Recent News
The Seattle University Physics Department has been awarded several grants from federal agencies and from private foundations recently. In the summer of 2009, Professor Mary Alberg and Associate Professor Paul Fontana each received research grants from the National Science Foundation (NSF). Each grant includes support for undergraduate student collaborators. The Physics, Chemistry, and Biology departments have jointly won in early 2009 a $350,000 Murdock Colleges Science Science Research program grant for undergraduate research. This came soon after a $25,000 Murdock Start-Up Grant for the Physics Department to add to research start-up funding for our new faculty member. And for the past several years we have enjoyed the enhanced upper-level physics lab equipment that we purchased with our portion of a $500,000 grant from the Sherman Fairchild Foundation. We thank both of these charitable foundations for helping physics majors at Seattle U!
During 2008-09 the department conducted a search for a new Assistant Professor of Physics, and this search resulted in a successful hire. Assistant Professor Woo-Joong "Andy" Kim, who was most recently a postdoctoral researcher in the Department of Physics at Yale University, joined us in September 2009. This position was made available by the retirement of Professor Reed Guy, in June 2009. However, Reed is still around the department this year. teaching a variety of courses and advising students
Congratulations to 2009 physics graduate Anne Bossi, who won a prestigious fellowship to study for a PhD in aerospace engineering at Purdue University, one of the top-5 aerospace engineering graduate programs in the nation..
Our seven class of 2008 physics major graduates are busy this year. Anna Smith is a student in the Physics PhD program at the University of Oregon. Stephanie Wright is in Nashville pursuing a PhD degree in Electrical Engineering at Vanderbilt University. Sean Rogers is in sunny San Diego as a PhD student in Physics at UCSD. Lee Jefferis has been accepted into the Mathematics PhD program at the University of Wisconsin, where he will go after taking a year off to travel in China. And Jason Ashbach is at Penn State University studying for a PhD in Electrical Engineering. Alec Cattarin plans to apply this year to PhD programs in astronomy. James Jenson is working in engineering. This shows that you have a lot of choice when you get a physics undergraduate degree!
Congratulations to Seattle U physics majors Lee Jefferis, Sean Rogers, and Anna Smith for being inducted into Sigma Pi Sigma, the national physics honor society, in the fall of 2007. In 2008, Seattle U physics major Anne Bossi was inducted. This honor is based on academic achievement in courses.
The play "Life of Galileo" (written by Bertolt Brecht; translation by David Edgar; directed by Rosa Joshi) was performed on campus October 25-November 18, 2007, at the Lee Center for Performing Arts and was a joint production by the artists of Strawberry Theatre Workshop and Seattle University.
2008 graduate Seattle U physics and mathematics major Lee Jefferis was named as a 2007 Barry M. Goldwater Scholar. This prestigious national award is given to only about 300 of the best science, mathematics, and engineering students in the nation per year. Congratulations, Lee!
We are also very proud of our recent physics graduate Jock Bovington, who was awarded a National Science Foundation Fellowship for graduate study. Jock is a PhD student at UC-Santa Barbara. 2007 physics graduate Martin Kearney received an Honorable Mention from the NSF and is a PhD student in mechanical engineering at the Ohio State University. In 2009, Martin was the lead author on a major journal article.
Congratulations also to John Ulmen (class of 2006), who was a student doing research in the lab of Paul Fontana, for being awarded a National Science Foundation Fellowship to work on his PhD in mechanical engineering at Stanford University. John is working on control systems for the LIGO gravitational wave observatory in eastern Washington.
Two of our physics major 2005 graduates are into PhD program study in physics and related fields. Naydene Hays is studying and doing research in planetary science at the University of Arizona, and Justin Zimmerman is a graduate student in physics at Texas A&M University. Congratulations, Naydene and Justin, for your recent (and future) achievements! Previous SU Physics graduates Porscha McRobbie and Dustin Offerman are in (or have finsihed) physics PhD programs at the University of Michigan and at the Ohio State University, respectively.
SU Physics alumni and alumnae
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