Author: aellenb

Department faculty, staff, students, and family members gathered at the Hendrix Student Center Friday, April 28 to honor our May graduates, departmental award winners, and Sigma Pi Sigma inductees. Graduating with Bachelor of Science degrees in May are William Bain, Rohan Chitrao, Natalie Combs, Logan Cruse, Kathryn Evancho, Regan Frye, Stone Gardner, Alexander Pendris, Michael Rutland, Brian Sanders, Austin Smith, Gavin Stafford, David Terry, and Timothy Thornton. Two graduate students, Austin Back and Peyton Stewart will graduate with a Master of Science degree, and graduate students Ross Silver and Haonan Wu will receive their Ph.D. degrees at the May hooding ceremony. Master of Ceremonies, Professor Joan Marler, had the privilege of introducing our graduates and presenting the departmental awards. Along with Professor Chad Sosolik, Dr. James Borgardt was on hand to provide some history about the Sigma Pi Sigma society and induct an impressive cohort of Clemson Physics and Astronomy undergraduates as charter members. Please join us in congratulating the following award winners:

Department of Physics and Astronomy Award Recipients
Matthew Everett and Grant Mondeel, L.D. Huff Outstanding Sophomore
Casey King, L.D. Huff Outstanding Junior
David Brian Sanders, Sigma Pi Sigma Outstanding Senior
Regan Frye, Samantha Erin Cawthorne ‘10 Award
Benjamin Amend and Ryan Perrin, Outstanding Graduate Teaching Assistant
Ross Silver and Haonan Wu, Outstanding Graduate Researcher
Benjamin Amend and Ryan Perrin, Impact Author Award
Benjamin Amend, Austin Back, Yamei Liu, Aniruddha Pan, Nathan Reed, and Peyton Stewart, Contributing Author Award

College, University, and National Award Recipients
Haonan Wu, Outstanding Graduate in Discovery
Scott Joffre, Outstanding Graduate in Engagement
Grant Mondeel, Goldwater Scholar

Congratulations to our May 2023 graduates, award recipients, and Sigma Pi Sigma inductees!

Physics and Astronomy Ph.D. student, Scott Joffre has teamed up with Prakrit Subba, a graduate student in Biological Sciences to launch a podcast called Breaking Silos. The pair began the podcast in January and have released ten episodes to date. “Inspired to solve complicated problems by bringing together experts from different fields,” Joffre says, “Breaking Silos enables graduate students in all fields to showcase their research and discuss how their area of study can be applied to solving long-lasting problems in new ways.” Joffre and Subba have covered topics from applying to graduate school, career readiness, writing successful travel grants, ethics, entrepreneurship, and many more! You can check out Breaking Silos on Spotify here.  Happy listening!

On April 14, 2023, five Physics & Astronomy graduate students and one CU-ICAR graduate student conducting research at the Clemson Nanomaterials Institute (CNI) presented six papers at the annual SC EPSCoR conference in Summerville, SC. Basanta Ghimire, Evan Watkins, Nawraj Sapkota, Peshal Karki, and Janak Basel each presented their work at this year’s conference. In addition to the student presentations, Research Assistant Professor, Sriparna Bhattacharya also chaired one of the conference sessions.

The SC EPSCoR Program, joined by SC NASA EPSCoR, invited faculty, post-doctoral fellows, graduate students, undergraduate students, and STEM professionals to this year’s state conference. Conference presentations built on the themes of the last five years, promoting collaboration among South Carolina colleges and universities.

The sun is an abundant — but still largely untapped — energy source.

With the push for renewable energy, researchers from the Clemson Nanomaterials Institute (CNI), led by Dr. Apparao Rao, and the Indian Institute of Science have designed a smart supercapacitor using a novel stack of metal oxides — vanadium pentoxide and zinc oxide — that can efficiently harvest energy from sunlight and simultaneously store it.

Read the full story here or watch the video on YouTube.

It is our pleasure to host Dr. Dipti, an atomic physicist from the International Atomic Energy Agency in Vienna Austria. She will be presenting a public lecture titled, “Spectroscopy: From Femtometer to Cosmic Scales”. Spectroscopy is the study of photons at different wavelengths that enables us to determine the temperature and composition of matter. In this talk, she will discuss the importance of spectroscopy for modern technology such as fusion reactors and how spectroscopy enables us to study everything from sub-atomic physics to galaxies surrounding supermassive black holes – the most massive and energetic objects in the universe. The talk will be held Wednesday, March 29th on Clemson University’s campus in Humanities Hall (G66) at 7pm. We look forward to seeing you there for what promises to be a very exciting presentation!

The Sonoco FRESH initiative at Clemson University has awarded three research grants to professors who are addressing issues regarding the safety, security, and sustainability of food throughout the value chain. With funding provided by Sonoco (a global provider of a variety of consumer packaging, industrial products, protective packaging, and displays and packaging supply chain services), each project focuses on how packaging can extend the shelf life of food, with particular emphasis on perforation density, recyclable adhesives and gas permeability.

Among the faculty members receiving the research grants is Assistant Professor of Physics and Astronomy, Dr. Rama Podila

“Sonoco has been honored to sponsor several calls for research proposals to be funded through Sonoco FRESH,” said Jeff Schuetz, Staff Vice President, Global Technology at Sonoco and FRESH Advisory Board Chair. “The unique multi-disciplinary FRESH research program recognizes the importance of developing solutions and we encourage companies at each step of the food value chain to support this program.”