Maryam Landi, a recent graduate of The University of Mississippi’s Master of Science physics program, was featured in the Graduate school Summer 2018 newsletter for developing  a new structure that emits sound waves from miniature speakers more efficiently, especially when it comes to low frequency, or bass. A lot of speaker designs in the world yield powerful, high-quality sound but fail to deliver when the speaker is miniaturized. This is because no one has figured out the physics behind doing so — until now. The article describes her physical acoustics research with Dr Likun Zhang and others on metacavities that act as highly effective miniaturized speakers. Their work was published in Physical Review Letters (Phys. Rev. Lett. 120, 114301).

Thomas Marshall and Maribeth Stolzenburg, a pair of University of Mississippi professors of the Physics and Astronomy depaertment, have been granted two National Science Foundation awards to study lightning initiation.

Hunter Gabbard, a recent graduate of The University of Mississippi’s Bachelor of Science physics program, is currently pursuing a doctoral degree at the University of Glasgow. Under the supervision of Dr Christopher Messenger, Mr Gabbard and his collaborators have demonstrated that machine learning algorithms may be useful in automating the search for astrophysical events that are detected on earth as gravitational waves.

Many physics graduate students presented their research at the 82nd Annual Meeting of Mississippi Academy of Sciences, which was held February 22–23 in Hattiesburg, MS. Students Shrobana Ghosh and Sunethra Dayavansha were each awarded first prize for talks they gave in the Physics and Engineering division; BB Pilgrim earned second prize. Ashoka Karunarathne’s poster was awarded third prize in the Mississippi INBRE graduate scholars symposium.

Saeed Kamali will receive the 2018 College of Liberal Arts Graduate Achievement Award in Physics and Astronomy.

The Graduate School awards up to a total of eighteen Graduate Achievement Awards each year for recognition on Honors Day. These include a maximum of two each from Accountancy, Applied Sciences, Business, Education, Engineering, and Pharmacy, and six from the College of Liberal Arts. (In Liberal Arts, the two awards are given in each of the following three areas: Area A, which includes Biology, Chemistry, Mathematics, Philosophy and Religions, and Physics and Astronomy; Area B, which includes Art, Classics, English, Journalism, Modern Languages, Music, and Theatre Arts; Area C, which includes History, Political Science, Psychology, and Sociology and Anthropology.)