We proudly recognize members of our community who recently garnered major honors, began new positions and more.

Faculty and Staff 

• Ruba Abukhdeir joined the department as the Director of Business and Finance. 
• Kaustubh Agashe, Mohammad Hafezi and Arpita Upadhyaya were elected Fellows of the American Physical Society.
• Jesse Anderson retired on December 31 after 34 years with the department. 
• Lea Bartolome received the department's Staff Excellence Award. 
• Alessandra Buonanno received the Balzan Prize.
• Sankar Das Sarma was named a highly cited researcher by Clarivate Analytics. He also wrote a commentary for Physics Today. He recently discussed the latest developments in topological phases in quantum computing at a Microsoft conference. 
• Work by Jim Drake on the heliosphere was described in Phys.org.
• James Ellsworth joined the department as assistant director for of procurement, inventory and receiving.
• Sarah Eno was elected a Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science. 
• Manuel Franco Sevilla was named liaison between EF and Rare Processes and Precision Measurement group at Snowmass.
• Victor Galitski was quoated in Physics magazine.  
• Jim Gates received the 2021 AIP Andrew Gemant Award. He was also profiled in Symmetry Magazine.
• Carter Hall was featured on the Department of Energy website regarding what his 2011 Early Career Award had meant to his research.
• Donna Hammer was named a Society of Physics Students Outstanding Chapter Advisor. 
• Eliot Hammer joined the chair's office as coordinator of administration.
• Work by Anson Hook was described in Science Daily.
• Ted Jacobson's idea of a black hole laser was discussed in PhysicsWorld.
• Danae Johnson joined the department as a business manager.
• Melanie Knouse received the department's Staff Excellence Award. 
• Alicia Kollár received a Sloan Research Fellowship.
• Wolfgang Losert received a Brain and Behavior Institute seed grant award.
• Howard Milchberg, Daniel Woodbury (Ph.D., '20), Robert Schwartz wrote a Physics Today Quick Study showing how revisiting early experiments with new tech leads to pinpointing individual electrons in ambient gases. 
• Rabi Mohapatra will retire on August 1, 2022.
• Allen Monroe received the department's Staff Excellence Award. 
• Johnpierre Paglione was named an Outstanding Referee of the Physical Review journals.
• Naomi Russo received the department's Sibylle Sampson Award.
• Jay Sau was named UMD co-Director of the Joint Quantum Institute.
• Yasser Saleh joined the department as procurement coordinator.
• Brian Straughn received the Lorraine DeSalvo Chair's Award for Outstanding Service.
• Fred Wellstood will retire on April 1, 2022.
• LaVita Williams joined the payroll office as a business service specialist.

 Students

• Elizabeth Bennewitz, a graduate student working with Alexey Gorshkov, has been named a finalist for a 2022 Hertz Fellowship.
• Yonatan Gazit and Yanda Geng received the Richard and Anna Iskraut Award.
• Donovan Buterakos, Haining Pan, DinhDuy Vu won the Richard E. Prange Graduate Student Award.
• Sagar Airen received the Kapo-Barwick Award.
• Batoul Banihashemi, Yan Li, Braden Kronheim, Edward Broadberry, Jeremy Shuler, Subhayan Sahu, Saurabh Kadam, Nathaniel Fried received the Ralph Myers Award

Alumni

• Vakhtang Agayan (Ph.D., '00) was named Chief Technology Officer of KMK Consulting. 
• Beatriz Burrola Gabilondo (Ph.D., '10) was named an APS Equity, Diversion and Inclusion Fellow.
• Laird Egan, (Ph.D., '21), was quoted in a Physics story on quantum error correction. 
• Alexei Fedotov (Ph.D. ’97), received teh Dieter Möhl Medal in the field of beam cooling.
• Salman Habib, Director at Argonne Lab's high energy division was a PhD student of mine (1988).
• Ruth Kastner received a  Visiting Fellowship at the University of Pittsburgh's Center for Philosophy of Science.
• Ying-Cheng Lai (Ph.D., '92) was named a Regents Professor at Arizona State University.
• Thomas Mason, B.S. '89, physics; B.S. '89, electrical engineering  https://www.chemistry.ucla.edu/news/mason-group-research-featured-science-advances  
• Elizabeth Paul (Ph.D., '20) and Matt Landreman published work on a twisty stellarator in Physical Review Letters.
• Denjoe O'Connor (Ph.D. '85) is now the Director of Dublin Institute for Advanced Studies, the position Erwin Schrödinger held during World War II.
• TC Shen (Ph.D. '85) is a professor of physics at Utah State University.
• Chris Stephens (Ph.D. '86) is the director of the Center for Complexity Science at UNAM, Mexico City.

Book Marks

Victor Yakovenko's work in econophysics was discussed extensively in the book Anthill Economics.

Department Notes 

• The UMD Society of Physics Students received an Outstanding Chapter Award. It also launched a newsletter, The Tortoise. 
• UMD President Darryll Pines spoke with CNBC about quantum computing.
• IonQ, a company founded on research based at the University of Maryland Department of Physics, joined the New York Stock Exchange. 
• IonQ also joined the University of Maryland in creating National Quantum Lab at Maryland (Q-Lab). The Q-Lab will be the nation’s first user facility that enables the scientific community to pursue world-leading research through hands-on access to a commercial-grade quantum computer.
• Women in Physics was featured in The Diamondback.