Featured Undergraduates: Spring 2020 (II)
Senior B.S. Major Jarod Wright, Double Major in Physics and Mathematics, Current Price Scholarship Awardee
Jarod Wright is our current Price Scholarship awardee; this scholarship is awarded to deserving students on the basis of scholastic ability, leadership potential and financial need. He is a senior B.S. major in physics and in mathematics and will be graduating this spring. B.S. physics majors often do mathematics as a second major, because the physics degree requires 18 credit hours of mathematics and additional math courses are recommended for majors planning to go on to graduate school.
Jarod, in the laboratory
Learn about Jarod in his own words.
“Thanks to faculty in both the physics and mathematics department, I’ve gathered a much more detailed and alluring image of a physics career. I’ve gone from having a broader, generalized ambition of being a scientist to being excited about specific goals. I hope to pursue a Physics PhD with a focus on computation thanks to many great classes with many great professors. My research project with Dr. Beach in particular has really helped me discover and understand my interest. I’ve had the opportunity with Dr. Beach to work on a C++ file that simulates a triangular lattice of rotors that evolves to its lowest energy configuration. In short, I’ve got to study the behavior of the antiferromagnetic configuration of the lattice and track many associated physical quantities while tweaking and varying parameters of the code. I’ve generalized the code in many instances and created plots from exported data. Along the way, I’ve familiarized myself with the Linux command line, GNU compiler collection, and other associated tools. I’ve learned more about computing and specifically C++ working with Dr. Beach than in all my programming courses. During my time at UM and prior, I’ve had to work extensively to pay my way through school and keep up with expenses. I’ve always considered this more of a means of keeping up with my real priorities. Being awarded the Price scholarship was a true blessing in this regard and it allowed me to alleviate some of the financial burden of a university education. I am incredibly grateful to be a recipient and it’s very encouraging to have such support. Lastly, pursing a mathematics B.S has been very complementary to my physics education. I would recommend it to anyone considering studying physics. The range of exposure I’ve gotten to mathematics has only ever been beneficial. This is not to say it hasn’t been rewarding on its own. I wouldn’t have seen math as an arena of proofs, lemmas, etc. otherwise. It’s all really interesting.”
RECENT STUDENT FEATURES
- Spring 2020 (I): B.S. Majors Carley Middleton, Nick Kruse and Joseph Brown, Society of Physics Students Officers, at PhysCon 2019.
- Fall 2019 (II): B.A. Major Taylor Cabrera Represents the Department as the 2019 College of Liberal Arts Student Ambassador for Physics.
- Fall 2019 (I): B.S. Majors Radhakrishna Adhikari, Paul Gebeline, Sakul Mahat & Ming Zern Ngoh at the Belle II Summer School.
We encourage all our students to do research with our faculty and staff. Opportunities for great experiences are open to all our students in all our main research areas: atmospheric physics, condensed matter physics, gravitational physics, high energy physics and physical acoustics. Projects are also available in digital electronics as well as other areas. Students in the B.S. program are required to complete 2 credit hours of the physics research courses, Physics 463 and/or 464 and students in the B.A. program are encouraged to participate as well. Students may talk to their academic advisors for help getting started or talk directly to the people in the research areas they are interested in.