Physics graduate student Xiaoliang Zhong and Engineering Physics graduate student Pradeep Kumar have been offered Finishing Fellowships from the Michigan Tech Graduate School. The fellowships provide support to PhD candidates who are close to completing their degrees. It is based on a student’s research, publication record, and contribution to the mission of Michigan Tech. Zhong works with Ravi Pandey in the Computational Solid State Theory and Materials Science group. Kumar is part of Miguel Levy’s research group.
Mike Meyer has been appointed the new director for the Center for Teaching and Learning. He will start his new duties on July 9. Meyer has been at Michigan Tech since September 2002.
He joined the physics department as laboratory coordinator, was lecturer from 2006 to 2010, and has been senior lecturer since 2010. He was elected to Tech’s Academy of Teaching Excellenceand won the Distinguished Teaching Award in 2011.
The expanded responsibilities of the new center director are an outcome of the recommendations of the Task Force on Blended and Technology-Rich Teaching/Learning Environment and Support Systems. READ MORE
Engineering Physics graduate student Subhasish Mandal is a recipient of a Finishing Fellowship from the Michigan Tech Graduate School. The fellowships provide support to PhD candidates who are close to completing their degrees; they are available through the generosity of alumni and friends of the University.
Congratulations to physics graduate student Matt Beals on receiving a NASA Earth and Space Science Fellowship. This prestigious award recognizes Beal’s achievements as well as the research performed using the HOLODEC detector. His proposal was entitled “Improved Mixed Phase Cloud Microstructure Measurements: The Holographic Detector for Clouds II (HOLODEC II).” The proposal basically outlined further characterization of the instrument and analysis of data from the flights the research team was involved with last fall at NCAR, the National Center for Atmospheric Research. Matt Beals is part of the Cloud Physics Laboratory, coordinated by Dr. Raymond Shaw.
“Office hours” are an elastic concept for Michigan Tech’s 2012 Distinguished Teaching Award winners. “His office is always open,” says physics department chair Ravi Pandey of Will Cantrell, associate professor of physics, who received the award in the professor/associate professor category. “I’ve seen him here on Saturday and Sunday working with students.” Cantrell came to Michigan Tech in 2001, after serving as a postdoc in chemistry at Indiana University and completing his PhD at the University of Alaska Fairbanks. Pandey called Cantrell “a superlative model of the scholar-teacher.” READ MORE
On the Wednesday before obtaining my Bachelor’s Degree, I left Houghton at 05:00 with 16 other Mind Trekkers for DC (story here). On Saturday, I woke up, donned my Mind Trekkers jersey, and went to the event. I noted that Bill Nye would be signing things starting at 11am, so around then I put on my cap and gown, grabbed my diploma cover, and John Lehman (assistant VP, enrollment services) and myself headed over there. READ MORE
The Department of Physics is pleased to announce the best oral and poster presentations by physics graduate students during the Physics Colloquium poster session held on April 19, 2012, in the Aftermath Atrium in Fisher Hall. There were two similarly rated best oral presentations: “Conduction Amongst Mesoscopic Particles” by Douglas Banyai and “Calibrating a Gamma-Ray Observatory” by Nathan Kelley-Hoskins. There were also two similarly rated best poster presentations: “Individual Particle Analysis of Carbonaceous Aerosols Emitted from the Las Conchas Wildfire, Los Alamos, NM” by Swarup China and “Exploring Cloud Microstructure with the HOLODEC I” by Matthew Beals. The presentations were evaluated by the physics graduate students and ranked in order of preference. The winners will receive a small monetary award.
It’s a tradition at this event for the graduating seniors to be recognized and for a senior coach to say a few words or tell a story about their experiences working as a coach. For example, Edward Leonard, from the Physics Learning Center, recounted backwards his four years at Tech, and with each year (and story) he took off a layer of clothes. READ MORE
Administration, faculty and staff have made a lot of headway during the last year at Michigan Technological University and those efforts were honored at the Board of Control meeting Friday morning. “Michigan Tech is recognizing two faculty members with the 2012,” Richardson said. “Professors Robert Nemiroff and Andrew Storer.” Nemiroff works with half of the team to contribute NASA’s astronomy picture of the day, garnering more than 500,000 hits daily.
The University is recognizing two faculty members with the 2012 Research Award, Robert Nemiroff and Andrew Storer. In nominating Nemiroff, physics professor Don Beck and Ravindra Pandey, chair of the physics department, cited his research based on gravitational lensing, noting that his groundbreaking predictions regarding binary stars, quasars and microlensing events (which give insight into stellar distributions and dark matter) have been proved correct. In another project, Nemiroff and his graduate students searched gamma-ray bursts to find “echoes” caused by the gravitational lens effect of dark matter. READ MORE