Category: Conferences and Workshops

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.

Clemson undergraduates Austin Smith and James Hutchinson presented the student rocket experiments carried out under the supervision of Prof. Steve Kaeppler and graduate student Alvaro Guerra over the last two semesters at the 25th ESA Symposium for European Rocket and Balloon Programmes and Related Research in held on May 1-5, 2022 in Biarritz, France.  Their oral presentation entitled “Clemson University Student Space Program: Educating Students in the Field of Space Physics” was given in the “Rockets & Balloons in Space Education” session and received broad attention and feedback from scientists and students in the audience.

The 2019 Methods & Applications of Fluorescence meeting was accompanied by a satellite workshop on Advanced Fluorescence Spectroscopy and Imaging with a focus on FRET. The workshop program was based on a bottom-up approach and geared to the specific requests of the attendees.

http://maf2019.ucsd.edu/program.html

Co-Organizers: Claus Seidel (HHU Düsseldorf, Germany), Hugo Sanabria (Clemson University, SC)

The Dept. of Physics and Astronomy hosted the latest meeting of the Southeastern Laboratory Astrophysics Community (SELAC) from May 13-16, 2019 at the Madren Conference Center. The meeting kicked off on Monday, May 13th with a graduate student symposium featuring graduate student presenters as well as panel discussions from faculty who discussed job and research opportunities in the field of laboratory astrophysics. The full SELAC meeting ran from Tuesday-Thursday and featured speakers from several of our Southeastern colleagues as well as from NIST-Gaithersburg, Los Alamos National Laboratory and the National Ignition Facility. Participants took time for a short outing into the South Carolina Botanical Gardens and the meeting closed with a vibrant discussion of future plans for the community to bring additional laboratory astrophysics opportunities to the Southeast.

The annual meeting of the Physics Teacher Education Coalition or PhysTEC was held March 2-3, 2019 in Boston, Massachusetts and Clemson University had a seat at the table for the first time. Attending the PhysTEC 2019 meeting were Profs. Sean Brittain and Chad Sosolik, who gave a presentation on their 3-year project with the Laurens County school districts entitled “STEM Training for K­-12 Teachers: A Pilot Program in Upstate South Carolina”.

The Dept. of Physics and Astronomy became  a PhysTEC member institution this past Fall as part of its ongoing effort to recognize and enhance the teaching and outreach components of its mission. PhysTEC, which was founded in 2001, is a network of institutions committed to developing and promoting excellence in physics and physical science teacher preparation. The organization operates as a partnership between the American Physical Society (APS) and the American Association of Physics Teachers (AAPT).

At PhysTEC 2019, attendees learned about ongoing efforts to improve physics teacher education at the undergraduate level, many of which may find their way onto the Clemson University campus. These include the UTeach Model and the Get the Facts Out initiative, which is focused on addressing the misperceptions and lack of knowledge that many students and professional physicists have about the teaching profession.

Medical Physics Group of the Department of Physics & Astronomy and Medical Beam Laboratories, LLC
Contacts: Prof. Endre Takacs (etakacs@clemson.edu) and Donald Medlin (dmedlin@medbeamlabs.com)
Location: Kinard Laboratory, Lecture Hall 101

Program

(13:00 – 13:10) Opening Remarks
Endre Takacs, Ph. D., Associate Professor, Department of Physics & Astronomy, Clemson University

(13:10 – 13:45) Title: “Monte Carlo dosimetry on GPU for radiation therapy applications”
Yannick Lemaréchal, Ph. D., Laboratoire de Traitement de L’Information Médicale (LaTIM), France

(13:45 – 14:20) Title: “Getting more from x-rays: Enhancing radiography with x-ray refraction”
Dean M. Connor, Jr., Ph. D., Assistant Professor, Department of Radiology and Radiological Science, Center for Biomedical Imaging, Medical University of South Carolina.

(14:20 – 14:40) Title: “Dosimetric Study of RGS”
Bishwambhar Sengupta, Graduate Student, Department of Physics & Astronomy, Clemson University

(14:40 – 15:00) Refreshment Break

(15:00 – 15:35) Title: “Radiation-therapy induced bone toxicity”
Jeff Wiley, Ph. D., Assistant Professor, Radiation Oncology, Orthopedic Surgery, School of Medicine, Wake
Forest.

(15:35 – 16:10) Title: “Effects of ionizing radiation dose and dose rate on adipose stem cell growth and survival”
Delphine Dean, Ph. D., Gregg-Graniteville Associate Professor, Department of Bioengineering, Clemson University

(16:10 – 16:30) Title: “Kinect programming basics and accuracy evaluation”
Tracy Sanders, Undergraduate Student, School of Computing, Clemson University

(16:30) Round Table Discussion about open projects at Medical Beam Laboratories, LLC
Lead by: Members of Medical Beam Laboratories, LLC. All guests are invited to participate.

The Geant4 Monte Carlo simulation environment was developed at CERN for the modeling of the interaction of particles and radiation with matter. Its use spans from high-energy physics through astrophysics to medical physics applications. The Medical Physics Group at the Department of Physics and Astronomy implemented the package on the Palmetto Cluster to run simulations of different radiosurgery equipment. Our collaborator Yannick LEMARECHAL, Ph.D. from the Centre Hospitalier Universitaire de Brest – LaTIM will give a three-part seminar series on the use of the package on Wednesday, Thursday, and Friday, August 24-26 from 5:30-6:30 pm. Interested students and faculty are welcome.

Wednesday, August 24: The philosophy of Geant4 and how to install it

Thursday, August 25: The basics of Geant4

Friday, August 26: Advanced Examples

Please contact Dr. Endre Takacs (etakacs@clemson.edu) for more information.