Radio Physics: Recent Episodes
Patty Fox
Radio Physics is for everyone! You don't have to be a scientist or even an aficionado to be fascinated by the questions and answers that you'll hear between 4:30 and 5:00 on the fourth Tuesday of every month. Radio Physics is a collaboration with top high school physics students from Aspen to Rifle, the Aspen Center for Physics, and KDNK Community Radio in Carbondale. Students interview one of the more than 1,000 physicists who visit the Aspen Center for Physics every year.
Javier Magán on Quantum Field Theory, Quantum Gravity, Quantum Information, Quantum Chaos and Quantum Complexity.
On this episode of Radio Physics, student intern Bryson Wells interviews John Schwarz, a Professor of Theoretical Physics at Caltech, the California Institute of Technology.
On this episode of Radio Physics, Alex Lupsasca speaks with summer interns, Andrew Tran and Bryson Wells. Alex Lupsasca is an Assistant Professor of Physics and Math at Vanderbilt University. He is a theorist with training in high-energy physics and general relativity.
On this episode of Radio Physics, summer interns Ean Olmstead and Andrew Tran interview Jessica Werk, associate professor of Physics at the University of Washington. Her research focuses on the role of gas in the formation and evolution of galaxies and the intergalactic medium, primarily through spectroscopic observations in the optical and ultraviolet.
On this episode of Radio Physics, summer intern, Imogen Kistner interviews Glenny's Reynolds Farrar.
This episode of Radio Physics features Kim Berghaus, a postdoctoral researcher at StonyBrook University who specializes in minimal thermal friction in cosmology, and researches the Migdal Effect in semiconductors, dark matter, and dark energy radiation.
Corey Michelin, a rising senior at Aspen High School and Madeline Schaefer, the daughter of visiting physicists, interview Kristen Dage, a postdoctoral fellow at the McGill Space Institute. Kristen uses multiwavelength observations to identify objects in extreme gravitational environments and characterize their physics. She received her PhD in astrophysics in from Michigan State University, and her Bachelor of Science in physics at the University of Michigan-Dearborn.
Evelyn Stefli, a rising senior at Aspen High School interviews Cecilia Chirenti, a research scientist at NASA Goddard Space Flight Center and the University of Maryland. Cecilia earned her Bachelor’s and PhD degrees in Physics from the Physics Institute of the University of Sao Paulo in Brazil, followed by a postdoc at the Albert Einstein Institute in Potsdam, Germany, before becoming a professor at the Federal University of ABC in Brazil, where she still maintains strong connections. Her research interests include relativistic astrophysics, testing relativity with gravitational waves, and understanding the details of black hole and neutron star mergers. She is also very active with education and outreach and maintains a busy schedule both in the US and Brazil encouraging students to become interested in astrophysics.
Aspen High School students Kenton Kowar and Elijah Goldman interview Nicholas Rodd, a theoretical physicist at CERN and organizer of the winter conference, “New Methods and Ideas at the Frontiers of Particle Physics." The three met during Lina Necib’s excellent public lecture at the Wheeler Opera House which Nicholas introduced. Lina's lecture is available at YouTube Aspen Physics by searching 2022 Winter Public Lectures.
Aspen High School senior, Kenton Kowar, and Basalt High School junior, Connor Hoffman, interview theoretical astrophysicist Anna Lisa Varri from the University of Edinburgh. Anna Lisa’s research focuses on the dynamics of stellar systems combining mathematics and astronomy and Kenton’s and Connor’s questions penetrated deeply into her research.
Patty Fox and members of the Aspen High School club, Girls in STEM interview practicing physicists and get some fantastic advice.
This fall, a group of Aspen High School students led by Mino Khan-Farooqi, Natalie Wesner and Claire Anderson formed a new club, “Girls in STEM,” with the intention of expanding their knowledge of careers in science, tech, engineering and math, in part by talking to women in these fields.
Caroline Boyd was a rising senior at Aspen High School in 2012 when she worked as a go-fer during the Aspen Center for Physics’ 50th celebration. She was inspired by her conversations with physicists at the Center to work in a lab when she went to Colorado College. This led Caroline to graduate work in the Department of Plant and Microbial Biology at University of California, Berkeley where she is now a doctoral candidate in Microbiology. In this interview, a reversal of our usual format, physics professor Clare Yu (University of California, Irvine), a member of the Aspen Center for Physics, probes Caroline’s research interests and shares her enthusiasm for virology and experimental research.
Katherine Young interviews Vivienne Baldassare, the William Band Distinguished Assistant Professor of Physics and Astronomy at Washington State University. Vivienne earned her PhD in Astronomy and Astrophysics from the University of Michigan in 2017.
Gemma Hill, a senior at Aspen High School and Katherine Young, senior at Glenwood Springs High School talk to Aditi Mitra, Professor of Physics at New York University, whose interests include quantum phase transitions and nanoscale physics.
Gemma Hill, a senior at Aspen High School, interviews galactic archeologist Keith Hawkins, Assistant Professor of Astronomy at the University of Texas at Austin. His research group focuses on the nature of the Milky Way.
Gemma Hill, a rising junior at Aspen High School interviews Stephanie Palmer, Associate Professor at the University of Chicago in the Department of Organismal Biology and Anatomy and the Department of Physics. She studies how neurons collectively encode incoming information and perform computations on the information. The brain performs several classes of computation including signal comparison, prediction, error correction, and learning.
Danie Way, a rising junior at Glenwood Springs High School interviews Sarah Loebman, an assistant professor in astrophysics at the University of California, Merced. Sarah's primary research interests are in galaxy evolution, clustered star formation, and chemo-dynamics in the Local Universe. She is also a devoted teacher and student advocate, and is strongly committed to supporting Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion efforts in astrophysics.
Danie Way, a rising senior at Glenwood Springs High School interviews Dr. Grace Telford, a postdoctoral researcher at Rutgers University studying the histories of star formation and heavy element, or metal, enrichment in nearby galaxies.
Jacob Bourjaily is a theoretical physicist at the Niels Bohr Institute in Copenhagen. Jacob completed his PhD in 2011 at Princeton Unviersity after which he spent three years at Harvard University as a Junior Fellow. The primary focus of Jacob's research is quantum field theory: connecting theory to experiment. Here, he explains why predictions made using quantum theory are often surprisingly simple in form.
Ibrahim Bah is Assistant Professor of Physics at Johns Hopkins University. His general research interest is in theoretical high-energy physics and cosmology exploring the relations between quantum field theories, string theory and gravity via the framework of holography. He’s also interested in fundamental aspects of black holes and their role in nature, all part of a larger research program in high-energy physics whose main goal is to understand a quantum theory of gravity.
After postdoctoral work, Wolfgang Ketterle joined the physics faculty at MIT where he is now the John D. MacArthur Professor of Physics. He does experimental research in atomic physics and laser spectroscopy and focuses currently on Bose-Einstein condensation in dilute atomic gases.
Sayantani Ghosh is an Associate Professor at the University of California, Merced. Her research covers both traditional topics and emerging multi-disciplinary themes in condensed matter physics. In addition, Professor Ghosh is the Founding Faculty and Advisor of UC Merced Women in Science and Engineering.
Pankaj Mehta is an Associate Professor at Boston University. His research focuses on theoretical and computational problems at the interface of theoretical physics, biology, and machine learning. Pankaj Mehta is also a long-time activist and writes regularly on science and politics.
Professor Amir Yacoby teaches Physics at Harvard University. His current interests include understanding the behavior of low-dimensional systems and their applications to quantum information technology.
Paul Goldbart is Dean of the College of Natural Sciences and Professor in the Department of Physics at University of Texas at Austin. His research focuses primarily on condensed matter. Paul also contributes to the fields of mesoscopic physics, quantum entanglement and chaos, atom-light crystallization in ultracold gases, nano-superconductivity, and a little law and economics.
Aparna Baskaran, Associate Professor of Physics at Brandeis University, studies the dynamics of soft materials far from equilibrium. She is presently focused on understanding active materials such as self-propelled colloids and in vitro cytoskeletal filament systems, field and shear driven colloids and granular materials.
Flip Tanedo is an assistant professor of theoretical physics at the University of California, Riverside where he is known for being covered in chalk dust after a long day’s work. His goal is to figure out what dark matter is and how it fits into our understanding of fundamental science. Flip grew up in Los Angeles and fell in love with physics after reading The Physics of Star Trek. This carried into degrees in mathematics and physics at Stanford, Cambridge, and Durham, a Ph.D at Cornell and a postdoc at UC Irvine.
Dr. Katherine Mack is a theoretical astrophysicist who studies cosmology and teaches at North Carolina State University. She speaks with Aspen High School's Maxine Mellin and Lander Greenway about dark matter, the early universe, galaxy formation, black holes, cosmic strings and the ultimate fate of the cosmos.
Dr. Jim Halverson is an assistant professor of physics at Northeastern University and applies his background in computation and math to study the interface between particle physics, string theory and cosmology. Interviewing him are Sharmila Day and Maxine Mellin.
Ajay Gopinathan joined UC Merced just as it opened and served as one of the founding members of the faculty, helping build undergraduate and graduate programs in Physics as well as interdisciplinary centers and institutes on campus. He is currently the Chair of the Department of Physics and also serves as Director of the National Science Foundation Center for Cellular and Biomolecular Machines, a research center that brings together about two dozen labs across science and engineering. His educational background includes a Ph.D in Physics from the University of Chicago, working on various problems in soft condensed matter physics including crumpling of sheets, colloidal suspensions and polymeric materials. Following this, he was a joint postdoctoral fellow at UCLA and UCSB working on how protein biopolymers produced forces. His current research involves using theoretical and computational methods to understand biological transport and biological machinery at the molecular, cellular and multicellular scales. In particular, he is interested in understanding how living systems are able to transport material with high fidelity in extremely noisy and disordered environments.