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Seminars/Colloquia, Fall 2025

Unless noted otherwise, Tuesday Colloquia are at 4:00 PM, refreshments will be served 15 minutes before each colloquium.
Scheduling for additional seminars will vary.

Date/Place	Speaker	Title (and link to abstract)
Tue, Aug 26 Lewis 101	Department Social Department of Physics and Astronomy University of Mississippi	Ice Cream Social
Tue, Sep 2 Lewis 101	Yi Hua The Vision Laboratory University of Mississippi	Physics Meets Vision: Imaging and Computational Modeling of the Optic Nerve Head
Tue, Sep 9 Lewis 101	Alexander Plavin Black Hole Initiative Harvard University	Active Galaxies as Particle Accelerators: the Multimessenger View
Tue, Sep 16 Lewis 101	Tiffany Lewis Department of Physics Michigan Technological University
Tue, Sep 23 Lewis 101	Ignacio Taboada School of Physics Georgia Institute of Technology
Tue, Sep 30 Lewis 101	Student Research Presentations Department of Physics and Astronomy University of Mississippi
Tue, Oct 7 Lewis 101	Kenichi Nishikawa Department of Physics, Chemistry, and Mathematics Alabama A&M University
Tue, Oct 14 Lewis 101	Francisco Sanchez Department of Physics and Materials Science University of Memphis	Studying AGN feedback under the microscope with Keck Adaptive Optics and JWST
Tue, Oct 21 Lewis 101	Quantum Movie Night
Tue, Oct 28 Lewis 101	Kei Nagai; Department of Physics and Materials Science University of Memphis
Tue, Nov 4 Lewis 101	Helvi Witek Department of Physics University of Illinois Urbana—Champaign
Tue, Nov 11 Lewis 101	Michel Villanueva Physics Department Brookhaven National Laboratory
Tue, Nov 18 Lewis 101	Matthias Kaminski Department of Physics and Astronomy University of Alabama
Tue, Nov 25 Lewis 101	Thanksgiving Break
Tue, Dec 2 Lewis 101	Michela Negro Department of Physics & Astronomy Louisiana State University
Tue, Dec 9 Lewis 101	Final Exam Week
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Abstracts of Talks

Yi Hua The Vision Laboratory University of Mississippi Physics Meets Vision: Imaging and Computational Modeling of the Optic Nerve Head Glaucoma is a leading cause of irreversible blindness worldwide, driven by the progressive degeneration of retinal ganglion cell axons. This degeneration originates in a structurally complex region at the back of the eye known as the optic nerve head. While elevated intraocular pressure is the most prominent risk factor, the precise mechanisms by which mechanical loading leads to axonal damage remain poorly understood. In this talk, I will present how we integrate advanced imaging with physics-based computational modeling to investigate two leading hypotheses for how pressure contributes to retinal ganglion cell damage in glaucoma. These approaches allow us to visualize tissue-scale deformations, quantify microstructural changes, and simulate the biomechanics and hemodynamics of the optic nerve head under varying pressure conditions. By linking mechanics to neurodegeneration, our work seeks to provide new insights into the biophysical pathways of disease. A deeper understanding of these mechanisms is essential not only for advancing fundamental knowledge in ocular biomechanics but also for developing improved methods for early diagnosis and treatment strategies that can preserve vision..

Alexander Plavin Black Hole Initiative Harvard University Active Galaxies as Particle Accelerators: the Multimessenger View Astronomy has been solely relying on electromagnetic waves for centuries, until recent decades brought new messengers. These include high-energy neutrinos detected by specialized observatories — IceCube, KM3NeT, Baikal-GVD. Neutrinos have been associated with distant active galaxies, quasars, since 2017: initially in terms of individual objects, then with well-defined source samples. In this talk, I will present recent observational discoveries shedding light on neutrino origins in quasars. I'll discuss how they challenge the current models of quasars and particle acceleration in their centers. These objects appear to accelerate heavy particles even more efficiently than previously expected. Our understanding of cosmic particle accelerators still has many gaps, and I will outline how current and future instruments can fill them.

Francisco Sanchez Department of Physics and Materials Science University of Memphis Studying AGN feedback under the microscope with Keck Adaptive Optics and JWST The discovery of several black hole scaling relationships has shown that supermassive black holes are not just astronomical ornaments sitting at the centers of galaxies, but they play a crucial role in the formation and evolution of galaxies. In this talk, I will describe recent work showing how supermassive black holes influence their host galaxies. I will focus on our team's recent results for a large sample of nearby active galactic nuclei (AGN) observed with Adaptive Optics (AO) at the Keck Observatory (the KONA survey) and with JWST. Our sample contains AGN in isolated galaxies and AGN pairs. We find that AGN-driven outflows of ionized gas are ubiquitous in both, single and dual AGN, with mass outflow rates ranging from a few solar masses per year in Seyfert galaxies to ~100 solar masses per year in dual AGN. The observations provide direct evidence of the ways in which the AGN outflows interact with the interstellar medium (AGN feedback in action), either by creating cavities of molecular gas, or by launching molecular outflows, in both cases suppressing star formation.