THIS YEAR'S PHYSICS GRADUATES
Joanne Gold , Bachelor of Arts; she begins Law School here at U of A this Fall.
James Michael Harrington , Bachelor Of Arts; he begins Law School at Georgetown University in Washington, D.C., this Fall.
Lucas Barrett Post , Bachelor of Arts; he will be pursuing an M.S. degree here.
James Lewis Clem , Bachelor of Science with honrs (Magna Cum Laude). He will be going on to graduate school.
Jonathan K. Earls , Bachelor of Science.
Brian Thomas Hart Bachelor of Science; he will be joining our new ACEMI (Arkansas Center for Electronic-Photonic Materials Innovation) program for an M.S. degree.
Michael J. Parker , Bachelor of Science will be working for an optics company in Colorado.
Forrest William Payne , Bachelor of Science.
Robert Quinn , Bachelor of Science.
Stephen R. Skinner , Bachelor of Science will be going to graduate school.
Robert Ryan West , Bachelor of Science.
Marwan Albarghoti , Master of Arts; he will continue for a Ph.D. under Dr. Oliver.
Ahmad M. Al-Yacoub , Master of Arts; he will continue for a Ph.D. under Dr. Singh.
John Hillis Carter , Master of Arts; he will continue for a Ph.D. under Dr. Lieber.
Kai He , Master of Arts.
Kim Fook Lee , Master of Arts.
Joao Sergio Afonso , Doctor of Philsophy, Directed by Prof. Chan.
George L. Bennis , Doctor of Philsophy, Directed by Prof. Gupta.
Kaiyuan Chen , Doctor of Philsophy, Directed by Prof. Chan.
Hongxiao Meng , Doctor of Philosophy, Directed by Prof. Salamo.
Zheng Lu , Doctor of Philosophy, Directed by Prof. Xiao.
GRADUATE STUDENT NEWS
Sergio Afonso and K.Y. Chen have successfully defended their PhD dissertations in the area of superconductivity.
Kai He completed his MA under the direction of William Harter by doing computer simulations of an ancient war machine called the "Trebuchet" which was originally thought to have been invented by the Turks around the 10th century. Kai found evidence that it was actually invented almost 1000 years earlier in China! The machine uses gravity alone to hurl objects to a range nearly a hundred times its length. Kai's model made of plastic picnic utensils throws a bolt across the classroom.
NEW GRADUATE STUDENTS
Daniel Bullock , BS from Arkansas Tech University
Timothy Clingan , BS from Henderson State University
Horace Crogman , BS from Midwestern State University
Miguel Martinez , BS from University of Arkansas at Little Rock
Amjad Nazzal , MS from Yarmouk University, Jordan
Craig Nelson , BS from Eastern Illinois University
Steven Skinner , BS from University of Arkansas at Fayetteville
Melody Thomas , BS from Carroll College
Hongjun Yao , MS from Fudan University, China
Renpi Yu , MS from Zhejiang University, China
UNDERGRADUATE STUDENT NEWS
Crystal Bailey, LeAnn Brown, Winfred D. Byrd, Nicholas Farrer , and Clinton Wood won upper class scholarships for the coming year. Joshua B. Hamblen won the Paul C. Sharrah scholarship for the second year in a row. Jeremy M. Massey won the Admiral Bryson scholarship for astronomy.
The Society of Physics Students initiated a free tutoring center for use by students in UPI/CPI. Quite a number of students took advantage of the center. SPS held a very successful banquet celebrating 50 years of SPS and 30 years of Sigma Pi Sigma. Eight of our undergraduate physics majors were inducted into a revitalized Sigma Pi Sigma. These were the first inductees in many years, and one more indication of the growing strength of our undergraduate program. The new Sigma Pi Sigma members are Crystal Bailey, Winfred Byrd, James Clem, Joanne Gold, Joshua Hamblen, Brian Hart, Nguyen Loann, Luke Post, and Steven Skinner.
Joshua Hamblen will spend the summer in the REU (Research Experience for Undergraduates) program in physics at the University of Colorado at Boulder, where he was one of ten accepted from 176 applicants!
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) works with a Terminal Doppler Weather Radar System at the TVR company in Norman, OK.
Tom Callaway (PhD 1975), Professor of Physics at Stephen F. Austin State University, Nacogdoches, Texas, has been recognized as the 1998 Regents Professor, and has also received the 1998 University Teaching Excellence Award. See the accompanying Alumni Profile article on Tom's career.
Robert Gruebel (PhD 1968) is Professor of Physics at Stephen F. Austin State University, Nacogdoches, Texas.
Shao-zheng Jin (PhD December 1995) is now working with Nortel, Canada's biggest telephone company.
Julia (Smith) Kennefick (BS 1989) completed her PhD in astrophysics from Caltech in 1995. After a postdoctoral appointment at Ohio State (1995-97), she moved to Oxford University, England, where she is engaged in a search for faint quasars at high redshift. She is married to Daniel Kennefick, a fellow physicist from Caltech.
Zheng Lu has taken a job at MEMC Crystal Technology in Saint Louis, the world's second largest silicon growth company.
Jon Osborn (MS 1997), is managing the computers in an elementary school in his hometown, Indianapolis, IN.
C. Wang (PhD 1994) is working at McDonald Software system in Dallas, TX
Karen Williams (MS 1988) received her PhD in physics education from the University of Oklahoma in May 1998. Her dissertation topic was "An investigation of meaningful understanding and effectiveness of the implementation of Piagetian and Ausubelian theories in physics instruction." This research has shown that the two theories are not vastly different at all. Rather, the two theories use different terminology to explain learning. Such research has direct application to college physics instruction.
Marvin Young (PhD 1988) has joined Worldcom in Tulsa, OK
FACULTY NEWS
Mark Filipkowski received a major piece of equipment, a Bruker spectrometer for solid-state NMR, costing $160K. He is designing probes to use with this instrument for studying the structure and electronic properties of magnetic multilayers.
Julio Gea-Banacloche received a grant from the National Security Agency to do research on the feasibility of quantum computers. Some earlier research of his was mentioned in a feature article in the September 1997 Physics Today (p. 35). And an instructional computer simulation he developed last year (which you can view at http://comp.uark.edu/~jgeabana/mol_dyn/) was chosen to be included in an electronic, interactive supplement for a College Physics textbook (Jones and Childers Contemporary College Physics, 3rd ed.).
William Harter's 20-year-old prediction of a subtle form of spontaneous symmetry breaking has been observed in high resolution spectra of SiF4 by researchers at the University of Paris in Vilateneuse. The effect which Harter named 'superhyperfine structure' involves resonance between two very weak fields, and is roughly analogous to an automobile being rolled over by its radio antenna. Even more pronounced effects are expected in C60 or "Buckyball" molecules.
Michael Henry , together with William Oliver, obtained a 3-year NSF Research Experience for Undergraduates (REU) grant to establish an REU site here on cutting edge optics and optics-related materials physics. This program will attract up to ten promising undergraduate physics majors for 10 weeks during summers to work with our department's research groups, and will encourage them to continue pursuing an education and career in science. Last summer we brought in our first group of REU students and ten more have been accepted for this summer. NSF aims to broaden the nation's talent pool by encouraging more students to pursue science and engineering graduate degrees.
Art Hobson finished work on the second edition of his textbook, Physics: Concepts and Connections (Prentice Hall, 1995), to be published this summer. It has been adopted at over 85 campuses. Hobson also spoke at an international physics education conference in Sopron, Hungary, and at the University of Freiburg and the University of Tuebingen in Germany. There are plans to translate and use the book in China.
Claud Lacy's most interesting discovery was an eclipsing binary star, V907 Sco, that has, once again, stopped eclipsing. Lacy and his Danish co-investigators now believe they know what's going on in this system - it's actually a triple star. The third star causes the orbital plane of the eclipsing binary to wobble, turning the eclipses on and off--a behavior that is unique among all known eclipsing binaries.
Michael Lieber received a NATO grant to support his collaboration with Hubert Klar of the University of Freiburg, Germany, and Akram Mukhamedzhanov of Texas A&M. The three are working on the quantum mechanical problem of three interacting charged particles. They will get together in June in Freiburg. Professor Lieber also presented a paper at the AAPT meeting last summer in Denver, and will present one at the 16th International Conference on Atomic Physics in Windsor, Ontario this August.
William Oliver was chosen to participate in a national AAPT/NSF-sponsored Workshop for New Physics Faculty, and also chosen to be one of 35 faculty members from around the country to participate in a Faculty Enhancement Workshop this June at Harvard University. In addition, he and Michael Henry wrote an NSF Research Experience for Undergraduates (REU) proposal to establish an REU site here on "Modern Optics and Optical Materials," and obtained funds for three years. For more about this program, see Michael Henry, above. He was promoted to Associate Professor.
Gegory Salamo published 11 research papers, including two papers in Physical Review Letters , two in Optics Letters , and one in Applied Physics Letters , and presented 17 invited and contributed talks at various meetings. He received a $1.5 million NSF-EPSCOR award to develop a program in photonics and electronics, and began growth of materials using the new Molecular Beam Epitaxy facility (see accompanying article in this issue) obtained through another NSF award. He is growing new photorefractive optical waveguides and carrying out investigations on quantum dots with atomic-scale resolution. He had one PhD student graduate.
Surendra Singh published two articles, one of them an invited review article in "Frontiers of Quantum Optics and Laser Physics," edited by S. Y. Zhu, M. S. Zubairy, and M. O. Scully (Springer-Verlag, Singapore, 1997), pp 336-351. He also gave two invited talks, at the International Conference on Quantum Optics in Hongkong in January 1997 and at the International Symposium On Lasers in Ahmedabad, India, in Decemeber, 1997.
Gay Stewart won the College of Arts and Sciences' Master Advisor Award, in recognition of her thoughtful advising assistance to our undergraduate physics majors--one reason for the recent strong upswing in our number of graduating seniors. She has continued to work on her NSF-supported project to implement interactive laboratory-based learning techniques at large comprehensive universities. In addition, she has been conducting an annual summer teaching academy program for physics teaching assistants, she published three papers on research in physics education, and has four more papers accepted for publication.
Paul Thibado finished setting up our new $1.7 million semiconductor fabrication and characterization facility. The new facility is unique in the nation, because it combines state-of-the-art in device fabrication with the capability of characterizing the material quality with atomic-scale resolution. He also won several major research grants from NSF, the Office of Naval Research, etc., totaling $1.5 million. These funds allow him to employ 5 undergraduate students, 5 graduate students, and 2 post-doctorates. The new facility was officially opened by Chancellor John White during a ribbon cutting ceremony in April, with over 100 in attendance, TV interviews, and several articles in local city and campus paper. For more information, see Thibado's article on the Molecular Beam Epitaxy facility.
Reeta Vyas directed a summer research project under the REU program, contributed physics questions to Arvest Academic Competition in Education for high school students, and presented science demonstrations for the Science Saturday at the University of Arkansas Museum. She published 4 articles and presented 4 papers at national and international meetings.
Min Xiao published 9 papers in quantum optics, atomic physics, and nonlinear optics. He has been selected to receive the Arkansas Alumni Association's Distinguished Achievement Award in Research. He was invited to participate in the Ninth Symposium of Frontiers of Sciences organized by the National Academy of Sciences at Irvine, California, November, 1997. He received a grant from the Office of Naval Research for $297,500. He was promoted to Professor.
Almost all faculty contributed to the year's total of 60 published articles and 40 contributed and invited talks at national and international conferences.
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