Imagine a patch of material an inch across – wide enough to handle – but only one atomic layer thick. “It’s a simple concept, really,” said Paul Malinowski, a Klarman Fellow in physics in the College of Arts and Sciences. “You pull on it.”

A physics theory that’s proven useful to predict the crowd behavior of molecules and fruit flies also seems to work in a very different context – a basketball court. A model based on density functional theory can suggest the best positioning for each player on the basketball court in a given scenario if they want to raise their probability of either scoring or defending successfully. Boris Barron, a doctoral student in physics working with Tomás Arias, professor in the Department of Physics, in the College of Arts and Sciences, presented his work on March 9 at the American Physical Society conference in Las Vegas.

Itai Cohen describes the challenge of building robots as consisting of two distinct parts: the brain of the robot, and the brawn. The brain refers to the microchip, and the brawn refers to the “legs,” or actuating limbs of the robot. Between these two, the brain – believe it or not – is the easy part. 

Over the next three to five years, each will receive approximately $400,000 to $600,000 from the program, which supports early-career faculty “who have the potential to serve as academic role models in research and education and to lead advances in the mission of their department or organization,” according to the NSF. Each funded project must include an educational component. Debanjan Chowdhury's Group will develop new theoretical methods for studying these electronic phases. The educational component will include a new podcast series on quantum materials research, workshops for high school science teachers, and undergraduate and graduate student mentoring.

Z. Jane Wang, a professor of physics at Cornell University who has studied some of da Vinci's pioneering analyses but was not involved in the current paper, said the new study revealed a man determined to find an iron law of nature that would shed light on the overall dynamics of falling objects.

Chowdhury is a theoretical physicist interested in addressing the fundamental principles that govern the emergence of new collective phenomena involving trillions of interacting electrons in solid-state materials. His main focus is developing theoretical methods that can describe and predict the quantum behavior of electrons leading to exotic forms of superconductivity and magnetism.

Debanjan Chowdhury (assistant professor, Physics and LASSP; Kavli Institute for Nanoscale Science executive committee member) find that "even a tiny amount of imperfection, inherent in any real-life material, plays a key role" to understanding the switch between a metal and an insulator within a single material. Understanding the physics behind this mysterious phase transition could lead to new complex microscopic circuits, superconductors and exotic insulators that could find use in quantum computing.

Research findings from the lab of Michelle Wang "provid[e] a fresh view into the ways a common chemotherapy agent, etoposide, stalls and poisons the essential enzymes that allow cancer cells to flourish." Co-lead authors and HHMI-funded researchers Dr. Tung Le and Dr. Meiling Wu published their findings in a paper published in Nature Chemical Biology on Jan. 30.

"Enter an education-focused position directly as a new faculty member, as did Natasha Holmes, a physics-education researcher at Cornell who studies the efficacy of laboratory courses. “There are more and more graduate students coming up the pipeline now,” says Holmes, another Wieman protégé."

Researchers from the Cohen Lab pinpoint the neuromuscular components that enable a fruit fly to stabilize its pitch, providing evidence for an organizational principle in which each muscle has a specific function in flight control.