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Seminar-Fall-2025

Physics Colloquium Schedule – Fall 2025

Previous and Future Colloquia

All colloquia will be held at 4 PM in Olin 101 (unless noted otherwise). Refreshments will be available at 3:30 PM in Olin Lobby prior to each seminar. For additional information contact wfuphys@wfu.edu.

Thurs. Aug. 28, 2025 — Welcome Colloquium

Thurs. Sept. 4, 2025 — Prof. Pieremanuele Canepa, University of Houston, Dept. Electrical & Computer Engineering
Texas Center for Superconductivity, — “The Rise of Sodium-ion Batteries via In Silico Design and Optimization” (Host: T. Thonhauser)

Thurs. Sept. 11, 2025 — Dr. Keefe Mitman, NASA Einstein Fellow at Cornell University, — “Mergers and Messages: Decoding the Universe with Gravitational Waves” (Host: G. Cook)

Thurs. Sept. 18, 2025 — Dr. Andy Fisher, Professor of Chemistry & Department of Molecular and Cellular Biology at UC Davis, — “Structural Basis for RNA editing by ADARs: Advancing Tools to Treat Genetic Disorders” UC Davis (Host: J. Macosko)

Thurs. Sept. 25, 2025 — Dr. Laura Brenneman, Division Chair for High Energy Astrophysics, Center for Astrophysics | Harvard & Smithsonian, –“Measuring Supermassive Black Hole Spins Using X-ray Spectroscopy” (Host: A. Cárdenas-Avendaño)

Thurs. Oct. 2, 2025 — Dr. Frans Pretorius, Princeton University, Fellow of the American Physical Society and the International Society on General Relativity and Gravitation, “Open Questions on the Dynamics of Black Holes,” (Host: A. Cárdenas-Avendaño)

Thurs. Oct. 9, 2025 — Dr. Cheng-Ju (Jacob) Lin, Assistant Professor, University of Miami, “Nonequilibrium Quantum Dynamics,” (Host: E. Huffman)

Thurs. Oct. 16, 2025 — Dr. Rustem Litvinov,Department of Cell and Developmental Biology, University of Pennsylvania School of Medicine, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania “Multiscale Mechanics of Fibrinogen and Fibrin: from” (Host: M. Guthold)

Thurs. Oct. 23, 2025 — Dr. Andrew Czeidinski, AAAS S&T Policy Fellow at National Science Board “From Normal Modes to Principal Components: Finding Simplicity” (Host: O. Jurchescu)

Thurs. Oct. 30, 2025 —Dr. Dieter Hartmann, Department of Physics and Astronomy, Clemson University “Cosmic Gamma Ray Bursts: Relativistic jets and their use as Probes — 50 years of Time Domain Astronomy at High Energies” (Host: D. Carroll)

Thurs. Nov. 6, 2025 — Dr. Thankful Cromartie, U. S. Naval Research Laboratory “High-Precision Millisecond Pulsar Timing in NANOGrav’s New Era” (Host: C. Witt)

Thurs. Nov. 13, 2025 — Dr. Rana Ashkar, Department of Physics & Center for Soft Matter and Biological Physics, Virginia Tech “Unified Scaling in Membrane Elasticity: From Molecular Complexity to Predictive Laws” (Host: D. Kim-Shapiro)

Thurs. Nov. 20, 2025 — Dr. Sudhakar Prasad, Department of Physics, University of Minnesota — “Beating the Rayleigh Curse of Optical Resolution, One Photon at a Time” (Host: K.Bonin)

Thurs. Nov. 27, 2025 — Thanksgiving holiday

Thurs. Dec. 4, 2025 — Dr. Sergei Tretiak,  Laboratory Fellow, T-1 Deputy Group Leader, MS B221, Theoretical Division & Center for Integrated Nanotechnologies (CINT), Los Alamos National Laboratory — “Recent Progress in Machine Learning for Chemical Processes: Reactive Force Fields and Beyond” (Host: A. Kandada)