Prof. Rhonda Dzakpasu has received a 2013 Research Award from the Marine Biological Laboratory (MBL) allowing her to conduct neuroscience-related research at the MBL’s Whitman Center in Woods Hole, MA. The MBL is the oldest private marine laboratory in the US and has a year-round scientific and support staff of nearly 300. During each summer 1,700 scientists and advanced students from around the world visit the MBL to study and conduct research. Prof.

Two physics Ph.D. students, Marguerite Brown and Bryce Yoshimura, have been named 2013-14 ARCS Fellows. Marguerite, who was also a 2012-13 ARCS Fellow, will be continuing her interdisciplinary research in the Blair lab on how microtubules, which provide structural support in cells, organize into different types of structures under different mechanical conditions. Bryce is conducting theoretical research in the Freericks group on using ion trap quantum simulators to study frustrated quantum magnetism.

Prof. Freericks led the theory effort on a University of Maryland/Georgetown University team that examined how to scale up ion trap quantum simulators to study complex frustrated spin states. The work was published in the May 3 edition of Science viewed as the top general science journal in the world.

Prof. David Egolf and a team of three former Georgetown undergraduates, Edward Banigan (C'07), Matthew Illich (C'11), and Derick Stace-Naughton (C'11), have had their research featured on the cover of the prestigious journal Nature Physics. They uncovered dynamical mechanisms behind the intriguing phenomenon of granular "jamming", in which free-flowing grains (sand, oranges, pharmaceuticals, etc.) develop into a disordered, solid-like state when the density is high enough.