Awards and Achievements

2008 Best Physics Graduate Student Presentation Awards
Best Physics Graduate Student Oral Presentation Award: Ewe-Wei Saw (Inertial Particle Clustering in Turbulence), advisor Dr. Raymond Shaw, award amount $100.
Best Physics Graduate Student Poster Presentation Award: Amalia Anderson (Analysis of Climate Data via Statistics of Record-Breaking Extremes), advisor Dr. Alex Kostinski, award amount $60.
Poster images and abstracts may be found in the Physics Poster Session 2008 Photo Gallery. Presentation abstracts are posted in the Spring Semester 2008 physics colloquiums. April 17, 2008

Spring 2008 Finishing Fellowship Recipient
Engineering Physics graduate student S. Gowtham will receive a $2000 Finishing Award from the Michigan Tech Graduate School. The awards are made possible by the support of several Michigan Tech Fund endowments. Gowtham is part of the Computational Solid State Theory & Materials Science research group led by Dr. Ravindra Pandey. January 21, 2008

Fall 2007 Finishing Fellowship Recipient
Physics graduate student Yanjie Wei will receive a $2000 Finishing Award from the Michigan Tech Graduate School. The awards are made possible by the support of several Michigan Tech Fund endowments. Wei is part of the Computational Nano - and Biophysics research group led by Dr. Ulrich H. E. Hansmann. October 18, 2007

Jaszczak Receives Distinguished Service Award
Tech Today, October 12, 2007

Students Receive DeVlieg Fellowships (Jason Moscatello)
Tech Today, September 6, 2007

Levy Receives Michigan Tech Research Award
Tech Today, June 26, 2007

Suits Receives Distinguished Teaching Award
Tech Today, May 25, 2007

Stephanie Irish Wins Goldwater Scholarship
Michigan Tech News, April 10, 2007

Stephanie Irish Wins Goldwater Scholarship
Tech Today, April 4, 2007

2007 Physics Graduate Student Poster Session
Eleven Physics graduate students participated in the departmental poster session held on March 22, 2007. Best Physics Graduate Student Oral Presentation Award: Wil Slough (Prize: $100). Best Physics Graduate Student Poster Presentation Award: Shun Wu and Zhuoyuan Wu (Prize: $60, each). Presentation and poster abstracts may be found in the Spring Semester 2007 physics colloquiums.

2007-8 Finishing and Recruiting Awards
Physics graduate student Lin Pan received a $2000 Finishing Award from the Michigan Tech Graduate School. Incoming Physics graduate student Ashley Shackelford will receive a Recruiting Award of $1000. The awards are made possible by the support of several Michigan Tech Fund endowments. March 12, 2007

Goldwater Nominees Announced (Stephanie Irish, Physics Major)
Tech Today, February 27, 2007

2006-7 GSC Poster Session Competition
Physics graduate students Jiesheng Wang and Vijaya Kumar Kayastha placed in the 2006-2007 Graduate Student Council Poster Session competition. Wang received First Place in the Technical category for his poster entitled "Breakthrough on the Growth of Boron Nitride Nanotubes". Kayastha received Third Place in the Visual category for his poster entitled "Effective Growth of Vertically Aligned Single Wall and Double Wall Carbon Nanotubes at Low Temperatures". They are both part of the Yap Research Group. The presentations were held on October 13-14.

Weidman Receives Williams Award
Tech Today, June 8, 2006

2006 Provost’s Award for Scholarship
Physics senior Adam DeConinck is this year's recipient of the Provost's Award for Scholarship. Adam has done research with Dr. Yoke Khin Yap on carbon nanotubes, funded by the Michigan Space Consortium. He currently does research on photonic structures with Dr. Miguel Levy. Adam received his award for these projects and many other activities at Michigan Tech. Read the award transcript from the 12th Annual Student Awards Banquet held on April 23, 2006 (PDF).

2006 Sigma Xi Colloquium Competition
Physics graduate student Vijaya Kayastha won honorary mention (Effect of Graphitic Order on the Stability of Field Emission Current from Carbon Nanotube Films) and S. Gowtham won the second prize (Interaction of Biological Matter with Nanomaterials: A First-Principles Approach) in Sigma Xi Multi-Disciplinary Graduate Research Colloquium (organized by GSC and Sigma Xi Scientific Research Society) on Saturday, 15 April 2006.

2005-6 GSC Poster Session Competition
Physics graduate students Vijaya Kumar Kayastha and Raghav Rao Vanga placed in the 2005-2006 Graduate Student Council Poster Session competition. Vanga received Second Best Presentation Award for his poster entitled "Ferroelectric Film-based High-efficiency Gas Drive Microvalves and Microsensors". Kayastha received Best Presentation Award for his poster "Synthesis of Carbon Nanotubes and Their Directed Assembly by a. c. Electric Field". It was about the growth of different types of carbon nanotubes (CNTs), such as vertically aligned multiwall, double wall and random single wall CNTs, and their post growth manipulation by using a. c. electric field. The poster also discussed lab research Kayastha's doing in different areas, such as finding field emission from a single carbon nanotube, study of I-V behavior of a single nanotube, and the fabrication of CNT based field effect transistor. The students gave 10-minute presentations with their posters. The event was held in the Rozsa lobby on February 1, 2006. Vanga's advisor is Dr. Miguel Levy and Kayastha's advisor is Dr. Yoke Khin Yap.

Professor Emeritus of Physics and '56 Alumnus Donald A. Daavettila Receives Outstanding Service Award
Michigan Tech Magazine, From the Association, December 2005 | Related Link

Guinness World Record Awarded to Physics
The entire Physics Faculty has been recognized by Guinness World Records—the faculty from 1901 that is: Fred McNair, James Fisher, Nathan Osborne, and Elmer Grant. They are recognized for the World's longest pendulum: 4440 feet. Their 100+ year-old accomplishment had been overlooked but eclipses the previous listed record of 22.5 m (approx. 75 ft). The new listing is first appeared in Guinness World Records' 2006 edition. The world record pendulum was constructed in the #4 Tamarack Mine shaft as part of an effort to understand some of the difficulties encountered when surveying such a deep shaft. Read the Jan. 26, 2005, Lode article " A century later...".

2005 Physics Graduate Student Presentation Awards
The Physics Department Graduate Committee has awarded the Best Oral Presentation to Kah Chun Lau (“First-Principles Study of Elemental Boron Nanoclusters & Nanotubes”) and the Best Poster Presentation to Ankita Roy (“Hyperspectral Imaging Application in Nano-Tube Growing Process”). Congratulations to both! Presentation abstracts may be found in the Spring Semester 2005 physics colloquiums.

2005 Sigma Xi Colloquium Competition
Physics graduate student Eli Ochshorn won first prize in the annual multi-disciplinary student research colloquium and competition sponsored by the Graduate Student Council and Sigma Xi. Physics graduate student Vijaya Kayastha won second prize. The presentations were held on April 23, 2005. Eli's advisor is Dr. Will Cantrell. His presentation was entitled “Towards Understanding How Water Freezes: An FTIR Study”. Vijaya is part of the Yap Research Group in the Physics Department at Michigan Tech. His presentation was entitled “Fabrication of C-MEMS/CNTs Electrode Arrays for 3D-Microbatteries”.

NSF CAREER Award

Ranjit Pati
CAREER: Theory and Modeling of a Mono-molecular Field Effect Organic Transistor (MOLFET)
Start Date February 15, 2007, Power, Controls & Adaptive Net

Yoke Khin Yap
CAREER: Synthesis, Characterization and Discovery of Frontier Carbon Materials
Start Date April 1, 2005, Solid-State Chemistry

Raymond Shaw
CAREER: Laboratory Studies of Small-Scale Processes in Clouds
Start Date January 1, 2000, Physical Meteorology

Robert Nemiroff
CAREER: Towards Understanding the Temporal Universe
Start Date September 1, 1997, Special Programs in Astronomy

About NSF CAREER Awards

Other Physics Research Awards

Distinguished Alumni

College of Science and Arts Distinguished Alumnae and Alumni

2006 Walter E. Kauppila - B.S. 1964, Physics * Professor of Physics, Wayne State University

2000 Joseph Roti Roti - B.S. 1965, Physics * Professor of Radiology, Washington University School of Medicine

1998 Carl R. Adams - B.S. 1962, Applied Physics * Chairman, Information and Decision Sciences Department, University of Minnesota

1998 Paul D. Pietila - B.S. 1962, Applied Physics * Chief Operating Officer, Toledo Molding & Die (Retired)

1995 Leonard C. Buckman - B.S. 1960, Engineering Physics * President and General Manager, Rockwell WABCO Vehicle Control Systems