Welcome to the Boston University Physics Department. Boston University has a vibrant program of teaching and research, with 37 faculty within the department, as well as a dozen or more faculty with joint appointments in affiliated departments, notably Electrical and Computer Engineering and Biomedical Engineering. Currently we have ~30 postdoctoral fellows and visiting faculty in residence, and a cohort of 115 graduate students and 100 undergraduates.
Our distinguished faculty includes one Nobel Laureate, 4 members of National or American Academies, 14 Fellows of the American Physical Society, 6 Fellows of the AAAS, and one Fellow of the American Philosophical Society. Over the past decade junior faculty have won 14 NSF Presidential, NYI or CAREER awards; 7 DOE Outstanding Junior Investigator awards; 11 Sloan Fellowships; and 4 Cottrell fellowships. In terms of statistical measures, our research productivity is high: 1150 refereed papers from 1999 to 2003 (ranked 8th among private universities) with 3290 annual citations on average (ranked 6th) and 13.88 citations per paper (ranked 1st) in the period 1999-2003 (data from the ISI). We obtained $10.7M in external research funding ($306K per faculty member) in the 2004 fiscal year (ranked 9th and 7th respectively; data from US News and World Report). Boston University Physics also has state-of-the-art infrastructure, including the Electronics Design Facility, the Scientific Instrument Facility, and the Center for Computational Science. Our faculty also direct the Polymer Center and the Center for Nanoscience and Nanobiotechnology.
Research in the Physics Department covers experimental and theoretical condensed-matter physics, elementary particle physics, and statistical physics and biophysics. In condensed-matter experiment, for example, there are a wide variety of opportunities in surface physics, time-resolved X-ray studies, nano-optics, polymer physics, and nanoscale science. There are also many joint projects within ECE and the Photonics Center in quantum optics and materials research. In theory, students can take advantage of strengths in correlated electron systems and statistical physics. In elementary particle experiment, there are major experimental efforts with the D0 experiment at Fermilab, the SuperK experiment in Kamioka, Japan, the LHC at CERN, the muon g-2 experiment at Brookhaven, and the mulan experiment at PSI, Switzerland. In elementary particle theory, our students are engaged in understanding the origin of mass, signatures of physics beyond the Standard Model, and cosmology and astroparticle physics.
Billy Hubbard
