Schearer Prize Winners Announced

Gaurav Khairnar, Ali Sarikhani, Yanyan Zheng, and Jose Nicasio, Ph.D. students in physics, are winners of this year’s Schearer Prize, the Missouri S&T Physics Department’s annual graduate research competition. It is held in memory of Laird D. Schearer, the department’s first Curators' Professor of Physics, and rewards graduate students for outstanding research performed during the course of their graduate study.

First prize was awarded to Gaurav Khairnar for his project “Phases and Phase Transitions of the Disordered q-state Quantum Clock model”. The 2nd prize is shared between Ali Sarikhani (Transparency and room temperature ferromagnetism in diluted magnetic polycrystalline Zn1−xCrxTe non-oxide II-VI semiconductor compounds) and Yanyan Zheng (An Optically Targeted Search for Gravitational Waves emitted by Core-Collapse Supernovae during the Third Observing Runs of Advanced LIGO and Advanced Virgo). The 3rd Prize goes to Jose Nicasio (Dispersion of Ultra-Relativistic Tardyonic and Tachyonic Wave Packets on Cosmic Scales).

Congratulations!

From left: Jose Nicasio, Gaurav Khairnar, Yanyan Zhen, and Ali Sarikhani.

Cavaglia and Fischer win faculty awards

Congratulations to Dr. Marco Cavaglia who was awarded the Faculty Excellence Award and to Dr. Daniel Fischer who was honored with the Faculty Research Award.

Congratulations to our Spring 2022 graduates

Congratulations to our students who are graduating with a BS in Physics. L to r: Nicholas Theodorou, Cole Rischbieter, Sean Anderson, Zachary Miller, Andrew Niiro, Andrew Janes, and Jose Padron (not pictured). We wish you all the best for your future paths!

2022 Fuller Competition Winners Announced

Jordan Stevens, Charles Kropp, and Ethan Pham are the winners of the 2022 Fuller Prize Competition for Undergraduate Research. First prize was awarded to Jordan Stevens for her project “Early Dark Energy in light of precise cosmological observations” (Advisor: Dr. Shun Saito). Second prize was awarded to Charles Kropp for his research “Investigation of Time-Delay, Transmission, and Deposition Eigenchannels” (Advisor: Dr. Alexey Yamilov). Third prize was awarded to Ethan Pham for his work on “Electric Field Exfoliation for Two-Dimensional Nanolayered Materials” (Advisor: Dr. Yew San Hor).
The Fuller Prize Competition for Undergraduate Research honors the memory of Dr. Harold Q. Fuller, former chair of the physics department.

Saito wins CASB Research Award

Congratulations to Dr. Shun Saito, assistant professor of physics, who has been awarded a 2022 CASB Research Award for his exceptional work with undergraduate students.

Physics students win at UGRC

Congratulations to three physics majors who won prizes for their presentations at the S&T Undergraduate Research Conference. 
Anthony Lonsdale (right) won a 1st prize for his project "Applying Spin Dynamics Methods to Uranium Dioxide" (advisor: Dr. Aleksandr Chernatynskiy). Reece Beattie-Hauser (left) won a 2nd prize for his work on "Scalar Susceptibility of a Diluted Classical XY Model" (advisor: Dr. Thomas Vojta). Jordan Stevens (center) won a 3rd prize for her research on “Early Dark Energy in Precision Cosmology” (advisor: Dr. Shun Saito).

Department welcomes new assistant professors

We are excited to welcome our new assistant professors Dr. Halyna Hodovanets and Dr. Hyunsoo Kim who are joining our department from Texas Tech. Both are condensed matter experimentalists and received their PhD's from Iowa State.

Congratulations to our fall 2021 graduates

Congratulations to our students who are graduating with a BS in Physics: Brock Hinton, Ethan Hisle, Joshua Dalton (l to r) and Noah Baden (not pictured). We wish you all the best for the future.

Schearer Prize Winners Announced

Sujan Bastola, Xuecheng Ye, and Jack Crewse (left to right) are the winners of the 28th annual Schearer Prize competition for graduate research. It is held in memory of Laird D. Schearer, the department’s first Curators' Professor of Physics, and rewards graduate students for outstanding research performed during the course of their graduate study.

Jack Crewse won the 1st prize for his project "Localization of the Higgs mode near the superfluid-Mott glass quantum phase transition" (advisor Dr. Thomas Vojta). Sujan Bastola received a 2nd prize for his work on "Fully Differential Investigation of Two-Center Interference in Dissociative Capture in p + H2 Collisions" (advisor Dr. Michael Schulz). Xuecheng Ye was awarded a 2nd prize for his research on "Stripe order, impurities, and symmetry breaking in a diluted frustrated magnet" (advisor Dr. Thomas Vojta). Congratulations!

Schulz retires

Curators' professor Michael Schulz is retiring after 31 years in our department. Congratulations and best wishes.

Pam Crabtree 30 years of Service

Pam Crabtree has been working in our department for 30 years. Congratulations! She is truly the backbone of our department.

Chernatynskiy and Yamilov Promoted

Dr. Aleksandr Chernatynskiy will be promoted to Associate Professor with tenure, and Dr. Alexey Yamilov will be promoted to Full Professor, effective September 1, 2021. Congratulations!

Congratulations to our Spring 2021 Graduates

Congratulations to our students who are graduating with a BS in Physics!
Top l to r: James Bearden, Joseph Franz, Samuel Halladay; bottom l to r: Jodie Hermann, Elijah Stafford, Seth Stubblefield, Joshua Maechler; not pictured: Taylor Lindenbusch, Nicholas Razo. We wish you all the best for your future paths.

Fuller Prize Winners Announced

Congratulations to the winners of the Fuller Prize Competition for Undergraduate Research. First prize was awarded to Samuel Halladay (Advisor: Dr. Thomas Vojta) for his work on Fractional Brownian Motion in Confined Geometries and to Steven Karst (Advisor: Dr. Shun Saito) for his project Machine Learning Optimizes a Survey of Dark Energy. The third prize was awarded to Charles Kropp (Advisor: Dr. Alexey Yamilov) for his research Aharonov-Bohm Conductance Oscillations in terms of Transmission Eigenchannels. The Fuller Prize Competition for Undergraduate Research honors the memory of Dr. Harold Q. Fuller, former chair of the physics department.

Physics Majors Win at Undergraduate Research Conference

Congratulations to physics majors Steven Karst (l) and Anthony Lonsdale (r) on their success at the Missouri S&T Undergraduate Research Conference. Steven won a 1st prize for his presentation “Machine Learning Optimizes a Survey of Dark Energy". His advisor is Dr. Shun Saito. Anthony won a 2nd prize for his project “Thermal Conductivity in Ferromagnetic Materials Using MD Simulations". His advisor is Dr. Aleksandr Chernatynskiy.

Chernatynskiy wins CASB Teaching Award

Dr. Aleksandr Chernatynskiy, assistant professor of physics, has received the 2021 CASB Teaching Award. Congratulations!

Grad Students Receive Grant to Establish Women in Physics Group

Physics department PhD students Dripta Bhattacharjee and Yanyan Zheng won a Women in Physics Group Grant from the American Physical Society to establish a Women in Physics group at Missouri S&T. Congratulations!

Congratulations to our fall 2020 graduates

Congratulations to our fall 2020 graduates: Kenneth Distefano, Nathaniel Page, Elizabeth Triller, Ravi Shastri, and Alex Warhover. We are proud of you and wish you all the best.

Congratulations to Schearer Prize Winners

Jack Crewse (left), Bishnu Acharya (center), and  Gaurav Khairnar(right), Ph.D. students in physics, are winners of this year’s Schearer Prize, the Missouri S&T Physics Department’s annual graduate research competition. It is held in memory of Laird D. Schearer, the department’s first Curators' Professor of Physics, and rewards graduate students for outstanding research performed during the course of their graduate study.

Jack Crewse won first prize for his research on high-harmonic generation in Dirac metals and the application of the semiconductor-Bloch formalism to topological systems. Bishnu Acharya was awarded second prize for a complete experiment on multi-photon ionization of ultra-cold and polarized atoms. Gaurav Khairnar received third prize for his studies of the phase boundary near a magnetic percolation transition.

Congratulations!

Researchers Validate Theory that Neutrinos Shape the Universe

An international research team has created cosmological simulations that accurately depict the role of neutrinos in the evolution of the universe in a study recently published in The Astrophysical Journal. Missouri University of Science and Technology cosmologist Dr. Shun Saito,  assistant professor of physics and researcher on the team, says the work is a milestone in the process of simulating the formation of the structure of the universe.

Read the full article here.

Physics Faculty Receive Research and Teaching Awards

Drs. Marco Cavaglia and Ulrich Jentschura received Faculty Research Awards, recognizing faculty members who have demonstrated excellence in research and scholarship.

Dr. Greg Story received both a Faculty Teaching Award and an Outstanding Teaching Award.

Drs. Thomas Vojta and Alexey Yamilov received Outstanding Teaching Commendations for 2019-2020

S&T Researchers involved in detection of most massive black hole merger

On September 2, 2020, astronomers announced the detection of a signal from the most massive black hole merger yet observed in gravitational waves. The signal was observed on May 21, 2019 with the National Science Foundation’s Laser Interferometer Gravitational-wave Observatory (LIGO), a pair of identical, 4-kilometer-long interferometers in the United States, and Virgo, a 3-kilometer-long detector in Italy. The international team of scientists, who make up the LIGO Scientific Collaboration (LSC) and the Virgo Collaboration, have reported their findings in two papers published today. One, appearing in Physical Review Letters, details the discovery, and the other, in The Astrophysical Journal Letters, discusses the signal’s physical properties and astrophysical implications. Missouri S&T is part of the LIGO Scientific Collaboration through the Institute of Multi-messenger Astrophysics and Cosmology (IMAC) at the Physics Department. Three IMAC researchers and students are among the authors of the two papers.

The two merging black holes had a mass of about 85 and 66 times the mass of the sun and merged into an “intermediate-mass” black hole, with a mass of about 150 times that of the sun. The merger likely produced gravitational waves equal to the energy of eight suns. The two black holes were located roughly 15 billion light years away from Earth, making this event one of the most distant gravitational-wave sources detected so far.

For more information, see:  https://www.ligo.caltech.edu/news/ligo20200902

 

 

Picture caption:

 

Numerical simulation of the heavy black-hole merger observed by LIGO and Virgo (GW190521). The two black holes inspiral and merge, emitting gravitational waves. The black holes have masses of about 85 and 66 times the mass of the sun. Credit: N. Fischer, H. Pfeiffer, A. Buonanno (Max Planck Institute for Gravitational Physics), Simulating eXtreme Spacetimes (SXS) Collaboration.

Congratulations to our Spring 2020 Graduates

Congratulations to our Spring 2020 graduates: Elizabeth Caputa-Hatley, Cameron Maupin, Kyle McMillen, Vince Preis, Anzumaan Chakraborty (top l to r), Dominic Dalba, Ashley Pruett, Jonas Buxton, Brett Ballard, Zenon Klok (bottom l to r), Mark Myers, and Michael Ellis (not pictured). We are proud of you and wish you all the best.

Fuller Prize Winners 2020

The 2020 Fuller Prize competition for undergraduate research took place via Zoom this year. First Prize has been awarded to Alex Warhover for  his research on Anomalous Diffusion with an Absorbing Wall (Advisor: Dr. Vojta). Second Prizes went to Elizabeth Caputa-Hatley for her project Highly non-stoichiometric amorphous oxide semiconductors:  the structure and electronic properties of defects in a-In₂O_3-x (Advisor: Dr. Medvedeva) and to Kyle McMillen for his work on Characterization of Supersonic Gas-jet Targets for Laser Wakefield  Accelerators (LWFA)  (Advisor: Dr. Daoru Han). Congratulations to all the competitors and to their advisors for an exceptional set of research presentations.

Schulz receives Distinguished Scientist Award

Congratulations to Dr. Michael Schulz, Curators' Distinguished Professor of Physics, for receiving a Distinguished Scientist award from the Chinese Academy of Sciences. Each year, only three recipients from all areas of physics and mathematics are selected to receive this award. Dr. Schulz will travel across China to give a lecture series at several institutes of the academy next summer.‌

Congratulations to Schearer Prize winners

Basu Lamichhane (right), Chandra Adhikari (center), and Ahmed Ibrahim (left), Ph.D. students in physics, are winners of this year’s Schearer Prize, the Missouri S&T Physics Department’s annual graduate research competition. It is held in memory of Laird D. Schearer, the department’s first Curators' Professor of Physics, and rewards graduate students for outstanding research performed during the course of their graduate study.

Basu Lamichhane won first place for his fully differential study of capture with vibrational dissociation in p+H₂ collisions. Chandra Adhikari won second place for his work on long-range interaction of hydrogen atoms and oscillatory tails. Ahmed Ibrahim won third place for his Monte Carlo simulations of the disordered three-color quantum Ashkin-Teller model. Congratulations!

Story wins Sustained Excellence in Outstanding Teaching Award

Congratulations to Dr. Greg Story who received a Sustained Excellence in Outstanding Teaching Award, a special award for faculty who have earned Oustanding Teaching Awards for nine out of the previous ten years. Dr. Story is pictured here with CAFE director Dr. Irina Ivlieva and physics department chair Dr. Thomas Vojta.

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Missouri S&T joins dark energy experiment

Missouri S&T has joined the Hobby-Eberly Telescope Dark Energy Experiment (HETDEX) as one of 11 international institutions that are collaborating to define the force causing the accelerated expansion of the universe.  “The cosmic acceleration is one of the biggest mysteries in our fundamental physics,” says Dr. ShunSaito, cosmologist, assistant professor of physics and leader of Missouri S&T’s HETDEX research group.

Read the full article here

S&T Faculty Win NSF Award for Supercomputer

A team of Missouri S&T faculty has won a $1.96 million award from the National Science Foundation's Office of Advanced Cyberinfrastructure. The award will be used to set up a supercomputer that will enable advanced computational science and engineering research and education at Missouri S&T and several partner institutions throughout the state. The team consists of Richard Dawes, Chemistry, who lead the initiative; Julia Medvedeva and Thomas Vojta from Physics; Stephen Gao from Geosciences and Geological & Petroleum Engineering; and Serhat Hosder, Mechanical & Aerospace Engineering. Thomas Vojta will serve as Principal Investigator for the award while Richard Dawes is on leave from S&T.

Read the news article here 

Jerry Peacher Celebrates 50 Years of Teaching

Prof. Jerry Peacher celebrated 50 years of teaching at our department.

Medvedeva co-PI on Multi-Million UM System Project

Prof. Julia Medvedeva is a co-PI on a multi-million project funded by the UM system to support Delbert E. Day Center for Glass Science and Technology and to significantly enhance research capabilities across the UM System. The project is lead by Dr. Richard Brow (S&T MSE) in collaboration with Dr. Ming C. Leu (S&T MAE), Yezaz Ghouri (UM Medicine), and Julie Semon (S&T Bio. Sci.). Julia Medvedeva will develop computational tools to study structural morphology and evolution, defect dynamics, oxygen diffusion, crystallization processes, and phase transformations in traditional and specialty glasses. Congratulations!

Missouri S&T Physics team wins Silver medal in the University Physics Competition.

Congratulations to Alex Warhover and Nicholas Razo who shared the first prize in the Missouri S&T physics competition. The competition is focused on junior undergraduate students, with only the material covered in the introductory physics courses necessary for the solution of the problems.  Theoretical and experimental portions of the competition contained 3 problems total with the limited time to solve them and generate a report. 

Missouri S&T Physics team wins Silver medal in the University Physics Competition.

Nicholas Razo, Nicholas Parris, and Anzumaan Chakraborty, undergraduate students in physics, are members of a team that won a Silver medal in the University Physics Competition. The competition is a worldwide event with over 280 teams participating in the course of one grueling weekend in November of 2018, when each team had to research, solve and deliver a report on the open-ended physics problem. For their work on the "Sending a Light Sail Propelled Nanocraft to Alpha Centauri" problem, the Missouri S&T team received a Silver Medal, a distinction for the top 18%  of the field. 

Scheare Prize Graduate Research Competition Completed: Congratulation to Winners!

Jack Crewse and Yunsheng Qiu, Ph.D. students in physics, are winners of this year’s Schearer Prize, the Missouri S&T Physics Department’s annual graduate research competition. It is held in memory of Laird D. Schearer, the department’s first Curators' Professor of Physics, and rewards graduate students for outstanding research performed during the course of their graduate study.

Jack Crewse won 1st place for his work on quantum critical behavior of a three-dimensional superfluid-Mott glass transition. Yunsheng Qiu was awarded 2nd place for his work on the anomalous Hall effect in n-type Cr_xSb₂Te₃ topological insulators. Congratulations!

The Forty-Seventh Annual Harold Q Fuller Undergraduate Research Competition Completed: Congratulation to Winners!

Society of Physics Students in Argonne

Last weekend, April 14th,  the Society of Physics Students took a tour of Argonne National Lab.

From SPS to Sigma Pi Sigma

We celebrated on Apr 4th the induction of 17 of our best undergraduate students into Sigma Pi Sigma, the honor society of the Society of Physics Students. Congratulations!

Department of Physics welcomes new postdocs

Dr. Luigi Bagolini (left) comes to us from Rome, Italy, and will be working with Prof. Julia Medvedeva. Dr. Martin Puschmann (right) from Chemnitz, Germany, will be working with Prof. Thomas Vojta. We wish them a wonderful and productive time here in Rolla.

Dr. Julia Medvedeva receives The Faculty Excellence Award!

Dr. Julia Medvedeva, professor of physics, was among 4 faculty members at Missouri S&T who were honored with the Faculty Excellence Award on Feb. 13th.   The award recognizes faculty members who have demonstrated sustained excellence teaching, research, and service  and carries a monetary stipend funded by industry and alumni contributions. Congratulations!