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Society of Physics Students |
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Columbia University in the City of New York |
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Fall 2006
7 December 2006 Speaker: Genevieve Shattow, astrophysics senior undergrad, Columbia University Talk Title: Explorations in Comparitive Theories Abstract: A presentation on her year studying abroad at Oxford, with some remarks about the British undergraduate educational system.
16 November 2006 Speaker: Prof. Gustav Brooijmans, Columbia University Talk Title: What to search for? Theoretical and experimental prejudice in the quest for new physics Abstract: This talk will start with an introduction to the standard model of particle physics and the many obvious questions it raises. After a critical review of what is commonly considered to be the main problem and its solution, the experimental apparatus needed to tackle the only known real problem will be described. An example of data analysis from a similar detector will be discussed to illustrate research in this field.
19 October 2006 Speakers: Laura Newburgh and Columbia Physics Grad students, organized by Marilena LoVerde of WISC Talk Title: Panel discussion and presentation followed by informal discussion on the subject of graduate school Abstract: Considering grad school in physics? Come receive wisdom from current physics grad students about deciding to go and getting through the application process. We'll have a group of graduate students in different areas of research, many of whom have applied for fellowships, some of whom have taken time off, some of whom have gone straight after undergrad. All of us have gone through the process and will prod you with what we think is good advice and answer any questions you may have.
12 October 2006 Speakers: Talk Title: Tours of Columbia Physics Experimental Facilities on campus Abstract: Representatives from 3 Columbia labs will give brief tours of their facilities, explaining what their labs do and what the roles of grad students and undergrads are.
28 September 2006 Speaker: Rubab Kahn, astrophysics junior undergrad, Columbia University Talk Title: Searching for Gravitational-Wave Bursts of Arbitrary Waveform Abstract: One class of signal LIGO is searching for consists of short duration gravitational wave bursts of unknown waveform. Potential sources include core collapse supernovae and the coalescence of binary black holes. To detect such events, existing search algorithms project the LIGO data stream onto various time-frequency bases and then search for regions of excess signal energy. My summer project this year at Caltech investigated extensions to this approach that also consider the statistical significance of arbitrarily shaped regions in the time-frequency plane by exploiting the advantages of data clustering. We have shown that density based clustering is improving the performance of Q pipeline for arbitrarily shaped non-localized waveforms.
14 September 2006 Speaker: Dr. Blaer, Columbia University Abstract: At this second meeting of the year, Dr. Blaer will update us on the news of the physics department. There will be national SPS membership sign-up forms, sponsored by the department.
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