Monthly Archives: May 2016

Physics major wins URISC Award !

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Congratulations to a physics major Graham Founds who received an Undergraduate Research, Innovation, Scholarship and Creativity (URISC) Award for Summer 2016 for his project titled “Optical Tweezers-Based Probing of Charge Transfer in Organic Semiconductors at Microscopic Scales” ! The URISC program is a university-wide competition of undergraduate proposals sponsored by the OSU Research Office. Graham’s proposal was among 8 compelling undergraduate proposals that were selected for funding. Graham (pictured below) has been a member of Organic Photonics and Optoelectronics Group led by Prof. Oksana Ostroverkhova at OSU Physics department since September 2015. With the URISC funding, he will continue working with Prof. Ostroverkhova over the summer towards demonstrating a new experimental technique for measuring charge transfer between molecules with elementary charge resolution. Graham is planning to graduate in the Spring of 2017 and to continue his education as a graduate student in physics. His longer-term plan is to join the US Air Force laboratories as a research scientist.

Physics undergraduate student Graham Founds setting up his experiment.
Physics undergraduate student Graham Founds setting up his experiment.

SURE Science Scholarships

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The Department of Physics is proud to announce that four undergraduate students are recipients of the Summer Undergraduate Research Experience in Science (SURE Science) Scholarships. Jeremy Meinke will be working in Prof. Weihong Qiu’s Lab to determine how OsKCH2 –a nanometer-sized biological motor protein– moves on the filamentous microtubule track using high precision single-molecule microscopy. Mirek Brandt and Ikaika Mckeague-McFadden will be working in Prof. Matt Graham’s Lab on the novel electronic and optical properties of two-dimensional and organic materials. Katelyn Chase will be working in Prof. Bo Sun’s lab to develop microfludics endothelium-on-chips devices for studying the collective endothelium shear stress sensing during embryo development. Many thanks to the College of Science and to the scholarship donors that made theses full-time summer-Science research scholarships possible.

Transit of Mercury

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On May 9th, Mercury transited the Sun and the crack physics solar telescope team (Randy Milstein and Jim Ketter) took a chance on a break in the clouds and set up 3 telescopes in the quad.  The sky cleared and over 40 people stopped by to see the transit before it ended right before lunch.  If anyone has a photo taken at this event, send it along and we will post it.

 

Randy Milstein helps visitors see Mercury transit the sun.
Randy Milstein helps visitors see Mercury transit the sun.