Physics Student Highlights

February 2010:

Congratulations to Iffat Nayyar who won the McCammon Graduate Student Travel Award to attend the 50th Sanibel Symposium to be held in St. Simons Isl., GA in February 2010.

February 2010:

Paul Stokes has been selected as one of the 60 participants from the United States to attend the upcoming Lindau Nobel Laureate Meeting for Physics in Germany. Paul is a graduate student in the Department of Physics and is a student of Dr. Saiful Khondaker, who has a joint faculty appointment at the NanoScience Technology Center and in Physics. Paul and Dr. Khondaker have been exploring the mass fabrication of nanoelectric devices using carbon nanotubes (as shown above) as documented in their recent paper in the journal Nanotechnology (19, 175202, 2008) titled "Local-gated single-walled carbon nanotube field effect transistors assembled by AC dielectrophoresis". This paper has received a lot of attention and is currently featured in Nanotechweb.org in an article titled "Large-scale fabrication approach of CMOS compatible high-performance nanotube transistors". Dr. Khondaker initiated Paul's nomination to the Nobel Laureate Meeting which was formally nominated by the VP of Research, Dr. M.J. Soileau. As part of this process, Paul will attend the meeting in Germany, he will listen to the Nobel prize winners' lectures, and will take part in various networking experiences during this week long event from June 29th to July 4th. We congratulate Paul and hope he enjoys this rich educational experience.

November 2009:

Kevin Thomas an undergraduate in the UCF Physics Department, earned an American Physical Society Fellowship. The $4,000 award will go toward his work with Professor Costas Efthimiou. They are looking at how the study of films can help or hinder the understanding of scientific theories.

July 2009:

Kevin Thomas, an undergraduate at the University of Central Florida, and Zhenyuan Zhao, a graduate student at University of Miami, have each been awarded an FPS Student Fellowship in Physics and Society for summer 2009. Fellowships consist of a stipend of up to $4000 and are awarded to undergraduate or graduate students in physics in support of projects that apply physics to a societal issue. See http://www.aps.org/units/fps/awards/student-fellowship.cfm; applications for summer 2010 awards are due Dec. 15. Thomas’ project involves surveying students’ pseudoscientific beliefs in the context of a course that uses study of films to explore scientific theories. He is working with Prof. Costas Efthimiou at UCF and will complete his Bachelor of Science in Physics UCF this summer, after which he will begin teaching high school physics while getting his Master’s degree in Education. Zhao’s project involves computer simulations of capping carbon emissions; he is working with Prof. Neil Johnson at UM – Ed. These contributions have not been peer-refereed. They represent solely the view(s) of the author(s) and not necessarily the views of APS

April 2009:

Hari Paudel (PhD) was selected as one of four winners for Best in Category: Engineering, Computer Science, Optics, Physical Sciences, Mathematics, and Modeling & Simulation for his poster presentation at the 2009 Graduate Research Forum.

April 2009:

Christopher Lorscher (PhD) was selected as one of four winners for Best in Category: Engineering, Computer Science, Optics, Physical Sciences, Mathematics, and Modeling & Simulation for his poster presentation at the 2009 Graduate Research Forum.

March 2009:

Justin Cleary one a 3rd prize and Doug Maukonen (undergrad) won an honorable mention in the recent poster competition at the Florida AVS 

November 2008:

Outstanding graduate programs:  U.S. News and World Report Best Graduate School guide. Physics, placed in the top 100 nationally.

June 2008:

Robert Macke (PhD) won a Smithsonian Institution Graduate Student Fellowship award and will research meteorites this summer at the National Museum of Natural History in Washington, D.C. For more about this, read the UCFNews report.

April 2008:

The Sigma Xi Committee on Grants-in-Aid of Research has approved funding in the amount of $605 for the research grant proposal submitted by Melinda Donnelly. The Sigma Xi Grant-in-Aid of Research program has a highly competitive application process and only approximately 20% of applicants receive any level of funding. Some applicants receive an award less than the requested value. This is because the Committee prefers to recognize outstanding research potential via reduced awards rather than to forgo any award.

April 2008:

Physics graduate student Bob Macke won a Smithsonian Graduate Student Fellowship for this summer. He will spend 8 weeks working at the Smithsonian Museum of Natural History in Washington DC. It also carries a two-month stipend and funding for travel. Bob Macke is pursuing his PhD under Dan Britt in Planetary Science.

April 2008:

Paul Stokes (PhD) was selected as one of three winners for Best in Category for his presentation titled, "Local-gated Single-Walled Carbon Nanotube Field Effect Transistors Assembled by AC Dielectrophoresis" in the Engineering, Computer Science, Optics, Physical Sciences, Mathematics, Modeling & Simulation category at the 2008 Graduate Research Forum.

April 2008:

Two of UCF's Physic Ph.D students, Paul Stokes and Dan Maronde, have been selected to attend the Lindau Nobel Laureate Meeting in Germany from June 29,2008 to July 4, 2008. Congratulations to them both for receiving this great honor. A special thanks to Dr. Saiful Khondaker (holds joint appointments in Nanoscience and Physics) and Dr. Costas Efthimiou (Assistant Professor of Physics) for advising these two gentlemen and aiding them in receiving such an honor. Strokes and Marond are two of the 60 participants from the USA that will have the honor to listen to Noble prize winners lecture and interact with them during a seven day period. The Laureates give presentations on topics of their choice. Particpants from all over the world are able to engage the Noble Prize Winners in discussions for several hours throughout the afternoon. Social events bring the scientific newcomers into personal contact with the Nobel Prize Winners.

February 2008:

We congratulate Atul Asati (mentor: Dr. Perez), Xiong Liu (mentor: Dr. Huo), and Paul Stokes (mentor: Dr. Khondaker) on this accomplishment. The UCF Research Week is an annual event held to highlight student's unique contributions to the university's research mandate. Each annual Research Week has a defining theme and this year's topic was the Environment: Conservation, Energy, and the Quality of Life. The topics of the students posters range from a gold nanoparticle assay that shows potential as a cancer biomarker, cerium oxide nanoparticles (nanoceria) that could be used as neuroprotective agents, and a technique of using carbon nanotubes as transistors that could be used in nanoelectric devices.

September 2007:

Dan Maronde (PhD) has given a number of presentations in recent months on the topic of the Heisenberg Uncertainty Relation. These included both lectures and poster presentations:

• Lecture: The History of the Heisenberg Uncertainty Relation, AAPT Summer Meeting, August 2007, Greensboro, NC
• Lecture: The History of the Heisenberg Uncertainty Relation and the Search for Its Expression on the Circle, Hampton University Graduate Studies at Jefferson Lab Summer School, June 2007, Jefferson Lab, Newport News, VA
• Lecture: The History of the Heisenberg Uncertainty Relation, APS April Meeting, April 2007, Jacksonville FL
• Poster Presentation: The Heisenberg Uncertainty Relation and a Search for Its Expression in Curved Space (Poster), Fourth Annual Graduate Research Forum, April 2007, University of Central Florida, Orlando, FL
• Poster Presentation: The Heisenberg Uncertainty Relation and a Search for Its Expression in Curved Space (Poster), NSF GK-12 Annual Meeting, March 2007, Washington, D.C.

Additionally, in June 2007, Dan was accepted into the Hampton University Graduate Studies at Jefferson Lab Summer School and was awarded the Glover Studentship by the Historical Section of the American Physical Society for my talk at the April 2007 meeting.

February 2007: UCF's Society of Physics Students, led by adviser Costas Efthimiou, has been selected as an Outstanding SPS Chapter for 2005-06 by the society's national organization. The award is based on research, public science outreach, tutoring programs and other categories.

October 2005: At the Origins of Life Symposium, held at UCF, two Physics majors (among eight student presenters) won student paper awards. Pontus Ahlqvist won first place for his paper on "Inflation in the Universe," and Tania D. Cubano-Cruz (double-major Physics and Chemistry) received Second Prize for her presentation on Liposome: A Perfect Medium for Life Formation."

October 2005: Linda Smith (Physics MS, admitted spring 2004) was recently selected for honorary recognition in The National Dean's List.

September 2005: The Society of Physics Students (SPS) has awarded UCF's SPS Chapter the 2005 Blake Lilly Prize for Outreach Activities. The Chapter's outreach program was led by Erin Riley. In addition to a monetary prize, the Chapter will receive a 3-volume set of the famous Feynman Lectures on Physics.

August 2005: Physics major Erin Langsdorf received the Central Florida Astronomical Society's 2005-2006 UCF Astronomy Scholarship. Langsdorfa's faculty sponsor and advisor is Associate Professor Daniel Britt.

March 2004:

UCF Astronaut Scholar (http://www.astronautscholarship.org/ucf.html)

Brian Glover - Physics - 2003–2004