old granddaughter via FaceTime.

I grew up in Pennsylvania and, prior to this year’s election, I reached out to all 400 of my high school classmates with a letter spelling out the importance of respecting science in the effort to combat the pandemic and especially climate change, where I believe the future of our planet for life as we know it is very much at stake.

Bob Wolf After retirement, I divided my time between my winter home in Claremont and my summer home in Washington. I devoted my time to bike riding, playing tennis and table tennis, hiking, mountain climbing kayaking, reading the neglected books from my library and the public libraries, painting watercolor scenes and warning the public, politicians and anyone else I could about the dangers of global warming and the measures that might limit that damage. My interest in politics was focused on the long-term risks of global warming and the most effective ways to avoid the worst effects at the least costs, and convincing people that long waits would result in unmanageable problems.

I was active in both states on homeowner committees on recreational facilities, landscaping, politics and energy conserving measures. Claremont Colleges provide excellent talks, theater and seminars almost every day of every week. In Washington, I live on the shore of a lake that provides fishing, swimming, kayaking and windsurfing. As time goes on, I have been spending more time landscaping which have won several prizes over the years. I have been very fortunate in retaining good health and good relations with neighbors in both communities.

Professor Townsend in class

HARVEY MUDD COLLEGE | PHYSICS HIGHLIGHTS 2020

12

RESEARCH

Summer Research Cross-talk Effects

Quantum Eraser

Sean Wu ’23 and Sonali Madisetti ’23 (Caltech) worked with Jessica Arlett to

Jason Gallicchio led two projects this summer with student researchers Max Szostak ’23, Yuanju Tsai ’23, Ngan Nguyen PZ ’21, Catherine Wu ’22, Inci Anali ’23 and Kathryn Chan ’21. In one project, students designed printed circuit boards to do optical, astronomical, and atomic physics experiments. These will eventually lead to implementing a “quantum eraser” experiment that will select between the wave-like and particlelight nature of an individual photon AFTER it has entered a large interferometer. In the second project, two students did theoretical work for a potential NASA mission involving quantum optics experiments from space. They did both quantum entanglement and general relativity calculations.

These calculations contributed to a NASA JPL proposal.

simulate chemical cross-talk effects, where chemicals generated in the detection of a signal on one sensor lead to a false positive on another sensor. This is of particular concern for Arlett’s research on neurochemical probes since a small footprint is essential to minimizing neural damage during probe insertion, requiring the sensors to be packed very closely together. Using a two-dimensional random walk model, Wu and Madisetti were able to reproduce the observed cross-talk not only in data collected by Harvey Mudd students Eleanor Rackoff ’20 and Yoo-Jin Hwang ’22 the previous summer, but also in two other landmark experimental papers with very different geometry and experimental configuration. Together, they were able to determine limitations in our current approach and to make predictions on paths for further optimization when we are able to resume experimental work. Wu continued the research this fall, expanding to a three-dimensional model. Wu’s research was funded by the HMC Campbell Summer Research Award and Madisetti was funded by Caltech’s SURF program.

Van der Waals Materials In the Nicholas Breznay Group this summer, Jessica Santosa ’22 continued work she began in the spring semester, studying the optical properties and characterization of two-dimensional “Van der Waals” materials.

Santosa had already mechanically exfoliated flakes of graphene—single atomic layers of graphite—and collected optical microscopy images using a new compound microscope before the spring semester went remote.

Over the summer, she led development of image-analysis algorithms written in Matlab to automatically detect and analyze singlelayer regions of graphene in the microscopy data. Santosa’s work has inspired follow-up development by 2020 Adlab students (keep an eye on hmc_adlab on Instagram for updates) and will also allow our group to quickly characterize a range of interesting new 2D materials.

HARVEY MUDD COLLEGE | PHYSICS HIGHLIGHTS 2020

Colloidal Crystals Sharon Gerbode’s lab was active, though remote, in summer 2020. Skylar Gering ’22

continued work on simulations of colloidal crystals using XSEDE supercomputing resources to determine how the rate that crystal grains shrink depends on their initial shape. Her improved methods for crystal initialization are providing a more careful analysis of the effects of grain shape, which will enable the completion of a manuscript started based on earlier preliminary simulation results. Later in the summer, rising sophomores Inq Soncharoen ’24 and Cora Payne ’23 worked under the guidance of Gerbode lab alum Maya Martinez ’20 to

analyze experimental colloidal crystal data collected during the 2019–2020 academic year, which showed that it’s possible for crystal grains to disappear by rotating rather than shrinking. Their work to carefully track the motions of individual particles within a rotating crystal grain revealed a surprising new method for grain rotation that has not been described previously.

This discovery initiated a new research direction in the Gerbode lab, and current senior thesis student Anna Barth ’21 is now working toward a theoretical description for the unusual grain rotation observed in the experiments.

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RESEARCH

Summer Research

(CONTINUED)

Donors Support Physics Research

PoSMLab Mark Ilton, Mason Acevedo ’22, Jackson Castro ’22 and Kaanthi Panhigunta ’23

worked in the HMC Physics of Soft Matter Lab (PoSMLab) to study latch-mediated, springactuated movement (LaMSA) systems, develop a biomechanics model, write open-source software and applied the model to specific case studies in both biology (trap-jaw ants)

and engineering (a micro-robotic jumper).

From this work, the group developed new ways of using biological data to tune the model and make it biologically relevant. Students also contributed to writing a manuscript on the model. Two manuscripts with student coauthors resulted from the work this summer, and both manuscripts will be

submitted to scientific journals. The opensource software that the students developed has already been used by other research groups and has opened up new collaborations for our group. The students plan to attend a virtual national conference in January to present their work.

tasks. Due to the remote format of summer research, they instead returned to data from summer 2019 on one-way steerable states, and fleshed out understanding of their correlations by subjecting the data to a variety of statistical tests to understand exactly what kinds of non-

classical correlation are present in these states, and which are truly one-way in their operation.

Lynn expects the work from this summer will result in a publication, and that the work will be presented at a conference in 2021.

Quantum Entanglement Theresa Lynn and student researchers Yilin Li ’22 and Mariesa Teo ’22 focused on

theoretical and experimental aspects of quantum entanglement this summer, continuing to explore partially entangled photon pairs. The more-than-classical correlation between entangled particles means that measurements performed on one particle can manipulate, or steer, the state of the second. Theoretical work a few years ago identified partially-entangled states with an intriguing property: measurements on one particle can steer the state of the second, but not vice versa. This situation, known as oneway EPR steering, is counter-intuitive even to quantum physicists since entanglement is typically understood as a mutual, or two-way, property of a pair. Nonetheless, over the last two years Lynn’s group has measured one-way steering in the lab, verifying it and learning that it occurs for a remarkably large set of partially entangled states. The group’s original intent for summer 2020 was to start experimental work on possible applications of one-way steering to quantum communication

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14

RESEARCH

Summer Research

(CONTINUED)

Donors Support Physics Research The Physics Summer Research Fund supports students over three summers (2020, 2021 and 2022) who are engaged in the department’s exciting summer undergraduate research opportunities.

George Innis ’74 and Peter Paterno ’72 funded a generous $120,000 challenge match that doubles every gift, dollar for dollar, up to $240,000. Approximately two-thirds of the funds have been raised. In Summer 2020, the Physics Summer Research Fund covered stipends for nine students doing research remotely with their faculty advisors.

Emergent Geometry and Quantum Gravity Vatche Sahakian advised Cameron Gray ’21, Nick Heller ’21, Will Warfield ’21 this summer as they worked on two projects and produced

results that will be part of their senior thesis presentations. Gray and Warfield worked on a project on relating quantum entanglement entropy to gravitational geometry, while Heller worked on a project applying new techniques of stochastic quantization to quantum gravity. Sahakian expects the two projects will lead to two student co-authored papers, one on the project Gray and Warfield worked on and the other on Heller’s work. Gray, Heller and Warfield developed skills this summer in mathematical and theoretical physics, which Sahakian says has prepared them well for graduate programs following Mudd and as they pursue careers in theoretical physics.

Automated Pipeline Based on last summer’s preliminary work in Brian Shuve’s group, Albany Blackburn ’23 and Mavis Stone ’23 developed and improved analysis software to complete their studies of new long-lived particles that could be produced at the Belle II electron-positron collider. The group is finalizing their work and intends to submit it for publication.

Building on previous senior thesis work by Ina Flood ’20, Rafael Porto ’22 and Maxwell Thum ’23 derived and implemented analytic and numerical calculations of the cosmological matter-antimatter asymmetry arising from the scattering and oscillations of sterile neutrinos. In particular, they determined the cosmological history of a hypothetical dark Higgs particle and determined its effects on the matter-antimatter asymmetry in some limits. This study laid the groundwork for a comprehensive analysis of the model, which is part of the work Jane Schlesinger ’21 is doing for her senior thesis.

HARVEY MUDD COLLEGE | PHYSICS HIGHLIGHTS 2020

The Helliwell/Busenberg Summer Research Fellow Thomas Helliwell and Bernadette Busenberg “Entanglement and Geometry from M(atrix) Theory” Cameron Gray ’22

J. Andrew Wehrenberg ’72 Physics Summer Research Fellow J. Andrew Wehrenberg ’72 “Quantum Entanglement and Emergent Spacetime” William Warfield ’21

Randall Spangler ’92 Summer Research Fellow Randall R. Spangler ’92 and Celeste Spangler “Mapping the Magnetic Phase Diagram of Dy Thin Film” Chloe Taylor ’22

Barb ’75 and Dale Filkins Summer Research Fellow Barbara L. Filkins ’75 and Dale Jay Filkins “Entanglement and Quantum Cryptography” Yilin Li ’22

Lee A. Reinleitner ’76 Physics Summer Research Fellow Lee A. Reinleitner ’76 and Katherine Day Reinleitner “Magnetic and Transport Properties of MnRh” Ella Blake ’23

New Formosa Summer Research Fellow Jack Houng ’92 “Electronics Atomic Physics and Radio Telescopes” Ngan (Steve) Nguyen PZ ’21

The Daniel Petersen Summer Research Fellow Scott E. Fraser ’76 “The Efficiency of Elastic Materials” Jackson Castro ’22 Shaun Pacheco ’12 Summer Research Fellow Shaun M. Pacheco ’12 “The Efficiency of Elastic Materials” Mason Acevedo ’22

Anonymous donor “Analyzing Colloidal Crystal Defect Motion” Cora Payne ’23 To inquire about contributing to the Physics Summer Research Fund and to learn about fellowship naming opportunities, please contact Nicole Ouellette at nouellette@hmc.edu in the Office of College Advancement.

15

RESEARCH

2019–2020 Physics Senior Research and Clinic Projects Clinic Projects

Theses Rachel Lim Barcklay: Developing a Plasma Reactor to Increase Accessibility in Experimental Plasma Physics Advisor: Tom Donnelly Ivy Chen: Improving Entanglement Purity for Robust Demonstration of One-Way EPR Steering Advisor: Theresa Lynn Harry Fetsch: Development of a Plasma Reactor for Gas-Phase Graphene Synthesis Advisor: Tom Donnelly Ina Flood: Baryogenesis via Right Handed Neutrino Production Advisor: Brian Shuve Matthew Stephen Fox: Leptogenesis through a scalar field UV completion of the Weinberg operator Advisor: Brian Shuve

Madeleine Kerr: Modeling Venusian mantle plumes: 2D models of subduction-induced plumes to reconcile plume-thermal dichotomy Advisors: Gregory Lyzenga and Dave Stegman (UCSD) Michelle Lee: Computational Modelling of Optical Traps using Bessel beams Advisor: Ann Esin Maya Martinez: Experimental Study of Grain Rotation in Colloidal Polycrystals Advisor: Sharon Gerbode Brennen M. Quigley: Investigating the Stability of Accreting Triple Stellar Systems Advisor: Ann Esin Duncan Javier Rocha: The Search for Emerging Jets in the ATLAS Detector at √s = 13 TeV Advisors: Brian Shuve and James Beacham (CERN)

Computer Science/Physics Los Alamos National Laboratory Automating the Extraction of Photon Doppler Velocimetry Data Liaison: Candace Joggerst ’04 Advisor: Peter Saeta Students: Nicholas Koskelo POM, Max Treutelaar, Trevor Walker, Isabel Duan (spring), Rikki Walters (spring) Engineering Sandia National Laboratories Measuring the Permittivity of Ferroelectric Nanoparticles in an Injection-molded Polymer Nanocomposite Liaison: Todd Monson Advisor: Albert Dato Students: Joshua Morgan (TL- F), Daniel Brito (TL-F), Michael Fernandez, Guadalupe Quirarte ’20, Eleanor Rackoff ’20, Jackson Baker (F), Dithi Ganjam (S)

Holly Frank: Computational Study of the Elimination of the Brittle Sigma Phase in Novel Fe-Cr-Mn-Al Alloys Advisor: Lori Bassman

HARVEY MUDD COLLEGE | PHYSICS HIGHLIGHTS 2020

16

ALUMNI NEWS

Physics Alumni Receive Awards

Outstanding Alumni

Van Hecke Prize

Given from alumni to alumni, the award recognizes individuals who have made a sustained and effective commitment to improving society and whose lives best exemplify the mission of Harvey Mudd College.

The Van Hecke Prize is reserved for alumni who are synonymous with an extraordinary level of support for and commitment to the College, its students, its alumni and its mission.

Thomas D. Wang ’85, MD, PhD (mathematics and physics) is an

Bruce Worster ’64 (physics), has been a member of the HMC Board

academic physician at the University of Michigan who specializes in in vivo imaging of the liver and digestive tract for early cancer detection. He is an NIH-funded investigator who has served as a principle investigator for several multi-institutional NCI research consortiums. He has developed the first video endoscope that is sensitive to fluorescence for rapidly identifying pre-malignant lesions over large mucosal surface areas. This approach has been patented, commercialized and developed for clinical use and is widely cited as a major impetus for the accelerated convergence of fluorescence spectroscopy and endoscopy. He has pioneered the use of fluorescence-labeled peptides to detect over-expressed cell surface targets in vivo to identify pre-malignant mucosa. He has filed over 30 patents on novel optical imaging technologies.

of Trustees since 1998 and was a 2009 Outstanding Alumnus and a 2019 recipient of the alumni association’s Lifetime Recognition Award. He previously served several terms on AABOG, including a term as president. With his wife, Susan, he established the Susan and Bruce Worster ’64 Professorship in Physics and has supported several capital projects and scholarships, including the Class of ’64 Endowed Scholarship. He held technical and leadership roles in several Silicon Valley companies and started his own, Ultrapointe Corporation, before joining telecommunications company JDSUniphase Corporation, from which he retired in 2001 as vice president. Worster holds many patents for integrated confocal laser imaging system and related technologies used to analyze defects on silicon wafers during the semiconductor manufacturing process.

HARVEY MUDD COLLEGE | PHYSICS HIGHLIGHTS 2020

17

ALUMNI NEWS

1961 Walter Naumann

Gave a talk to the retirement community Valle Verde Science Discussion Group on 3D sound and its implications for hearing aids, binaural sound and a design for sound in model railroads. I also gave a talk in August on Nuclear Power. My wife, Kay, and I ride our tricycles for an hour every day. Built two all wood clocks, model airplanes (HMC Wing Bender alumni) and wood toys to donate to charity. Valle Verde is protecting us during the pandemic by delivering prepared food to our door and doing local shopping for us.

1966 Robert Charrow

Not much is happening this year other than being the general counsel of the Department of Health and Human Services (CMS, NIH, CDC, FDA, IHS, HRSA plus 21 other divisions) in the middle of the COVID-19 pandemic.

The department is responsible, with private partners, for research and development, manufacturing and distribution of new therapeutics and vaccines, ensuring that vaccine candidates are cost-free to most, if not all, Americans and paying hospitals and physicians relief funds for the many months of lost revenues, to name only a few things on our plate. On a happier note, our younger daughter gave birth to twins; she will now have three kids under three years old. Our son-in-law is in the Earth and Planetary Sciences Department at Harvard teaching courses virtually. Our older daughter is an artist on Madison Avenue. Veda retired from NIH 12 years ago and has been oil painting for about 10 years. She does great portraits.

1967 Bob Kelley

Like many of us, I’m limited mostly to telecommuting from home here in Klosterneuburg, Austria. We spend a lot of time on home improvement, like a new railing in our Japanese garden. I write articles for Stockholm International Peace Research Institute, where I have a fellowship. I’m also a contributing

HARVEY MUDD COLLEGE | PHYSICS HIGHLIGHTS 2020

author for Jane’s Intelligence Review, where you can find articles this summer on “Uranium Enrichment in India,” “Highly Enriched Uranium Usage in DPRK Thermonuclear Weapons” and “Nuclear Power in the Middle East.” Retirement is great and lockdown has its advantages!

Steve Quilci

Retired from an active role in Aerospace and Defense Communications (40+ years) after earning a PhD from Stanford in applied physics. Keeping busy with local government management (City Planning Commission; elected to the local Sanitary District Board of Directors and formerly on the advisory board for an L.A. County high-tech incubator) and continuing to support technical education through L.A. County-based 501(c)3 and 501(c)6 charitable organizations, providing scholarships to civilian and military students.

1970 Andy Bernat

Went on to a PhD in astronomy (Texas), then six years as an astronomer before jumping to computer science. Professor, department head, fight with university administration, rotator position at NSF, now executive director of the Computing Research Association. HMC did me well. I’ve stayed in touch with Maria and the CS faculty. Son, Drew (short for Andrew but not a junior), graduated from HMC and married a Scripps girl as well. We bought a seat in the new classroom building with a blank line for the next one to attend!

Bruce Cohen

I still work about two days each week for Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory on a contract basis doing technical work (telecommuting because of COVID). Otherwise busy with work around the house, gardening, walking and hiking, books, weekly golf games and lots of Zooms with friends and family. This year, there is a lot of politics to keep up with.

Andy Hoffer

I’m carrying out all my Simon Fraser University teaching, research and service activities remotely. We were lucky to complete data collection from 119 of 120 intended participants in a golf putting biomechanics study before campus was shut down in March and are now preparing papers for publication.

I have given several presentations on the Lungpacer system to liberate intensive care patients from dependency on mechanical ventilation by strengthening their diaphragm using a temporary transvenous nerve stimulation catheter. In April, the approach was allowed emergency use by the FDA and has since successfully returned independent breathing to COVID-19 survivors who couldn’t wean from the ventilator.

At home, I built a roof over our deck so we now meet outdoors with a few visitors at a time—our daughter, son, their partners, neighbors—rain or shine. Eny and I play golf more often than in normal years, an ideal way to interact socially and exercise in open air— rain or shine!

1972 Brian Baxley

Enjoying retirement after 35 years at Hughes Aircraft/Boeing. Recently moved to Escondido where we’re hiding from the virus in our garden. There is a silver lining—the pandemic has prompted reconnection with lots of classmates via Zoom.

1974 Doug Burum

My graduate years at Caltech (PhD in applied physics), were followed by a first career with a scientific instruments company, which included a move to the Boston area.

I then transitioned about 14 years ago into the field of patent law. I earned my patent agent license 11 years ago and, since then, I have been working for a boutique patent law firm in Nashua, New Hampshire, called Maine, Cernota and Rardin.

Thanks to my solid grounding in physics from HMC and Caltech, I am able to draft and prosecute patents for inventions in nearly all technology fields. I am married with three children and one grandchild. In my spare time, I sing in a barbershop quartet, and I enjoy refurbishing antique radios and TVs.

18

ALUMNI NEWS Timothy O’Donnell

1983

I gave a talk about my career, titled “0 to 100 Billion,” at the last reunion of our class. I went to work with a startup called ARM. The company designed a microprocessor chip.

This chip has been used in almost all portable equipment. At the time of this talk, there had been more than 100 billion processors shipped (now more than 160 billion). I was president of ARM, Inc. from 1991 to 2002, when I retired.

Fred and Wendy Streitz

1976 Susan Lewallen

I’ve stepped back from a life in public health ophthalmology training and research in Africa.

Living in sunny San Diego and studying creative writing because I’ve always loved to read fiction. Writing it turns out to be a lot harder than it looked! My first book, Crossing Paths, was published in September 2019 and I’m working on my second book now.

Scott E. Fraser

It has been a busy year teaching and doing research while keeping everybody safe. The graduate students and postdocs in the lab have been amazing in developing new tools and using them to make new insights. One of the most exciting is a collaboration with the Don Arnold and Carl Kesselman labs, watching individual connections in the brain as an animal learns. The results show that in one brain subregion, synaptic connections were formed anew, and in another, connections were eliminated. Kesselman, the informatics specialist, created a data ecosystem so that each figure in the paper gives the reader a direct path to the primary data, protocols and experimental details: the dawning of a new era in making complex imaging data accessible for meta-analyses. We have been active in translation from the research lab into new products and tests. Several of our patents have been licensed in the last year, leading to new microscopes, new medical tests, and new, accurate DNA synthesis.

Anne Hofmeister

In fall 2020, I received the Professional Excellence Award (Academic/Research Category) from the Association of Women Geoscientists.

HARVEY MUDD COLLEGE | PHYSICS HIGHLIGHTS 2020

1977

It’s been a crazy couple of years! At the very beginning of last year, Wendy retired from her position as executive director for research policy analysis and coordination at the University of California system and relocated to Washington, D.C., to become the next President of the Council on Governmental Relations (COGR). We were beginning to live a bi-coastal existence when, only three months later, Fred accepted a request to help forge an Artificial Intelligence and Technology Office (AITO) inside the Department of Energy. The office was formally created last September, and he was slated to continue on as the chief science advisor. However, SARS-CoV-2 changed all of that; in March he was tapped to be DOE Liaison to the nation’s COVID-19 Task Force, which has occupied his time since. We are now both working out of our apartment in D.C. full time. Not at all what we had originally expected but never a dull moment!

1988

Deborah Konkowski

I was on sabbatical from the Math Department at the U.S. Naval Academy last year and worked on singularities in relativistic space times. I collaborated some with Prof Emeritus Tom Helliwell. Papers will hopefully be forthcoming.

This year, I’m learning how to teach Differential Equations remotely. So far pretty good, except for expected technical glitches. In between teaching and research, I am serving on the academy’s promotion and tenure committee—a very time intensive activity. I do love to travel and hope to get back to that as soon as conditions warrant. I miss doing research in London and in Claremont!

Jeffrey Edison

I am still living in Belgium, but working now for Oracle in Financial Services.

Enjoying myself, especially when it was possible to travel.

1979 Greg Hassold

I’m teaching physics remotely at Kettering University. I’ll retire at the end of this academic year. My wife and I plan to relocate to Albuquerque in a few years. The photo is from a recent production of “Yeomen of the Guard” by the University of Michigan Gilbert & Sullivan Society.

Steve Roth

I’ve retired after 30 years at Hewlett-Packard, and am now the disaster preparedness coordinator for the city of Sunnyvale, California. I’m responsible for the city’s emergency response volunteer programs and disaster preparedness education.

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ALUMNI NEWS

1989 Roger Carlson

After working in the Bay Area and Kodiak for two years, Roger left the rocket company Astra, has started his own consulting company and is currently working for Virgin Orbit, and staying home in Redondo Beach.

1990 Marty Berliner

Last year was my 20th year at Pfizer (wow).

After 15 years as a process chemist, for the past several years I have been a member of a global informatics team that works to ensure that the software that we use fulfills the needs of our scientists. I am the system owner of the electronic lab notebook used in our development group, do lots of strategic planning in addition to UI and analytics work, know far more about Windows servers than I ever expected, and am on my fourth or fifth programming language after having forgotten almost everything CS after HMC. In these very challenging pandemic times, I’m humbled that the systems that I support are used daily by thousands of scientists, many of whom are working to rapidly progress COVID antivirals and vaccine components in clinical studies.

Outside of work we are all thankfully well (Linda; Sonia, 15; Erika, 11) and are surviving these strange times with baking and a Doctor Who obsession.

like I’ll be at Mudd for parent events, hopefully dropping her off there when things open back up.

Ashley Stroupe

I have been working at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory and specializing in Mars Rover Operations since 2004. I have worked with Spirit, Opportunity and Curiosity doing various roles including telemetry analysis, planning drives and arm use, strategic planning, science activity planning and managing the planning process. I still do get to put my physics to use when interfacing with the science team and understanding how the various science instruments work and what they can tell us.

2002 James Perry

I’m in Irvine, California, doing software engineering at Google. There’re quite a few Mudders here! With all the COVID-19 closures, my hobbies have become working from home, teaching a 6-year-old, marveling at how fast a 6-year-old learns to use technology during school shutdowns and trying to stop a 6-yearold from using technology all day.

2004 Dave Gaebler

I was granted tenure and promoted to associate professor of mathematics at Hillsdale College. I live in Hillsdale, Michigan, with my wife, Leslie, and our four children.

1992 Bryan Reed

I’m still the CTO of Integrated Dynamic Electron Solutions, and now that we’re a subsidiary of JEOL, we can focus on the fun stuff, namely building cool toys and working with amazing scientists from around the world.

The only problem is that whole “around the world” thing in the middle of a pandemic, but we’re figuring out how to deal with that. So it turns out you can have a lot more academic freedom in industry than in academia these days! Who knew?

2008 Angela Berti

I finished my PhD in physics at UC San Diego in August and am now a postdoc with the Dark Energy Spectroscopic Instrument survey collaboration.

2013

1994 Jason Rhodes

Bryan Marten

Twenty years ago I switched from drug discovery research—computer-assisted drug design—in New Jersey big pharma to living in the San Francisco East Bay teaching public high school AP chemistry and physics in San Francisco where my wife’s family is from. My work in drug discovery did not earn the Nobel Prize, but I was happy to see the project I worked on— Hep C protease inhibitor—was made possible by the topic of 2020’s Nobel in Medicine for discovering the Hep C virus. High school is 100% online teaching since March and probably for the rest of the academic year, but we’ll see. I enjoy regularly helping to facilitate a summer cosmology/particle physics workshop at Lawrence Berkeley National Lab for high school students and teachers featuring lab personnel. Re-lived the college application process last year with my oldest daughter, who is now a first-year at Mudd! Bummer about our canceled 30th reunion last May, but looks

HARVEY MUDD COLLEGE | PHYSICS HIGHLIGHTS 2020

I am a senior research scientist at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory. I develop and implement space telescopes to study dark matter, dark energy and exoplanets. In particular, I am the U.S. science lead for the European Space Agency’s Euclid mission (launch 2022) and the JPL Project Scientist for NASA’s Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope.

1999

Tyler Ochiai Jacob Herbold

This year, I changed jobs from electric concrete power cutters and landscaping tools to heavy duty electric trucks. I’m now leading the high-voltage electrical design at the heart of Freightliner’s future, high performance, long range battery electric truck. Really excited to replace more fuel tanks with batteries.

I’ve been working in adtech and e-commerce as a software engineer. I’ve mostly worked on data pipelines and APIs that service web and mobile applications. I also married my lovely wife, Yu-Shan, and spend much of my time taking pictures of my cat.

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ALUMNI NEWS Marc Finzi

2014

Jaron Kent-Dobias

I graduated with my PhD from Cornell in August and have started a postdoc at Ecole Normale Supérieure in Paris studying the dynamics and complex landscapes of glasses.

Getting visas and traveling internationally during the pandemic was trying but, as I write, my wife and I have been in France for three days!

Luke Mastalli-Kelly

Working on firmware and experimental software for modular quantum computers at Quantum Circuits Inc. in New Haven, Connecticut. I’ve also just closed on a house, so Connecticut is stuck with me for a while.

2015 Yantao Wu

Applying for postdocs in condensed matter theory!

2016 Lennart Rudolph

I’ve been working on data streaming infrastructure at Yelp for the past year.

2017 Marisol Beck

I quit my full-time quantum physics job to pursue art. I discovered my love of embroidery in the last year and have been using it as my main source of income for six months now. I’ve also been heavily involved in the Portland BLM protests and have been tear gassed and beaten

by Portland police and federal agents more times than I can count. At least the protest fires remind me of the good ol’ days in West dorm. :)

HARVEY MUDD COLLEGE | PHYSICS HIGHLIGHTS 2020

I’m working towards my PhD in CS at NYU now (I transferred from Cornell). Recently I have been working on projects that are either physics inspired such as LieConv (https:// arxiv.org/abs/2002.12880) where we develop neural networks with symmetries to Lie groups or projects that are at the intersection of Physics and ML such as (https://arxiv.org/ abs/2010.13581) where we devise networks with better inductive biases (from classical physics) to learn from physical systems such as the dynamics of a jointed robot.

Over the summer, I worked with two ex-theoretical physicists Roberto Bondesan and Max Welling on Probabilistic Numeric Convolutional Networks (https://arxiv.org/ abs/2010.10876) where we used tools from the physics toolbox like Greens functions and GPs to model discretization errors in CNNs probabilistically. More recently I’ve been working on a project to use neural networks to express solutions in numerical relativity to simplify some challenges with adaptive mesh refinement.

Calvin Leung

Since leaving Harvey Mudd, after a year at the University of Vienna, I’ve been working on my PhD at MIT, studying fast radio bursts with the CHIME/FRB collaboration. Fast radio bursts are impulsive radio flashes, occurring all over the sky, originating from cosmological distances. Since they only last for milliseconds, very little is conclusively known about these transients, but we think they can be used as cosmological tools to make precise measurements of the universe’s expansion history.

Sakshi Shah

After graduating from Harvey Mudd, I joined a biotechnology startup company called Cytovale as a biomedical engineer. At Cytovale, we squeezed cells inside a microfluidic flow cell and performed high-speed image analysis to diagnose a disease called sepsis. Research in our field shows that the deformability of a patient’s white blood cells predicts their likelihood of developing sepsis, and Cytovale is currently working to commercialize this diagnostic device and improve patient outcomes. This summer, I left my position at Cytovale to start my PhD at the joint bioengineering graduate program at UC Berkeley and UCSF.

I’m excited to use my PhD education to design technologies that improve access to or build equity in healthcare. At Harvey Mudd, I was a president of the Women in Physics society, and I remain deeply passionate about creating inclusive communities in STEM, both at my prior industry job and in my new community at UC Berkeley and UCSF.

2018

Connor Colombe

I got my master’s degree in computer science and started a PhD program in operations research at the University of Texas at Austin.

When I am not studying or working on research, I can be found at the local rock climbing gym or at the park playing frisbee.

Pip DiGiacomo

I’m an electrical engineer at semiconductor equipment company Applied Materials. I design, build and test electrical assemblies that control plasma composition, temperature and motion. Electronics Lab knowledge from Mudd is certainly useful in my job. Two Mudders (engineering ’20) were hired to my group recently.

We Love Hearing From You Thank you for your enthusiastic response to the Physics Department’s request for alumni news. We’ll be in touch each spring by email, or you can send updates at any time to arauchfuss@hmc.edu.

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