How should professors respond when students are faced with turmoil in their campus community? Should they alter assignments, and if so, how? Emory Physics Professor Erin Wells Bonning gives her take on these questions in the Chronicle of Higher Education.
Chern insulators are paradigmatic topological insulators known for exhibiting quantized Hall conductance even without a magnetic field. Due to their topological nature, electrons within these materials cannot be thought of as forming compact wave packets, known as Wannier functions, pivotal for defining polarization. Consequently, for decades, it has not been clear how to understand the … More Polarizing forces in a topological material
Recent work from the Shekhar lab (led by graduate student Ekram Towsif) was featured in The Scientist magazine! Their pre-print on how actin filaments assemble and disassemble is changing the field. Read more about it here! https://www.the-scientist.com/complicated-cap-does-it-all-71765
RNA polymerases must transit through protein roadblocks to produce full-length transcripts. Building on preliminary work by Finzi lab alumni Yan Yan and Wenxuan Xu, graduate student Jin Qian recently used magnetic tweezers to discover that RNA polymerases can backtrack and ram into longer lived protein roadblocks to transit through them during transcription. He was helped in … More Battering the roadblocks of RNA transcription
The NSF has awarded a CAREER grant to Prof. Rieser to use experimental and computational techniques to establish links between architecture and functionality of the complex nest structures created by red imported fire ant colonies. Specifically, this research seeks to understand how above- and below-ground nests are organized to achieve mechanical robustness and to facilitate … More Prof. Jennifer Rieser receives NSF CAREER Award
Emory’s Society of Physics students showed up en masse to engage both children and adults at the Atlanta Science Festival Expo. The Expo is the finale of the Festival, and fills most of Piedmont Park with 20,000 people. This year, Emory Physics focused on “how physics touches your life,” and featured dancing oobleck, spinning motors, … More Emory SPS jams at the Atlanta Science Festival
The Emory Planetarium, nestled within the Mathematics and Science Center on the Atlanta campus, serves as a celestial sanctuary like no other. This 56-seat classroom differs from your typical learning space – it’s both a cosmic theater designed for teaching undergraduate astronomy as well as a wholly unique event space. As the house lights dim, … More Hidden Emory: The Planetarium
Interfaces impact the properties of glasses over surprisingly large length scales, which has important implications for developing nanoscale devices involving polymers. Emory graduate student Yannic Gagnon, together with his PhD advisor Prof. Connie Roth and Prof. Justin C. Burton, recently discovered a new mechanism for how local dynamics in glasses may be coupled over long … More The acoustic dance of polymers near an interface
The American Physical Society has named Emory biophysicist Laura Finzi as one of its 2023 Fellows, a distinction given to researchers who have made significant contributions to the application of physics to science and technology and advanced physics through original research. The APS honors only about half of a percent of its members with the Fellows distinction. … More Professor Laura Finzi named American Physical Society Fellow
The Department of Physics at Emory University invites applications for a tenure-track Assistant Professor position in experimental condensed matter physics or optics, broadly defined, to begin in fall 2024. We are particularly interested in candidates who demonstrate creativity in their research field and would benefit from and complement the existing strengths of the Department and … More Assistant Professor (tenure-track) in Experimental Condensed Matter or Optics