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| Good
News Around the Department |
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| April 29, 2004 |
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We
are happy to report that Miles and Muriel Dresser will
attend
one last physics event before moving on to Lincoln City,
Oregon. They are moving to Oregon to be closer to their
daughter and her family. Miles and Muriel are graduates
of Linfield College, which is located in McMinnville
where their daughter lives. We look forward to seeing
them at the Chair's Appreciation event on Friday, April
30. Be sure to wish them farewell.
Tom Dickinson received a $25K
grant from the The Undergraduate Teaching and Learning
Improvement Program -- Tom is developing a JAVA based
computer quizzing and tutoring system to improve
the teaching of lower division physics. The project
is supported by the Samuel H. and Patricia W. Smith
Teaching and Learning Endowment, the Office of Undergraduate
Education, and other sources. Tom will also receive
another NSF award. The three-year award for a total
of $156, 000 is entitled: "Atomic Force Microscopy
Studies of Tribochemical Phenomena".
Phil
Marston has been approved for sabbatical
leave beginning August 16, 2004. Phil's research will
focus on underwater acoustics in the optical diagnostics
of ultrasonic processes. He will be interacting with
colleagues at the University of Washington, the Naval
Surface Warfare Center in Panama City, Florida, the
Woods Hole Oceanographic Institute and various institutions
in England.
Mike Miller has also been granted
a one-year sabbatical at Linz, Austria, beginning
August, 2004. He will be working on the theory of
inhomogeneous, strongly-interacting, many-fermion
systems. He is interested in developing a generalization
of Landau‚s Fermi-liquid theory for polarized
systems in two-dimensions. Miller hopes to predict
the properties of strongly polarized 3He in 4He superfluid
films. In the bulk, it is almost impossible to polarize
liquid 3He because even at the largest attainable
fields the magnetic energy is always negligible relative
to the Fermi energy. In films, however, the density
of the 3He is adjustable and so at low areal densities
it may be possible to strongly polarize the system.
Mike
will be working at Johannes Kepler University
in Linz, in a very strong many-body theory group.
Techniques developed at WSU can be combined with
the expertise of the group at Linz to treat important
systems in condensed matter physics, e.g., electrons
in metals or nuclei.
Sudha
Swaminathan has been given a small
grant by the AAUW (American Association of
University Women). The goal of the grant is
to offer Spokane High School girl students
the opportunity to engage in physics experiments
on electricity, magnetism waves, and optics.
The experiments will be done here on Pullman
WSU campus. The funds will be used to purchase
pre-assembled kits from a scientific vendor
that will be used in the hands-on experiments.
Research associate Matt Zacate, graduate student Aurélie
Favrot (visiting from France) and Gary
Collins have a paper accepted for publication by Physical
Review Letters in April. The paper describes a new method for investigating
diffusion of atoms in solids. Gary and Matt also had two papers accepted
for publication in April by Physical Review B that describe studies
of the site preference of solute atoms in compounds.
Congratulations
to Guy
Worthey, recipient of the 2004 College
of Sciences Young Faculty Performance Award.
Matt Zacate will be leaving
soon, he has a new position in the Department
of Physics and Geology at Northern Kentucky University.
We wish him all the best.
In other good news.... the College of Sciences Distinguished Alumni
Award went to Mike Bair (B.S. Physics, ' 78). There
is a nice article on Mr. Bair and the Boeing 7E7 in the Winter edition
of Washington State Magazine, Winter, 2003-04
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Physics Undergraduate and Graduate Scholars for 2003 - 2004
Physics Book Scholars
Joshua Carmichael
Tyler Cumby
Ryan Leach
Jared Lorh
Andrea McEvoy
Peter Means
Steve Pearce
John Renshaw
Jedidiah Serven
Travis Tobey
Neil Trotman
Michael Winterrose
Claire May Band Scholarship for Women
Jaime Gilbert (Central Kitsap High School, Silverdale
WA; freshman, fall 2003)
Megan Reynolds (Columbia High School, Burbank, WA;
freshman, fall 2003)
Andrea McEvoy, Corvallis, OR;
2nd degree in Physics at WSU
COS Research Awards ($2500 each)
Jeff Noel - Student Research
Minigrant, working with Sukanta Bose
John Leraas - Honors Science
Summer Internship, working with Tom Dickinson
Scott Wright - Summer Research
Minigrant, working with Moonsoo Kang
College of Sciences - Distinguished Student
Award 2004
Ryan Leach
Tyler Cumby, Ryan Leach and Kelli
Weed won one of the FASR-Sigma Xi Undergraduate Awards. Ryan placed
2nd and Ty took 3rd for the Sigma Xi; Kelli won "Honorable Mention" for
the FASR award.
Tyler Cumby and Ann McEvoy received
awards at the Undergraduate College of Sciences Poster Competition this
spring. Tyler got second place in Physical Sciences and Ann tied
for first place in the Interdisciplinary Division. Both Ty and Ann
work with Tom Dickinson.
Graduating with a B.S. May or August,
2004
Josh Carmichael
Tyler Cumby
Phillip Hardway
Andrew Hansen
Ryan Leach
Bryan Morgan
Pieter Nauta
Jedidiah Serven
Kelli Weed
Michael Winterrose
Graduate student, Katherine Hegewisch received the Outstanding
Woman in Graduate Studies Award this spring. The commendation
read, "Congratulations! On behalf of the Washington State University
Association for Faculty Women, I am pleased to inform you that you have
been selected to receive the Outstanding Woman in Graduate Studies
Award (2nd place). Your academic performance, your research and scholarship,
and your promise of future professional leadership demonstrate truly exceptional
achievement."
Tae-Jin Kim has been selected to receive the AAPT (American
Association of Physics Teachers) Outstanding Teaching Assistant
Award. The award includes a complimentary one-year student membership
in the AAPT and a one-year subscription to the American Journal
of Physics.
The 2004 College of Sciences Graduate Student Award went to soon
to be Dr. Kirill Zhuravlev
Graduate
Students graduating May or August, 2004
Christopher Dudley M.S.
Katherine Hegewisch M.S.
Li Kang M.S.
Xavier Perez- Moreno M.S.
Jipeng Wang M.S.
Kirill Zhuravlev Ph.D.
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