NEWS

You can find the physics department's new, revamped Web site at http://www.uark.edu/depts/physics/. Much of the site was designed and put together by Tamara Snyder (MS 1993).

GRADUATE STUDENT NEWS

Kim-Fook Lee presented a paper based on his work at the March 1997 American Physical Society meeting in Kansas City.

Ron Adams won the Excellence in Teaching Award offered by the university's teaching and faculty support center. He was also won the physics department's Outstanding Teaching Assistant Award for 1996-97.

NEW GRADUATE STUDENTS

Marwan Albarghouti from University of Jordan.

Ahmad Al-Yacoub from University of Rajasthn Jaipur, India.

Colleen Cafferty from University of New Mexico

John Carter from East Texas Baptist University

Albert Estevez from Auburn University.

Ditta Gallai from Janus Pannouius University in Peis, Hungary.

Kai He from Fudan University, China.

Junho Lee from Kyunghee University, Korea.

Laura Wessels from Mary Washington College.

UNDERGRADUATE STUDENT NEWS

Four students won freshman scholorships for the coming year: Nicholas Farrer from Fordyce High School in Fordyce, Arkansas, Kjell Tengesdal , Travis Wages from Fayetteville High School in Fayetteville, Arkansas; and Dustin Walker from Cotter HS in Gassville, Arkansas.

Four students won upper class scholarships for the coming year: Winfred Byrd, James Clem, Josh Hamblen, and Jeremy Massey . Byrd, Clem, and Hamblen are also physics scholarship holders for the past academic year.

James Clem won the Admiral Bryson scholarship for astronomy for the second year in a row.

Josh Hamblen was the first winner of the new Paul C. Sharrah scholarship.

The Society of Physics Students (SPS) plans a year full of physics activities. SPS officers were elected for the academic year 1997-98. They are: President, Steve Skinner; Vice President, Noel Napieralski; Secretary, Brian Hart; Treasurer, James Buffington.

ALUMNI NEWS

Calling all alumni! Email (ahobson@comp.uark.edu) or write to us and tell us about the interesting things you've been doing!

Arlis Dodson (MS 1994) joined the TVR Company in Norman, OK.

Galen Durree (PhD 1995), Assistant Professor, Northwest Nazarene College, Nampa, Idaho was awarded a Research Corporation grant in support of his project.

Kevin Fandre (BS) joined E-Systems located in Dallas, TX.

Greg Fox (MS 1996) joined E-Systems located in Dallas, TX.

James Hendren (BS 1969, MS 1971, PhD 1972) and his company Arkansas Systems have made a significant contribution as matching funds for Dr. Min Xiao's grant that required the matching money. Hendren is also interested in interviewing students that have an interest in employment in a applied problem solving enviornment using computing tools.

Robert Maurer (BS 1948 ), now retired from Corning Glass Company, was elected Fellow of the American Physical Society.

David Mooney (PhD) moved back to Denver from Washington, DC to take a job as Chief of Staff at the National Renewable Energy Lab. A few months into that job, he accepted an offer from Superconducting Core Technologies (SCT) to become their Vice President for Administration. He will run daily operations and work with the scientists and engineers how make up about 30 of the company's 50 people. SCT's product is a thin-film high temperature superconductor-based microwave filter that will be incorporated into cellular and PCS telephone base stations. This will be the first product that commercializes high temperature superconductivity material on a large scale.

Yujiang Qu (PhD 1995) joined Versatility, Inc, a Telecommunication company that develops software used in CALL Center.

C. Wang (PhD 1994) joined McDonald Software System in Dallas, TX.

Marvin Young (PhD 1986) joined Worldcom, Inc, a transmission optics and new technology company located in Tulsa, OK.

FACULTY NEWS

Julio Gea-Banacloche published a review article last year in the Advances in Atomic, Molecular and Optical Physics series, and has been developing educational Java applets for use on the World-Wide Web.

Mark Filipkowski is studying the boundary between equilibrium and nonequilibrium thermodynamics in macroscopic magnetic particles. In a novel teaching approach, he has also used the motion of these magnetic particles in the study of motion in his Analytical Mechanics course, thereby connecting classroom study with frontier research.

William Harter has developed two new and improved simulation programs for quantum dynamics and discovered some intriguing results concerning violations of Bloch symmetry in super lattices. Also, new programs for class C++ projects to help learn classical mechanics and complex variables were developed.

Art Hobson's textbook Physics: Concepts and Connections (Prentice Hall, 1995) has received favorable reviews in Physics Today, American Journal of Physics, Contemporary Physics, and Science, Technology and Society Today , and has now been adopted on over 70 campuses. A second edition is in the works for next year.

Claud Lacy spent his sabbatical leave at the Harvard Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics, and has published or had accepted 6 refereed publications in the last 7 months, an all-time record for him. The publications are all about his binary star research.

Michael Lieber co-authored a paper in Physical Review presenting an improved approximate wavefunction for the quantum three-body coulomb problem.

William Oliver was awarded the prestigious NSF CAREER award last May, and gave an invited talk at the Fall 1996 Materials Research Society meeting in Boston on "Relaxation Phenomena in Complex Systems at High Pressure."

James Bradford Shue has enhanced the department's community outreach by putting on an increasing number of public demonstration shows and involving more graduate and undergraduate students to give them experience.

Surendra Singh presented invited talks at the Chinese Academy of Sciences and at the 26th Winter Colloquium on the Physics of Quantum Electronics.

Gay Stewart has been developing a new field of education research called educational engineering. This allows educational objects to undergo a model-measure-iterate cycle, helping to bring the precision of physical science to education research.

Reeta Vyas gave an invited short course on "Some Recent Advances in Quantum Optics: non-classical light and its interaction with a single atom," at the Third Escola Mario Schonberg de Pos-Graducao Workshop at the Paraiba Federal University in Joao Pessoa, Brazil.

Min Xiao has carried out several experimental research projects on applications of electromagnetically induced transparency in nonlinear optics. He has also gotten interesting results on the properties of certain self-consistent theoretical quantum phase operators.

Amost all faculty contributed to the year's total of 49 published journal papers, 26 additional papers published in conference proceedings, 6 invited talks, and 35 contributed talks.