ING Honors University of Kansas Professor for Excellence in Teaching Financial services leader ING has honored University of Kansas Professor Greg Rudnick with the ING Professor of Excellence Award for his outstanding performance in the classroom and commitment to the profession. The award was presented at Allen Fieldhouse during the Kansas vs. Oklahoma men's basketball game. The ING Professor of Excellence Award is presented to a member of the university faculty for his or her achievements and dedication to excellence in teaching at the university. The recognition includes a $1,000 grant. The full story can be accessed here.

Patsy Tombaugh, wife of Pluto discoverer, dies in Las Cruces at 99 Patricia "Patsy" Edson Tombaugh, community leader, educator, artist, and enthusiastic supporter of her astronomy pioneer husband Clyde, discoverer of the planet Pluto and KU alumnus, died Thursday, Jan. 12 at the Arbors of Del Rey in Las Cruces. She was 99.

AAS Dispatch: Astronaut Looks Back at 50 Years of Human Spaceflight.
For the KU Astrophysics program, it was an exciting week in Austin at the 219th meeting of the American Astronomical Society. Among two of the many highlights, program alumnus, retired astronaut, and current faculty member Professor Steve Hawley, (BA: Astronomy, Physics 1973), gave an invited talk on the 50-year history of human spaceflight, a talk which ended with a standing ovation from the audience of over 1000 astronomers. At the same meeting, it was announced that Dr. Ron Gilliland, (BA: Astronomy, Math, Physics, 1974) has been awarded the Tinsley Prize for 2012. For more on Ron's research, check out the alumni news page.

ATLAS/CMS Focus in on the Higgs The ATLAS and CMS experiments at the LHC, which include a number of KU Physics and Astronomy faculty and students in High Energy and Nuclear Physics, issued a press release updating the status of the experimental quest to identify the elusive Higgs particle, a fundamental prediction of the standard model of elementary particle physics. Thanks to the exceptional technology being employed to identify the Higgs, the allowed mass range for the particle has been narrowed to between 115 and 130 Gev, with evidence for an excess signal near 125 Gev. The full release is accessible at this link.

KU Physics and Astronomy Scores Well in NRC Rankings
The latest survey of graduate programs by the NRC has finally appeared after a multi-year delay, in part due to the more convoluted scheme for evaluating and ranking programs with a probability range rather than a single number. The link on the title of this news item allows one to supply the specific factors that matter to the reader and determine the ranking based upon those weights. In the simplest case scenario, the NRC Survey-Based Quality Score, KU ranked 57th, a dramatic rise from the last full survey in the early 90's where the department was rated in the 90-100 range. More impressive is Research Productivity, where KU ranks 35th in the country out of 161 programs. Finally, among programs with 25 or fewer faculty, KU ranks 9th in Research Productivity out of 52 programs.