The Department of Physics and Astronomy at Vanderbilt University combines the friendly and supportive atmosphere of a liberal arts college with the excitement and challenge of forefront research. The undergraduate program consists of a focused physics education combined with a wealth of skills from the humanities and social sciences. The bachelor’s degree prepares a student for a career in the private sector or for continuing one's education in physics, astronomy, engineering, law, medicine and many other fields.

Both undergraduate and graduate students actively engage in Departmental research programs that are supported by more than $8 million in external funding annually. These research programs are at the cutting edge of traditional areas of physics as well as being a major contributor to contemporary interdisciplinary institutions and centers.

Graduate student Stephen Johnson received a "best oral presentation" award for his paper: Effects of Laser Wavelength, Fluence and Pulse Duration on Infrared Pulsed Laser Deposition of Conducting and Semiconducting Polymers, presented at the SPIE Photonics West Symposium.

Video of the recent Forman lecture by Carl Wieman title Using the Tools of Physics to Teach Physics is available for viewing. You can view the streaming files by clicking on either of the following links:            Windows Media Player        Real Player

Department Chair Robert Scherrer and Lawrence Krauss of Case Western Reserve University, are authors of the March 2008 Scientific American cover story journal article, "The End of Cosmology". Watch the video to learn about The End of Cosmology!  (Click on the arrow in the video box to watch it full screen.)

Vanderbilt's Relativistic Heavy Ion Group represented by Prof. Greene and Velkovska, post-docs Shengli Huang and Michael Issah, and graduate students Hugo Valle and Ronald Belmont, had notable presence at the Quark Matter 2008 conference which was held in Jaipur, India, Feb 4-10, 2008. Three oral presentations and one poster were delivered regarding new results made possible by the successful operation of the time-of-flight detector that the group recently built. With extended detector capabilities, they have been able to probe in detail the fluid properties of the matter produced at RHIC and obtain the first direct evidence that the matter is thermalized at the very early partonic stage of the nucleus-nucleus collisions. This very important result is expected to be published in the near future.

Congratulations to Dr. Vicki Greene who has been appointed Associate Dean for Graduate Studies in the College of Arts and Science. She will begin serving in this capacity in August.

Dr. David James waits for very rare Mammatus clouds to clear before beginning his evening session studying the skies of the southern hemisphere. He is spending his spring break using a 1 meter telescope to measure the rotation rates of stars in a cluster in an effort to determine the age of the cluster. Vanderbilt is a member of the SMARTS consortium which runs the small and medium-sized (1 meter class) telescopes at CITO in Chile. Dr. James also teaches a course at Vanderbilt on the Solar System.

The Joint Institute for Heavy Ion Research at Oak Ridge celebrates its 25th anniversary. The joint institute was originally sponsered by Vanderbilt, UT, and Oak Ridge National Laboratories (ORNL) and has been a home away from home for physicists from around the world while researching nuclear sciene. Dr. Joe Hamilton is one of the institute's original founders and was at the celebration recounting the institutes history and accomplishments. This image is from the 1984 dedication: (left to right) Lee Riedinger (UT), Russell Robinson (ORNL), Dr. Hamiltion (Vanderbilt).

Fresh from the 2008 American Astronomical Society Conference: Our own Dr. Kelley Holley-Bockelmann is making news following her presentation regarding Rogue Black Holes. MSNBC, BBC, Science Daily, PhysicsOrg.com, National Geographic, Nature, Vanderbilt Exploration, Yahoo! News, Blog.wired, SpaceRef.com, NewScientist, Fox News, Daily Mail (UK), Cosmos (Australia)