Class of 2021 – 2022: Sudeep Adhikari, Hollie Danielle Arnsdorff, Quinn Campagna, Claudia Chambliss, Lucretius Coleman, Alex Denette, Xudong Fan, Paul Stanley Gebeline, Justin Guilliams, Nicholas Allen Kruse, Adedotun Michael Lawal, Sakul Mahat, BB Pilgrim, Mason Smith, John Wilson Stacy, Jessica Blake Swindoll, Huu Do Tran and John Vincent Waite

Our graduating class consists of the following 7 undergraduate students:

• Hollie Danielle Arnsdorff earned the bachelor of science degree in physics and will be working for General Atomics.
• Claudia Chambliss earned the bachelor of science degree in physics and was accepted into a biophysics PhD program at Cornell.
• Paul Stanley Gebeline earned the bachelor of science degree in physics and is continuing on in the graduate program in physics.
• Nicholas Allen Kruse earned the bachelor of science degree in chemistry and is continuing on in the graduate program in chemistry.
• Sakul Mahat earned the bachelor of science degree in physics and has been accepted at the University of Texas — Dallas in the graduate program in mathematics.
• John Wilson Stacy earned the bachelor of science degree in physics and is continuing on in the graduate program in physics.
• Jessica Blake Swindoll earned the bachelor of science degree in physics and has been accepted at the University of Maryland — Baltimore County in the graduate program in physics.

Our graduating class consists of the following 8 graduate students:

• Quinn Campagna earned the master of science degree in physics and is continuing on in the Ph.D program here in experimental physics.
• Alex Denette earned the master of science degree in physics.
• Justin Guilliams earned the master of science degree in physics and is continuing on in the Ph.D program here in experimental physics.
• Adedotun Michael Lawal earned the master of science degree in physics.
• Mason Smith earned the master of science degree in physics and is going on to a medical physics program at University of Kentucky.
• Sudeep Adhikari earned the doctor of philosophy degree in physics and will be working for Merck.
• Lucretius Coleman earned the doctor of philosophy degree in physics.
• Xudong Fan earned the doctor of philosophy degree in physics.
• BB Pilgrim earned the doctor of philosophy degree in physics.
• Sashwat Tanay earned the doctor of philosophy degree in physics.
• Huu Do Tran earned the doctor of philosophy degree in physics and will be teaching at the University of Illinois — Chicago.
• John Vincent Waite earned the doctor of philosophy degree in physics and will be teaching at Morehead State University.

We congratulate our graduating class and wish each of them the best.

Lorena Magaña Zertuche is the winner of the 2022 Advancing STEM Scholarship! As the call for nominations by the Graduate School said, “Eligible individuals are prospective or current University of Mississippi doctoral students in a STEM discipline whose background, achievements, and experience demonstrate a commitment to contributing to the advancement of women in STEM, regardless of the recipient’s gender or gender identity.” That call also stated that “Priority will be given to the recruitment of new students.” The fact that Lorena was chosen attests to her commitment to advancing women in STEM, and is very well deserved. As Dean Kluck wrote in the award letter, “It was quite difficult to select just one winner. However, the committee felt your leadership to advance women in STEM caused you to stand out from others and is the type of work we seek to recognize with this important award.” Congratulations to Lorena!

Four physics majors are working with a University of Mississippi professor and an international team of scientists to search for new particles and interactions that may help solve big questions about the universe. Along the way, they’re getting a head start on their own research careers.

The students – Paul Gebeline, Sakul Mahat, Matthew Mestayer and Wil Stacy – are working with Jake Bennett, an experimental elementary particle physicist and assistant professor in the University of Mississippi Department of Physics and Astronomy. Bennett collaborates with more than 1,000 physicists and engineers from 26 countries on the Belle II experiment, a groundbreaking project at the SuperKEKB electron-positron accelerator in Tsukuba, Japan.

For more details please see the article in the Oxford Eagle.

Anil Panta has been selected to receive a Graduate Achievement Award.  The award will be presented to Anil at the Honors and Awards Convocation, on April 7, 2022.  To learn more about Anil’s research, you can click on this link: https://physics.olemiss.edu/grad_dir/

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.)

University of Mississippi researchers are sending a sonic experiment to Space Station. The project aims to develop method to control fluids in zero gravity using sound waves.

A device that can move liquids without physical contact sounds like the stuff of science fiction, so perhaps it’s appropriate that a prototype of just such a marvel is headed to the International Space Station for an out-of-this-world test of its capabilities.

When NASA’s next resupply mission to the ISS, Cygnus NG-17, blasts off Saturday morning (Feb. 19) from Wallops Flight Facility in Virginia, an acoustic tweezers device conceived and built at the University of Mississippi will be among its cargo.

Likun Zhang, assistant professor of physics and astronomy and a researcher at the university’s National Center for Physical Acoustics, and Robert Lirette, a former UM doctoral student in physics and postdoctoral research associate, hope to explore the ability of the device to control fluids in the zero-gravity environment of space.

For more details please see the article in the University of Mississippi News.