Interactions.
Professor Jong Han works with a student in Fronczak Hall.

Professor Jong Han is the lead author of a new study that helps solve a longstanding physics mystery on how insulators transition into metals via an electric field, a process known as resistive switching. Read more about Han's research that solves the mystery of insulator-to-metal transition. Photo: Douglas Levere

In this Issue:

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Message from the Chair

Xuedong Hu writes:

Dear Alumni and Friends of UB Physics,

Time flies!  Another year is passing, and we have a lot of great news to share with you on the achievements of our students, faculty, and alumni.  To start off, Paul Dewan Jr., a former undergraduate student in the Department and mentored by Professor Priya Banerjee, has won the prestigious and extremely competitive NSF Graduate Research Fellowship (NSFGRF). He is now a graduate student in Harvard studying biophysics.  In the meantime, Professor Igor Žutić has become our latest SUNY Distinguished Professor for his various research achievements in spintronics and topological quantum computing, in addition to his successful mentoring of our undergraduate and graduate students as well as postdocs, many of whom were Goldwater and NSFGRF winners or were placed in faculty positions around the world.

Headshot of Xuedong Hu.

Department News

In Memoriam

With great sadness, we report the passing of Professor Yung Chang (Y.C.) Lee and Professor Shigeji Fujita.

Yung Chang Lee and Shigeji Fujita.

Yung Chang (Y.C) Lee (left)  and Shigeji Fujita (right)

Igor Žutić, Dean Robin Schulze, Priya Banerjee, Xuedong Hu and Murthy Ganapahty posing for a group photo.

(From left to right) Igor Žutić, Dean Robin Schulze, Priya Banerjee, Xuedong Hu and Murthy Ganapahty at the Advancing Excellence celebration.

Advancing Excellence

By Xuedong Hu, PhD

On September 20, the College of Arts and Sciences held the first-ever Advancing Excellence event in Slee Hall, where Dean Robin Schulze recognized a wide range of scholarly achievements by faculty members from the College. Several Physics faculty members were prominently featured in her slideshow, including Igor Žutić for becoming a SUNY Distinguished Professor, Hao Zeng for receiving the SUNY Chancellor’s Award for Excellence in Scholarship and Creative Activities, and Priya Banerjee for receiving an NSF CAREER Award. Herbert Fotso, Ia Iashvili, and Salvatore Rappoccio are also presented either in her speech or in a College-produced video.

Research News

How RNA Phase Separates

By Priya Banerjee, PhD

Reversible phase separation of condensates comprised of proteins and ribonucleic acids (RNA) regulates a variety of evolutionarily conserved biochemical processes in living systems. The so-called molecular grammar, i.e., the primary sequence of the chain encoding phase separation of proteins, has been explored. However, the formation of many biomolecular condensates containing ribonucleoprotein (RNP) complexes critically depends on RNA. A recent study of neurodegenerative CG-rich repeat expansion disorders suggested that RNA phase separation was essential to the disease process. This and other observations beg a deeper understanding of the process of RNA-dependent phase transitions of RNP granules.

Priya Banerjee is the co-author of a recent Nature Chemistry paper titled “RNAs undergo phase transitions with lower critical solution temperatures.” Photo: Douglas Levere

Department Events

Group photo from the Topical Symposium of the New York State Section of the American Physical Society at UB.

The Department of Physics hosted the 127th Topical Symposium of the New York State Section of the American Physical Society at UB Under the theme of "Quantum Science and Technologies."

127th NYSSAPS Symposium Explores Quantum Science and Technology

By Changjiang Liu, PhD, Hao Zeng , PhD,  and Herbert Fotso, PhD

The Department of Physics hosted the 127th Topical Symposium of the New York State Section of the American Physical Society (NYSSAPS) on April 28, 2023. Under the theme of "Quantum Science and Technologies," this event brought together experts and enthusiasts from across New York State and neighboring regions to explore the fascinating world of quantum science.

The event commenced with opening remarks delivered by Venu Govindaraju, Vice President for Research and Economic Development (VPRED), Robin Schulze, Dean of the College of Arts and Sciences (CAS), and Sambandamurthy Ganapathy, Chair of the Department of Physics. Venu underscored UB's steadfast commitment and investment in the field of quantum science and technology, Robin highlighted CAS's support through faculty recruitment, and Murthy emphasized the remarkable growth of the physics department, which anticipates filling eight positions by the fall of 2024.

The symposium featured presentations from renowned researchers, including Kin Fai Mak from Cornell University, Nitin Samarth from Penn State University, Andrew Kent from New York University, Dominik Schneble from Stony Brook University, Andrea Alù from City University of New York, Samindranath Mitra from the Physical Review Letters, Mingzhao Liu from Brookhaven National Laboratory, Kathy-Anne Soderberg from the Air Force Research Laboratory, and John Nichol from University of Rochester. Their talks spanned a wide range of topics, encompassing 2D materials, spintronics, quantum metamaterials, quantum simulations, superconductor qubits, and quantum networks. A highlight of the day was the engaging discussion on the innovation cycle for quantum technologies, given by David Cory from the University of Waterloo.

Approximately 100 participants, primarily comprising graduate and undergraduate students, attended the symposium. A poster session was held, with over 40 posters presented by students and postdocs, providing them with the opportunity to network and interact with leading researchers and fellow students. A poster prize ceremony was held during the conference banquet.

The Symposium was co-organized by Herbert Fotso and Changjiang Liu, two new hires of the Department of Physics in the field of quantum physics, jointly with Hao Zeng, the Moti Lul Rustgi Professor of Physics and Vasili Perebeinos, Professor of Electrical Engineering. Generous support was provided by the VPRED office, the School of Engineering and Applied Sciences, CAS, the Department of Physics, the Department of Electrical Engineering and the American Physical Society. The dedicated efforts of the physics staff and student volunteers helped make this event a great success.

Faculty News

Surajit Sen

Surajit Sen, professor of physics, whose current research is focused on a range of complex dynamical systems, was on sabbatical leave in Spring 2023. He served as a Distinguished Visiting Professor of Biosciences and Bioengineering at the Indian Institute of Technology Jodhpur in the period between January and August 2023. During his stay, Surajit engaged in starting two major new research efforts at Jodhpur and in continuing with his current projects on the dynamics of electoral processes and the nucleation of extremists in social systems, the study of massive rogue fluctuations in strongly nonlinear, non-integrable many-body systems, and on acoustic transmission in granular metamaterials. The work at Jodhpur is highly collaborative in nature and involves teams of engineers, bioscientists, humanities and social sciences, and business school faculty. The two projects with IIT Jodhpur are (i) on developing a broad understanding of the food webs and their stabilities in the Thar desert ecosystem and (ii) on developing the concept of sustainable microcities as a unit for re-designing extant functioning urban environments into highly sustainable complex systems (this work is aligned to the Future Cities project of the Office of the Prime Minister, Republic of India).

Surajit Sen and Mohan Dangi.

Surajit Sen (right), Distinguished Visiting Professor of Biosciences and Bioengineering at the Indian Institute of Technology (IIT) Jodhpur, with Mohan Dangi (left) from Cal State, Fresno, visiting as a Fulbrighter from Tribhuvan University in Nepal, at IIT Jodhpur campus.

Paul Dewan Jr. and Pria Banerjee.

Associate Editor of Biophysics Reviews

In Fall 2023, Pria Banerjee (right) was appointed as an Associate Editor (AE) of "Biophysics Reviews" (BPR), AIP Publishing. The Editor-in-Chief of BPR, Prof. Kit Parker, Harvard University, recognized Banerjee’s seminal contributions to the field of Biophysics and invited him to join the editorial board. BPR was launched in 2020 and modeled after Applied Physics Review (IF: 15). This journal is primarily focused on publishing authoritative reviews on a wide range of biophysics topics such as biomechanics, bioimaging, soft robotics, and computational biology. As an Associate Editor, Banerjee’s job will be to contribute to the journal’s scientific development, visibility, and growth.

Forever 1928

Tom Gruenauer has built some of the world’s most advanced scientific instruments at the UB Instrumentation Shop for over thirty years, but he also has been restoring wooden power boats since 1983. His latest boat restoration project took thirty-four years. He started working on the 24-foot Chris Craft triple cockpit runabout the same year that he joined the College of Arts and Sciences Machine Shop in 1989. The boat was originally built in 1928, and Tom had to replace 80% of the wood and find a historically correct vintage engine along with most of the boat’s hardware. Since he removed/replaced one plank of wood at a time, the boat is still considered by the US Coast Guard to be the original 1928 version rather than a new build. He was restricted to glues and hardware that were used on these boats in 1928, so no modern epoxies or even Phillips head screws, which were invented in the early 1930s!

John Cerne, Tom Gruenauer and Andrea Markelz posing in front of a boat.

Left to right: John Cerne, Tom, “Forever 1928,” and Andrea Markelz at the Grand Island boat show. Photo: John Cerne

Faculty Awards

Bruce McCombe.

Dr. Bruce McCombe, SUNY Distinguished Professor Emeritus, was named among the 153 Outstanding Referees 2023 of the Physical Review journals, as the journal editors chose. The Outstanding Referee program expresses appreciation for the essential work of anonymous peer reviewers. Each year, a small percentage of our 82,000 active referees are selected and honored with the Outstanding Referee designation. Selections are made based on the number, quality, and timeliness of referee reports as collected in a database over the last 40 years.

Hao Zeng.

Professor Hao Zeng has been awarded a three-year NSF DMR grant titled "Investigating Magnetism, Spin Texture, and Magnetotransport Phenomena in 2D Materials." In this project, his group will focus on the synthesis of novel self-intercalated covalent 2D magnets and 2D magnet/van der Waals semiconductor heterostructures. Their primary goal is to investigate, manipulate, and optimize emergent spin-based topological and magnetotransport phenomena within these materials. The anticipated outcomes of this project are poised to impact modern electronics, sensing technologies, and quantum information processing.

Hao Zeng is also a co-PI of a $3M DOE grant titled “High Performing, Durable, Low-PGM Catalysts and Membrane Electrode Assemblies for Medium- and Heavy-Duty Applications”. The project will focus on creating efficient, cheap, durable catalysts for hydrogen-powered fuel cell trucks. Zeng’s group will be responsible for studying CoPt and FePt based nanoparticle catalysts for oxygen reduction reaction.

Ciaran Williams, Dejan Stojkovic, Doreen Wackeroth and Will Kinney.

Professors Ciaran Williams,  Dejan Stojkovic, Doreen Wackeroth and Will Kinney received a grant from the National Science Foundation to conduct a wide-ranging research program that aims to provide answers to key open questions at the frontier of particle physics, cosmology, and gravity research. Research topics to be investigated span a large range,  including the physics of cosmological inflation, the physics of black holes, the physics of Dark Energy (which is believed responsible for driving accelerated cosmological expansion), the properties of the Higgs boson, and studies of the theory that underlies the strong and electroweak interaction and their effects at the CERN Large Hadron Collider and at future accelerators.

Grady Gambrel.

Professor Grady Gambrel was nominated as an EDJI Faculty Fellow for the 2023-2024 academic year. The EDJI (Equity, Diversity, Justice, and Inclusion) Faculty Fellows Program was developed by UB’s Office of Curriculum, Assessment and Teaching Transformation (CATT) to improve the inclusivity of UB’s curriculum and instruction. Throughout the year, Dr. Gambrel will be trained to help other professors within the department teach more inclusively and develop a welcoming environment for students of all backgrounds. As a College of Arts and Sciences representative, he will also connect with committees supporting equity, diversity and inclusion within other departments.

Priya R. Banerjee posing for a picture with Ibraheem Alshareedah.

Priya R. Banerjee (left) with his PhD student Ibraheem Alshareedah (now a postdoctoral researcher at Harvard University).

Associate professor Priya R. Banerjee, PhD, is an experimental biophysicist whose research group employs innovative microscopy and single-molecule spectroscopy tools to understand the physical principles, properties, and functions of biomolecules. He is an expert on intrinsically disordered proteins (IDPs), an intriguing class of proteins that lack a rigid structure but play decisive roles in cellular physiology and pathology. In 2023, he received a prestigious National Science Foundation CAREER Award for his project, “Dissecting Phase Behavior of Pioneer Transcription Factor Condensates and Their Role in Gene Regulation.” This project focuses on special proteins called transcription factors (TFs) and a subset called pioneer transcription factors (PTFs). “Transcription factors are proteins that begin the process by which information flows from our DNA to RNA to proteins,” he said. As a biophysicist, his interest is in the mechanisms by which the TFs switch on a particular gene. Given that our genomic DNA is severely compacted—a six-foot strand carrying about 30,000 genes is contained in each cell—most of the time, a particular gene cannot be physically accessed for transcription. Through this award, Banerjee will test an emerging idea of how TFs control when and how genes in our DNA are expressed through liquid-liquid and liquid-solid phase transitions. In parallel, he plans to work with SayYesBuffalo to provide mentorship and research opportunities in his lab to underrepresented minority students and Buffalo Public School teachers. Banerjee is also interested in communicating science to the general public, and he plans to work with the Coalesce Center for Biological Art at UB to promote biophysics education through local and global art exhibitions.

Igor Žutić.

Professor Igor Žutić, received a Multidisciplinary University Research Initiative (MURI) grant titled “Epitaxial Phase-Biased Josephson Junctions,” from the U.S. Office of Naval Research, which built on a previous collaboration with the experimental group of Professor Javad Shabani at the New York University. This team effort, led by Professor Shabani and also involving researchers from Yale University, the University of Maryland, the University of Pittsburgh, and the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign, will provide a platform for manipulating elusive Majorana bound states, a key element for the fault-tolerant quantum computing. This topic is also an opportunity to broaden related research in our Department, which also involves Professor Jong Han and Associate Professor Herbert Fotso.

Professor Žutić also received a grant titled “Quantum Materials: Magnetism, Spin-Orbit Coupling, and Superconductivity, from the U.S. Department of Energy, Office of Science, Basic Energy Sciences, which is a renewal of his prior funding, started in 2010. Advances in quantum materials and their heterostructures provide fascinating opportunities to reveal novel phenomena and test previously unexplored states of matter. The reduced dimensionality of the building blocks of such heterostructures and the improved interfacial quality enable the targeted use of proximity effects in materials design. A given material can be transformed through proximity effects whereby it acquires properties of its neighbors, for example, becoming superconducting, magnetic, topologically nontrivial, or with an enhanced spin-orbit coupling.

Herbert Fotso.

Professor Herbert Fotso received a collaborative research grant from the Department of Energy (DOE) for his project on: “Nonequilibrium Dynamics of  Non-Ideal Quantum Materials”. The goal of this project, in collaboration with co-PI Prof. Hanna Terletska of Middle Tennessee State University, is to develop novel solutions for the characterization and understanding of the nonequilibrium dynamics of many-particle systems that feature a non-trivial interplay between strong interaction and disorder. While inhomogeneities are unavoidable in all realistic materials, their precise roles in numerous properties of correlated systems remain generally unclear.  This project aims to fill the void that exists, in particular, in the understanding of what role disorder plays in the nontrivial dynamics of strongly correlated systems away from equilibrium.

Professor Fotso also received a second collaborative National Science  Foundation (NSF) research grant with Prof. Hanna Terletska of Middle  Tennessee State University on: "Quantum@MTSU: Building QISE Research and  Education in Middle Tennessee." This award is part of the ExpandQISE effort at NSF. The project aims to help establish a strong QISE (Quantum  Information Science and Engineering) effort in the Middle Tennessee area.  The research will focus on developing control protocols for quantum emitters in dynamic environments for optimal light-matter interfaces in quantum information processing. In addition, the project will include a  strong education and outreach component.

Xuedong Hu and Peihong Zhang.

Profs. Xuedong Hu and Peihong Zhang have recently been awarded, as part of a large collaborative team, a research grant from the Air Force Office of Scientific Research (AFOSR) for studying the correlation between materials properties and the performance of spin qubits in silicon quantum dots. This is a large collaborative project (total budget over $6,000,000; UB budget: $1,020,000) involving research groups from the University of Rochester, UCLA, Stony Brook, SUNY Polytechnic Institute, Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, and UB. Silicon spin qubits are an excellent platform for quantum computing, although several material challenges present obstacles to their continued development. In this project, in collaboration with both theoretical and experimental research groups, we will take a materials-first approach to discover the underlying causes of these challenges and establish correlations among qubit metrics, materials properties, and measurements reflecting these challenges.

Top: A typical spin qubit device in Si. The qubits (represented by the two blue dots) exist in a complex environment that contains nearby metal gates and amorphous oxides. Our goals are to identify components of this environment that negatively affect qubit coherence and control properties and how to mitigate their influences. Bottom: Schematic of a silicon-based quantum chip.

Faculty recognition by the University

By Xuedong Hu, PhD

Multiple Physics faculty members received external awards in recognition of their excellence in research.

Professor Igor Žutić

Igor Žutić has become the latest SUNY Distinguished Professor from the Physics.  Žutić is a globally renowned condensed matter theoretical physicist who is recognized for his seminal discoveries related to spin-dependent transport and superconducting junctions. Žutić’s predictions for spin-photodiodes, spin-transistors, and ultrafast spin-lasers, have been experimentally realized, complementing commercial spintronic applications, while his work on superconducting junctions is guiding efforts to implement fault-tolerant topological quantum computing. He is the recipient of a National Research Council Fellowship, NSF CAREER Award, and Gordon Godfrey Visitor Fellowship at the University of New South Wales. He has also been a great mentor for students at UB.  For example, the research of his undergraduate students has been recognized with prestigious awards, including Barry Goldwater Scholarship, NSF Graduate Fellowship, and National Defense Science & Engineering Graduate Fellowship.

Hao Zeng.

Professor Hao Zeng

Hao Zeng, Moti Lal Rustgi Professor in Physics, has received the SUNY Chancellor’s Award for Scolarship and Creative Activities.  Zeng is an international leader in materials science and physics, with pioneering work in magnetic nanoparticles, data storage and permanent magnets. An experimentalist who combines physics and chemistry to produce materials on the nanometer scale for various applications, he has led research in novel magnetic nanostructures, 2D materials and chalcogenide semiconductors. He has published 150 articles, with more than 21,000 citations according to Google Scholar. Throughout his academic career at UB, Professor Zeng has been funded by the National Science Foundation, the Department of Defense, the Department of Energy and the SUNY Applied Materials Research Institute. He has received approximately $6 million in total grants as a principal investigator or co-principal investigator, including a prestigious NSF CAREER award in 2006. He is also an editor of the Journal of Magnetism and Magnetic Materials, and serves on the Committee on Memberships for the American Physical Society.

Professor Dejan Stojkovic

Dejan Stojkovic has received the UB Exceptional Scholar Award for Sustained Excellence in Research for his works on fundamental problems at the interface of particle physics, gravity and cosmology. His work of the highest immediate and practical service to the scientific community is perhaps the event generator BlackMax, which is extensively used by the ATLAS, CMS and MOEDAL collaborations at the LHC (CERN) in search for new physics. He works on classical and quantum aspects of black holes at all scales (from microscopic primordial black holes to supermassive black holes located in centers of galaxies). He also works on cosmological puzzles like dark matter (missing mass in our universe) and dark energy (mysterious ingredient that drives accelerated expansion of our universe), and most recently on foundations of quantum mechanics. 

Student News

Lift off! Physics students compete in the world’s most prestigious rocketry competition

By John Cerne, PhD

Twenty-two students from the University at Buffalo took a trip down to the southern New Mexico desert, bringing a rocket called VROOM that shoots purple flames in tow.

The team is part of the University at Buffalo’s Students for the Exploration and Development of Space (UB SEDS), which has competed in the Intercollegiate Rocket Engineering Competition (IREC) since 2017.  The competition, also known as the Spaceport America Cup, is the largest of its kind in the world, consisting of over 150 universities hailing from 24 separate countries, including Australia, South Korea, Germany and more.

A group of UB students.

UB rocketry team at the Fuller Lodge after a successful launch!

Lea Kyle and Sydney Swedick.

Lea Kyle (left) and Sydney Swedick are the latest UB students to receive the prestigious Goldwater Scholarship.

UB Physics Minor receives prestigious Scholarship

By Ia Iashvili, PhD

Lea Kyle, a biochemistry student, is a physics minor in our department. Her journey with us started in 2020 when she inquired about the level of difficulty at which the Honors Physics I course is taught at UB. She wondered if this would be the better option for her to learn physics, and although she hesitated with her decision, she joined the honors course and quickly rose to the top of the class. From that moment, she stayed with us and decided to sign up for a minor in physics. This year, she became one of the two UB recipients of the Barry Goldwater Scholarship 2023, the most prestigious and competitive research scholarship offered for undergraduate STEM students. Lea worked on some of her collaborative projects together with physics majors, and her Goldwater application was supported by both the UB Chemistry and Physics departments. Her plan is to do her Master's in Public Health in Ireland before pursuing a PhD in biochemistry at a top-tier university, focusing on infectious disease prevention and transmission. She wants to eventually work in the public health care sector in a national lab.

UB Physics major receives prestigious Fellowship

By John Cerne, PhD

Paul Dewan is an exceptional student. He graduated with a perfect 4.0 GPA and has been an excellent researcher in Dr. Banerjee's biophysics lab. According to Dr. Banerjee, Paul was "one of the very best I have ever mentored." His work at UB has earned him the prestigious Goldwater Scholarship in 2022 the Sekula Scholarship in 2020, and in 2020, he was inducted into the Sigma Pi Sigma Physics Honor Society. In 2023, Paul won the National Science Foundation’s prestigious Graduate Research Fellowship and was named the Physics Department’s Outstanding Senior.

In addition to his academic and research excellence, Paul has actively served the Department of Physics as a College of Arts and Sciences Ambassador from 2021 to 2023. In his senior year, Paul served as the vice president of UB's Society of Physics Students chapter. Paul is currently pursuing his PhD in biophysics at Harvard University.

Paul Dewan posing with his family for a photo.

Paul Dewan with his family at the “2023 Celebration of Student Academic Excellence Student Showcase” at UB in April 2023. Photo: John Cerne

Alumni News

Alumni gathering at the 2023 March Meeting

By Xuedong Hu, PhD

After three years of canceled or online meetings, the APS March meeting finally returned with a fully in-person version from March 5 to 10, 2023, in Las Vegas, Nevada.  A large UB Physics contingent attended the meeting and gave dozens of presentations.  We also had the first UB Physics Reunion since the pandemic on March 7 in Gordon Ramsay Pub & Grill.  About 30 current faculty members and students and several alumni and friends attended, including Professors Sergio Ulloa (former student of Y.C. Lee) and Nancy Sandler from Ohio University, Dr. Satoshi Okamoto from Oak Ridge National Lab, and Professor Myoung-Hwan Kim (former student of John Cerne) from Texas Tech.  The event was supported by the Department of Physics and the University Advancement Office of the College of Arts and Sciences.

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