Exploring nanoscale light and the impact on ultrafast computers
Hayk Harutyunyan works in a world where nothing behaves the way it does in everyday life. It’s called nanophotonics, where light interacts with matter on an almost unimaginably tiny scale. “The most important thing about light is that it’s a wave,” says Harutyunyan, a Professor and the Director of Graduate Studies in Emory’s Physics Department. “And…
A Bug’s Life…in Minecraft
Emory Physics graduate student Zachariah Germain participated in this year’s “Squishy Science Sunday” before the annual American Physical Society Global Physics Summit in Denver, CO. In Prof. Jennifer Rieser’s lab, Zach’s research focuses on 3D imaging and printing models of fire ant nests. And now, he helped to build one of these nests as an…
Prof. Shashank Shekhar recognized by the Biophysical Society
Emory Physics Professor Shashank Shekhar has won the 2026 Early Career Award from the Biophysical Society in the area of Mechanobiology. These awards recognize the research of members in specialized research Subgroups. The winners were honored at the Society’s 70th Annual Meeting, held in San Francisco, California from February 21-25, 2026. As part of the…
The Secret to Sliding Eggs Off Stainless Steel
Frying an egg in a high-quality, slip-slidey nonstick pan or a well-seasoned cast iron skillet is pretty straightforward. But when a stainless steel pan is involved, it can quickly turn into a sticky situation. Maki Yazawa from NYT Wirecutter recently investigated this problem with a hack using salt to prepare the pan and make it less sticky: https://www.nytimes.com/wirecutter/reviews/stainless-steel-egg-slide Handling delicate…
Physics major Yurok Song is a 2026 Bobby Jones Scholar
Emory University will send four outstanding graduating seniors to Scotland for additional study next fall through the elite Robert T. Jones Jr. Scholarship program. Emory College of Arts and Sciences seniors Claire Burkhardt, Josh Grand, Asmita Lehther and Yurok Song will complete a year of study at the University of St Andrews in honor of the…
‘Periodic table’ for AI methods aims to drive innovation
Artificial intelligence is increasingly used to integrate and analyze multiple types of data formats, such as text, images, audio and video. One challenge slowing advances in multimodal AI, however, is the process of choosing the algorithmic method best aligned to the specific task an AI system needs to perform. Scientists have developed a unified view…
The Electric Worm Gets the Fly
A tiny worm that leaps high into the air — up to 25 times its body length — to attach to flying insects uses static electricity to perform this astounding feat, scientists have found. The journal PNAS published the work on the nematode Steinernema carpocapsae, a parasitic roundworm, led by researchers at Emory University (Justin Burton and Ranjiangshang Ran,…
Sensing and generating light with a few atoms
Researchers from Harutyunyan Lab and their collaborators have built an ultrathin electronic device that can both make and sense light at the scale of a few atoms. The heart of the device is a remarkably stable tunnel junction, two metal films separated by a crystal-clear layer of lutetium oxide (Lu₂O₃). In this tiny gap, electrons…
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