Control Center for the FUSE Satellite

CAS     The Center for Astrophysical Sciences (CAS), currently directed by Professor Ethan Vishniac, provides several different kinds of support for the research efforts of the department's astrophysicists and astronomers. It supplies managerial and technical support for projects ranging in scale from individual observing programs to multimillion dollar spacecraft. CAS also acts as an umbrella organization for scientific policy-making by the JHU astrophysics/ astronomy group. In addition, CAS sponsors a weekly research seminar series and other informal opportunities for the members of the Baltimore astrophysical community to mingle and exchange ideas.

MRSEC

    A Materials Research Science and Engineering Center (MRSEC) was established at The Johns Hopkins University in January 1997 with C.L. Chien as its director. It is one of 24 MRSECs in the country sponsored by the National Science Foundation.

    The MRSEC at Hopkins focuses on nanostructured materials. Nanostructured materials contain low-dimensional entities or patterned structures with feature sizes on the nanometer scale. The low-dimensional entities may be 2D (e.g., functionally dissimilar multilayers or superlattices), 1D (e.g., arrays of nanowires), 0D (e.g., materials with embedded ultrafine particles) or patterned structures (e.g., ordered 2D lattices of rings, dots or 1D stripes) made by nanolithography. Nanostructured materials exhibit unique and often greatly enhanced properties, in comparison to bulk materials, when their key structural length scales become comparable to, or smaller than, characteristic physical length scales. The ability to modify the underlying nanostructures in a controlled manner and to manipulate the interplay between the constituent materials allows new properties to be revealed, enhanced, optimized and tailored. With these attributes and flexibility in design, nanostructured materials are at the forefront of the development of novel devices in many critical technologies.

Scanning electron micrograph of an array of a superconducting aluminum ring fabricated by electron beam lithography. Each ring is 1.7 µm in diameter. Arrays of this type are used by Prof. Reich to explore the role of lattice geometry in magnetism.     The center currently consists of eight faculty members, a number of postdoctoral research associates, graduate students and undergraduate students from four academic departments in the School of Arts and Sciences and the School of Engineering. The shared experimental facilities include fabrication and processing, X-ray characterization, electron microscopy, surface characterization and measurement of physical properties.

Maryland Space Grant Consortium

The department is host to Maryland Space Grant Consortium, the Maryland arm of NASA's National Space Grant College and Fellowship Program, which was started in 1989. Directed by Professor Richard Henry, the Consortium carries out programs to encourage female and underrepresented minority careers in science (especially with NASA); programs to let the public better understand the return on NASA investment in all its programs; and finally, programs to help improve mathematics and science education at all levels. Professor Richard C. Henry is director of Maryland Space Grant Consortium, which includes (besides Johns Hopkins as the lead institution) the University of Maryland at College Park, Morgan State University, the U.S. Naval Academy, the Johns Hopkins Applied Physics Laboratory, the Space Telescope Science Institute, the University of Maryland Center for Environmental Sciences and Hagerstown Junior College Advanced Technology Center. A major Space Grant tool for education is Maryland Space Grant Observatory, located on the roof of the Bloomberg Center and used not only in Space Grant programs but also in the undergraduate and graduate programs of the department. Space Grant provides a fellowship for a graduate student whose duties are to be observatory staff, hosting public nights and training undergraduate and graduate students in use of the Morris W. Offit Telescope, the main observatory instrument, which is a half-meter reflecting telescope that is equipped with a CCD (electronic) detector.

TIPAC

    For many years, TIPAC members have organized the Johns Hopkins Workshops on Current Problems in Particle Theory. The workshops are held annually and involve about 50 leading researchers from around the world. They rotate among Johns Hopkins and several other prestigious universities in Europe and Asia. In 2001 the 26th Johns Hopkins Workshop was held in Florence, Italy. This conference brought together experts in physics and astrophysics for four days of intensive discussions about the latest developments across the different fields. Each year there is substantial participation in the workshops by faculty and advanced graduate students from Johns Hopkins.