ECU Department of Physics

10/15/2026

https://ecu.webex.com/ecu/j.php?MTID=m42d6867ee1d41936519d1e563e1e44ea

This Friday, October 16 at 3:00 p.m. will feature Professor Wesley Wong from Harvard Medical School, where he will present "Mechanical Force in Nanoscale Biology: From Hemostasis to DNA Nanoswitches":

Mechanical force plays a critical role in regulating many aspects of biological function and structure, particularly at the nanoscale. My research group develops and applies methods in single-molecule manipulation to understand the force-dependent dynamics of biological interactions. I will present some methods that we are developing, including massively parallel single-molecule force measurements and nanoscale devices built using DNA origami, and demonstrate how these approaches can bring new insights into biological processes such as blood clotting and hearing.

The presentation will be held in the Life Sciences and Biotechnology Building, room 1006. Please join us via Webex if you are unable to attend in person.

10/08/2026

https://ecu.webex.com/ecu/j.php?MTID=m9d7b62c422c3471c6cb5e64a256c7a92

This Friday, October 9 at 3:15 p.m. will feature Professor Julieta Gruszko from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, where she will present "Discovering the Origin of Matter with LEGEND":

Why is the universe dominated by matter, and not antimatter? Neutrinos, with their changing flavors and tiny masses, could provide an answer. If the neutrino is a Majorana particle, meaning that it is its own antiparticle, it would reveal the origin of the neutrino’s mass, demonstrate that lepton number is not a conserved symmetry of nature, and provide a path to the creation of matter in the early universe. To discover whether this is the case, we must search for neutrinoless double-beta decay, a theorized process that would occur in some nuclei. By searching for this extremely rare decay, we can explore new physics at energy scales that only existed in the seconds following the Big Bang. Detecting this ultra-rare process, however, requires us to build very large detectors with very low background rates. The LEGEND experiment searches for the neutrino less double-beta decay of 76Ge with hundreds of kilograms of detectors. I’ll discuss including the machine learning-based LEGEND-200’s first results and our progress towards building LEGEND-1000, work we’re doing to make these experiments even more sensitive.

The presentation will be held in Austin 132. Please join us via Webex if you are unable to attend in person.

09/23/2026

https://ecu.webex.com/ecu/j.php?MTID=m9d7b62c422c3471c6cb5e64a256c7a92

This Friday, September 25 at 3:15 p.m. will feature Professor Atul Kedia from North Carolina Central University, where he will present "Signals From Neutron Star Mergers and The Formation of Precious and Radioactive Elements":

Neutron stars are dense remnants of dying heavy stars, and a merger of two neutron stars is a spectacular event that pushes physics to its limits. The high densities cause gravitational waves, i.e. ripples in the fabric of space to be sent across the universe and the dynamical forces push out energetic radioactive matter that decay and emit a signature electromagnetic signal, a kilonova. In this talk, I will discuss these aspects of neutron star mergers (NSM) and the modelling and analysis used to illuminate nuclear behavior in these extreme environments and to understand the role of nuclear reactions in forming the precious and radioactive elements we have on Earth. I will discuss what we have learnt about element formation from the NSM event: GW170817/AT2017gfo. With more observatories on the horizon, we are in an exciting time to understand not only the nature of these remarkable events, but also the processes that synthesized the elements that we have in our planet.

The presentation will be held in Austin 132. Please join us via Webex if you are unable to attend in person.

09/10/2026

SPS and Astronomy Club are off to a great start this semester!

09/09/2026

https://ecu.webex.com/ecu/j.php?MTID=m9d7b62c422c3471c6cb5e64a256c7a92

This Friday, September 11 at 3:15 p.m. will feature Professor Shailesh Chandrasekharan from Duke University, where he will present "Building Our Universe with Qubits":

The Standard Model of particle physics has been remarkably successful in explaining a wide range of experimental results. It is built on the assumption that our universe consists of quantum degrees of freedom existing at every point in space and evolving in time according to the laws defined by the model. These assumptions inevitably involve infinities, which pose significant computational challenges and have long hindered progress in calculating quantities of interest within the strongly interacting sector of the Standard Model that describes nuclear physics. Until now, we have relied on classical computational paradigms to address these infinities. However, the advent of quantum computers offers new ways to approach the problem. The quantum computational paradigm compels us to construct the quantum degrees of freedom of our universe from qubits. In this talk, I will introduce the basic ideas behind this program and present recent results suggesting that key features of the Standard Model—such as asymptotic freedom and the emergence of gauge structure—may arise in novel ways when reformulated in terms of qubits.

The presentation will be held in Austin 132. Please join us via Webex if you are unable to attend in person.

09/04/2026

08/12/2026

Photo from the Physics Alumni Reunion held at the annual AAPM meeting in Vancouver, BC!

08/04/2026

The ECU 2026 STEM Symposium was great!

05/24/2026

Physics Undergraduates:
Michael (Cole) Fuqua (BS Research)
Christopher Bonham-Janes (BS Professional)

Physics Graduates:
Homeira Faridnejad (MS & PhD)
Mason Ross (MS & PhD; MA in mathematics)
Amara Moeller (MS)
Eric Watkins (MS)

Congratulations!

05/19/2026

Celebration of Physics Research and Scholarship 2026

Sigma Pi Sigma Inductees:
William Carroll
Elizabeth Cox
Marshall Malone

URCA Award Winners:
Greta Bublitz
Jaida Hernandez Dones
Marcus Case

URPA Award Winners:
Jaida Hernandez Dones
Marshall Malone
Dylan Miller
Amilia Price

TAB Scholarship in Physics:
Landon Gooding

Dr. Plenkovic Memorial Scholarship in Physics:
Jaida Hernandez Dones

Carin and Gregory Lapicki Scholarship:
Landon Gooding

Outstanding Senior:
Christopher Bonham-Janes