Itai Cohen with research associates
World class physics education and training

The Department of Physics

Uniquely versatile undergraduate and graduate programs, an unrivaled breadth of  research training, and Nobel Prize-winning work in world class facilities, defines the Department of Physics at Cornell University as a national and global leader in physics training and education. The department has more than 40 active professors,  approximately 180 graduate students and 65 undergraduate majors, and offers a full range of university-level work in physics, from general education courses for nonscientists to doctoral-level independent research.

Colorful data visualization showing geodesic training trajectories.
This data visualization shows the geodesic training trajectory of different deep neural networks as they advance from total ignorance to full certainty.

Replica theory shows deep neural networks think alike

By David Nutt, Cornell Chronicle

March 12, 2024

How do you know you are looking at a dog? What are the odds you are right?

If you’re a machine-learning algorithm, you sift through thousands of images – and millions of probabilities – to arrive at the “true” answer, but different algorithms take different routes to get there.

A collaboration between researchers from Cornell and the University of Pennsylvania has found a way to cut through that mind-boggling amount of data and show that most successful deep neural networks follow a similar trajectory in the same “low-dimensional” space.

Read more here.

 

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PhD student Prateek Sehgal works with shear thickening fluid in their Clark Hall lab.
PhD student Prateek Sehgal works with shear thickening fluid in their Clark Hall lab.

Research Spotlight

Research in the department is organized in two laboratories, the Laboratory of Atomic and Solid State Physics (LASSP) and the Laboratory for Elementary Particle Physics (LEPP). Explore the links below to learn more about the major research areas of the department and the facilities available to researchers.

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