Author: Sean Brittain

Our colleague, John Meriwether, has been elected a fellow of the American Geophysical Union (AGU). John retired at the end of the 2017/2018 academic year and is now an emeritus faculty member. Only 0.1% of the members are inducted into the AGU each year, so this is quite an honor. The AGU boasts over 62,000 members from 144 countries and publishes the leading journals in geoscience and space physics. Please join me in congratulating John for this well deserved recognition.

Professors Sean Brittain and Chad Sosolik have been named to the second cohort of PhysTEC Fellows, a two-year program of The Physics Teacher Education Coalition, whose mission is to improve and promote the education of future physics teachers. The College of Science team is one of five chosen for this cohort to receive support to build and enhance high school physics teacher education programs. Read more about it here.

Graduate student Komal Kumari has been elected student representative to the NSF CEDAR Science Steering Committee where she will serve a two year term. The Coupling, Energetics, and Dynamics of Atmospheric Regions (CEDAR) Program, funded by the National Science Foundation’s Atmospheric and Geospace Sciences Division, studies the interaction region of the Earth’s tenuous upper atmosphere. For over 25 years, CEDAR brings together the U.S. aeronomy community to combine observations from ground based and space based platforms, theory and modeling. As student rep, Komal will provide graduate student input to the CEDAR programmatic priorities and organize the one day student workshop that is part of the annual CEDAR conference. Please join me in congratulating Komal on this well deserved honor.

Bishwambhar Sengupta, a PhD student with Prof. Takacs, has just accepted an offer for a post-doctoral position at the University of Washington in Seattle. He will join the group of Eric Floyd in the department of Radiation Oncology. Let’s congratulate Bishwambhar on this next excellent next step in his career.

Marco Ajello has been awarded the Rising Star in Discovery by the College of Science. This award recognizes excellence in forefront research performed at Clemson University. Marco is interested in understanding the evolution of supermassive black holes and all kinds of high energy phenomena in the universe. Please join me in congratulating the success of our colleague.

The purpose of the President’s Leadership Institute is to hone and develop the skills necessary for leadership success with higher education. The institute expands the participant’s knowledge of higher education as an industry and provides a broad understanding of the skills needed for executive leadership. Participants also gain a broader perspective on the impact Clemson has at the state, regional, national, and international level. Please join me in congratulating Hugo for being selected for the President’s Leadership Institute.

Our students continue to excel! Second year graduate student, Jordan Eagle, has been awarded the Chandra X-ray Observatory Predoctoral Fellowship at the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics. The Chandra X-ray Center is the Science and Operations Center for the Chandra X-ray Observatory, operated for NASA by the Smithsonian Astrophysical Observatory (SAO) at the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics (CfA). After completing her coursework at Clemson, she will spend two years doing research at the forefront of high energy astrophysics. Please join me in congratulating Jordan for this well deserved honor.

Graduation is always a bittersweet time for us. On the one hand we are sad to see the students that we have worked with over the past four years leave us. On the other we are excited to see them accomplish their goals and move onto this next stage in their life. This spring, we had 19 undergraduates and 1 graduate student and had the opportunity to have brunch together prior to the commencement ceremony. Please join me congratulating these students on all their hard work.

What does quantum mechanics have to do with a movie from the Marvel Cinematic Universe? Evidently, quite a bit. But do they get quantum mechanics right? Well it’s a comic book movie, so I’ll let you go watch it in lieu of ruining any plot lines. However, the movie has given one of our faculty members, Sumanta Tewari, the opportunity to explain to the public what quantum mechanics is all about. Check it out here.

Work by Clemson faculty has been featured on APOD. The Auroral Zone Upwelling Rocket Experiment (AZURE) aims to understand how the energy from the solar wind is transferred to our atmosphere and gives rise to the aurora. In the process, this experiment generates spectacular views as seen on the APOD post. You can read more about the experiment here and here. Let’s congratulate our colleagues on a successful experiment!