A Georgetown team led by Prof. James Freericks, postdoctoral fellow Joseph Wang, and undergraduate REU student Adam Keith (NC State) provided theory and computational work to help understand a quantum simulator built at NIST in Boulder, CO, that approaches having the memory of one Googol bits (10¹⁰⁰ bits). The work was published in the April 26, 2012 issue of Nature, one of the most prestigious general science journals.

Marguerite Brown, a second-year physics Ph.D. student, has been named a 2012-13 ARCS Fellow. The fellowship will support her research in the Blair lab on liquid-crystal formation. The mission of the ARCS Foundation is to advance science and technology in the US by awarding fellowships and scholarships to outstanding students in science and engineering.

Dr. Michael Helle, who received his Physics Ph.D. from Georgetown in 2011, has been announced as the winner of the 2012 Harold N. Glassman Dissertation Award in the Sciences. This award is given by the Georgetown Graduate School of Arts and Sciences to honor distinguished dissertations. Mike completed his Ph.D. work under the direction of Professor Ed Van Keuren and Dr. Antonio Ting at the Naval Research Lab in Washington, DC, where most of his research was carried out.

Do you want to understand how (and why) food foams are made or why the elasticity of steak matters? Why do some chefs use liquid nitrogen (at about -320 degrees F) to freeze ingredients? Have you ever wondered about the secrets behind the wild creations at Chef Jose Andres' world famous DC based Minibar? Have you ever heard of Soft Condensed Matter Physics? Want to learn more is the science behind these pioneering approaches to taste and presentation?