September 2024
August 2024
- (Anand) Attended the Alfons van Blaaderen / SCMB conference celebrating Alfons’ 60th birthday and the SCMB group’s 25th anniversary. Quite an impressive diversity of talks.
June 2024
- June 25: Ashish Joy will present his (and Shivani’s) work on AC electrophoresis today as an oral presentation at the ACS Colloids & Surface Science Symposium in Seattle.
UNDER CONSTRUCTION: a fluorescence correlation spectroscopy set up with red and blue lasers! Victor is planning to get it working and to use it this summer.
May 2024
- May 15: Congratulations to Venketesh wins the Canadian Organization of Medical Physicists Jerry Batista award to attend the COMP annual scientific meeting – the awards don’t seem to stop for Venky!
- May 10: Departmental poster session highlighted all the research going on in the Department of Physics & Physical Oceanography. Ashish wins “Best Poster” prize. And Majid wins the students’ choice Best Poster – congratulations to both !!
April 2024
- Shivani gets hired by the National Research Council in Ottawa – BIG CONGRATULATIONS! We celebrated with Ethiopian food on her last day in the lab.
- Ashish and Shivani’s micro-electrophoresis work is published in J. Phys. Chem. Letters.
February 2024
Victor Borges tied for first place to win the Tindall/Steinitz Award, the top prize given at the annual Atlantic Undergraduate Physics & Astronomy Conference (AUPAC), awarded to the undergraduate student giving the best research presentation. Congratulations, Victor!
The presentation was entitled “Using Fluorescence Correlation Spectroscopy to Categorize Electrophoretic Mobility and Diffusion in Colloidal Nanoparticles”.
October 2023
Venketesh (graduated and now working in medical physics) wins best poster award at the ISMRM-SNMMI PET/MRI workshop. Congratulations!
Brief visit to Reine Nehmé’s laboratory in ICOA to learn more about microscale thermophoresis.
June 2023
Majid poses in front of his new electro-rheo-microscopy set up.
May 2023
Sina presents at the Biophysical Society of Canada meetings in Calgary!
- May 26: Students from École des Grand-Vents (grade 6) visited! Arranged by Stefan Wallin and myself, they visited our lab in Physics to see demonstrations by Majid, Ashish, Nishel and Anas, the liquid nitrogen/helium facility (to see the coldest point in Newfoundland – thanks to Frank), and the NMR facility (thanks to Céline Schneider)!
- May 8: Nishel Alexander joins the lab from University of Prince Edward Island for the summer term. He will work with me on construction of the fluorescence correlation spectroscopy (FCS) set up, and also on fluorescent tagging and purifying proteins and polymers.
December 2022
Shivani and Kirti decked out at their wedding in Dehradun – congratulations!
Our equipment grant (for an FCS setup) is in the local MUN news.
October 2022
September 2022
- Shivani’s Dipolar Depletion paper (with Cassandra and Ivan) accepted in Phys. Rev. X!
- Venky’s Ficoll paper (with Saman and Stefan, and Yun Liu from NIST) accepted in Macromolecules!
- Ealisha returns to complete her Masters in Environmental Science!
June 2022
Venky convocation: perfect balance!
May 2022
Grade 6 students from École des Grand-Vents, who are currently studying electricity and magnetism, visited Physics (our lab, as well as the labs of Profs. Andrews and Chen). In our lab, Victor Borges showed them experiments on colloidal particles being driven into oscillatory motion by electricity. Anas Alhasanat showed how to mix liquids with magnetism. Frank from the liquefaction facility showed them the Stirling engine that makes liquid nitrogen: then they got to see superconductivity in action in the undergraduate lab upstairs.
- Venketesh gets the Graduate Academic Excellence ISRA award – 2022 by the International Students Resource Center, MUN. Also this week, Venky got a job as Assistant medical physicist at the Dr. H Bliss Murphy Cancer Center – congratulations two-fold!!
- Dillip Mohapatra arrives in St. John’s to begin his postdoc – welcome!
- Victor Borges begins summer research doing micro-electrophoresis studies
April 2022
Ashish Joy arrives in St. John’s to start a PhD – welcome !
Congratulations to Shivani (April 28) for a successful PhD defence!
Left to right: Qiying Chen, AY, Shivani, Ivan Saika-Voivod, John Dutcher (screen large), Mykhaylo Evstigneev (screen small)
Congratulations to Venky (April 14) for a successful PhD defence!
Left to right: Mike Morrow, AY, Venky, Alan Denton (screen), Ivan Saika-Voivod
Sina Heravi is awarded the best poster presentation in biochemistry at the SEA (Scientific Endeavours in Academia) conference at MUN – congratulations!
Venky receives the Burton’s Pond Award (for exceptional dedication to improving the quality of life for the residents of Family Housing. Congratulations!
March 2022
Congratulations Venketesh and Sandhya: welcome to the world, baby Hridya!
January 2022
Josipa Cecić-Vidos begins working in Orléans (Josef Hamacek group) as part of the X-CROWD project.
November 2021
- Majid Bahraminasr arrives in St. John’s – welcome!
- Suhad’s study of internal dynamics in polymer microgels is published in Langmuir.
August 2021
- Anas Alhasanat and Sina Heravi arrive in St. John’s – welcome!!!
- Shivani’s Deans Doctoral Award just got extended by a semester!
June 2021
Venketesh is awarded “Fellow of the school of graduate studies” by MUN’s School of Graduate Studies for his “continued academic excellence”. Congratulations, Venky!
May 2021
- Erica Short completes her honours thesis (congratulations!) and begins a Canada Summer Jobs work term, joint with Stefan Wallin and AY. She is simulating polyethylene glycol at varying concentrations.
- Shivani and Venketesh share their thoughts and perspective on the current second wave of Covid in India on VOCM radio.
Apr 2021
Shivani Semwal and her exciting work with the Kalpana Network, a network of female STEM students, mentors and STEM subject experts featured on the Gazette.
Mar 2021
Yanitza Trosel was awarded the 2020/2021 J. Bruce and Helen H. French Graduate Scholarship in Physics. This scholarship recognizes excellence in both course work and research in the Department of Physics and Physical Oceanography. Congratulations, Yanitza!
Feb 2021
Yanitza Trosel wins a Student Research Achievement Award in Physical Cell Biology at the Biophysical Society Meeting. Congratulations, Yanitza!
On the occasion of the International Day of Women in STEM, Shivani Semwal speaks about her association with Vigyaan Shaala International and mentorship.
Spot the two Memorial soft materials graduates in CAP’s Spot the Physicist poster! [Hint: their names begin with A.]
Student Research Awards and Recognitions 2018 – 2024
Student | Programme | Award/Recognition | Year(s) | Award Amount |
T. R. Venketesh | PhD | Graduate Academic Excellence Award (International Students Resource Center, MUN | 2022 | |
Burtons Pond MUN Award for Student Leaders | 2022 | |||
Fellow of the School of Graduate Studies Award, Memorial U. | 2021 | |||
Graduate Student of the week award, Memorial U. | 2020 | |||
MITACS Globalink Research Fellowship to visit a French lab | 2019 | $6k | ||
Shivani Semwal | PhD | Dean’s Doctoral Award, Memorial University | 2017-2021 | $5k/yr |
MITACS Globalink Research Fellowship to visit a Dutch lab | 2019 | $6k | ||
Yanitza Trosel | PhD | MITACS Accelerate – Lab2Market Award | 2022 | $15k |
3 Minute Thesis competition, Memorial University | 2018 | |||
Oral presentation award, CAP Congress | 2018 | |||
Poster presentation award, Biophysical Society meeting, USA | 2021 | |||
Victor Borges | UG | AUPAC Cup, Atlantic Undergraduate Physics and Astronomy Conference, Halifax, NS | 2023 | |
Tindall-Steinitz Prize for Best Oral Presentation, AUPAC, Sackville, NB | 2024 | |||
Sina Heravi | MSc | Barrowman Travel Award, Memorial University | 2023 | $400 |
Best Poster Presentation at Biochemistry, Memorial University | 2022 | $100 | ||
Biochemistry Graduate Teaching Excellence Award, Memorial University | 2022 | $100 | ||
Majid Bahraminasr | PhD | Dean’s Doctoral Award, Memorial University | 2021-2025 | $5k/yr |
Ashish Joy | PhD | Best poster, Departmental Poster session, Memorial University | 2024 | $100 |
Jinesh Machale | Postdoc | Co-chair at the Canadian Chemical Engineering Conference organized by the University of Calgary and the Chemical Institute of Canada. | 2023 | |
Dorcas Akrong | PhD | Best Presenter (Oral) award during the 24th Aldrich Conference, organized by the Graduate Student Union, Memorial University | 2023 | |