Dear Syracuse Physics Community,

It’s hard to believe that 2025 is almost over! I am excited once again to write you and highlight some of the successes and exciting developments that we have experienced over the past year. In this newsletter you will find those highlights, along with a few stories we’ve written about the excellent CU*IP gathering our community members organized early in the Spring 2025 semester, cool research projects our students pursued this past summer with amazing support given to us by an alum, and a fun tradition that we do every Fall at the department picnic. As you’ll see, we remain just as active and fun a department as I’m sure we were whenever you were last affiliated with us.

At the outset of this newsletter, I want to mention just a few of the big stories we have seen this past year around the department. A major development is the ongoing renovation project that is transforming the Basement level of the Physics Building into a new “Quantum Technology Center” which will ultimately be home to research laboratories, teaching spaces, and offices for members of the department. This is a huge project, and as anyone who has been around the building recently can tell you, it’s certainly been challenging at times to continue our daily work with a background of construction. I want to personally thank everyone for their patience…usually…during this project. When this work concludes later in 2026, we’ll be sharing a lot more about it with you. For now, we wanted to show you some of the “progress pics” from the past year.

A few other items are worth sharing too. The machine shop received a brand new 5-axis CNC machine which will dramatically improve the ability of our shop to do precision projects that our researchers require for their cutting-edge scientific pursuits. This CNC machine was generously supported by the College of Arts and Sciences, and we are very grateful to them for this new addition. The College of Arts and Sciences was also very supportive in working with the office staff to choose new furniture for room 202/204! This is our primary gathering area as a department, and is home to colloquia, classes, group meetings, study groups, costume parties, and the occasional gaming night. The new furniture allows us to quickly rearrange things to suit any occasion…and the chairs are fun to rock in as well.

Finally, I’d like to mention the work that was in Stolkin Auditorium during the summer break. The space was completely emptied of the seats and dust buildup (ewww!!!), and the Syracuse University facilities folks did an amazing job installing new audiovisual equipment, new seats, and refinishing the floors and walls. It definitely has brightened the space where thousands of students from around the university have their first, and last, encounter with Physics and Astronomy as formal courses.

Speaking of Astronomy, this Fall has seen the official launch of our brand-new Astronomy B.A. degree program, thanks to the work of many dedicated faculty! We now have our first Astronomy majors at Syracuse University. We would like to grow this new degree program and try to recruit even more students to pursue Physics and Astronomy as major degrees since we all know that an undergraduate education in these subjects at Syracuse can take you anywhere you want to go!