Physics & Astronomy @ Rowan University

Physics & Astronomy

16 September 2014 — Physics group win presentation honor: The biophysics team of Xiao Hu (Assistant Professor), Fang Wang (Post-dotoral researcher), Nathan Wolf ('16), Eva Rocks ('16), Trinh Vuong ('15, Biochemistry) presented the poster titled Comparative Studies of Regenerated Wild Silk Biomaterials at the North American Thermal Analysis Society 42nd annual conference. The presentation was awarded the honor of "Best Overall Poster Presentation". The best poster presentation is determined by ballot of all symposia chairpersons during the General Poster Session; there is only one poster for this award each year.
29 August 2014 — Physics students win presentation honors: Undergraduate physics majors Nathan Wolf and Eva-Marie Rocks along with biochemistry students Trinh Vuong won third place Best Student Poster award at the Thermal Analysis Forum of Delaware Valley (TAFDV) Summer Symposium 2014. The conference was held at Delaware, Center for Composite Materials and they were the only undergraduates presenting a poster; all the other presentations were by graduate students!
Summer 2014 — Physics Majors at summer REU programs: The department of physics and astronomy proudly announces nine of its students who have received amazing opportunities for summer internships at various collegiate programs. The different summer programs offer hands on experience in their chosen field of science and provide the students with new researching skills and techniques. Physics majors include: Tim Baker ('17) at The Ohio State University, Sarah Kessler ('15) at University of Wisconsin-Madison, Jesse Kosior ('16), Ford Scott ('16), and James Torres ('14) at NIST-Gaithersburg, Anne Rebecca ('16) at Louisiana Tech University, Jaime Richards ('16) at Kansas State University, Robert Oszust ('16) at Thor Labs, and Chris Kassner ('14) at the Naval Research Lab.
Summer 2014 — Rowan Physics & Astronomy Summer Research Program: Eighteen Rowan undergraduate physics majors participated in a Physics Summer Research program in the research labs in Science Hall. 1The program was sponsored by Rowan University and the NASA New Jersey Space Grant Consortium. Rowan professors supervised student research projects in biomaterials, planetary science, materials science, laser cooling, and theoretical physics.
13 June 2014 — Drs. Jeff Hettinger and Xiao Hu on team that wins 2014 CSM Grant Development Award: One $15,000 award goes to the team lead by Dr. Gregory Caputo from the Department of Chemistry & Biochemistry for the project entitled "Silver-based Materials as Antimicrobial Coatings for Biomedical Devices". Team members for this project include Dr. Lei Yu (Chemistry & Biochemistry), Dr. Jeffery Hettinger (Physics & Astronomy), Xiao Hu (Physics & Astronomy), Dr. Robert Krchnavek (College of Engineering), and Dr. Renee Demarest (RowanSOM).
10 June 2014 — Daniel Klehamer (Rowan Physics '14) named a member of the inaugural class of Woodrow Wilson New Jersey Teaching Fellow: The Woodrow Wilson National Fellowship Foundation announced the inaugural class of 50 Woodrow Wilson New Jersey Teaching Fellows; they were announced by Governor Chris Christie at the New Jersey State House in Trenton. The highly competitive program recruits both recent graduates and career changers with strong backgrounds in science, technology, engineering, and math-the STEM fields-and prepares them specifically to teach in high-need secondary schools. Dan Klehamer has worked in our student teaching labs as a technician and lab assistant.
18 January 2014 — Adjunct Professor John Herrmann's Ocean City Observing: Dr. John Herrmann, adjunct professor of astronomy here at Rowan hosted a "sidewalk observing" session down in Ocean City, NJ. See this story from the Press of Atlantic City for all the details. Way to go Doc!
04 December 2013 — Justin Buchicchio received Best Student Poster Award at regional conference: While attending the Thermal Analysis Forum of Delaware Valley 2013 annual meeting held at The Laboratory for Research on the Structure of Matter, University of Pennsylvania, Rowan undergraduate physics student Justin Buchicchio was awarded a Student Best Poster Award. His was one of only two posters by undergraduates—all the others were presented by PhD graduate students from U Penn, Drexel, and Temple.
November 2013 — UTRC/NJDOT grant awarded to Dr. Michael Lim: Dr. Lim (co-I) received funding from the UTRC/NJDOT along with Dr. Beena Sukumaran (PI) of the Civil Engineering department and Dr. Ravi Ramachandran (co-I) of the ECE department to develop a laser tool for rapid analysis of mineralogy of aggregates. The $430k grant will support the work of several undergraduate students and a graduate student.
September 2013 — Dr. Tabbetha Dobbins awarded grant from NSF Major Research Instrumentation program: This $280,000 award is for "Acquisition of a Combination Raman and FTIR for Research, Education, and Training" which will be used to purchase and set up this new spectrometer to support several research programs within physics and chemistry. Co-Is on the grant are Rowan Faculty Xiao Hu (Physics & Astronomy), Michael J. Lim (Physics & Astronomy), Timothy D. Vaden (Chemistry & Biochemistry), Samuel E. Lofland (Physics & Astronomy).
Summer 2013 — Physics Majors at summer REU programs: The department of physics and astronomy proudly announces seven of its students who have received amazing opportunities for summer internships at various collegiate programs. The different summer programs offer hands on experience in their chosen field of science and provide the students with new researching skills and techniques. Physics majors include: Chris Rotella, National Science Foundation Research Experience for Undergraduates (REU) at Penn State; Bill Rieger, Los Alamos National Lab; Sean Hoyt, NASA Goddard Astrobiology Institute; Chris Kassner and Troy Smith, National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) in Gaithersburg, Maryland; Eric Kaiser, Science Undergraduate Laboratory Internship (SULI) program at the Princeton Plasma Physics Laboratory; Jaime Richards, Polymer Research Experience at University of Akron. These summer programs accept only a selected number of students from hundreds that apply. For example, Kassner and Smith will be among 190 students out of 600 applicants to attend the 11-week NIST summer program. All of the students' hard work and dedication to their major allows them this amazing opportunity to gain knowledge and practice from experienced professionals and fellow students.
Summer 2013 — Rowan Physics & Astronomy Summer Research Program: Eighteen Rowan undergraduate physics majors participated in a Physics Summer Research program in the research labs in Science Hall. 1The program was sponsored by Rowan University and the NASA New Jersey Space Grant Consortium. Six Rowan professors supervised student research projects in biomaterials, planetary science, materials science, laser cooling, and theoretical physics.
April 2013 — Dr. David Klassen received the The Joseph Barnes Award: The award was established to recognize outstanding service to the university community; the college story provides futher details.
March 2013 — Christopher Rotella (Rowan Physics '14) was awarded an "SPS Undergraduate Presentation Award" by the American Physical Society (APS) and the Society of Physics Students (SPS): Chris received this award for for his presentation at the 2013 March American Physical Society Meeting. His presentation, "Properties of Ti₈C₅ thin films created at different temperatures using magnetron sputtering", was one of the top undergraduate presentations at the 2013 March APS Meeting in Baltimore, MD. Top presenters were selected from the nearly 150 undergraduate oral and poster presentations.
The March meeting of the APS is the largest physics meeting in the world, focusing on research from industry, universities, and major labs. Chris presented an oral paper of the research that he did with Dr. Jeff Hettinger, Dr. Sam Lofland and Mr. Carl Lunk and with fellow undergraduate students Justin Buchicchio (Physics '14), and Emma Cortes (Physics '11).
23 February 2013 — CSM First Ever Telsecope Workshop: College of Science and Mathematics hosted its first ever Telescope Seminar in the Edelman Planetarium. The popular event was directed by astronomy professor Dr. Donald Farnelli and included four speakers, planetarium director Keith Johnson, and astronomy professors
Dr. Eddie Guerra, Lloyd Black, and Steve Simmerman, all from the department of Physics and Astronomy. The seminar introduced workshop goers to the celestial sphere, instructed how to locate bright stars, and use stars to align a telescope. The seminar also demonstrated various types of telescopes and their optics, and included a brief history of the telescope from the beginnings by Galileo and Newton to the modern innovations that make telescopes accessible to all.
January 2013 — Faculty member selected as Kavli Institute for Theoretical Physics Scholar: Dr. Hong Ling, Professor of Physics was selected to as a 2012 Kavli Institute for Theoretical Physics (KITP) Scholar. As one of the most renowned awards in theoretical physics, it will allow Dr. Ling to travel to KITP as a visiting researcher over the next three years. Only eight such awards are selected each year.
26 June 2012 — RU physics major interning at national lab: Ashli Nieves will perform 4 weeks (out of her 11 week Physics & Astronomy summer internship) doing research and performing as a beamline assistant at the Advanced Photon Source (located at Argonne National Laboratory near Chicago, IL). Ashli's 4 week internship is supported, in part, by a grant from the ChemMatCARS beamline and the University of Chicago. Jim Viccaro (director of ChemMatCARS beamline) extended the invitation for Ashli's visit in an effort to reach out to and maintain ties to undergraduate institutions. Ashli will work under the direct supervision of Dr. Jan Ilavsky, renowned for Ultrasmall Angle X-ray Scattering (USAXS) measurement, where she will assist users of the USAXS instrument in performing their experiments. Users typically come to the laboratory from universities and industries around the world for a 1 to 2 day visit in order to gain unique microstructural data from their samples. Ashli will not only interact with a wide variety of individuals, she will also collect data from her gold nanoparticle and nanorod samples, as well as the samples of another group member (Brien Bennett) who has worked on de-agglomeration of carbon nanotubes.
22 January 2012 — RU physics major in Japan: Rowan physics major Zachary Buck will be taking a semester abroad in Sapporo, Japan. While there, aside from his usual classes, he will be participating in materials research. See the full store from the Gloucester County Times.
20 April 2011 — Presentation at the AAPT: Physics major Jasen Scaramazza has been awarded the Barry M. Goldwater Scholarship. He has been active in the Physics Club (including bing vice president), and participated in research in both the Physics & Astronomy Department and the Mathematics Department. It was his work in theoretical physics that earned him the scholarship.
12 January 2011 — Presentation at the AAPT: Dr. David Klassen, professor of Physics & Astronomy presented a talk on his Martian cloud research at the 2011 Winter Meeting of the American Association of Physics Teachers. The talk presented a look at how the standard astronomical data analysis techniques we teach our introductory students don't always live up to the introductory level decriptions and how more sophisticated techniques may be needed.
01 September 2010 — Postdoctoral Fellow Blake Laing: The physics department welcomes CLAS's first postdoctoral fellow to work with Dr. Hong Ling, professor of Physics & Astronomy, on his theoretical physics project "Coupled atom-polar molecule condensate systems". See his CLAS Spotlight for more information and a brief bio.
23 August 2010 — Grant funded to study Mars: The National Science Foundation has awarded Dr. David Klassen, Associate Professor in Physics & Astronomy, his grant proposal titled "Measuring Ice Abundances in Martian Clouds". This is a three year project in the amount of $281,640 and which includes funding for two undergraduate research assistants per year.
8 July 2010 — Paper on atom cold trapping published: Dr. Michael Lim, Associate Professor Physics, is a co-author on a paper with his colleagues at the Nanyang Technological University, Singapore, the National University of Singapore on atom cold traps which was recently highlighted by the APS. Michael is currently on sabbatical working in Singapore. Having Michael's research singled out from the thousands of papers published each month is certainly a milestone for Rowan's Physics Department.
5 April 2010 — Neutrino experiment funded: Dr. Tatjana Miletic (Assistant Professor, Physics) is a co-investigator on a recently awarded National Science Foundation grant "Systems to Increase Neutrino Detection Precision with the Double Chooz Detectors" awarded to Charles E. Lane (Drexel University). The Double Chooz neutrino experiment will use electron anti-neutrinos emitted by a nearby nuclear reactor to investigate the size of the last non-measured neutrino oscillation angle θ₁₃. This measurement will make possible other experiments looking into CP violation in leptons and help in our understanding for a matter dominated universe using neutrinos. Drexel is partnering with Dr. Miletic to involve Rowan undergraduates in the front-end electronics ("FEE") effort of the Double Chooz Detector, providing them with physics research experience in detector design.
10 March 2010 — Grant received for theoretical physics: Dr. Hong Ling, professor of Physics & Astronomy, was awarded a grant titled "Coupled atom-polar molecule condensate systems: a theoretical adventure (6.4 Atomic and Molecular Physics)". This three-year grant in the amount of $174,837 will also fund a post-doctoral researcher.
24 February 2010 — Major equipment grand funded: Physics & Astronomy professors Dr. Sam Lofland and Dr. Jeff Hettinger, along with Amos Mugweru (Chemistry), Kandalam Ramanujachary (Chemistry), and Paris Von Lockette (Mechanical Engineering) were awarded an NSF grant for the "Acquisition of a Four Circle X-Ray Diffractometer for Use in Undergraduate Materials Research and Education" in the amount of $263,000.

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