Fourth year graduate student Nicole Quist has been chosen as a member of the United States Delegation for the sixth International Conference on Women in Physics. As a member of the delegation, she is involved in writing the conference proceedings paper for the United States and creating the national poster which focus on the statu
Nicole Quist
s of women in physics in the United States and the problems that women in physics experience. The delegation will also be completing a project that will provide tools to aid women in physics, and Nicole will contribute to this as well. Although she will not be part of the subset of the group that will travel to the conference itself, her contributions will. This is an exciting opportunity for Nicole to work with women around the country to focus on encouraging diversity in physics.
Physics students and faculty have received a total of 7 SURE Science Awards.
The SURE Science Awards support an undergraduate student for a summer of research in a faculty member’s lab.
our student and faculty awardees are:
Cassandra Hatcher (Physics) in the Lazzati Group
Garret Jepson (Physics) in the Schneider Group
Michelle Zhou (Physics) in the Johns Lab (Vet-Med)
Youngmin Park (BB) in the Qiu Lab
Theresa Dinh (Biology) in the Sun Lab
Dublin Nichols (Physics) in the Minot Lab
Attila Varga (Physics) in the Hadley Group
Congratulations to all – we’re looking forward to hearing your reports at the end of the summer.
Bethany Matthews, a 4th-year graduate student in Prof. Janet Tate’s lab, has won a U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) Office of Science Graduate Student Research Award. The award is for the proposed research project, “Microscopy Analysis of Metastable Heterostructural Alloys with Anomalous Piezoelectric Response”, to be conducted at the National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL) in Golden, CO during the summer and fall of 2017.
The award citation states that, “The SCGSR award is in recognition of outstanding academic accomplishments and the merit of the SCGSR research proposal, and reflects Bethany Matthews’s potential to advance the Ph.D. studies and make important contributions to the mission of the DOE Office of Science.” Congratulations, Bethany!
Bethany will work with Dr. Andrew Norman of NREL and also with Prof. Brian Gorman and Dr. Andriy Zakutayev, her collaborators in the DOE-funded Energy Frontier Research Center, the Center for Next-Generation Materials by Design. The EFRC members study metastable materials of many types, and Bethany’s role has been understanding metastable alloys. Her developing interest in transmission electron microscopy, using OSU’s Electron Microscopy Facility under the guidance of Dr. Pete Eschbach, led her to submit a proposal to DOE to study metastable alloys with microscopists at NREL and Colorado School of Mines.
SPIE – the international society for optics and photonics has chosen Matt Graham as one of 10 Rising Researchers for 2017. He will be honored at their meeting in Anaheim next week!
OSU’s last Goldwater Scholar winner was in 2013; most years there are only a couple successful nominations statewide (3 this year). OSU also had a second successful nominee this year, True Gibson, a Life Sciences major. Congrats!
The Goldwater Scholarship was established by US Congress in 1986. Each year all universities nominate up to four undergraduates in science or engineering for one of ~240 Goldwater Scholarships. As all nominees are academically near the top of their school, the primary consideration at the National level becomes “the extent to which that individual has the commitment and potential to make a significant contribution to his or her field. This is judged by letter of references, essays written by the student, and prior research experience.”
Mirek will graduate in June 2018 as a Physics and Math major and plans to pursue graduate studies. Since his freshman year (Fall 2014), Mirek Brandt has been a member of Prof. Matt Graham’s Micro-Femto Energetics Lab. His research contributions are very substantial and we thank URSA-ENGAGE and SURE Science Summer Scholarship programs for funding his research. He will defend his undergraduate senior project thesis later this year entitled “The Impact of Crystal Morphology on Opto-Electronic Properties of Amorphous and Organic Crystalline Materials”.
To top off this National honor, Mirek was recently recognized internationally by being selected to attend the Kupcinet-Getz International Science School. This program matches top-undergraduates with leading research mentors at the Weizmann Institute in Rehovot, Israel. Mirek will join a Theoretical Astrophysics group at Weizmann this summer before returning to Oregon State Physics to take-up his Goldwater Scholarship.
On behalf of the OSU Physics Department, congratulations Mirek!
On Saturday, March 4th, the Physics Department was part of the annual “Discovering the Scientist Within” event at OSU. Twenty-three middle school girls from all over Oregon visited the department and learned about physics by playing with some of our coolest physics toys.
The girls drew “physicists doing physics” on the wall-mounted touch screens in our hi-tech studio classroom. The girls played with our superconducting train, centrifuge chair, precessing bicycle wheel, standing wave strobe setup and tabletop hovercrafts. They used OSU diffraction glasses to look at atomic emission spectra. They zoomed down the halls of Weniger on our leaf-blower hovercraft. We turned out the lights and did some “light painting”. We finished the day with homemade liquid nitrogen ice cream.
Photo Credit and Copyright: Aran (Ari) Denison 2017 All Rights ReservedPhoto Credit and Copyright: Aran (Ari) Denison 2017 All Rights ReservedPhoto Credit and Copyright: Aran (Ari) Denison 2017 All Rights ReservedPhoto Credit and Copyright: Aran (Ari) Denison 2017 All Rights ReservedPhoto Credit and Copyright: Aran (Ari) Denison 2017 All Rights ReservedPhoto Credit and Copyright: Aran (Ari) Denison 2017 All Rights ReservedPhoto Credit and Copyright: Aran (Ari) Denison 2017 All Rights ReservedPhoto Credit and Copyright: Aran (Ari) Denison 2017 All Rights Reserved
Shane Larson, BS 91, has won the Vth Fermilab Physics Slam – a public contest in which scientists are given 10 minutes on stage to explain what the heck they do to over 1000 people in a sold out auditorium.
http://www.chicagotribune.com/suburbs/aurora-beacon-news/news/ct-abn-physics-slam-st-1202-20161201-story.html has a Chicago Tribune article about the contest.
Shane works at the Adler Planetarium and teaches at Northwestern University. He gave a talk here in 2016 on the LIGO gravitational wave discovery.
Salary is commensurate with education and experience
Position Summary
Oregon State University-Cascades, in Bend, Oregon, in partnership with the College of Science at Oregon State University-Corvallis, invites applications for a full-time, (1.0 FTE), 9-month, fixed term Instructor rank faculty position in Physics. Reappointment is at the discretion of the Dean.
The successful candidate will have the important role of bringing innovative teaching practices to the new Physics program at Cascades.
The person in this position is assigned to work at Oregon State University-Cascades, located in Bend, Oregon. The ideal candidate performs teaching, maintains currency, and performs service.
Oregon State University’s commitment to student success includes hiring, retaining, and developing diverse faculty to mentor and educate our undergraduate and graduate students from entry through graduation. Our Strategic Plan (http://oregonstate.edu/leadership/strategicplan/phase3)
articulates the strategies we believe critical to advancing and equalizing student success. As part of this commitment, OSU has established a hiring initiative designed to support these strategies.
Salary is commensurate with academic preparation and professional experience.
About OSU-Cascades: Oregon State University’s branch campus in Bend, Ore., features outstanding faculty in degree programs that reflect Central Oregon’s vibrant economy and abundant natural resources. Nearly 20 undergraduate majors, 30 minors and options, and four graduate programs include computer science, energy systems engineering, kinesiology, hospitality management, and tourism and outdoor leadership. The branch campus expanded to a four-year university beginning fall 2015; its new campus opened in fall 2016.
The anticipated start date is 9/16/17.
Position Duties
80% Student related activities
– Teach regular undergraduate credit courses as assigned. This includes in-class activities, laboratory supervision, class administration and regular office hours, in keeping with the highest professional standards.
-Curriculum development, aimed at improving lectures, studio sessions, recitations, and labs in courses taught.
-Evaluation and purchase of suitable laboratory and audiovisual equipment in cooperation with Physics and Cascades academic leadership.
-Sustained commitment to creating and maintaining an inclusive learning environment for all students.
-General advising of students.10% Maintaining Currency
May include, but not limited to, any of the following:
-Maintain familiarity with recent developments in evidence-based instructional practices.
-Make contributions to general teaching resources such as online learning systems and development of new laboratory experiments.
-Disseminate ideas and methods within the Department, University and broader community.10% Service
May include, but not limited to, any of the following:
-Service on departmental and university committees related to instruction.
-Assisting other faculty members as needed, e.g. mentoring part-time instructors.
-Acting as official adviser for various student organizations and clubs.
-Participation in activities that increase diversity and inclusion, for example Search Advocate training and mentoring students from underrepresented groups.
Minimum/Required Qualifications
-Master’s degree in Physics or related fields (examples of related fields may include, but are not limited to, Electrical Engineering, Astrophysics, Geophysics, Applied Mathematics, etc.) by the start of the appointment.
-Experience with or demonstrated potential for teaching Physics at the college or university level. This can include service as a Teaching Assistant and/or formal training in pedagogy at any level.
-Faculty at OSU-Cascades are committed to undergraduate and graduate student success. We seek faculty who have evidence of educating and mentoring a diverse group of learners, which may include experience with sponsoring student research or internships, developing study abroad opportunities, service learning courses, or the use of innovation pedagogies such as hybrid or online learning.
-A demonstrable commitment to promoting and enhancing diversity and inclusion.
Preferred (Special) Qualifications
-Doctoral degree in Physics or related field.
-Previous classroom experience.
-Experience in using and designing online materials. Facility with computer operating systems, web design tools and/or Latex.
-Experience operating and constructing laboratory equipment.
At the most recent Astronomy Open House, on February 17th, many tried to reach for the… planets?
The newly formed OSU Astronomy Club and the Department of Physics hosted the most recent Open House with invited activities by the Corvallis Public Library and the Corvallis Arts Center. The event also featured Tom Carrico of the local amateur astronomer club: Heart of the Valley Astronomers who talked about how to view an eclipse safely.
At the event, parents, college students, and children alike, learned about how telescopes work, how astronomers identify what stars are made of, what causes the seasons, and the different types of shadows formed by an eclipse! Once each person completed their activity sheet, they were able to get a free commemorative eclipse poster about the upcoming Total Solar Eclipse in August.
Everyone seemed to love the event, and the OSU Astronomy Club is working to make the event even better than it already is, especially with anticipation growing for clear weather for the next Open House! So be sure to keep an eye on facebook.com/osuastronights to hear about the next exciting Astronomy open House! We hope to see you there!
The Oregon State University Society of Physics Students (SPS) made a strong showing at the Sigma Pi Sigma Quadrennial Congress, which was held on November 2-6, 2016 in San Francisco. In cooperation with LBCC students and faculty, SPS secured funding to send 1 graduate student and 7 undergraduates from OSU and 3 LBCC students to the Congress. The students presented posters, toured scientific facilities, networked with professionals, and listened to talks by the leaders in Physics.
Michael Forkner and Tym Mangan (pictured with their posters) were among the undergraduates who presented the innovative research being done at Oregon State University. During the poster sessions, students discussed their work with other physics students from across the country and received feedback from professional physicists on their presentations. They also toured the Stanford Linear Accelerator or the Google X facilities, and listened to talks by professional scientists while looking at the sort of labs they might work in one day.
There were exciting plenary talks, including one by Dame Jocelyn Bell-Burnell who discovered quasars. She thinks that the climate in physics for women has improved considerably since her days as a young scientist. Eric Cornell, Nobel Laureate (and former Yunker lecturer) gave a characteristically upbeat and interesting talk about what the life of a real scientist is like. Between plenary talks, PhysCon conducted workshops that allowed SPS members from across the nation (and beyond!) to network and discuss important topics faced by chapters and individuals during their physics journeys. Grad student Kelby Hahn was a panelist who discussed life as a graduate student. The students were delighted to made connections that will last well beyond their short stay at PhysCon.
OSU/LBCC Participants:
Kelby Hahn, Michael Forkner, Evan Peters, Tym Mangan, Elliot Capek, Hazel Betz, Gabe Nowak, Nikita Rosanov; Osvaldo Galvez, Delphine LeBrunColon, Eric Slyter.
Michael Forkner presents his research at PhysConTym Magnan at PhysCon 2016Delphine LeBrunColon and Elliot Capek at PhysConStudents at PhysCon
