Our annual department retreat will be February 19-20th at the Carol Joy Holling Retreat Center.

From Physicist to Patent Lawyer
Matt Poulsen, Ph.D.
Suiter – Swantz pc llo

Patent law represents an intriguing career choice for many in the science and engineering disciplines.  The number of patent applications filed in the U.S. has steadily risen for the past two decades.  With the increased focus on intellectual property by developing economies, such as China and India, U.S. and foreign patent related activity will undoubtedly continue to grow.  Couple this with changing U.S. patent law and the demand for skilled patent attorneys and agents will likely remain strong in the foreseeable future. Not surprisingly, patent attorneys must possess strong technical, reasoning and writing skills.  Physicists are uniquely situated in this regard and will generally find a smooth transition to patent law.  Opportunities exist in patent law for patent attorneys, patent agents, technical advisors and patent examiners working in a broad spectrum of technological areas and settings. These settings include large law firms, boutique law firms, large and small companies, university technology transfer offices and the United States Patent and Trademark Office. 

Matt is currently a patent attorney at Suiter Swantz pc llo and counsels clients ranging from Fortune 500 companies to small startups on a variety of intellectual property matters.  In this discussion, he will touch on a variety of patent related topics and provide a general overview of career opportunities in patent law.  He will describe his experience in transitioning from a freshly minted Ph.D. physicist to a patent attorney (including life as a law student) and his personal experiences as a patent attorney, providing a snapshot of what one career path in patent law may look like.

Dr. Timothy Wager, Creighton University Department of Physics

Cumulus clouds are an important, yet underobserved, part of the climate system.  As cumuli develop, they mix with the surrounding environment through the process of entrainment, which impacts the lifespan, droplet size, and depth of the clouds. In order to properly simulate the atmosphere for climate and weather forecasting, these impacts must be accounted for but the small spatial extent of these clouds means the entrainment process must be must be parameterized, a difficult problem due in part to the lack of available observations of entrainment.  Entrainment has been traditionally measured via direct penetration of clouds by instrumented aircraft but the expense and difficulty associated with this method means that the scope of the available entrainment observations is small.

To expand the number of observations of entrainment available for analysis, a remote retrieval method using ground-based instrumentation has been developed.  This method, called the Entrainment Rate In Cumulus Algorithm (ERICA) retrieves the fractional entrainment rate through a Gauss-Newton optimal estimation retrieval.  High temporal resolution observations of cumuli and their environment and a guess of the entrainment rate are ingested by a cloud parcel model, in this case the Explicit Mixing Parcel Model (EMPM).  The entrainment rate is iteratively adjusted until the modeled cloud matches the observations.  ERICA has been shown to correspond well with other methods of retrieving the entrainment rate.  Results for both shallow continental cumulus and deep tropical convection will be shown.

Why Isn't God Ambidextrous?

Dr. Tim Gay, Department of Physics, University of Nebraska – Lincoln

Thursday, January 29nd, 2015: 4:00 p.m., Hixon-Lied Science Building, 244

Until 1957, scientists thought that the fundamental laws of Nature must be the same whether they were applied to our Universe or the Universe that is a mirror reflection of our own.  The implications of the discovery that this is not true - essentially that Nature is "handed" - will be discussed.  Some interesting applications of handedness, or "chirality"  in agriculture, biology, chemistry, and physics will be presented.  I will also talk about some new physics experiments on chirality that may shed light on how life began on this planet.

Dr. Gay’s group is interested in polarized electron physics. Their work involves studies of polarized electrons scattering from atomic and chiral molecular targets, the development of novel sources of polarized electrons and electron polarimeters, and investigations of the fundamental nature of the electron.

Evidence from multiple indirect measurements implies that 80% of the mass in the universe is dark, non-baryonic and hence is composed of a new type of undiscovered particles.  I will describe why Weakly Interacting Massive Particles (WIMPs) are the most popular candidate for the dark matter and describe how WIMPs would interact in a detector.  I will then describe a leading experiment attempting to directly detect WIMP interactions, the Super Cryogenic Dark Matter Search (SuperCDMS) and present results.

Dr. Sander is interested in finding evidence of new physics. Towards that end, he is a primary investigator on the SuperCDMS collaboration looking to directly detect dark matter. He is also working on developing new detection techniques for the next generation of rare event searches.

Physics Students, Faculty, and Staff,

The 2014 Evening of Reflection will be held on Saturday April 26th at Lower St. Johns on the Creighton Campus. The program will begin at 4:30 pm and includes dinner (Catered by Big Mama's Kitchen!). Some of the events of the evening will include:

This spring, the Creighton University Society of Physics Students (CUSPS) will  sponsor Physics Field Day, a day of activities and excitement for high school students. The theme of the 2013 Physics Field Day is "The Physics of Everyday Objects." The day is filled with competitions that require understanding and application of basic physical principles. We in the CUSPS believe that physics can be enjoyed in a hands-on, competitive spirit. There is an event for everyone!

The PHYSNIC onSATURDAY SEPTEMBER 21st @ NOON! As the name suggests, this event is a physics picnic, where the entire physics department including faculty go to ELMWOOD PARK (66th and Elmwood Park RD.) eat food, socialize and play games!

If you need a ride to the physnic, or if you are willing to drive other students that do, there is a sign up sheet on the door of HLSB G55. 

Assessing AGN Feedback Models with C III* Measurement and Photoionization Modeling

Dan McGinnis

Abstract: