A Word from the Department Administration

When Tora Aasland appointed the Fagerberg Committee, which is named after its leader, Prof. Jan Fagerberg at UoO, she stated: ”We must dare to ask critical questions about whether or not there is a sufficiently good relation between the resources we allocate to research and the results of this research”. Better management is a question we have discussed also during the strategy work at IFT, and this is an important element in the Norwegian Research Council’s evaluation of basic research in physics – and probably of the other subject areas. We recommend all employees and others who are interested to read through the short version of the Fagerberg Committee’s report and other’s comments to this work (see the links under), and reflect on the recommendations.

News and General Information

Gunnar Randers research award 2011 given to Mogens Høgh Jensen

Foto: K. Hovland, Teknisk Ukeblad

On May 5, the Randers prize for 2011 was awarded to Mogens Høgh Jensen from the Niels Bohr Institute, Copenhagen. The total prize amounts to 100000 NOK, and is administered by the Institute for Energy Technology in Kjeller and is given to physicists who work within the field of condensed matter physics and collaborate with researchers in Norway.

Høgh Jensen is known for many groundbreaking efforts, especially within phase transitions, critical phenomena, chaos, turbulence and complex systems.

The physicist meeting in Oslo Oslo June 20 - 22

We would like to remind everyone that our colleagues in Oslo invite us to this year’s Physicist meeting. This event will also contribute to mark the 200 years of the University of Oslo. We would like to encourage everyone to participate. The conference fee of those PhD and MS student with registered presentations will be covered by the Norwegian Physics Society. IFT will in addition cover parts of travel and accommodation expenses, up to 1500 NOK per student, the rest shall be covered by the respective research groups. For more information, contact Per Osland. We encourage everyone, who would like to participate, to register as soon as possible.

EU info day May 24

In July, many new announcements will be coming in EU’s FP7. In cooperation with the University of Bergen, the Norwegian Research Council would like to invite to a day with rich information. International collaboration is important for Norwegian research, and participation in EU’s framework programs is of high priority. Participation provides valuable knowledge, researcher network and funding.

Norwegian researchers who participate in EU-research ensure Norway valuable access to results and knowledge. The way to obtaining research results is through collaboration across scientific and national borders. Researchers who succeed with their EU-applications highlight the value of being a part of an international network.

Participation in the information day is free of charge, lunch will be served! The program includes the free programs such as ERC and Marie Curie plus some thematic areas such as environment, health, agriculture and energy. More information can be found on NFR’s web pages. Registration here.

The Fagerberg Committee’s recommendation

On May 2, The Fagerberg Committee published its report on higher education A More Open Research System. It is also possible to find short summary of the report. See the reviews in interviews in På Høyden: Positive to open competition arena and Would like to reduce the research time of ineffective researchers, and in Universitas.no: Fears researcher dumping.

Staff

Dr. Silvio Melo to IFT/ Michelsen Centre as guest researcher for one year.

Dr. Silvio Melo who is associate professor at the Federal University of Pernambuco (UFPE) – Brazil. Silvio got his BSc in computer science and MSc in mathematics from UFPE and his PhD at the Arizona State University in computational math. His research interests include reconstruction methods for industrial tomography, geometric modeling in computer graphics, CAGD and applications of computer vision and signal processing.

We welcome Silvio to IFT!

IFT in media

· Bjarne Stugu: Mørkt og tungt (Dark and heavy) Dagbladet Magasinet May 7 2011.

· Arvid Erdal: Eneste i sitt slag (One of a kind) Video interview about the Van de Graaff-generator published by UoB May 18 2011. It will be broadcasted on NRK2 May 28 at 16:30 in “Vitenskapshvelvet” (The Science Vault).

Publications (ISI)

· Gerold B, Kotopoulis S, McDougall C, McGloin D, Postema M, Prentice P: Laser-nucleated acoustic cavitation in focused ultrasound REVIEW OF SCIENTIFIC INSTRUMENTS Volume: 82 Issue: 4 Article Number: 044902

· Aad G, Abbott B, Abdallah J, Buanes T, Burgess T, Eigen G, Johansen LG, Kastanas A, Leibig W, Lipniacka A, Mohn B, Oye OK, Rosendahl PL, Sandaker H, Sjursen TB, Stugu B, Tonyan A, Ugland M et al.: Measurement of Dijet Azimuthal Decorrelations in pp Collisions at root s=7 TeV PHYSICAL REVIEW LETTERS Volume: 106 Issue: 17 Article Number: 172002 Published: APR 29 2011

· Djuvsland O, Nystrand J: Single and double photonuclear excitations in Pb plus Pb collisions at root s(NN)=2.76 TeV at the CERN Large Hadron Collider PHYSICAL REVIEW C Volume: 83 Issue: 4 Article Number: 041901

· Tanskanen EI, Pulkkinen TI, Viljanen A, et al.: From space weather toward space climate time scales: Substorm analysis from 1993 to 2008 JOURNAL OF GEOPHYSICAL RESEARCH-SPACE PHYSICS Volume: 116 Article Number: A00I34

· Bugiolacchi R, Mall U, Bhatt M, McKenna-Lawlor, Banaszkiewicz M, Bronstad K, Nathues A, Soraas F, Ullaland K, Pedersen RB: An in-depth look at the lunar crater Copernicus: Exposed mineralogy by high-resolution near-infrared spectroscopy ICARUS Volume: 213 Issue: 1 Pages: 43-63