Groundbreaking Ceremony for the Physics Research Building

Despite rain and cool temperatures, a standing-room-only crowd fi lled the tent at the ceremonial groundbreaking for the new Physics Research Building. Speakers included Department of Physics chair William Saam, Board of Trustees vice chair Zuheir Sofi a, (former) university President William E. Kirwan, undergraduate physics and astronomy major Karoline Gilbert, and dean of the College of Mathematical and Physical Sciences Robert Gold. (Excerpts of speeches follow.)

Additional participants who assisted with “digging” included: Department of Physics professors emeriti William Palmer and E. Leonard Jossem, professors Evan Sugarbaker and Frank DeLucia, coordinator of Building Services Mark Reed, and college representative to The Ohio State University Alumni Association’s Alumni Advisory Council David G. Price.

A commemorative refrigerator magnet was attached to the inside of the program, with a reminder: tune in to the web site: www.physics.ohio-state.edu/newbuilding/ to watch the building take shape via webcam. You may receive your own Physics Research Building refrigerator magnet by calling Karolyn Frasure at (614) 292-2653 or by sending her your name and address via e-mail: frasure@mps.ohio-state.edu.

Construction has started, and the building should be completed in 2004. The 233,739- square-foot building will house the department’s administrative offi ces, conference space, and faculty offi ces, as well as 210 laboratory modules. The design features a stunning atrium and adjoining patio space. Interaction is the focus of open spaces throughout the building, and a highlight of the atrium fl oor is the Smith Seminar Room.

Excerpts from speeches:

Remarks made by Karoline Gilbert, class of 2002 physics / astronomy major:

I will take a lot of memories away from the time I spent in the physics depart-ment at Ohio State, and I have spent a lot of time. As a physics major, I fi gured out that I’ve spent over 800 hours sitting in physics classes alone. Then, there were the countless hours spent with my fellow students in the physics lounge, racking our brains trying to fi gure out how to do a problem. And then once we fi gured that out, spending the next two hours trying to mess with algebra to fi gure out what we did wrong.

Of course, we didn’t always get past the fi rst stage of fi guring out how to do the problem, and then we had to storm the professor’s offi ce to ask for help. I’ve spent my share of time in physics professors’ offi ces at Smith, and I can assure you that they will be quite happy to get new offi ce space.

My experiences as a physics major at Ohio State have prepared me well for my future studies in astronomy, in large part because of the support that I have received as an undergraduate physics major. The undergraduate physics lounge is an invaluable place the department has provided for us. It gives us a place to work in groups on homework and on the computers, hold meetings, catch up with friends, and occasionally even catch up on sleep.

I have fond memories of the picnics the department has every year, complete with food, a dunk tank, water balloons, ice cream made with dry ice, and the sledgehammer carnival game, which I’ve not yet done successfully, but maybe this year is the year.

The picnics and other functions the physics department sponsors give students the chance to interact and develop relationships with professors in a non-classroom setting. One of the most important assets of my education, however, is the support I’ve received from the physics professors. The professors in this department provide a great deal of encouragement to students. In addition to opening up their offi ce doors to students for questions about homework, courses, physics in general, or careers, they open their lab doors to undergraduate students who want to get involved in physics research.

I know many students who work in various labs at Smith. In fact, some of the memories I will take with me from my years at Ohio State are from the summer I spent working in the lab with Dr. Greg Lafyatis. It was the summer after my freshman year, and my parents were eagerly anticipating my return home for the summer break. Dr. Lafyatis sorely disappointed them, however. When I started working in Dr. Lafyatis’ lab, I didn’t even know which way to turn a screw to loosen it. Thankfully, Dr. Lafyatis was patient, and by the end of the summer I had spent time in the machine shop, learned what a lathe was and how to use it, worked a little with electronics, worked on lab view codes, helped take data on experiments, and yes, I even learned which direction to loosen a screw.

Most importantly, however, I learned how physics research is conducted. This experience has enriched my educationand been helpful in several classes I have taken.

One of the best things a physics major can do, regardless of their future career path, is to get involved in research early in their undergraduate career. There is no substitute for learning what physics is really about. The physics department and professors have often demonstrated that they are not only supportive, but committed to helping undergraduate students get involved in research.

The new building, by supporting cutting-edge research that professors will be doing, will also be supporting the undergraduate program. Although my memories will all be of Smith Lab, I look forward to visiting Ohio State in a couple of years and seeing the shiny, new, state-of-the-art building on that empty lot.

And now, I am pleased to introduce Robert Gold, Dean of the College of Mathematical and Physical Sciences, yet another mathematician-turned-administrator, proving that a mathematician can, perhaps, have some practical skills.

Remarks made by Robert Gold, Dean, College of Mathematical and Physical Sciences

We’ve heard great things about the physics department today. I could go on in that vein; I am one of the department’s biggest fans. But I Groundbreaking Ceremony for the Physics Research BuildingFrasure at (614) 292-2653 or by sending her your name and address Renderings of the new Physics Research Building 2223thought I might take a different tack and tell you the “rest of the story,” as in The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde.

Of course the physics department has done well for itself. Like being the top place finisher in the first Selective Investment round. You need to remem-ber, however, that Physics is the only department on campus with nuclear devices. Who was going to turn them down?

In the area of research, the department has made a spectacular rise in the national rankings and many of our faculty and staff are among the best in world at what they do—real champions. On the other hand, it is true that the APS, the American Physical Society, does operate somewhat like the World Wrestling Federation. The champions are all determined in advance, somewhere in a smoke-filled room, or more appropriately, a cloud-filled chamber. The department is also a part of the international physics conspiracy to befuddle anyone who is not a physicist. Just take a look at the title of any physics paper you can lay your hands on.

The department does a great job of undergraduate teaching and has won more than its share of teaching awards, both individually and collectively. But let’s face it. Any student who even thinks of taking a physics course is self-selected to be in the top 5 percent of the under-graduate class, carries a 3.99 GPA, and is on target to graduate in three years, with at least two majors. Someone like Karrie here. How hard can it be to teach such a student?

Finally, the department’s service and outreach activity is phenomenal. Worthy of particular note is the Physics Open House where we bring to campus some of Ohio’s most creative and impressionable high school adolescents and show them how to explode pop bottles, electrocute their tongues, microwave various household objects, and expose a university president to acute embarrassment in front of a large audience. This sets a new standard in public service.

Now that you’ve heard the other side of the story, you can appreciate more fully how delighted we are to have this new building going up. I want to thank those of you who have worked long and hard to bring this building to fruition. I’d also like to thank and congratulate the university leadership for having the wisdom and the courage to place academic quality and academic need at the top of the list of capital building priorities.

Seminar Room to Carry on Tradition

The tradition of excellence in the Department of Physics at Ohio State includes the Smith name. Alpheus Smith, after whom Smith Lab is named, taught for 37 years, served the department as chair from 1926 to 1946, served the university as dean of the Graduate School from 1939 to 1946, and served as president of The Ohio State University Research Foundation from 1946 to 1958, while he was professor emeritus

Thanks to a generous gift from his son Robert, a physics alumnus and past winner of the Distinguished Alumni Award from the Department of Physics, and his wife Winifred, the Smith legacy will continue to be part of the new Physics Research Building. Bob and Winnie Smith have given $200,000 to name a seminar room in the new physics building. Located on the atrium fl oor, it will be called the Robert Smith Seminar Room.

“My connections with Ohio State extend to my childhood,” said Bob. “And my degree in physics propelled me to a great career in aeronautics. I’m happy to make certain the Smith name remains part of physics. More important, I’m glad to support programs that will encourage the physics students of tomorrow.”

Bob and Winnie currently reside on Balboa Island, California.

Welcome New Faculty

Ralf Bundschuh

I received my Ph.D. from Potsdam University in 1996. The research in the area of theoretical polymer physics was mostly carried out at the Max Planck Institute for colloid and interface research in Teltow. I worked for one year as a postdoctoral fellow on the theory of mesoscopic conductors in Martin Zirnbauer’s group at the University of Cologne. In 1997, I changed focus once more and started working on biophysics in Terence Hwa’s group at the University of California at San Diego, first as a fellow of the German Academic Exchange Service (DAAD) and then as a postdoctoral associate. My research concentrated on biological sequence comparison algorithms and the secondary structure of RNA. From UCSD I came to Ohio State in the summer of 2001.

The biological sciences are undergoing a revolutionary change characterized by the emergence of experimental techniques that produce quantitative biological data waiting for interpretation. The broad goal of my research is to develop new methods to extract biological knowledge from such data. These methods will be derived using statistical physics tools. I am focusing on problems involving sequence data and RNA molecules. The problems can be described in terms of physical systems with a complex energy landscape. The study of these systems leads to new insights into the statistical physics of disordered systems.

One particular area of my interest is sequence alignment, the most widely used computational tool in molecular biology. The identification of any newly sequenced gene depends on the accuracy with which the alignment can be performed. The biological relevance of the results must be determined to rule out randomness. Characterizing the behavior of a random system is clearly the domain of statistical physics and several of its tools can be used to tackle this problem.

The other system of my current interest is RNA secondary structure formation. RNA is a single-stranded heteropolymer, which can gain energy by folding onto itself and forming “base pairs” between its monomers. Interestingly, the bioinformatics community has worked out an algorithm to fold RNA in polynomial time. Characterizing the different phases and phase transitions involved numerically and analytically is an ongoing project. On the other hand, quantitative modeling of recent force-extension experiments on RNA molecules provides a foundation on which these experiments can be interpreted and new experimental ideas can be explored.

Sabine Jeschonnek

I received my Ph.D. from Bonn University in 1996. All my research work was carried out at the Forschungszentrum Juelich, a big, multi-purpose national lab in Germany. In 1997, I went to MIT on a Feodor-Lynen fellowship of the Alexander-von-Humboldt foundation, and worked on relativity in electron scattering and a complete description of final state interactions at GeV energies. In 1998, I joined the Theory Group of the Thomas Jefferson National Accelerator Facility (Jefferson Lab) in Newport News, Virginia, where I continued to investigate electron scattering, and started modelling quark-hadron duality. Both topics are closely related to the experimental program at Jefferson Lab, and I have collaborated with experimentalists in the preparation of proposals and the analysis of data. I joined Ohio State in the fall of 2001.

My two main research interests are quark-hadron duality and electron scattering from few-body systems.

Quark-hadron duality is an interesting phenomenon that is observed in many different processes. Duality implies that in certain kinematic regions, properly averaged hadronic observables can be described by perturbative QCD. While it is well established experimentally, a full theoretical explanation is not yet available. Modelling duality is the most promising way to shed light on this interesting and very useful phenomenon.

One main thrust in electron scattering from light nuclei is to learn how far a conventional description in terms of nucleons and mesons works, and where the quark/gluon substructure of matter shows itself. In order to properly interpret the experimental results, one needs to have very precise calculations of the conventional effects.

In my spare time, I like to read mysteries and excavate dinosaurs.