Yesterday we watched the closing ceremony for the Relativistic Heavy Ion Collider (RHIC) @brookhavenlab. For somebody like me, who started my Ph.D. in heavy ion physics in 2000, the year when RHIC started its operations, it was an emotional moment.

Watching RHIC's closing ceremony 💔

🤦🏼‍♀️

Ready for the Winter storm in Houston! Remember to protect the 4 Ps: people, pets, plants and pipes! ❄️☃️

Santa came to Texas... and met my cat

I hooded my 7th and 8th graduate students yesterday!

Enjoying @jnoronhahostler.bsky.social talk at our INT workshop on Nuclear Physics in Mergers.

Virtually attending the talk of Mateus Reinke Pelicer, who is presenting the MUSES cyberinfrastructure at the INT today.

How I love Houston ❤️

What a day! I started with an online talk at my former Ph.D. advisor's retirement workshop, and a few hours later I celebrated the successful Ph.D. defense of my student 🤩 I am reflecting on the impact that my advisor had on my life, and trying to propagate it forward to my own students.

Want to download everything from today? Whether you want a new desktop background or an image to send to friends and family, we've got you covered! Head to rubinobservatory.org/gallery/collections/first-look-gallery and take your pick 🌌🔭🧪 (...or just download everything, no need to choose!)

Here is the link to the Skyviewer app, that allows you to navigate the very large #VeraRubin Observatory image. skyviewer.app/explorer

Happening now! Tune in to watch the first Vera Rubin Observatory images! www.youtube.com/live/dF1g-Ru...

It was my great pleasure to work with @fannyetienne.bsky.social, Johannes Jahan and everyone else on the #pint25 team! Already looking forward to a great #pint26! Please get in touch if you want to help organize the event in your town!

My group surprised me with flowers, cake and a wonderful card on my birthday. I am so proud of my special Houston family. 🥰

#pint25 is over, and it was a big success! We sold out all evenings in Houston and in many other cities. Lots of fun discussions and interest from the audience! Many thanks to all city teams for making it possible. Mark your calendars for #pint26: May 18, 19, 20. See you next year!

The first evening of Pint of Science in Houston was a big success! Full house, great talks, and so many questions! See you tonight and tomorrow at the True Anomaly Brewing Company! @pintofscience.us #pint25

Pint of Science is already next week 😱 Still don't have your tickets? Grab them now here 👉 pintofscience.us 16 cities in the US for 3 nights of fun and cool science 🤩 #pint25

I was excited to listen to my favorite author, Amor Towles, tonight in Houston.

The Knowmads Podcast is back with season 2 and our first episode is with Rene Bellwied on winning the breakthrough prize in fundamental physics. #breakthroghprize #fundamentalphysics #Theknowmadspodcast youtu.be/evozvs63Ub4?...

🎟️TODAY IS THE DAY! 🎉 Tickets for #Pint25 are officially ON SALE! 🍻🧠 Check out the program, grab your tickets today and join us May 19–21 for three nights of exciting science in 16 cities across the U.S. 👉 pintofscience.us

Very grateful to the organizers of our biggest conference, Quark Matter 2025, for streaming all the talks! We all cheered remotely for our undergrad @jappus.bsky.social today, who gave his talk at the conference in Frankfurt. He did so well! 🤩

I finally had the pleasure of attending a talk by Tatiana Erukhimova from @tamu.bsky.social. She is so engaging, I really enjoyed and admire her energy!

New paper day! We calculate the D-measure in a hadronic vs quark-gluon plasma scenarios and compare to LHC data, finding moderate evidence for fluctuations freezing out in the quark phase. arxiv.org/abs/2504.02085

New paper day! 4D equation of state for strongly interacting matter with extended coverage from first principles! www.arxiv.org/abs/2504.01881

Proud of my students who presented their work at the @apsphysics.bsky.social Global Physics summit this week! They all did a great job, and enjoyed their experience too!

If you are at the @apsphysics.bsky.social #GlobalSummit this week, check out these two mini-symposia tomorrow, which contain a lot of exciting results from the MUSES collaboration and feature many of my students and collaborators!

Happy #PiDay!

New York City, get ready! 🗽✨The city that never sleeps is lighting up with science at #pint25 on May 19-20-21! 🚀🔬 Meet the team making it happen 👉 pintofscience.us/team/New%20Y...

New paper day! Very excited about this collaboration. Chec it out! arxiv.org/abs/2503.03057

🫶

🚨City announcement🚨 Houston, did you miss us? We are back for #pint25 🚀 in May 19-20-21! Check out for more info here 👉 pintofscience.us

I spent the afternoon at work today, to attend the Physics Department research day. Lots of great talks and posters, here are the winners in the different categories. Among them, my students @prachigarella.bsky.social and Gabe Frohaug. Congratulations!

How I love Le cirque du soleil!

New paper day! We provide a new constraint on the location of the QCD critical point, based on a novel method developed within the MUSES collaboration, and on an equation of state with improved precision. arxiv.org/abs/2502.10267

Check out the new paper by our MUSES Collaboration! www.arxiv.org/abs/2502.07902

My student Hitansh Shah presented our recent paper on the QCD critical point at today's MUSES seminar. He did a great job!

Moon and Venus were so close tonight!

I can't believe that finally tomorrow we are in February! I feel like this January was at least 3-4 months long 😅

Happy birthday to the love of my life 🥰

Today we had our first group meeting of the new semester!

It really happened! ❄️ #Houston #WinterStorm2025

Big winter storm coming to Houston this week! We wrapped our palm trees and flower beds and are ready! Keep warm, fellow Houstonians!

We have a new paper out! First time I post on the condensed matter arXiv! We use deep learning to classify the 2D Ising model configurations as paramagnetic or ferromagnetic, based just on training at T=0 and T=Infinity. www.arxiv.org/abs/2501.05547

So excited to have finally met @rittenhousewest.bsky.social in real life, after so many years of virtual interactions!🥰

Choose 20 movies that have stayed with you or influenced you. One movie per day for 20 days, in no particular order. No explanations, no reviews, just posters. #Movie #FilmSky #MovieChallenge Day 20

Choose 20 movies that have stayed with you or influenced you. One movie per day for 20 days, in no particular order. No explanations, no reviews, just posters. #Movie #FilmSky #MovieChallenge Day 19

Check out our white paper on software infrastructure for advancing nuclear physics computing! We welcome input from the community until February 14th! arxiv.org/abs/2501.00905

Choose 20 movies that have stayed with you or influenced you. One movie per day for 20 days, in no particular order. No explanations, no reviews, just posters. #Movie #FilmSky #MovieChallenge Day 18

Choose 20 movies that have stayed with you or influenced you. One movie per day for 20 days, in no particular order. No explanations, no reviews, just posters. #Movie #FilmSky #MovieChallenge Day 17