New Chair
Chris Stanton, Chair, Physics Department
This article was originally printed in the October 1999 issue of CLASnotes.
As we approach the year 2000 and look back at the scientific achievements impacting society over the last 100 years, it is safe to say that physics has played a major role. While the role of physics is obvious in areas such as the development of the transistor and laser, it is less obvious in other realms. For instance, fundamental research in solid state, atomic and nuclear physics has lead to the development of modern medical imaging techniques such as Computed Axial Tomography (or CAT Scan), Magnetic Resonance Imaging (MRI), Ultrasound, and Positron Emission Tomography (PET Scan). The Global Positioning System or GPS resulted from research designed to test Einstein's theory of relativity. The $1.5 trillion/year telecommunications industry responsible for the information super highway was aided by early physics research. Physicists developed new materials, electronics and lasers, which in turn lead to fiber optics and cellular communications. In addition, though not well known, particle physicists designed the World Wide Web as a means for scientific communication with colleagues.
It is clear that physics will play a fundamental role in many of the new technologies that emerge in the next century. It is our goal as a department to train and educate the students who will be making contributions and competing in a highly technical society. To meet that goal, the department has changed dramatically in the last 20 years. When I was an undergraduate student here in 1979, the department had 22 faculty members. Today, we have over 50 tenure track faculty members, almost half of whom were hired since the fall of 1988. The excellence of our faculty is demonstrated by the fact that the department has had six National Science Foundation Presidential Young Investigator/Early Career Award recipients, two Cottrell Scholars, two Sloan Fellows, three Guggenheims and two Jesse Beams Medal winners. The recruitment of faculty has enabled the department to establish active research groups in astrophysics, cosmology and gravitation, condensed matter physics (experimental, theoretical and computational), low temperature physics, elementary particle physics (experimental and theoretical) and more recently biophysics. Excellence in the faculty has translated down to excellence in our students. Two of our undergraduate students have been finalists for the American Physical Society Apker Award (given to the top research project by an undergraduate student in the US) with one student winning the award outright.
These improvements have enabled our department to move into the top quarter of all physics departments nationwide according to the National Research Council's rankings. Like the university as a whole, however, we are not content with this level of distinction and want to move onto the list of top 10 public university physics departments. The New Physics Building will be a valuable resource in attaining this goal. In addition, we must continue to recruit the best faculty from around the world, and to increase our external funding. This will allow us to further improve our graduate and undergraduate programs while securing our position at the forefront of research.
Credits
Writer
Chris Stanton
