Travel

Michele Irwin, APS International Programs Administrator

India – U.S. Travel Program

The Indo-U.S. Science and Technology Forum (IUSSTF) and the American Physical Society (APS) co-sponsor an exchange program for physicists and physics graduate students between India and the United States. The Professorship Awards in Physics funds physicists in India or the United States wishing to visit overseas to teach short courses or provide a physics lecture series delivered at a U.S. or Indian university. Through the Physics Student Visitation Program, U.S. and Indian graduate students apply for travel funds attend a short-course or summer institute, work temporarily in a laboratory, or pursue another opportunity that the student and the host professor believe is worthy of support. The Physics Student Visitation Program aims to mostly support graduate student travel to India by U.S. citizens, while enabling some students of Indian citizenship to travel to the United States.

India-US Physics Students Visitation Program:

In the spring 2010 six students benefited from the Program:

Akaa D. Ayangeakaa, Department of Physics, University of Notre Dame.

In the fall of 2010, Mr. Ayangeakaa will participate in experiments on the study of nuclear tidal waves using the Doppler Shift Attenuation Method (DSAM) at the Indian National Gamma-ray Array (INGA) at the Tata Institute for Fundamental Research (TIFR) in Mumbai.

Aatish Bhatia, Department of Physics and Astronomy, Rutgers University.

Mr. Bhatia will visit TIFR in Mumbai from 1 January to 31 March 31 2011. During that time, he will assist his thesis advisor, Professor Gyan Bhanot, in teaching a course in Biophysics and Bioinformatics in the Department of Theoretical Physics at TIFR. He will also conduct research with members of the Department of Theoretical Physics and Biological Sciences.

Amitai Bin-Nun, Department of Physics and Astronomy, University of Pennsylvania.

Mr. Bin-Nun will visit the Inter-University Centre for Astronomy and Astrophysics (IUCAA) in Pune for a few weeks in the fall of 2010. During that time he will conduct research on the topic of gravitational lensing and braneworlds with his host Professor N. Dadhich.

Debraj Choudhury, Department of Physics, Indian Institute of Science, Bangalore.

Mr. Choudhury will participate in the experiments at the Advanced Photon Source at Argonne National Laboratory in Illinois with his host Dr. John Freeland in the Magnetic Materials Group.

Chris Coleman-Smith, Department of Physics, Duke University.

Mr. Coleman-Smith will collaborate with Dr. Dinesh K. Srivastava at the Variable Energy Cyclotron Center in Kolkata. He will also attend and present a poster at the 10th International Conference on the Physics and Astrophysics of the Quark-Gluon-Plasma, to be held in Goa, 5 to 10 December 2010. 

James Matta, Department of Physics, University of Notre Dame

In the fall of 2010, Mr. Matta (like Mr. Ayangeakaa) will participate in experiments on the study of nuclear tidal waves using the Doppler Shift Attenuation Method (DSAM) at the Indian National Gamma-ray Array (INGA) at TIFR in Mumbai.

The India-U.S. Professorship Awards in Physics were awarded to three Professors:

Dr. Irudayaraj Johnson, Department of Physics, St. Joseph's College,Trichy

Dr. Johnson will present a series of lectures on the effects and applications of ultrasound in nanomaterials, nano thin films, and nondestructive evaluation at the Department of Physics at Utah State University in Logan.

Professor Humphrey J. Maris, Brown University, Providence, Rhode Island

Professor Maris will visit the Department of Physics at the Indian Institute of Science in Bangalore in January 2011 where he will give a short course of lectures on his current research, including supersolid helium, electrons in liquid helium, physics of nucleation and ultra-high frequency ultrasonics.

Professor Richard Packard, Physics Department, University of California, Berkeley

In November 2010, Professor Packard will deliver lectures describing his group’s research on superfluid weak links at the Tata Institute for Fundamental Research in Mumbai, The University of Hyderabad, and the India Institute of Science, Bangalore.

The International Travel Grant Program (ITGAP)

The International Travel Grant Award Program (ITGAP) was established to promote international scientific collaborations between APS members and physicists in developing countries. Grant recipients receive up to US $2,000 for travel and lodging expenses for international travel while visiting a collaborator for at least one month. Members of APS units that sponsor ITGAP* are eligible to apply.

For the eleventh cycle of the program (Winter 2010) the APS received nineteen proposals from thirteen different countries. The following three collaborative teams were awarded grants. We congratulate the recipients and wish them a most successful collaboration with long term benefits.
  1. Dr. Martin Nieto-Perez (Member of DPP)
    Instituto Politecnico Nacional (IPN)
    Mexico D.F., México

    Dr. Richard Majeski (Member of DPP)
    Princeton Plasma Physics Laboratory (PPPL)

    Dr. Nieto-Perez will visit PPPL from mid-July to mid-August 2010 to use the liquid lithium test stand available at PPPL to study two particular aspects of the lithium film.

  2. Prof. Irina Novikova (Member of DAMOP & FIP)
    Department of Physics
    College of William & Mary, Williamsburg, Virginia

    Prof. Arturo Lezama (Member of DAMOP & FIP)
    Instituto de Fisica, Facultad de Ingeniería
    Universidad de la República, Montevideo, Uruguay

    Prof. Arturo Lezama will visit to the College of William & Mary this year to participate in a joint experiment in the generation of light with non-classical statistics (in particular squeezed vacuum) using atomic coherence.

  3. Dr. J. Y. Vaishnav (Member of DAMOP)
    Department of Physics
    Bucknell University, Lewisburg, Pennsylvania

    Dr. Gediminas Juzeliunas
    Institute of Theoretical Physics and Astronomy
    Vilnius University, Vilnius, Lithuania

    Dr. Juzeliunas will travel to the U.S. where he will collaborate with Dr. Vaishnan at the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) Gaithersburg, MD. They will conduct a theoretical exploration of artificial magnetic fields for atoms with the goal being to propose "atomtronic" devices which could extend the capabilities of electronic ones.

* As of February 2010, ITGAP is sponsored by the following APS units: the Division of Astrophysics (DAP); the Division of Atomic, Molecular and Optical Physics (DAMOP); the Division of Computational Physics (DCOMP); the ¨Division of Materials Physics (DMP); the Division of Nuclear Physics (DNP); the Division of Particles and Fields (DPF); the ¨Division of Physics of Beams (DPB); the Division of Plasma Physics (DPP); the Division of Polymer Physics (DPOLY); the Forum on International Physics (FIP); theTopical Group on Magnetism and its Applications (GMAG).

Michele Irwin is the APS International Programs Administrator.

Disclaimer - The articles and opinion pieces found in this issue of the APS Forum on International Physics Newsletter are not peer refereed and represent solely the views of the authors and not necessarily the views of the APS.