Physics and Astronomy News

Dr. Julie Vanegas was awarded an NSF grant with the amount of $250,000 as principal invesigator. 

Dr. Ryan Oelkers had his Mt. Cuba Astronomical Foundation grant accepted related to modernizing and robotizing the TOROS telescopes in Argentina in July 2025. - July 14

One of the papers of Dr. Nicholas  Dimakis was accepted in the Journal of Materials Chemistry A (IF ~10.7). In the co-authorship list, you may recognize Dr. Bill Goddard from Caltech, one of the most well-known computational chemistry scientists in the world - June 3

Dr. Liliana Rivera Sandoval was featured in the prestigious journal Science in May 2025, in recognition of her selection as a Cottrell Scholar Awardee. - May 30

Oct. 30 - Congratulations to Dr. Julie Vanegas' work has appeared in Le Temps, a leading Swiss magazine. Article: Le Temps 2024 

Sep. 3 - Congratulations to Ms. Srbuhi Yolchinyan, UTRGV Affordability Advocate in Fall 2024.                            Complete Story: Affordability Advocates in Fall 2024

Aug. 21 - Congratulations to Dr. Julie Vanegas for being selected from among 10,000 projects by the American Chemical Society.  Full Story: Pilot study uses recycled glass to grow plants for salsa ingredients

Aug. 13 - Congratulations to Dr. Ahmed Touhami was awarded the NSF-MRI grant as co-PI. 

Project Title: MRI Track 1: Acquisition of a Photo-Induced Force Microscope for Simultaneous Nanoscopic and Spectroscopic Imaging of Multifunctional Materials and Interfaces.

Jul. 24 - Congratulations  to Dr. Liliana Rivera Sandoval on being selected for another consecutive year on her outreach/ citizen project " Ellas y las Estrellas". Her project was selected among many other excellent projects!

Jul. 24 - Congratulations to Dr. Liliana Rivera Sandoval on being featured in the Sky & Telescope magazine inside the September 2024 issue.

Jul. 13 - Congratulations to Dr. Karen Martirosyan for receiving NASA MPLAN 2024. NASA MPLAN 2024 Award.

Apr. 10 - Congratulations! to Dr. Hyeongjun Kim has been selected to receive funding from the for UIUC's NSF STC QCB center.

Apr. 8 - Congratulations! to Dr. Liliana Rivera Sandoval for feature in Exploration Museum Solar Eclipse broadcast.  Full Story

Jan. 17 - Congratulations! To Dr. Liliana Rivera Sandoval for her participation in the detection of a radio source in the center of the globular cluster 47 Tucanae, using the deepest, most sensitive radio image ever compiled of a globular cluster.

Full Paper: Ultradeep ATCA Imaging of 47 Tucanae Reveals a Central Compact Radio Source

Nov. 10 - Congratulation! Dr. Liliana Rivera Sandoval got a new NASA grant as PI.

Oct. 19 - Congratulations! Dr. Joe Romano has been selected as a 2023 awardee of the APS fellowship.

Citation: For foundational contributions to the detection and characterization of stochastic gravitational wave signals.
Nominated by: DGRAV 

Oct. 16 PhD student Miriam Ramos Arevalo won the prize for best talk in the APS meeting in San Angelo, TX

Oct. 15 - Dr Hyun Lee was interviewed about the eclipe.

Full story:   Dr. Hyun Lee Interview

Oct. 15 - Dr. Creighton was interviewed about the eclipse.

Full story:   Dr. Creighton Interviewed

Oct. 15 - Dr. Soma Mukherjee sharing this amazing photo:

Oct 15 - CGWA-Brownsville solar telescope.

Sep. 25 - Congratulation! Dr. Liliana Rivera Sandoval is one of the 10 winners of the Women and Girls in Astronomy Program with the project "Ellas y las Estrellas”.

Full Stroy - Ellas y las Estrellas. 

Sep. 18 -  Dr. Mohanty (PI), Dr. Mukherjee (co-PI), and Dr. Martirosyan (co-PI) were awarded the NSF grant with the title CAP: STARTER: South Texas AI Research, Training, and Education Resource.

Sep. 15 - Dr. Jasim Uddin is now a member of the Editorial Board for the journal Nature Scientific Report.

Sep. 5 - Congratulations! Dr. Kim’s NIH/NIGMS (National Institute of General Medical Sciences) grant is now funded. 

Congratulation to Dr. Soumya Mohanty and Raghav Girganokar.

Aug. 30 - MS student Raghav Girgaonkar has been selected to present a talk at TACCSTER’23.

Congratulation CGWA.

Aug. 23 - CGWA press release. 

NSF funds a partnership between Texas Southmost College and UTRGV in Multi- messenger Astronomy

Hamidreza Ramezani, Associate Professor in the Department of Physics and Astronomy, has been awarded a major grant from the National Science Foundation (NSF) with an $800K budget to perform research on quantum optics in open photonic lattices.

The award-winning team consists of Hamidreza Ramezani as the Pprincipal Investigator (PI) from UTRGV, Prineha Narang as a co-PI from the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA), Omar Magana-Loaiza as a co-PI from the Louisiana State University (LSU), and Andreas Hanke and Neda Dadashvand as Senior Personnel, both from the UTRGV Physics Department.

The awarded project aims to study photons in quantum photonic lattices and use photon dissipation, an effect that normally destroys quantum behavior, in a clever way to actually enhance quantum information processing. 

Many candidates for building future quantum devices need an ultra-cold environment to operate properly. For example, the quantum computers at Google and IBM must be kept at around -320F! This is even colder than interstellar space, and making it happen is very expensive and impractical. Photons, particles of light, do not need such requirements and they can be used for room temperature quantum operations. 

Quantum mechanics describes subatomic particles like electrons as waves, and finds that the energy of light is quantized in particles called photons. In the last decade scientists learned to exploit the intriguing quantum behavior of subatomic particles to create next-generation technologies for sensing, computing, modeling, and communicating. The award to UTRGV is part of the NSF program “Expanding Capacity in Quantum Information Science and Engineering (ExpandQISE)”, whose mission is to help institutions like UTRGV build up a new research program in quantum information science (QISE) with the assistance of external institutions that are already strong in QISE. The external collaborators in our award are UCLA and LSU led by Prineha Narang and Omar Magana-Loaiza, both eminent scientists in the field.

"A dedicated, interdisciplinary research program in quantum information science and engineering in the RGV region is currently missing, while there is a tremendous student interest and great potential here in the valley" says Dr. Ramezani.

The research and educational program of this grant at UTRGV performs cutting-edge research in this exciting field, and develops a quantum workforce that originates in the RGV. This is accomplished, among other things, by a Scholar Academy between UTRGV, UCLA, and LSU. "To my knowledge, this is the first-ever quantum award to UTRGV. This is a big step for the Department of Physics and Astronomy and the University. My dream is to use this award as a seed to build a quantum center in the RGV that serves our region and our nation" says Dr. Ramezani.

It is to note that the Nobel Prize in Physics 2022 was awarded to Alain Aspect, John F. Clauser, and Anton Zeilinger “for experiments with entangled photons, establishing the violation of Bell inequalities and pioneering quantum information science” - precisely the topic of the new NSF quantum award to UTRGV.

https://www.nobelprize.org/prizes/physics/2022/press-release/

UTRGV goes Quantum!

Team of the new NSF quantum award at UTRGV 

Members from left to right, Dr. Andreas Hanke, Dr. Hamidreza Ramezani, Dr. Neda Dadashvand

"Ellas y las Estrellas” is a virtual conference that aims to bring researchers, teachers and mainly students closer to different exciting topics in astronomy developed by female researchers in Latin America. The event also celebrates the National Hispanic Heritage Month. Event will be in Spanish. Registration and more information in https://www.ellasylasestrellas.org/ 

UTRGV welcomes first students working toward toward doctorate in Physics

RIO GRANDE VALLEY, TEXAS – Eight UTRGV students are making history as the first to be accepted to the new Ph.D. program in physics at UTRGV.  

Full story: UTRGV welcomes first students working toward doctorate in Physics

Dr. Satya R. Kachiraju

UTRGV 2022-2023 Faculty excellence award in Teaching (Non-tenure track).

Full story:  Office of Faculty Success & Diversity

                 Ten faculty named recipients of 2022-2023 UTRGV

Dr. Janna Arney, UTRGV executive vice president and provost, congratulated this year’s awardees for their impactful work and accomplishments.

“We are proud to celebrate our esteemed faculty and all they have accomplished,” Arney said. “UTRGV is fortunate to have exceptional educators shaping our students and having an impact not just on the institution but also on the Valley community.

“Faculty are selected for these awards through a peer-reviewed, highly competitive selection process,” she said. “This is further testimony to how outstanding these individuals are. I am so proud to be able to recognize their dedication and impact, and I am grateful they are Vaqueros.”

Published peer reviewed article in Nanophotonics journal in 2022. Satya R. Kachiraju, “Coupled surface plasmon-phonon polariton nanocavity arrays for enhanced mid-infrared absorption” Nanophotonics, (2022).

Full article: https://www.degruyter.com/document/doi/10.1515/nanoph-2022-0339/html