乐播传媒 has welcomed a large group of new faculty this year. Seventeen tenured or tenure-track professors joined the college during the 2025-2026 academic year. 乐播传媒 News has been introducing them in groups over this semester. This fifth and final installment introduces you to the last of our new faculty hires at 乐播传媒 this year. 

Wesley Gillis, assistant professor of physics

Focus of teaching and scholarship:

Collaboration is at the heart of both my teaching and my scholarship. In the classroom, I am focused on implementing team-based learning across the physics curriculum. This approach helps students build effective team dynamics, develop collaborative problem-solving skills, and engage deeply with complex, real-world problems through shared inquiry and discussion.

My research similarly centers on collaborative engagement within a large, international scientific community. As a member of the nEXO collaboration 鈥� comprising approximately 200 scientists worldwide 鈥� I contribute to the research and development of a next-generation, underground experiment designed to investigate the fundamental nature of the neutrino. Specifically, my lab studies the detection mechanisms, hardware design, and data analysis of vacuum ultraviolet light in liquid xenon. Together, our work aims to answer one of physics鈥� most profound questions: Is the neutrino its own antiparticle?

What is most exciting in your first year at 乐播传媒? 

I was excited to play Dvorak鈥檚 9th symphony, the New World Symphony, with the 乐播传媒 College Orchestra in November.

What is your favorite part of teaching?

When a class full of teams has been given a challenging problem, the volume ramps from a dull rumble to a clamorous cacophony of engagement. This is when I know good learning is happening.

Eugene Choo, professor of economics

Focus of teaching and scholarship:

I specialize in empirical industrial organization and econometrics, with a research focus on marriage matching and the economics of household formation. My work combines structural modeling and econometric identification to study matching markets. Before joining 乐播传媒 College, I taught econometrics, industrial organization, mathematical economics, and intermediate microeconomics. 

What is most exciting in your first year at 乐播传媒? 

I am excited about joining the vibrant liberal arts community and engaging with 乐播传媒 students. I am also looking forward to exploring the beautiful state of Maine.

What is your favorite part of teaching?

My favorite part of teaching is watching students discover economics and how it is used to look at everyday life.

Charlotte Connop, assistant professor of earth and climate sciences

Focus of teaching and scholarship:

I’m a metamorphic petrologist and geochronologist. These are fancy words to say that I date the formation of (usually pretty old) metamorphic rocks and try to figure out how these rocks formed. These rocks can help us figure out the driving mechanisms behind processes that happen deep within the Earth that we are unable to directly observe. I’m especially interested in investigating processes that lead to the movement of elements within the Earth, including things like partial melting 鈥� where temperatures increase enough to melt rock, with the molten rock able to migrate through the Earth, leading to the transportation of material to a new location.

My teaching focuses reflect these research interests 鈥� in my classes, students learn about the rocks that make up our planet and the land we live on, and the different processes that formed and modified these rocks over time. Students learn how elements join together on the atomic scale to make minerals and how those minerals are combined in different proportions to produce different rocks. We focus on connecting these different rocks to tectonic environments to disentangle Earth processes that we are unable to observe ourselves. 

What is most exciting in your first year at 乐播传媒? 

I’m most excited about getting to know everyone in the 乐播传媒 community! Whether it’s students in class, swinging by office hours or completing a senior thesis with me, or seeing my fellow faculty and staff around campus or in the Den grabbing lunch, everyone has been so welcoming so far. I’m looking forward to getting to know everyone more and becoming part of the 乐播传媒 community.

What is your favorite part of teaching?

My favorite part of teaching is watching students pull together information from across the semester (and across their courses) to grapple with complex scientific questions. We think about a lot of different time and length scales in earth and climate sciences and to have students be able to think from the nano scale to the macro scale and beyond requires integrating a lot of different concepts, which can be hard to grapple with at times, but so rewarding when put together correctly. 

Two 乐播传媒 College scientists have received nearly $373,000 from the National Institutes of Health for first-of-its-kind research into the genetic functioning of bacteria that cause Lyme disease.

The project draws on new capabilities in high-resolution microscopy that make it possible to observe spatial arrangements of RNA in Borrelia burgdorferi, one of four Borrelia species that cause Lyme disease. This study of variations in RNA location and shape could eventually suggest new medical responses to Lyme, which strikes up to 300,000 people in the U.S. annually.

Receiving the $372,639 grant for the two-year project are physicist Travis Gould, an expert in the field of fluorescence nanoscopy, and biochemist Paula Schlax, who researches gene expression in spiral-shaped bacteria, also known as spirochetes, such as Lyme bacteria.

Biochemist Paula Schlax and physicist Travis Gould pose with Gould鈥檚 STED super-resolution microscope in Carnegie Science Hall. (Phyllis Graber Jensen/乐播传媒 College)

鈥淩NA is an intermediate in the process of cells making proteins,鈥� says Schlax, a professor of chemistry and biochemistry at 乐播传媒. 鈥淲e鈥檙e trying to understand generally how production of proteins gets turned on and off when the bacteria move from ticks to mammals and from mammals back to ticks鈥� 鈥� changes in the bacteria鈥檚 environment that change the shape and location of RNA.

鈥淲e know from other bacteria that RNA鈥檚 location inside the cell seems to affect how long that RNA lasts 鈥� whether it’s near the edges of the cell, or the ends of the cell, or spread out evenly inside. Our hypothesis is that how fast RNA gets broken down, or doesn’t get broken down, probably helps the cell decide which proteins to make when conditions change, such as when the bacteria moves from the tick to a mammal or vice versa.鈥�

Variations in protein production could cause variations in the bacteria鈥檚 disease-causing capability. 鈥淭he more we understand that process,鈥� Schlax says, 鈥渢he easier it is to think about new targets for drugs and new therapeutics.鈥�

Until quite recently, the physical limitations of microscope technology curtailed its usefulness in testing such a hypothesis. The bacteria have a characteristic shape, says Gould: very skinny in relation to length. The length is typically around 20 microns, or millionths of a meter, but the bacteria鈥檚 internal diameter is vastly smaller, at about 200 nanometers, or billionths of a meter. (A piece of paper is about 100,000 nanometers thick.)

鈥淭hat 200 nanometers is, in the best-case scenario, at the limit of a conventional microscope’s resolution,鈥� Gould says. 鈥淪o a conventional microscope can鈥檛 answer these questions about where RNA is within that 200-nanometer cylinder.鈥�

But Gould, an associate professor of physics, is an innovator in imaging technologies that use lasers, fluorescing molecules, and other means to attain much higher resolution. For the NIH-funded research, he has adapted an existing 乐播传媒 microscope that he built and that uses a process called stimulated emission depletion, or STED, to capture images of the B. burgdorferi RNA.

Going from older microscopy technologies to Gould’s newly updated STED 鈥渋s like putting on glasses for the first time.鈥�

Specifically, he added another laser to the instrument that expands its imaging capability from two to three dimensions. Going from older technologies to this latest iteration, says Schlax, 鈥渋s like putting on glasses for the first time.鈥�

Complementary to the STED technology, the researchers and their students will use a technique called fluorescence in situ hybridization (FISH) that deploys fluorescent probes to specific parts of the 鈥渢ranscripts鈥� that the microbe鈥檚 DNA imparts to its RNA.

The research will be the first to identify patterns of transcript localization within B. burgdorferi, and, notably, the first research to use STED microscopy for this sort of localization within any spirochete.

This is significant given the range and impact of diseases caused by such bacteria, including syphilis, yaws, periodontal disease, and leptospirosis, whose effects include kidney failure.

Joining Schlax and Gould in the project are 乐播传媒 students and research associate Anna Bowsher, whose position is funded by the NIH grant. The work entails growing B. burgdorferi microbes in the lab, affixing individual cells to slides, and introducing DNA molecules, complete with fluorescent tags, that are tailored to activate a specific RNA response.

Then the slides will be examined with Gould鈥檚 STED microscope, and the results compiled into a spatial-distribution analysis of different types of RNAs. The team hopes that they will have results to report by summer 2020.

The project will involve both thesis students advised by Gould and Schlax and students doing summer research. 鈥淭hese kinds of projects really are great for students to see how science is done,鈥� says Schlax, 鈥渁nd hopefully get their names on some papers and keep them interested in science.鈥�

With the use of fluorescing molecules now standard practice in high-resolution microscopy, STED imaging achieves enhanced resolution through a technique of selectively switching off such molecules. STED is one of a number of so-called super-resolution techniques developed to bypass the diffraction limit, a limit on the resolution of conventional microscopy imposed by the length of light waves.

Gould estimates that all told, there are likely two dozen or so labs equipped with commercially available STED microscopes, and another handful that use custom-built instruments like his.

Here鈥檚 a reward for getting up real early Monday morning: a chance to see a bit of 乐播传媒 streak into space.

At 4:39 a.m. EDT, a cargo spacecraft takes off from NASA鈥檚 Wallops Flight Facility in Virginia. Its destination: the International Space Station. Its payload: a laboratory that will conduct an experiment in ultracold physics for 乐播传媒 physicist Nathan Lundblad.

(Update 10:30 a.m. 5/18/18: Monday’s scheduled launch is a postponement from Sunday. Follow Wallops social media for .)

Lundblad is one of the few scientists, and the only one from an undergraduate college, chosen to have his research conducted by the Cold Atom Lab in the CAL’s initial experiments aboard the space station. Nature magazine calls the lab a “” for quantum physicists like Lundblad.

This map of the U.S. East Coast shows when and where the launch will be visible of a cargo spacecraft that’s delivering a 乐播传媒 physics experiment from NASA’s Wallops Island Flight Facility to the International Space Station. The launch is at 4:39 a.m. May 21. (Courtesy Orbital ATK)

Even hundreds of miles from the launch site, the rocket might be visible on the horizon. “Check the southern skies about three minutes after launch, about five degrees above the horizon,” says Noah Petro ’01, the NASA project scientist for the Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter mission, now orbiting the Moon.

“If you are in the right area, it will appear as a small dot of red light traveling much faster than an airplane with no blinking lights. You鈥檒l want to be in an area with a clear horizon and away from bright lights.”

+How to Watch 乐播传媒 Rocket to Space

In Alexandria, Va., Petro will get up very early on Monday, not only because he鈥檚 professionally interested (and not only because he and his wife, Jennifer Giblin ’01, have two early-rising young children).

鈥淚鈥檓 insanely proud of 乐播传媒. This is all about the power of science at 乐播传媒,鈥� Petro said from the Goddard Space Flight Center on Thursday. 鈥淗ere I am at Goddard, a member of the NASA science community, and 乐播传媒 is part of this really cool opportunity.鈥�

Scientist Noah Petro ’01 represented NASA at a minor league baseball game in Oregon last August that had an “eclipse delay” because of the total eclipse of the sun. (Photograph courtesy NASA/W. Hrybyk)

He鈥檚 proud of the 乐播传媒-into-space launch, he says, because it reaffirms what he and others at NASA know well. 鈥淲e 乐播传媒ies聽鈥� all of us liberal arts grads聽鈥� do really great science,鈥� Petro says, noting that a liberal arts graduate just down the hall trains the astronauts now aboard the ISS.

鈥淭his is not about putting 乐播传媒 on the map of science teaching and research. It puts yet another 乐播传媒 pin in the map.鈥�

Petro earned a doctorate at Brown; his dissertation was 鈥淧rovenance of Lunar Regolith Components: Redistribution of Material by Craters from the Heavy Bombardment Period through the Copernican Era.鈥�

鈥溊植ゴ� is just as preparatory for a career in science as any other institution in the country,” he says. “In fact, 乐播传媒 may do it even better. But that鈥檚 just my opinion!鈥�

鈥淭his does not put 乐播传媒 on the map of science teaching and research. It puts yet another 乐播传媒 pin in the map.鈥�

Here are seven things to know about Lundblad’s research aboard the space station.

1. Once it鈥檚 plugged in, the Cold Atom Lab will be the coldest known environment in the universe.

As its name suggests, the lab will be very, very cold 鈥� one ten-billionth of a degree above absolute zero.

Physics major Dan Paseltiner 鈥�16, one of Nathan Lundblad’s former thesis students, narrates this short film about the 乐播传媒 experiment that will be aboard the Cold Atom Laboratory.

2. The lab will operate only when the astronauts are asleep.

Once the CAL reaches the ISS, the astronauts will hook it up. After that, it鈥檚 mostly hands-off, partially because the astronauts鈥� day-to-day movements actually move the space station itself, disturbing the stillness the lab needs to work properly.

鈥淭hey decided, let鈥檚 run while the astronauts are sleeping,鈥� Lundblad said. 鈥淚t will be essentially remotely controlled.鈥�

3. Cold Atom Lab experiments take turns.

Lundblad鈥檚 experiment is one of several housed in the Cold Atom Lab. 鈥淢y project will essentially get a week, and then everybody else will rotate in and have a week, and then I鈥檒l get another week, and then everybody else will rotate through. Then I鈥檒l have a long downtime of a couple months to analyze each data set.鈥�

Associate Professor of Physics Nathan Lundblad’s research rockets to the International Space Station on Sunday morning at 5:04 a.m. (Sarah Crosby/乐播传媒 College)

4. Lundblad will study a form of matter that can’t exist on Earth.

Lundblad works with Bose-Einstein condensates. BECs are ultracold clouds of gas whose atoms lose their individual characteristics and behave more like a unified wave. He can study them in pretty cold environments on campus, but without gravity he can go even colder.

鈥淚鈥檓 interested in studying how the rules of quantum mechanics apply to a BEC based on its shape, and certain shapes are really tough to make in gravity,鈥� he said in 2014.

鈥淚鈥檓 looking to make a BEC in the form of a shell or bubble, and then study how quantum mechanics applies to a system that is two-dimensional, but without a border, like the surface of the Earth.鈥�

5. When gravity goes away, other forces come to the fore.

In designing his Cold Atom Lab experiments, Lundblad had to take into account the magnetic field of the lab itself. That, for him, is a first.

鈥淕ravity is the dominant force in these experiments down here. But in free fall, all of a sudden you鈥檝e eliminated this enormous whopping gravitational force,鈥� he says. 鈥淎ll these other little details begin to be important.鈥�

6. Lundblad will work remotely.

Lundblad created an experimental sequence that the Cold Atom Lab will run. 鈥淲ithin a couple days, I will get a data dump,鈥� he said. 鈥淭he data comes in the form of, essentially, images of these cold clouds, tagged with something like, 鈥極K, you designed experimental sequence 455 with all these particular parameters, and here鈥檚 the picture that resulted.鈥欌��

7. 乐播传媒 students will be involved.

Like many 乐播传媒 science faculty, Lundblad involves students deeply in the research. When the Cold Atom Lab data comes in, 鈥淚鈥檒l want to probably have a few late nights with some of my thesis students in the fall, trying to figure out, 鈥楧id that do what we thought it would? Is this looking like some of the effects we鈥檙e looking for?鈥欌��

You’ll find pure chaos inside a storage room in Carnegie Science Hall.

Not chaos in the disorderly sense but in the mathematical. Specifically, the room contains a homemade contraption that “demonstrates what chaos is,” says Raj Saha ’03, a faculty member in the geology and physics departments.

Known as a Lorenz water wheel, the apparatus looks like a miniature Ferris wheel. A bicycle rim is attached to a vertical piece of wood. Plastic bottles, sort of like gerbil water bottles, hang around the rim’s perimeter. There’s also a pump, tubing, and a wooden platform, all inside a plastic tub.

This Lorenz water wheel was built by 乐播传媒 students. (Phyllis Graber Jensen/乐播传媒 College)

See how it works: A tank at the bottom holds water, and a pump pushes the water through the tubing to the top, where it fills the first bottle. Like a waterwheel, the wheel starts to spin. But here’s the chaotic twist: 鈥淓ach bottle has a leak,鈥� explains Saha, and each bottle leaks at a different rate.

Instead of each bottle filling and emptying like a regular waterwheel, which spins at a predictable rate, the bottles leaking at irregular rates create randomness. The wheel turns one way for a while, then slows down and turns the other way.

“The wheel’s dynamics are chaotic, which means that it鈥檚 very hard to predict which way the wheel is going to be turning at a given time,” Saha says. “Even if we know the exact speed it is rotating at any given time, and at a high degree of accuracy, we will not be able to predict how it will behave at any time in the future. That’s the basic fundamentals of how a chaotic system works.”

For example, chaos is why your weekend weather forecast can change several times before Saturday arrives. “Beyond a window of a few days, the predictive capacity of weather models completely breaks down,” Saha says.

“It was not just a show and tell but also a demo of a device that can generate data.鈥�

Two students in his mathematical modeling class last spring, Josh Rines ’17 and Erik Saberski ’17, created the water wheel for an assignment. While most of their classmates chose a mathematical modeling project with computers, Rines and Saberski wanted to make an physical demonstration of chaos.

鈥淭hey did it all on their own, with zero help from me,鈥� Saha remembers.

The assignment window was brief, and Saha was dubious that the pair could build the wheel. 鈥淏ut they did,鈥� he says. 鈥淣ot only that, they recorded it while it was in action and used that data for modeling, so it was not just a show-and-tell but also a demo of a device that can generate data.鈥� They completed the modeling part as well. 鈥淨uite challenging,鈥� he says.

Saberski’s thesis, in fact, explored ideas to predict “which way the wheel will turn at some future time,” Saha says, and his thesis presented a predictive algorithm that he applied to two chaotic systems: rainfall in India and bitcoin price fluctuations.

Students often learn about the concept as a mathematical construct, Saha says, but rarely 鈥渉ow it works in real life.鈥� He plans to use the wheel with future classes as a real-world demonstration of chaos. That鈥檚 why he鈥檚 keeping it close by.

Dean of the Faculty and Vice President for Academic Affairs Matt Auer. (Phyllis Graber Jensen/乐播传媒 College)

At 乐播传媒, we often try to imagine the college 25 or 50 years out. What 乐播传媒 looks like in the future is at least partially revealed each time we hire a new faculty member. Today鈥檚 new recruit may teach at 乐播传媒 through 2050 or beyond.

Our ability to peer into the future is especially sharp this year because we recently hired nine tenure-track faculty members who will make an impact on the curriculum and on scholarship across all of our intellectual divisions 鈥� that is, in the humanities, natural sciences and mathematics, social sciences, and interdisciplinary programs.

Carolina Gonz谩lez Valencia is a great example of a new faculty colleague whose impact will likely be felt early and consequentially. She鈥檚 an expert in digital media and drawing. Her interest in areas like representations of migration, identity, and 鈥渘ationlessness,鈥� and her ability to teach students to inscribe their own understanding of these issues on paper, canvas, and film, will add major new intellectual thrusts to the work of the Department of Art and Visual Culture.

She is also the first Mellon Diversity and Faculty Renewal Postdoctoral Fellow at 乐播传媒. In her first year, she enjoys the advantages of a postdoctoral fellowship before converting, automatically, into a tenure-track assistant professorship in 2017鈥�18.

Patrick Otim is the second of our two new postdoc fellows. A historian, his expertise is in 19th- and 20th-century East Africa, focusing on intellectual history in the pre-colonial era.

We talk about 鈥渁 college for coming times鈥� in our mission statement, but Carolina’s and Patrick鈥檚 backgrounds, experiences, and expertise illustrate that the coming times are already here.

Patrick is joined in the history department by Wes Chaney, who adds breadth and depth to our increasingly strong social, historical, and humanistic perspectives on China. Wes鈥� work is at the intersection of the environment, society, and the law in China during the Qing Empire (1644鈥�1911) with a special interest in historical China鈥檚 border areas.

Network Infrastructure Project Manager Kevin Poland, left, and Desktop Operations Analyst Matthew Thomas install components of 乐播传媒’ new High Performance Computing Cluster at 65 Campus Ave. New members of the physics faculty have taken the lead in bringing the system to 乐播传媒. (Josh Kuckens/乐播传媒 College)

Wes has an instant community of fellow intellectual travelers since he comes on board at 乐播传媒 at the same time that Mia Liu and Nathan Faries begin their shared assistant professorship in Asian studies. Mia is a history, art, and visual culture expert, focusing on China. Nathan鈥檚 research considers religion, particularly Christianity, in Chinese literature in the contemporary context. Both Mia and Nathan teach Chinese language and culture courses.

The trend of faculty renewal is boldly evident in the natural sciences, too. Andrew Kennedy, an organic chemist whose work has neurobiological and medicinal applications, is fortifying connections between our department of chemistry and our program in neuroscience. Kennedy is already a major force nationally in understanding cognitive dimensions of a rare, genetic disorder called Pitt-Hopkins Syndrome.

Andrew Mountcastle, a new assistant professor in biology, is exploring the boundaries between physics and anatomy in living creatures, particularly insects. His students can expect to learn everything about the secrets of insect flight, from biomechanical, locomotive, and physiological perspectives.

The trend of faculty renewal is boldly evident in the natural sciences, too.

Two new assistant professors in the Department of Physics and Astronomy are helping to boost 乐播传媒 to a new level of computing capability. Jeff Oishi is a computational astrophysicist whose specialty is fluid dynamics and whose laboratory is the cosmos, as he studies solar magnetism. His new colleague, Aleksandar Diamond-Stanic, uses supercomputers to understand the structure and behavior of supermassive black holes.

With Oishi taking the lead, 乐播传媒 is now installing its first High Performance Computing system 鈥� a scalable computer cluster that, for example, will allow the astrophysicists to crunch data-rich imagery from the Hubble Space Telescope. This increase in the size and sophistication of the college鈥檚 supercomputing resources will continue in dramatic fashion as the college makes hires in the new Digital and Computational Studies program this year, and next.

From lower left, seniors Minh-Tam Pham and Kathleen Morrill look on as their adviser, biology professor Larissa Williams, scans protein molecules with 乐播传媒’ new confocal microscope. (Phyllis Graber Jensen/乐播传媒 College)

乐播传媒 College is now home to a state-of-the-art microscope, only the second of its kind in the state, that professors call a “game-changer” for student learning and faculty research.

Called a “confocal” microscope because of the optical technology it employs, the new Leica SP8 is a versatile, user-friendly device that gives 乐播传媒 a variety of important new or improved imaging capabilities. 乐播传媒 was able to obtain the microscope through a grant awarded by the National Science Foundation.

Taken with a confocal microscope, this image shows two adjacent neurons filled red and green fluorescent dye. The image, says 乐播传媒 neuroscientist Nancy Kleckner, can tell researchers if the cells are coupled, “that is, whether the dye could leak from one cell to the other.” These types of neurons are involved in regulating feeding in pond snails, a specific focus of Kleckner’s research.

The microscope can create three-dimensional internal images of transparent specimens. In addition, unlike some other high-resolution imaging technologies, confocal microscopy requires only minimal, non-destructive specimen preparation聽鈥� meaning, for instance, that biologists can use it to examine structures and processes within living cells.

The new scope will support research in disciplines including biology, neuroscience, nanotechnology and photophysics.

The 乐播传媒 scientists awarded the grant are Matthew Cote, associate professor of chemistry; Travis Gould, assistant professor of physics; Nancy Kleckner, associate professor of biology; and Larissa Williams, assistant professor of biology and the leader of the application and acquisition process.

The NSF awarded 乐播传媒 the $791,480 grant in September, and the German-built Leica was installed in a microscopy suite in the college’s Carnegie Science Hall in November. The grant was approved on the applicants’ first try. There are other confocal microscopes in Maine, but “the only comparable microscope to the Leica is at The Jackson Laboratory, in Bar Harbor,” said Joseph Tomaras, associate director of 乐播传媒’ office for external grants.

Biology professor Larissa Williams manipulates the specimen stage of 乐播传媒’ Leica SP8 confocal microscope. (Phyllis Graber Jensen/乐播传媒 College)

If the 乐播传媒 team is elated by the Leica’s features and research potential, Williams explains that in terms of 乐播传媒’ teaching capacity, the new scope is a game-changer. “It’s incredibly important that students have access to this state-of-art technology,” she says.

“This microscope is future-proof.”

Confocal microscopy uses lasers, computers and optical elements to compose a complete image one pixel at a time. Key to this process is a version of the art-photography student’s old friend, the pinhole, which helps remove unwanted information from the image. While the basic principles of the system date back nearly 60 years, it took decades for technology to catch up with theory.

Say “cheese”! A zebrafish depicted by a confocal microscope.

These microscopes create optical sections聽鈥� the rendering of images in thin uniform layers that can be digitally stacked into a three-dimensional representation. For Williams and Kleckner, this ability to look inside cells is key.

Kleckner’s plans for the scope include research into the nervous systems of pond snails and zebrafish. Williams, who studies the effects of environmental toxicants on animal development, also works with zebrafish, but in the embryonic stage.

Both rely on so-called fluorescence microscopy, in which certain wavelengths of light are used to “excite”聽鈥� or cause to glow聽鈥� biological specimens that have been treated with fluorescent dye or genetically modified to light up. Until now聽鈥� barring a road trip to use confocal scopes in Bar Harbor or at Bowdoin College 鈥� their go-to imaging tools were widefield scopes that can’t create optical sections.

The SP8 is a big step forward. “It allows us to make crisp, well-resolved images of deep cellular structures that our older microscopes would show as fuzzy,” says Williams.

For Gould, who specializes in nanoscopy, the Leica’s user-friendliness is an asset when he needs to test results from an experimental microscope that he or a student is working on. “You can just throw your sample on there, and see what you’ve got, in a quick and easy interface.” He’s also intrigued by the SP8’s ability to analyze the workings of fluorescent particles over a period of time within a sample.

The confocal workstation. The Leica microscope itself is to the left of the monitors. (Phyllis Graber Jensen/乐播传媒 College)

And the new scope’s ability to produce finely tuned wavelengths of laser light to illuminate samples is an advantage across the board.

Cote’s research is in nanotechnology, and the more precisely he can control the color of light that he trains onto nanostructures, the better he can understand their distinctive features.

“The bottom line is that, I think, Leica really has the best system out there, hands down,” says Gould. “It’s extremely flexible, extremely powerful, extremely easy to use. We’re very fortunate that we were able to get a system like this.

“And very fortunate that we got the grant for it on the first try, which is usually not the case.”

The confocal scope shares 乐播传媒’ microscopy suite with a JEOL scanning electron microscope that the college purchased in 2012. The two instruments are complementary. The SEM can depict smaller objects than the confocal, Cote explains, and is also equipped to chemically identify elements in a specimen. But preparing specimens for it can be destructive to them.

The confocal microscope provides non-destructive, true three-dimensional imaging, even of internal cellular structures and even of live cells. In fact, says Gould, “With the confocal you can target specific biomolecules for imaging, which is an important advantage over electron microscopy.”

“Because of the SP8’s capabilities, researchers at Bowdoin wrote to the NSF in support of our proposal,” Tomaras said. He added that the microscope will be incorporated into professional training in advanced imaging for faculty and students at Southern Maine Community College.

One of several crates in which the Leica SP8 arrived at 乐播传媒 in November 2014. (Sarah Crosby/乐播传媒 College)

It doesn’t take a rocket scientist, or a physicist for that matter, to see the trend.

Sixteen physics majors graduated last year, and another 17 are declared physics majors in the Class of 2015, numbers that are easily the highest in a decade.

And the pipeline is pretty full, says Professor of Physics Hong Lin, who chairs the department and has been on the faculty since 1991.

In her sophomore- and junior-level courses, she’s seeing some of the largest enrollments in the department’s history. “It’s exciting to see more students interested in physics.”

There’s quality in the quantity, too.

Physics major Ben Lovitz ’15 of Portland, Ore., works with his adviser, assistant professor Nathan Lundblad in his ultra-cold atomic physics lab. Lovitz is one of four senior physics majors who won competitive research fellowships last summer. (Phyllis Graber Jensen/乐播传媒 College)

Four of the department’s 17 senior majors 鈥斅燗ndrew Briggs, Emily Clark, Joceylyn Hoye and Benjamin Lovitz 鈥� won highly competitive fellowships last summer that took them to major research institutions across the country. They’re profiled below.

On campus, Ali Hakusui ’15 of Boxford, Mass., and Emily Hayes ’15 of Natick, Mass., won 乐播传媒 grants last summer funded by INBRE, collaborative network of Maine educational and research institutions sponsored by the聽National Institutes of Health.

Aliza Khurram ’15 of Rawalpindi, Pakistan, did 乐播传媒-funded summer work with her adviser, Lin, and she’s presenting her research at the Frontiers in Optics annual meeting in Tucson, Ariz., this week. Nathaniel Cash ’15 of Beverly, Mass., was in Nathan Lundblad’s doing work funded by Lundblad’s NASA space station grant.

Seeing the dizzying variety of physics-related careers in action.

For students, summer fellowships and internships complement their rigorous, personalized 乐播传媒 education, says Professor of Physics Mark Semon.

“At 乐播传媒, there’s close interaction between faculty and students 鈥斅爄n classes and labs, during senior theses and when students work with faculty on their research.”

When they head off campus, students get to see the dizzying variety of physics-related careers in action. They learn new skills and become familiar with large-scale research operations.

And they make professional contacts, building relationships and a network that pay off when it comes time to pursue graduate school, a professional program, or other career direction.

“Students often become co-authors on research papers and receive letters of recommendation from their supervisors,” Semon says. “This gives graduate programs and other hiring entities insights into how our student compare with people already in the field.”

Here, Briggs, Clark, Hoye and Lovitz talk about their summer fellowships.

Andrew Briggs
Hometown: York, Maine
Major: Physics and mathematics; philosophy minor
Research Funding: National Institute for Science and Technology’s Summer Undergraduate Research Fellowship, a program that selects just 30 percent of applicants
Location: NIST’s Physical Measurements Laboratory, Gaithersburg, Md.

Andrew Briggs ’15 (Sarah Crosby/乐播传媒 College)

How would you describe your summer fellowship experience to someone who isn鈥檛 a physicist?

At the end of my fellowship experience I delivered a plenary talk titled “Raman and Infrared Studies of Few Layer TaSe₂.” Though that might sound complex, I essentially shot light in many different ways at an atomically thin material and studied the optical properties.

I was also responsible for getting the group鈥檚 Fourier transform infrared spectrometer working, and taking preliminary results. No one in my group had used that particular machine yet, so I had to learn how to run it and write a standard operating procedure for my colleagues.

How does your fellowship connect to your work at 乐播传媒?

NIST was my first large research experience. Over the summer I learned so much about how research should be done. I could not be more thankful to be coming into my thesis knowing how to conduct research in an academic setting.

What was the best or most memorable part of your fellowship?

My responsibilities were so broad that at first I didn鈥檛 think I would be successful in my research. Not only did I perform good research, I even got to give the plenary talk for the Physical Measurements Laboratory at the end of the SURF program.

Emily Clark
Hometown: Readfield, Maine
Major: Physics; mathematics and Latin minors
Research Funding: National Science Foundation’s Research Experience for Undergraduates
Location: Indiana University

Emily Clark ’15 (Sarah Crosby/乐播传媒 College)

How would you describe your summer fellowship experience to someone who isn鈥檛 a physicist?

My research was on a substance called “nuclear pasta.” This is a state of matter that occurs at extremely high densities, like those found in the inner crusts of neutron stars.

Opposing forces mold the nuclear matter into strange shapes resembling various types of pasta, depending on the conditions of the system 鈥斅爂nocchi at lower densities, spaghetti and lasagna at higher densities.

A visualization of “nuclear pasta” courtesy of the Advanced Visualization Lab and Professor of Nuclear Physics and Astrophysics Charles Horowitz of the University of Indiana.

I wrote a computer code that would calculate the forces on the particles given a relatively small number of nucleons 鈥� about 5,000 鈥� at a certain density, and could develop the system to see what kinds of pasta shapes would be formed.

I also helped figure out how to work the department’s new 3-D printer so that we could print out the pasta shapes.

How does your fellowship connect to your work at 乐播传媒?

My research at IU was completely different from anything I have done at 乐播传媒. It involved relatively simple physics, but we were exploring a completely new state of matter. We could not have done it without computers 鈥� meaning that I had to teach myself some programming before I could do anything.

What was the best or most memorable part of your fellowship?

Probably the best part of the experience was really getting to feel like a physicist doing meaningful research. I got to work alongside physicists who had been doing research for years, and to contribute to their work.

I got to present my work at a at the joint meeting of the American Physical Society’s Division of Nuclear Physics and the Physical Society of Japan.

It was a great opportunity to network and to hear about other nuclear physics research happening around the world.

Jocelyn Hoye
Hometown: Sturbridge, Mass.
Major: Physics and mathematics with a public health concentration
Research Funding: The American Association of Physicists in Medicine Summer Undergraduate Fellowship Program, granted to 20 percent of applicants
Location: University of California, San Francisco聽Medical Center

Jocelyn Hoye ’15 (Sarah Crosby/乐播传媒 College)

How would you describe your summer fellowship experience to someone who isn鈥檛 a physicist?

I shadowed a medical physicist in the radiation oncology department at UCSFMC. I studied quality assurance for the Gamma Knife Perfexion, a machine that delivers radiation to patients for treatment of brain cancer 鈥� usually smaller tumors, epilepsy, trigeminal neuralgia and arteriovenous malformations.

I also observed surgeries and a variety of radiation treatments for several other conditions including ocular tumors, prostate cancer, cervical cancer and larger brain tumors.

How does your fellowship connect to your work at 乐播传媒?

My fellowship came at the perfect time right after the lab methods course I took last winter with Assistant Professor of Physics Nathan Lundblad. That semester was also my first research experience, working with Assistant Professor of Physics Travis Gould on a biological imaging project that I ended up presenting at the Mount David Summit.

I applied skills I聽learned that semester and, of course, skills from all of my other physics courses to my research this summer. This work also ties in with my senior thesis, where I am doing a theoretical analysis of one of the treatments I observed this summer.

What was the best or most memorable part of your fellowship?

The best part was getting to observe the treatment planning process and see how the medical physicists collaborated with physicians, surgeons, nurses and radiation therapists to come up with a treatment plan that would treat the patients’ conditions while minimizing the impact of radiation on healthy tissues.

I was in awe watching all the experts from differing fields come together to solve a problem for each individual patient.

Benjamin Lovitz
Hometown:听Portland, Ore.
Major: Physics
Research Funding:听National Science聽Foundation’s Research Experience for Undergraduates and the college’s Linda Erickson Rawlings Fund for Student Research
Location: Clarkson University

Benjamin Lovitz ’15 (Phyllis Graber Jensen/乐播传媒 College)

How would you describe your summer fellowship experience to someone who isn鈥檛 a physicist?

I worked with a group studying聽a small part of the theory behind what could in the future store and transmit information in a hypothetical “quantum computer.” In physics jargon, we call these quantum spin systems. Instead of modern day computers, which run on bytes 鈥斅�1s and 0s 鈥斅燼 quantum computer uses the behavior of single particles to store information.

We studied how single particles behave when placed in different graphs. By graphs we don’t mean the x and y graphs you remember from high school. Instead, these graphs consist of vertices, which are just dots in space, and edges connecting those vertices. The vertices are where the particle is allowed to reside. The edges designate the vertices that the particle may travel between.

When a particle is placed at a vertex and released, its location becomes probabilistic. We looked for graphs in which the particle could be released from a vertex and found some time later at another vertex with 100 percent probability.

This research was done largely with pen and paper, using a formula derived from the Schrdinger equation.

How does your fellowship connect to your work at 乐播传媒?

I am doing my thesis in Professor Nathan聽Lundblad’s Bose-Einstein condensation聽lab.The BEC creates quantum effects on a macroscopic scale by cooling atoms to very low temperatures. These two projects are related by their heavy reliance on quantum physics.

What was the best or most memorable part of your fellowship?

The best part of my experience was working with my summer adviser, Tino Tamon, and my wonderful student colleagues. It was also great being in beautiful upstate New York. The most surprising part was realizing聽that there is still new and accessible math and physics research being done with pen and paper!

Physicist Alan Nathan. (Nathan Stauffer)

Alan M. Nathan, a professor emeritus of physics at the University of Illinois and a nationally recognized expert on the physics of baseball, speaks at 乐播传媒 at 4:10 p.m. Tuesday, Sept. 9, in Room 204 of Carnegie Science Hall, 44 Campus Ave.

Titled The Physics of Baseball: You Can Observe a Lot by Watching (a phrase borrowed from Yogi Berra), Nathan’s talk is presented by the physics and astronomy department at 乐播传媒. Refreshments will be served in the Carnegie lobby at 3:45 pm. For more information, please call 207-786-6490.

A native of Rumford, Maine, Nathan will use high-speed video clips to highlight some of the interesting physics underlying the game of baseball. He will discuss the baseball-bat collision, the intricacies of a baseball’s flight and such practical questions as: What is the “sweet spot” of a bat? How does the batter’s grip affect the batted ball? Why does aluminum outperform wood? What determines how far a fly ball travels? How much does a curve ball break? What’s the deal with the knuckleball?

Nathan has consulted with major league teams including the Red Sox and served on the NCAA’s research panel during its exploration of the qualities of wood vs. aluminum bats. He has worked as consultant in baseball injury cases and was an adviser to the inventor of Sportvision’s widely used PITCHf/x pitch-tracking system during its development.

A nuclear physicist, Nathan joined the physics department at Illinois as an assistant professor in 1977 and retired in 2008.

On the topic of communicating science, I like to quote 乐播传媒 biologist Will Ambrose.

He once said that if the only people who understand your research are your academic adviser and your parents, then you’ve not done your job as a researcher.

Enter oceanographer Gregory Johnson ’85, who, as reported by , and other media outlets, has used haiku and watercolors to communicate deftly the daunting concepts of climate change contained in a massive 2013 report.

This watercolor by oceanographer Gregory Johnson ’85 is among 19 images with accompanying haiku that explain climate change. This one suggests that global warming persists despite the cooling effects of clouds and dust in the atmosphere. (Copyright Gregory Johnson)

Johnson, a physics major at 乐播传媒 who earned a doctorate at MIT, is a major contributor to that report, serving as a lead author of the chapter on

At more than 1,500 pages and 8 pounds, the report paints the complete picture of climate change. But it’s not easy reading, and even an MIT-trained researcher like Johnson was looking for ways to reinforce, in his own mind, the report’s major ideas.

As Reuters explains, Johnson was home sick one day, going over the report’s “Summary for Policymakers,” itself a dense, 28-page slab of ideas. “I thought that if I tried distilling these ideas into haiku, maybe that would help fix them in my mind,” he says.

He eventually created 19 watercolor/haiku pairings that can be published by the Sightline Institute, a Seattle-based environmental policy think-tank.

“Scientists can also be poets.”

In Sightline’s story, writer Anna Fahey notes that Johnson has created a “work of art [that] doubles as clear, concise, powerful talking points and a compelling visual guide” to understanding climate change.

“Condensing to this degree is not how scientists typically operate,” writes Fahey. “But, as Johnson proves, scientists can also be poets.”

As a disclaimer, Johnson emphasizes that the haiku and watercolors are a personal project, and don’t represent his employer, NOAA, or the international team of scientists responsible for the report.

A selection of Johnson’s haiku and watercolors are below. (All images copyright Gregory Johnson.)

We burn more carbon,
air warms for decades 鈥� but seas…
for millennia.

Recent air warming
slowed by volcanoes and sun?
Seas sequester heat.

Forty years from now
children will live in a world
shaped by our choices.

Arctic will warm most,
and land more than sea 鈥� too hot.
Still, choices matter.

Wet will get wetter
and dry drier, since warm air…
carries more water.

Fast, strong action
will reduce future warming, but…
rising seas certain.

Nathan Lundblad, assistant professor of physics, studies atomic behavior at ultracold temperatures. (Chris Milliman for 乐播传媒 College)

When NASA sends its new Cold Atom Laboratory up to the International Space Station in 2016, 乐播传媒 physicist Nathan Lundblad will be watching it go with more than routine scientific interest.

An atomic physicist, Lundblad is one of just a handful of scientists chosen by NASA to perform research with the Cold Atom Laboratory, a refrigerator-sized apparatus designed to create the coldest known environment in the universe聽鈥� one ten-billionth of a degree above absolute zero.

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Lundblad, who studies atomic behavior at ultra-cold temperatures, is principal investigator for one of seven NASA research projects that will employ the new facility. Moreover, Lundblad is the only principal investigator representing an undergraduate liberal arts college in the CAL project. The seven projects will share a total of about $12.7 million over a four- to five-year period.

Nathan Lundblad: What NASA’s Cold Atom Laboratory means for students

When Lundblad arrived at 乐播传媒 in 2009, he and his students established the first apparatus at 乐播传媒 for conducting this kind of research. 乐播传媒 and Amherst College are the only two undergraduate liberal arts colleges in the U.S. with such facilities.

When he first learned of the CAL opportunity, Lundblad saw his way to pursue research previously out of reach, so to speak. “The idea that I proposed to NASA has been popping around in my head for some years,” he says, “but it鈥檚 virtually impossible to do in the presence of gravity.”

News of the award sent Lundblad “absolutely over the moon with delight,” he says. “I鈥檒l have a chance to do science that I couldn鈥檛 do otherwise. I鈥檓 excited for my students, that they鈥檒l have opportunities to do research at this level. And it raises the profile of science at liberal arts colleges like 乐播传媒 to be able to participate in work like this.”

Nathan Lundblad: What NASA’s Cold Atom Laboratory means for 乐播传媒

At extreme low temperatures, the familiar physical attributes of classical mechanics are supplanted by the counterintuitive and seemingly weird behaviors of quantum mechanics — under which, for example, atomic particles can resemble waves as much as particles, and a given object can be in more than one place at the same time.

Lundblad works with Bose-Einstein condensates (BECs). Named for the physicists who first postulated their existence in the 1920s, Satyendra Bose and Albert Einstein, these are ultracold clouds of gas whose atoms lose their individual characteristics and behave more like a unified wave.

Here on the planet, gravity curtails how cold an environment can be maintained in the vacuum chambers used to create BECs. Because gravity’s pull aboard the space station is so faint, the CAL will be able to reach temperatures lower than can be established in an earthly lab.

In collaboration with Courtney Lannert, a theoretical physicist at Smith and the University of Massachuetts Amherst, and David Aveline, an experimental physicist at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Lundblad has proposed a set of experiments to observe properties of certain types of BECs that can’t be created in Earth’s gravitational field.

“I’m interested in studying how the rules of quantum mechanics apply to a BEC based on its shape, and certain shapes are really tough to make in gravity. I’m looking to make a BEC in the form of a shell or bubble, and then study how quantum mechanics applies to a system that is two-dimensional, but without a border, like the surface of the Earth.”

At 乐播传媒, Lundblad will work with a postdoctoral researcher and with his students to design experiments for the CAL. That work is expected to begin this May and continue at 乐播传媒 through 2019.

In the Lundblad lab at 乐播传媒, the apparatus for conjuring up a Bose-Einstein condensate occupies a large table covered with a mass of wires, tubing and hardware at whose heart is a vacuum chamber and a set of lasers. He and his students are accustomed to attending this machinery hands-on — a degree of control they’ll have to surrender with the CAL, which they will operate remotely, with just limited intervention by the space station astronauts.

“The astronauts aboard the ISS will be able to make small changes, but they are very busy up there. So in general the biggest challenge is running this apparatus remotely, and that鈥檚 totally different from how we do things on Earth.”