Overview

The mission of the Physics Department is to conduct advanced research into the physical principles underlying the natural world, to train the next generation of physicists by engaging students in forefront research, to teach the fundamentals of physics to students in the natural sciences, biological sciences and engineering, and to introduce the principles of physics, quantitative scientific reasoning and the latest discoveries to a wider audience.

Through the years our program has been steadily growing. Our faculty is distinguished; it includes a Nobel Laureate, two members of the National Academy of Sciences and 17 Fellows of the American Physical Society. They play leading roles on national and international committees and various panels. The Department has 33 senior faculty, 3 junior faculty, and 1 Master Lecturer. Two new junior faculty will join the Department at the beginning of the next academic year. The primary services of Professors Ruckenstein and Whitaker are in the University and College administration, respectively. In addition, 18 faculty from affiliated departments hold joint appointments in Physics, and we have about 40 research faculty, visiting researchers and postdoctoral fellows.

This year, we have continued to grow our educational mission with the introduction of a second semester of Modern Physics and a new study abroad program at the University of Geneva. The department also saw continued growth in its summer immersion and evening classes for in-service teachers.

Faculty garnered many national and international awards and accolades, including Professor Stone being selected as a Jefferson Science Fellow, Professor Bansil starring in an episode of the NSF’s Science Nation, and Professor Stanley being recognized as an Outstanding Referee by the American Physical Society, as well as being the recipient of an honorary doctorate from the University of Messina in Italy. In 2009, our faculty published nearly 250 refereed papers, 7 books and 9 book chapters.

We awarded 13 PhDs, 4 MAs, and 17 BAs. Andrew Fraine won the Alumni Student Award and Claire Thomas won the College Prize for Excellence in Physics.

Our graduate recruitment season was extremely successful as we made fewer offers to fill our incoming class than in previous years. This continuing increase in our acceptance rate is a clear measure of success, reflecting our growing national and international stature.

Research highlights include major developments at the Large Hadron Collider, advances in dark matter and neutron detection, the demonstration of reconfigurable metamaterials, novel behavior of coupled networks, and the first long-baseline neutrino event of the T2K experiment at the Super-Kamiokande detector in Japan.

Our Scientific Instrument Facility and Electronics Design Facility continued to be very productive, meeting the budget projections in both facilities. The SIF Student Training Center, that offers a 6 week curriculum, has continued to teach cohorts of graduate students in physics, astronomy and engineering.

The CAS-funded visitors programs in elementary particle theory and condensed matter theory continue to bring many leading researchers to our department, providing both valuable collaborative interactions and positive exposure for our department.

Additionally, the department has been very active with outreach and educational activities in the local Boston community. A graduate student helped to develop new curricula for local high school physics programs; Physics Day attracted 250 urban high school students for a morning of demonstrations and lectures by faculty and graduate students; the Improving the Teaching of Physics program entered its 6th year, and we expanded on the recently developed Teacher Immersion in Science program with a new, two-week workshop on Global Energy Distribution.

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