Welcome From Our Department Head

Dear Alumni and Friends,

The Department of Physics at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign is one of the largest and best physics programs in the U.S., educating highly qualified physicists for academia and training STEM-field employees for the U.S. workforce. Over the last five years, we have graduated an average of 130 undergraduate physics majors per year. We maintain the largest doctoral program in physics in the U.S., and since the summer of 2005, we have graduated a total of 505 doctoral students.

Our students are trained in the rigorous academic environment of a leading research university. Each year, we teach about 600 physics majors and more than 4,000 non-majors in our introductory physics courses. This effort is based on the innovative work of our physics education research group, which is driving the continuous development of modern, evidence-based pedagogies and pedagogical tools. In addition to the large educational effort, we maintain one of the most highly regarded fundamental physics research programs in the world.

New leadership.

This term, new leadership was introduced at the campus, college, and departmental levels. Our former dean, Andreas Cangellaris, now serves as the new provost, and Rashid Bashir, as the new dean of the College of Engineering. In the Department of Physics, Brian DeMarco has stepped up as associate head for undergraduate programs, and I have taken on the head position. The vision and direction we share for the College of Engineering is advancing knowledge and technology through a science-based approach. This method relies on close collaboration between the Department of Physics and other units in the College, both in education and research. Many of our scientific strengths in Physics are closely connected to technology research pursued by the faculty, researchers, and students in Engineering.

Quantum information science at Illinois.

Quantum information science (QIS) is an exciting, fast-growing field with important implications for future technologies that will support secure communications and exponentially greater computational power. Federal support for QIS research continues to grow, and a national initiative is being launched. Our department is a principal stakeholder in the university’s strategic plan to expand research efforts and build partnerships in this field. The university is a key player in a larger plan to put the State of Illinois at the forefront of this emerging field. The university has pledged $15 million to create an Illinois Quantum Information and Technology Center (IQUIST) that will facilitate collaborations among faculty from different units and will foster partnerships with industry, national laboratories, and other academic units. The university also joined the Chicago Quantum Exchange as its final core member, initiating collaboration with the University of Chicago, Argonne National Laboratory, and Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory in QIS. Paul Kwiat, Brian DeMarco, and Dale Van Harlingen are leaders of this important initiative at the U of I, in the State of Illinois, and nationally.

Strength through diversity. 

My own research takes place in a multi-national environment at CERN, and I have seen firsthand how diversity benefits both creativity and research output. The positive impact of diversity at CERN has been studied by social scientists from Finland and Italy: diversity plays an important role in the efficient knowledge creation at CERN and in the knowledge transfer to collaborating institutions and companies. These strengths are certainly at work in our department as well. Our faculty, researchers, staff, and students come from many different backgrounds, and we continue to seek ways to better benefit from the broad diversity we have in American society.

As a department, we support measures that advance gender and racial equality and inclusion in physics at all levels. We actively work to ensure that the climate for our students, postdocs, faculty, and staff is collegial and supportive. This semester, we welcomed 147 new undergraduate students, of which 16 percent are women and 8.5 percent are from groups underrepresented in physics. We also welcomed 41 new graduate students, of whom 34 percent are women. This significant increase is thanks in large part to the efforts of Lance Cooper, our associate head for graduate programs. We are strongly committed to further improve diversity and inclusion, and your suggestions are highly welcome.

New faculty.

One important way we will maintain our top-ten standing among physics programs in the U.S. is through strategic hiring of new faculty members. This semester, we welcomed three outstanding new members to our physics faculty: Assistant Professor Barry Bradlyn, a condensed matter theorist from Princeton; Assistant Professor Patrick Draper, a high-energy theorist from University of Massachusetts Amherst; and Assistant Professor Lucas Wagner, a condensed matter theorist who had been a research professor in our department.

In Spring 2019, we will welcome Assistant Professor Sangjin Kim, an experimental biophysicist from Yale, and Associate Professor Joaquin Vieira, an astrophysicist and cosmologist from the U of I Department of Astronomy. In Summer 2019, we will welcome back Professor Ido Golding, an experimental biophysicist returning to us from Baylor. And in Fall 2019, we will welcome Fahad Mahmood, a condensed matter theorist from Johns Hopkins University, and Yonatan Kahn, a theoretical particle physicist coming to us from the University of Chicago. Paperwork is underway for two excellent nuclear theorists to join us in 2019, and we currently have three open faculty searches, in quantum information science, gravitational theory, and physics education research.

We have an aggressive hiring strategy in place for the upcoming years. We have requested four to five new hires per year for the next five years, in part to compensate for upcoming faculty retirements, and in part to support future growth of the department. We plan to increase our core tenure-track faculty positions to 65. This will make it possible to create a strong quantum information science group and to support planned new degree programs and future increases in student enrollment.

Thanks to our outgoing leadership.

At Illinois, we stand on the shoulders of giants whose work wrote science history and who created our unique collaborative and collegial way of doing physics here in Urbana. This valuable tradition was kept alive and well under the outstanding leadership of Dale Van Harlingen for the past 12 years! I know I can speak for the entire department when I thank Dale, who served as head from June 2006 to August 2018, and Mats Selen, who served as associate head for undergraduate programs from January 2014 through June 2018, for their superb leadership and commitment to this department. Many of the improvements we are seeing this semester are a result of their efforts, including the excellent new faculty hires, the newly opened drop-in Undergraduate Help Rooms, staffed by professors and TAs, the town hall meetings that continue as a forum for students and faculty to brainstorm new initiatives, and the energy-saving infrastructure projects that are nearing completion, including our new high-efficiency HVAC systems that will reduce heating and cooling costs for the department into the future. We are better and stronger for having had Dale and Mats in these important roles.

With warm regards,

Matthias Grosse Perdekamp