Physics Colloquia

Spring 2016 (usually Fridays 2:00 PM in SE 319)

Date Speaker Title
Feb 25 George Sgouros Radiopharmaceutical Therapy in the era of Precision Medicine
Feb 26 Troy Schaudt Mathematica 10 in Education and Research
Mar 25 James Mcguire Bosons, Fermions or What?
Apr 22 Yidun Wan Unified aspects of topological phases via anyon condensation

 

Colloquium Abstracts

Radiopharmaceutical Therapy in the era of Precision Medicine

George Sgouros (Johns Hopkins University), Feb 25

Radiopharmaceutical therapy is a cancer treatment approach that uses cancer cell targeting molecules as vehicles to deliver radiation specifically to cancer cells while sparing normal tissues. This is accomplished by radiolabeling the carrier molecule with a radionuclide that emits short-range radiation to target the tumor cells and also, ideally, photon radiation to obtain images of the biodistribution and use this information for dosimetry and treatment planning. A substantial number of variables must be defined to optimize a particular treatment strategy to a cancer type, patient population or individual patient. This can involve variables related to physics (particle emission type, half-life of the radionuclide), chemistry (how stable is the radiolabeling), tumor biology (where are the cancer cells? What is their radiosensitivity, how much of the target is expressed on cancer cells) and also patient-related parameters (how will prior patient treatment history impact toxicity?). All these and other considerations must come together to implement this multidisciplinary treatment modality.

Mathematica 10 in Education and Research

Troy Schaudt (Wolfram Research, Inc.), Feb 26

This talk illustrates capabilities in Mathematica 10 and other Wolfram technologies that are directly applicable for use in teaching and research on campus. Topics of these technical talks include: * Enter calculations in everyday English, or using the flexible Wolfram Language * Visualize data, functions, surfaces, and more in 2D or 3D * Store and share documents locally or in the Wolfram Cloud * Use the Predictive Interface to get suggestions for the next useful calculation or function options * Access trillions of bits of on-demand data * Use semantic import to enrich your data using Wolfram curated data * Easily turn static examples into mouse-driven, dynamic applications * Access 10,000 free course-ready applications * Utilize the Wolfram Language's wide scope of built-in functions, or create your own * Get deep support for specialized areas including machine learning, time series, image processing, parallelization, and control systems, with no add-ons required Current users will benefit from seeing the many improvements and new features of Mathematica 10 (http://www.wolfram.com/mathematica/new-in-10/), but prior knowledge of Mathematica is not required.

Bosons, Fermions or What?

James Mcguire (FAU), Mar 25

We are taught that identical quantum elementary particles must be one of two types, either Bosons or Fermions. It is my hope to raise doubt in your mind as to whether this is true or even possible.

Unified aspects of topological phases via anyon condensation

Yidun Wan (Perimeter Institute), Apr 22

In this talk, I will tour with you through anyon condensation --- a framework that may unify various aspects of topological orders, such as topological phases, symmetry-protected topological phases, symmetry-enriched topological phases, and so on. Anyon condensation also offers in its framework a systematic solution to many seemingly different problems about topological orders, e.g., the ground-state degeneracy on open surfaces, the patterns of global-symmetry fractionalization, and the classification of gapped domain walls/boundaries.