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The Anatoly Larkin Award, named after the renowned theoretical physicist, celebrates outstanding achievements in theoretical physics. The accolade is given annually to two researchers—one senior and one junior—who have made exceptional contributions to advancing the field. 

Nandkishore’s work, which spans various complex areas in theoretical physics, continues to shape our understanding of many-body quantum systems and their behavior in disordered environments. His recognition by the FTPI underscores the impact and significance of his research in the scientific community. 

As part of the recognition, Nandkishore will be invited to present a colloquium at the University of Minnesota's School of Physics and Astronomy.  

“I am honored and grateful to receive this award,” Nandkishore stated. “Being a theoretical physicist can be a lonely business – you work hard on problems that you think are important, but at the same time you can’t help but wonder if anyone cares. It’s nice to know that the community does care, and recognizes the importance of the work you’ve been doing. I am also grateful for the unflagging efforts of the students and postdocs who have worked with me, and who helped establish many of my results, to the senior scientists who mentored me, and to my colleagues at CU who created such a supportive environment for my research.” 

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The Distinguished Research Lectureship is awarded annually to a tenured faculty member, Research Professor, or Adjoint Professor who has been with the university for at least five years. A faculty review panel evaluates nominees, and those selected are invited to present a public lecture highlighting their work. The award recipients receive a $2,000 honorarium and are celebrated for their contributions to CU Boulder and the broader academic community. 

As a Professor of Physics, Nagle has spent much of his career investigating the early universe through high-energy nuclear physics. His research has focused on understanding the quark-gluon plasma, a state of matter theorized to have existed just microseconds after the Big Bang.  

“As you go back to about 6 microseconds after the universe started, the temperature was around two trillion Kelvin,” Nagle explained. “It was theorized that protons and neutrons inside of nuclei would melt away, creating a bath of more fundamental particles—quarks and gluons.” 

Nagle's work involves recreating droplets of this quark-gluon plasma in a laboratory setting by colliding large nuclei at nearly the speed of light. These collisions occur at the world’s highest energy accelerators, including the Relativistic Heavy Ion Collider (RHIC) at Brookhaven National Laboratory in New York and the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) in Geneva, Switzerland.  

“In the world's highest energy accelerators, we can collide very large nuclei like gold, lead, or platinum at such high velocities that we create a tiny droplet of this 2 trillion Kelvin plasma,” he said. 

Reflecting on the award, Nagle expressed deep gratitude and a sense of accomplishment: “It means a lot to me. You get to a certain middle age and are more self-confident, but this recognition feels rewarding. There's a lot of effort, and much of the hard work goes unnoticed. It’s nice to feel like the fruits of that labor are appreciated.” 

The Distinguished Research Lectureship also emphasizes communicating complex scientific concepts to broader audiences. For Nagle, this is a vital part of his work: “This award is very meaningful to me because I often listen to the lectures of past recipients. It's about communicating the broader context of why this scientific research is important, not just within the microcosm of nuclear physics.” 

Nagle’s lecture is expected to take place in February 2025.  

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Jun Ye, a professor of physics and a JILA and NIST Fellow, has been named the inaugural holder of the Monroe Endowed Professorship in Physics. This prestigious new professorship, the result of a $1 million endowment from CU alumnus Chris Monroe, underscores the university’s growing prominence in quantum information science and applied quantum physics.  

“I went to CU for graduate school simply because it looked like the best place for me to study atomic and quantum physics,” Monroe said. “Only later did I realize just how much better it was than high-drama places on the coasts. I cannot imagine a better preparation for the rest of my career having gone through CU and JILA.” 

Chris Monroe, Circa 1990

Monroe, a pioneering physicist and co-founder of IonQ, Inc., established the Monroe Endowed Professorship in Physics to support CU Boulder’s leadership in the rapidly evolving field of quantum research. He graduated from CU Boulder in 1992 with a Ph.D. in Physics under the mentorship of Nobel Laureates Carl Wieman and Eric Cornell, then worked closely with Nobel Laureate David Wineland at nearby NIST-Boulder as they pioneered the use of individual atoms as quantum computer bits (qubits). His illustrious career has taken him to Duke University, where he is the Director of the Duke Quantum Center, and holds the Gilhuly Family Presidential Distinguished Professor of Electrical and Computer Engineering and Physics at Duke. Monroe’s research has pioneered all aspects in designing and fabricating scalable quantum computers based on atomic qubits. His machines have been programmed for rudimentary quantum algorithms and simulations of complex quantum phenomena in nature. His company IonQ, the first public quantum computing company, aims to commercialize quantum computers according to a clear technology roadmap.  

His vision for the CU Physics endowment, outlined in the fund agreement, is clear: “The purpose in establishing this Fund is to enable the University and JILA to expand its research and education capacity in quantum information science and applied quantum physics through an endowed professorship position that will retain current faculty or allow the University and JILA to hire the best and brightest researchers in this field.”  

One of the leaders teaching the best and brightest researchers is Jun Ye, who is internationally recognized for his groundbreaking work in precision measurement, ultracold molecules, and ultra-high precision atomic clocks. His strontium lattice atomic clock, which uses laser-based technology, is currently the most accurate in the world. His very recent measurement of a nuclear transition using laser light could revolutionize clocks (and maybe even quantum computers) well into the future. Ye’s numerous accolades reflect his leadership in the field, including the 2022 Breakthrough Prize, the I.I. Rabi Prize, and the Niels Bohr Institute Medal of Honor. 

“I certainly feel very honored to be a recipient of the Monroe Endowed Professorship,” Ye said. “I have known Chris for many years. It turns out that when I arrived in JILA and CU Physics as a fresh graduate student, the very first PhD defense I witnessed was Chris's work with Carl Wieman. I have regarded Chris a gold standard for JILA and CU Physics graduates ever since.  He has made big impact to quantum information science, being an original practitioner, a visionary advocate, and a breakthrough technologist.”  

The selection committee, led by CU Boulder Physics Professor Paul Beale and including a combination of Physics department faculty and JILA Fellows, unanimously chose Ye for the position  

“Jun is internationally recognized as a leader in quantum science and technology with a specialty in precision measurement,” Beale said in a statement from the selection committee. “He is a world leader in frequency combs, ultracold molecules, and ultra-high precision atomic clocks,”  

The Monroe Endowed Professorship joins a distinguished lineage of other endowed positions in CU Boulder’s Department of Physics. In 2021, alumnus Joseph Mitchell and his wife Cindy established the Jesse Lafayette Mitchell Endowed Chair in Experimental Physics. Alysia Marino currently holds this chair, where her research focuses on neutrino detection and the fundamental properties of these elusive particles. Additionally, the Waldo E. Rennie Endowed Professorship in Theoretical Physics, created in 2021 with funds from the trust of Waldo E. Rennie, supports Michael Hermele’s research in quantum phases of matter and strongly correlated systems. 

As the holder of the new Monroe Endowed Professorship, Jun Ye is poised to continue his transformative work in quantum physics, ensuring that CU Boulder remains at the forefront of quantum science research. 

“I will continue to draw inspiration from Chris and help to advance the field of quantum science and precision measurement,” added Ye.  

Header photo credit: R. Jacobson/NIST

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A Journey Through Physics

Akers’ journey into physics started at a young age.

“I grew up liking math and science and puzzles,” he says.

His passion for problem-solving naturally led him toward physics. During high school, Akers stumbled upon popular physics books by Sean Carroll and lectures by Steve Pollack, a professor of physics at CU Boulder. These resources fueled his interest in theoretical physics, steering him toward an academic career.

“I started in college as a physics major with academia as my goal,” Akers recalls.

Akers’ academic journey took him from Texas A&M University, where he explored various research areas, to the University of California at Berkeley for graduate school. Following his time at Berkeley, he pursued postdoctoral positions at MIT and the Institute for Advanced Study at Princeton. During these experiences, Akers refined his research focus, ultimately moving toward studying quantum gravity.

Current Research and Projects

Akers’ research at CU Boulder revolves around quantum gravity and the holographic principle. This theory suggests gravitational phenomena in our universe can be described by a quantum system in a lower-dimensional space that doesn’t include gravity.

As Akers explains: “There’s a completely different formulation of gravity that doesn’t involve gravity at all... this is sort of an emergent description of that other quantum system.”

In collaboration with colleagues such as Andrew Lucas and others at CU Boulder, Akers is working on simplifying complex problems in quantum gravity by examining them in fewer dimensions.

“We live in 3 plus 1 dimensions—three dimensions of space and one of time. But it turns out you can mathematically formulate an interesting theory of gravity in just one spatial dimension with one time dimension,” he adds.

This approach makes the equations governing quantum gravity more manageable while still preserving essential physics that can be used to build a deeper understanding of the fundamental nature of our universe.

Akers’ work is further supported by a $3 million grant from the Heising-Simons Foundation, which funds a collaboration among CU Boulder researchers to investigate how quantum gravity can be simulated using atomic, molecular, and optical (AMO) systems. This effort could provide new insights into quantum emergent spacetime, potentially solving long-standing questions in physics.

Since arriving at CU Boulder, Akers has been impressed by the vibrant academic community.

“The people here are some of the best in the world at what they do,” he says, emphasizing the quality of his colleagues in the quantum group. “I get to talk about various aspects of quantum physics with some of the leading experts in AMO physics.”

In addition to the academic atmosphere, Akers enjoys the location and outdoor activities that Boulder offers. He’s looking forward to taking advantage of the city’s many hiking trails and outdoor adventures. “There’s so much to do, I can’t wait to explore,” he adds.

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“It’s a rare opportunity and a very special occasion for a grad student to present a talk at a physics colloquium,” explained Zhang. “I felt super excited. I think people enjoyed the talk and our research.”

CU Boulder Physics professor and JILA and NIST Fellow Jun Ye, a leading figure in quantum physics, hosted Zhang’s presentation. The talk discussed some of the groundbreaking research done by Zhang and other members of Ye’s thorium clock team, which was recently published as .

Zhang’s talk focused on the latest advancements in using lasers to measure and control the behavior of atoms, which is essential for studying critical quantum phenomena. He highlighted a significant breakthrough involving the thorium-229 nucleus, where the team used a highly specialized laser to examine nuclear energy levels with incredible precision for the first time. This measurement was achieved thanks to a cutting-edge tool, a laser frequency comb that works in a very short wavelength of light.

Zhang explained how he and the team precisely measured the thorium nuclear clock transition and connected it to the most accurate atomic clock in the world, which uses the element strontium-87. This connection between nuclear physics and precision timekeeping is not just an impressive scientific accomplishment—it could lead to new ways to test fundamental theories in physics. Additionally, it holds the potential to create extremely reliable timing devices that could be used in various important applications.

“This is just the beginning of this new field,” Zhang added. “There are many things that we can do now. We’re improving our laser to get an even better resolution on this newly found nuclear transition. We are also collaborating with different groups and trying other thorium samples to see how the different material changes the transition. We also closely work with theorists to interpret our data and its fundamental physics implications.”

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Among the recipients is CU Boulder Physics Professor Meredith Betterton, who, alongside collaborator Jeffrey Moore from CU Anschutz, received funding for their project on tubulinopathies, genetic diseases that disrupt brain and nervous system development due to mutated tubulin proteins.

“You can think of tubulin as being like a brick that is stacked next to other bricks to build a road (the microtubule),” Betterton explained. “One of the puzzles about tublinopathies is that the mutation usually occurs in one tubulin gene out of many, so it affects only a minority (usually 25% or less) of the subunits. We aim to understand how a mutation in one small part of a tubulin gene can cause catastrophic defects at the cell and tissue level, ultimately impacting patients.”

Betterton's and Moore’s research proposes that tubulin mutations influence structural changes in neighboring tubulins, amplifying the mutation's effects and creating serious health issues for individuals.

“This award is very exciting for my lab and me because it will provide seed funding for a new direction for our work,” Betterton added. “It’s a fantastic opportunity to potentially help people affected by these diseases.”

Highlighting the collaborative nature of the project, Betterton emphasized the importance of interdisciplinary research: “We will work with the Moore lab at CU Anschutz to conduct a combined experimental and theoretical study. This award is meaningful because it supports a new idea predicted by our theoretical work, now finding support in experiments. As a theoretical physicist, being able to predict an important new effect is something we all hope to do in our work.”

The AB Nexus program continues cultivating a culture of collaboration and innovation at the University of Colorado. Its vision is to tackle the toughest challenges in human health through teamwork across diverse fields.

As Vice Chancellor Thomas Flaig noted in the award announcement: “Solving the toughest challenges in human health requires teamwork across a wide range of fields, and we’re very proud of how this program has helped to inspire so many new interdisciplinary research projects across our campuses.”

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In the current landscape of higher education, familiar challenges like disengaged students, faculty burnout, and high staff turnover can frequently dominate discussions. Often seen as separate issues, these challenges can be viewed through a systems perspective to reveal deeper, interconnected roots—chief among them a pervasive lack of belonging across all levels of academia. The recent COVID-19 pandemic seemed to have exacerbated these issues, leaving many students, staff, and faculty feeling isolated and overwhelmed.  

To address these issues and suggest a possible solution, University of Colorado Boulder Professor of Physics Noah Finkelstein collaborated with CU Boulder Professor of History Phoebe Young to highlight the importance of belonging, or a sense of community, at institutes of higher learning in a recently published article for the journal Change: The Magazine of Higher Learning. From their work, they found that belonging is important on multiple levels, from students to faculty and staff to the institution itself, and that each of these levels can help support each other.   

“One of the key takeaways is that each level impacts the other levels and is impacted by the other levels,” Finkelstein explained. “So students, faculty, and institutions both benefit from a sense of belonging and are agents of belonging for these other layers.”  

A Background in Belonging 

For years, Finkelstein and Young have studied the importance of belonging within separate institutional layers.  

In addition to conducting studies that identify a sense of belonging as essential for student engagement and retention in physics classes, Finkelstein notes that, as a professor, he got a front-row seat to seeing how belonging impacted students. Given his role, he observed how students helped foster belonging not only for other students but also for faculty.  

Additionally, Finkelstein studies the role of belonging at an institutional level, both in his research on institutional change and as he sits on the board of trustees for the Higher Learning Commission. From his position, he looks at how institutions are organized and the policies they implement to cultivate a community and sense of belonging among individuals.  

Young elaborated, “I've done less formal research on faculty and staff belonging than Noah has done on either students or institutions.” As Associate Chair for Undergraduate Studies, however, she led and published efforts within her department (the History Teaching and Learning Project and the Teaching Quality Initiative), which demonstrated the significance of faculty sense of belonging.  

“We got together and said, ‘Hey, why not combine forces on this,’ and then we can highlight the systems view with multiple layers,” Finkelstein added.  

Belonging is Multi-Layered 

Unlike previous literature, which has largely examined each layer individually, Finkelstein and Young adopted a systems view to explore the concept of belonging at its three essential layers: student, faculty and staff, and institutional. This multi-layered approach involved analyzing existing literature and case studies to understand how belonging impacts each group and their interdependencies.  

“You can't look at any one of these groups in isolation, right?” Young said. “We have to think about how they relate to each other.”  

The researchers examined students' academic and social belonging, highlighting the importance of feeling connected to their field of study and peers. They also looked at how institutional support and recognition influence faculty and staff's ability to foster student belonging. Lastly, Finkelstein and Young considered how institutions themselves need to be viewed as integral parts of society to foster a collective sense of belonging. 

The researchers saw that a strong sense of belonging is correlated with higher retention rates, increased engagement, and better academic performance for students. They found that, notably, belonging has a more substantial impact on retention for women in fields like physics than traditional metrics like exam scores.  

For faculty and staff, Young and Finkelstein saw that belonging enhances their capacity to support students and contributes to institutional loyalty and reduced turnover.  

At the institutional level, not only does the institute construct conditions for students and faculty belonging within college campuses, but also, increasingly, institutions for higher education need to make the case that they belong and contribute to our broader society.   

Belonging During the COVID-19 Pandemic  

For Young, the faculty and staff's sense of belonging was especially important during the COVID-19 pandemic.  

“We noticed the importance of belonging more clearly when it got stressed and taken away during the pandemic. This was because of the way faculty were being so front and center and staff too on many occasions for trying to hold on to some kind of tenuous sense of student belonging. For them, they had fewer tools to do so than they would have normally had.”  

Finkelstein and Young found the pandemic revealed that a strong sense of belonging among faculty and staff is essential for their well-being and their capacity to support students effectively. This period underscored the interdependence of belonging across different levels within academia: diminished belonging among faculty and staff led to decreased student engagement, highlighting the need for systemic approaches to foster a supportive environment for all. 

Belonging Beyond the Simple Fix  

Given their observations, Young and Finkelstein suggest that moving forward, higher education institutes need to adopt this systems-wide thinking to ensure sustainable belonging within and beyond an institution.  

“We often see belonging in the literature that belonging does matter, but there's often a kind of list, such as ‘the top 10 things you can do to increase student belonging.’” Young stated. “So it becomes a kind of plug-and-play or one-off solution. So the institutions then say: ‘Oh, we'll pick this one. We'll do that, and things will be better.’”  

Instead, Finkelstein and Young suggest that shifting to a systems-wide view can help integrate belonging into an institutional framework more sustainably. This perspective requires rethinking institutional policies and practices to foster an environment where students, faculty, and staff all feel valued and supported. For institutions, this means not only addressing internal culture and policies but also how they are perceived externally. By positioning themselves as integral parts of the broader social fabric, institutions can garner public support and fulfill their mission to serve the public good more effectively. 

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Only a few individuals or teams are awarded by the Guinness Book of World Records for specific actions or research they’ve done. One of those teams is led by the University of Colorado Boulder Professor of Physics Ivan Smalyukh, who, with his research group, developed “the World’s Most Transparent Material.”

This material—a synthetic gel-derived material known as aerogel—is around 97-99% transparent, compared to glass, which is around 92% transparent. While many aerogels are being manufactured worldwide, the aerogel Smalyukh and his team have created involves fibers of cellulose, a protein derived from plants. Their aerogel, which has now been successfully patented, can be added to windows to boost thermal insulation, increasing the overall efficiency of a building.

What is an Aerogel?

Aerogels are often described as “frozen smoke” or “solid air” because they are incredibly light and porous. They are made by removing the liquid from a gel, leaving behind a mostly empty solid network.

“There are different ways people define aerogels, but it’s roughly one percent solid by volume and 99 percent air, so it’s mostly air,” explained Smalyukh.

Despite being extremely lightweight, aerogels are excellent thermal insulators, which means they can prevent heat from passing through them. This makes them useful in everything from space exploration to insulating homes.

“In the U.S., unfortunately, we still have almost 50 percent of single-pane windows,” added Smalyukh. “What that means is that you heat the building, especially during winter, but then a lot of that energy is actually lost through the windows.”

By retrofitting these windows with aerogel, the thermal efficiency of these windows can be increased as more heat is trapped inside.

The Challenge with Transparency

Traditional aerogels, however, despite being effective insulators, have drawbacks—they tend to scatter light, making them appear cloudy or opaque. This limits their use in applications where transparency is important, such as windows.

“They are so hazy because you have many tiny particles that are somehow connected to each other in a network. And the length of the pores between these particles ranges from a few nanometers to micrometers.”

That’s where the new aerogel Smalyukh and his team developed, called SiCellA, comes in. Instead of having various pore lengths and particle sizes like other aerogels, the researchers meticulously controlled the size of the particles, the cellulose fibers, within SiCellA, along with the distance between these particles.

“The cellulose fibers we use are typically under 6 nanometers in diameter. Because the particles themselves have a diameter much smaller than the wavelengths of light and the pores in between them are also much smaller, therefore, the scattering of light is very small.”

This produces a higher transparency percentage of the aerogel, allowing it to let through 97-99% of visible light while scattering and reflecting only 1% of the remaining light.

Boosting Energy Efficiency

Infrared thermal imaging photos of different types of treated and untreated window panes mounted into an insulated box. These boxes are designed to hold extreme hot and cold temperatures to test the thermal insulating properties of each window type. The double-paned Insulated Glass Unit (IGU) containing the SiCellA aerogel (Top Left) and the single window pane treated with the SiCellA aerogel film (Bottom Left) show markedly higher thermal insulation properties than a conventional double-paned IGU (Top Right), and a single pane of glass (Bottom Right).

“If we only could stop that heat loss, then we would not need to generate this much energy,” Smalyukh elaborated. “That means shutting down some coal-based power plants or using less fossil fuels.”

By using this SiCellA in windows, buildings could become much more energy-efficient, reducing the need for heating and cooling and lowering energy bills. Because SiCellA is so transparent, it can be used in windows without blocking the natural light that makes spaces bright and inviting. This means that homes and offices can stay comfortable all year round while using less energy, contributing to a more sustainable future.

A Guinness World Record

The incredible transparency of SiCellA hasn’t gone unnoticed. The Guinness Book of World Records has officially recognized it as the most transparent material ever created.

When Smalyukh & team presented their results at an ARPA-E project meeting, the program manager suggested submitting SiCellA to the Guinness Book of World Records to help disseminate the project's outcomes. While Smalyukh and his team did submit the record to Guinness back in 2019, the public release of this World Record wasn’t until much later, as the team was patenting SiCellA at the same time and had to wait for the patents and in to be accepted before breaking the news.

“It was interesting and exciting to see the record entry in the Guinness Book of World Records,” Smalyukh added. “We were happy that everything went through.”

Title Image: Senior Research Associates Vladyslav Cherpak and Bohdan Senyuk hold SiCellA aerogel film, suspended in plastic wrap, in front of the foothills. Image courtesy of the Smalyukh Group

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