News

Haoxin Zhou joined us as an Assistant Professor this September. Haoxin's research area is experimental quantum matter physics. He specializes in superconducting circuits, nanomechanics, and strongly correlated electron systems to probe, manipulate, and harness quantum behavior at mesoscopic and macroscopic scales. His lab is in PSB and he is looking for students! He will present the condensed-matter seminar on Nov 5, 2026. He comes here from a postdoc position at UC Berkeley. Welcome, Haoxin!

Prof. Scott Hertel and graduate student Mark Murdy and their colleagues in the LUX-ZEPLIN collaboration reported an intriguing detection event, which is a candidate for a dark-matter detection! This UMass news article nicely summarizes the event and Scott's assessment. For experts: the LZ site and the collaboration's report on the ArXiv have details. Congratulations to Scott and Mark for this exciting news! 

Physics faculty colleague Varghese Mathai has been promoted to Associate Professor with tenure.  Varghese is an experimentalist, specializing in soft matter physics and fluid mechanics. His research focuses on the interactions between soft materials (e.g., bubbles, droplets and membranes) and hydrodynamic turbulence. You can read about his group's work here: https://varghesemathai.weebly.com/  Congratulations, Varghese! 

Physics faculty colleague Shuang Zhou has been promoted to Associate Professor with tenure.  He is an experimentalist, specializing in soft matter and bioinspired materials. Shuang's research includes liquid crystals, active matter (including living liquid crystals), and the mechanisms by which single-cell organisms swim. Congratulations, Shuang! 

A new $25M NSF grant was awarded to a group led by five universities with large data centers, including Prof. Rafael Coelho Lopes de Sa (UMass Physics / MGHPCC). The group will develop a National Data Platform (NDP), which will allow users to seamlessly connect to and harness U.S. computing infrastructure, transforming data-to-knowledge from being data-limited to knowledge-driven through composable, discoverable, interoperable and trustworthy AI services at the fingertips of researchers, educators, and learners nationwide.  More information can be found at this UMass News link. 

UMass Physics recently hosted the 2026 SPS Zone 1 Meeting of the Society of Physics Students, welcoming more than 60 attendees from nine chapters across New England. Organized around the theme “Advancing in Physics,” the meeting brought together undergraduate students, alumni, and faculty for a day of talks, lab tours, networking, and research exchange. Highlights of the meeting included talks by Professor Grant Wilson (Astronomy) and Professor Scott Hertel (Physics), guided tours of UMass Physics research laboratories, an alumni panel on careers in graduate school and industry, and an

Physics seniors Milo Van Mooy and Ramin Gasimli have been recognized with UMass Rising Researcher prize awarded to a select group of undergraduate students across campus who "excel in research, challenge their intellect, and exercise exceptional creativity". Milo’s work has been on developing a Magnetic Levitation (MagLev) system for particle-laden fluid flows. The bottom-left image: a custom MagLev holder plate built with support of the Physics Machine Shop. Ramin’s work gives a modern twist to the centuries-old Brachistochrone challenge of Bernoulli and Newton, revealing the fastest and

Nick Mazzoni, a Physics Junior and Co-president of the Society of Physics Students, has been awarded a Barry Goldwater Scholarship, one of the most prestigious scholarships available to undergraduate students studying natural science, engineering, or mathematics. This year, this recognition was awarded to 454 students nationwide in all academic fields (78 in the field of Physics). Nick was the only Goldwater scholar at UMass this year. He has been working on various problems in theoretical and mathematical physics, including modeling of black hole evaporation and formal aspects of quantum