The American Astronomical Society (AAS) has chosen Dr. Paul A. Mason to be a member of the International Astronomical Union (IAU). The IAU is the main organization of astronomers in the world. Members are selected once every 3 years. It became famous in 2006 when they voted that Pluto should not be considered to be a planet. Paul will officially become a member at the General Assembly Meeting in August 2009. The selection includes an all expenses paid trip to the IAU meeting in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil!

 

The soccer-ball-shaped C60 buckyball can be viewed as the smallest molecule in a family of icosahedral carbon fullerenes that approach the flat graphene sheet when the number of atoms becomes large. In a joint article to be published in Physical Review B, UTEP researchers Rajendra R. Zope and Tunna Baruah in collaboration with researchers from Georgetown University and Naval Research Laboratory, have used computer simulations to show that boron, carbon's neighbor in the periodic table, can form an analogous family of stable fullerenes that ranges from the buckyball-like B80 to a flat boron sheet. Each boron fullerene has a precise structural relationship to its carbon counterpart, and also has the same number of valence electrons. Mathematically, these icosahedral carbon and boron fullerene families can be described as 60n^2 and 80n^2 families where n is an integer. In both the icosahedral fullerenes and their boron analogs, the electronic band gap, which arises from quantum confinement of electrons, decreases with increasing cluster size. However, unlike the carbon clusters, for which the band gap approaches zero only in the limit of infinite size, the boron fullerenes are predicted to transition to a metallic state at a cluster size of about 2000 atoms. The boron sheet is metallic whereas the graphene sheet is semi-metal. Recently, the existence of B80 fullerene and the boron sheet was predicted independently by two groups from Rice and Yale University. While there are a few recent works on boron nanostructures, this research from UTEP now establishes a connection between these two earlier important predictions. It also explains the unusual stability of these boron cages. The pictures of C60 and B80 and their big brothers (C240 and B320) from the above mentioned fullerene families are shown below. This research forms an important step toward the understanding of boron nanostructures. 

 

Angel Esparza, a physics graduate student from UTEP Environmental Science and Engineering PhD program has won an international student competition from the division of Urban Environment of the American Meteorological Society (AMS). Angel’s PhD work is mentored by Dr. Rosa Fitzgerald. He won the "Outstanding Poster Presentation” award with a work entitled “Aerosol Characterization in a City Influenced by Both Rural and Urban Regions”, Authors: Angel Esparza, R.M. Fitzgerald and J. Polanco. The presentation was part of a student presentation competition at the Annual American Meteorological Society Meeting, held in Phoenix, from Jan.11-15, 2009. Incidentally, one of the authors, Javier Polanco, is also a former student of Dr. Fitzgerald and he is now pursuing a PhD in Math at Texas A&M, College Station.
Congratulations to Angel and to Dr. Fitzgerald for this achievement!

During the Closing Awards Ceremony of the 2009 Joint-Annual Conference of the National Society of Black Physicists and the National Society of Hispanic Physicists
February 11-15, Nashville, TN, and on behalf of the NSBP, NSHP, and the American Institute of Physics, UTEP physics undergraduate Judith Rivera received an honorable re-induction into the honor society Sigma Pi Sigma for her academic excellence in physics and her contributions to physics. Judith was the only Hispanic and the only female inducted (out of a total of 5 people) during the awards ceremony.
Judith, congratulations from the  Physics Department, we are all proud of you!  

The UTEP  Society of Physics Students (SPS) has been selected as an Outstanding SPS Chapter for the 2007-2008 school year. The selection is based on the depth and breadth of SPS activities conducted by the chapter in such areas as physics research, public science outreach, physics tutoring programs, hosting and representation at physics meetings and events, and providing social interaction for chapter members. If you would like to see what some other chapters are doing, the SPS website at www.spsnational.org <http://www.spsnational.org>  has many examples and ideas. This award is a testament to  UTEP Physics leadership  as much as it is an acknowledgment of UTEP SPS chapter’s superior performance.
Congratulations  to our students and the faculty leaders Bill Durrer (retd) and  Eric Hagedorn,  !!