2022 Physics Newsletter
Message from the Chair
Department Spotlights
Department Kudos
Alumni Class Notes
Message from the Chair
Greetings to all of our alumni from the George Washington University Department of Physics! I am pleased to report that our department continues to be at the forefront of transformative, interdisciplinary scholarship. Together, we are working to provide the guidance necessary for intellectual development and success in the classroom, the laboratory and in the community. I am excited to share this update, which highlights our recent efforts and accomplishments.
I wish you all well and thank you for your work in our shared discipline.
Chryssa Kouveliotou
Professor of Astrophysics and Department Chair
Department Spotlights
GW PhD Student Plays Key Role in Gamma-Ray Burst Discovery
The recent discovery of a long gamma-ray burst (GRB) triggered by the collision of two neutron stars challenged the scientific consensus on the cause of that cosmic phenomenon. Brendan O’Connor, a sixth-year PhD student at GW, was among the scientists who observed this momentous event and interpreted its significance. He served as principal investigator (PI) of an International Gemini Observatory program that studied this unique explosion, known as GRB 211211A.
Making a Difference on the Earth and in the Sky
Astrophysics graduate student Sarah Chastain uses the powerful MeerKAT telescope in South Africa to search space for cosmic transients—a project that is opening the field to a diverse new generation of students and scholars. Her work was featured in the CCAS Spotlight newsmagazine.
Study: Online COVID Misinformation Battle Lost Early
A team led by Professor of Physics Neil Johnson revealed mainstream Facebook communities were already intertwined with anti-science groups early in the COVID crisis, reducing trust in masks and vaccines. The research appeared in CCAS Spotlight.
GW Hosts 2022 Physics Congress
The Physics Department and the GW chapter of the Society of Physics Students were the local hosts of PhysCon (Physics Congress), the largest annual conference for physics and astronomy undergraduate students in the nation. The event was covered by GW Today.
Department Kudos
- Physics Professor Andrei Afanasev and PhD student Erin Seroka joined Columbian College faculty, students and alumni who have spearheaded humanitarian aid efforts for Ukraine. They were featured in CCAS Spotlight.
- Former Physics Department Chair Bill Briscoe was honored with a retirement symposium titled “42 Years of Hadron Spectroscopy at Accelerator Facilities.” Dozens of current collaborators and past mentees from around the world came to Ashburn, Va., this past August to celebrate his career.
- Senior physics majors Logan Earnest and Gabriel Grauvogel presented their undergraduate research at the American Physical Society's Division of Nuclear Physics Fall Meeting in October 2022, after winning acceptance in the Conference Experience for Undergraduates program.
- Undergraduate physics student Gabriel Grauvogel is taking his CCAS Luther Rice Fellowship research to a subatomic level, joining an international team of scientists in an effort to unravel the puzzling proton. He was profiled in CCAS Spotlight.
- Physics Professor Sylvain Guiriec and senior undergraduate student Adellar Irankunda have been developing a virtual reality environment for enhancing the teaching experience by making a field trip through the universe possible.
- Professor of Physics Neil Johnson’s research was featured by the Los Angeles Times in the article “Coronavirus Today: How COVID lies spread on Facebook.’’ He was quoted by The Washington Times in the articles “Measles, polio reemerge in U.S. as COVID-19 vaccine uproar supercharges anti-vaxx movement’’ and “COVID-19 fights bleed into larger ‘anti-vaxx’ movement, threaten longtime vaccine rules in schools”; by STAT in “Twitter has spent years trying to combat health misinformation. Will Musk’s takeover make that harder?’; and by The Daily Beast in “Facebook Parenting Flame Wars Go Nuclear With COVID Disinfo” He also spoke to WTTG-Fox5 Morning News about his study of misinformation on Facebook aimed at parenting groups early in the pandemic.
- Associate Professor of Physics Oleg Kargaltsev was awarded a $84,165 grant from NASA Goddard Space Flight Center to study the mining of globular clusters in massive star remains.
- Professor of Physics and Department Chair Chryssa Kouveliotou received a $37,500 grant from NASA to examine deep galactic plane observations by the international space station NICER TOO.
- Third-year graduate student Erin Seroka was named one of the 2022-23 Jefferson Lab Graduate Student Fellows for her proposal to use quasi-elastic electron-nucleus scattering to study the isospin structure of short-range correlated nucleon pairs.
- Fourth-year graduate student Phoebe Sharp is one of the winners of a U.S. Department of Energy Graduate Student Research Fellowship for her work studying short-range correlations of nucleons with nuclei using rho-meson photoproduction at Jefferson Lab.
- Physics Professor Alexander van der Horst discussed his work with data from space-based and ground-based telescopes around the globe in a video conversation with CCAS Dean Paul Wahlbeck.
- Our PhD students’ publications are hitting the headlines worldwide! Research publications by PhD students in the complex systems/networks group were featured in major media outlets such as Forbes magazine.
- The importance of the research by our PhD students in the complex systems/networks group was formally recognized by the leadership of the National Academy of Sciences and the leadership of the American Physical Society.
Alumni Class Notes
- Charles Palmer, PhD ’01, does quantitative finance in his day job, and is also the board chair of the Atlanta Shakespeare Company (host of the 2024 Shakespeare Theatre Association conference!). He recently became a chartered advisor in philanthropy (R).