Physics Professor John LoSecco has been part of an international team on the Double Chooz experiment in France for five years, including three as software director. The experiment, aimed at better understanding fundamental properties of particles called neutrinos, recently started collecting data with its detector. The detector is slightly more than 1 kilometer away from two of the largest nuclear reactors in the world, near the France-Belgium border, and records data on neutrinos that escape from the reactor. 
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People are increasingly obtaining endangered or threatened plants, often illegally, and moving them outside their native range, according to an article published today in the journal Nature by Patrick Shirey and Gary Lamberti in the department of biological sciences at the University of Notre Dame.
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More than 120 K-12 teachers and administrators attended the fourth annual Notre Dame extended Research Community (NDeRC) Forum titled, “Collaborating for Education and Research” on Jan. 22 in the Jordan Hall of Science. The event offered opportunities for science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM) educators to exchange ideas and learn about more teaching tools and resources. U.S. Rep. Joe Donnelly, D-Ind., told the group that he supported the focus on education by taking the state teacher of the year, Penn High School physics teacher Stacy McCormack, to the State of the Union address.…

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Viktor Krchnak, a research professor in the Department of Chemistry and Biochemistry since 2003, has recently become director of a new research group at Palacky University in the Czech Republic, expanding a collaborative effort that has brought four Czech doctoral candidates to Notre Dame in recent years. The research will be dedicated to high throughput organic synthesis of heterocyclic compounds, an important area in drug discovery. A grant of more than $1 million from the Czech Republic’s Ministry of Education, Youth and Sports will support the group, which will include 10 to 12 doctoral candidates and postdoctoral fellows, for three years.…

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The University of Notre Dame will launch a master’s of science in global health degree program in fall 2011. The program will provide basic science-centric training in the emerging field of global health. The program, including classroom and experiential learning, aims to prepare students for improving human health around the world, especially for the poor and under-served, a reflection of the University’s Catholic mission.

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Six College of Science faculty members have been named Fellows of the American Academy for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) in honor of their efforts to advance science or its applications. They are among 503 new Fellows who will be honored at the AAAS annual meeting on February 19 in Washington, D.C.…

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The American Physical Society (APS) has recognized Notre Dame physics alumna Reka Albert as the recipient of the Maria Goeppert Mayer Award for her imaginative and pioneering studies of networks.

Albert received her bachelor’s and master’s degrees from the Babes-Bolyai University in Romania. She earned her Ph.D. in physics from Notre Dame in 2001, working with Prof. Albert-Laszlo Barabasi. Albert did postdoctoral research in mathematical biology at the University of Minnesota, working with Hans G. Othmer. She joined the Pennsylvania State University in 2003, where she currently is a professor of physics with adjunct appointments in the Department of Biology and the College of Information Science and Technology. 
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Elizabeth Archie, assistant professor of biological sciences has won a National Science Foundation CAREER Award, $750,000 across five years. The award, from the Animal Behavior Panel, will support her research into the spread of disease among wild animals.

“A lot of my work is looking at how social behavior shapes patterns of disease transmission in wild animals – how parasites and pathogens move in populations of wild animals,” Archie says, adding that the transmission patterns are largely unknown. “It’s hard to track how parasites and pathogens move from one animal to another in the wild.”…

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Andras Libal, who earned his Ph.D. in Physics at Notre Dame in 2007 and won the department’s Best Thesis Award, has published a book with the material. “Simulation Studies of non-equilibrium collective phenomena in colloids” is a synthesis of four papers Libal wrote on the subject. His adviser was Boldizsar Janko.…

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