Category: news

On Monday March 19, 2018, the Department of Physics held a reception in honor of Ryan Melvin, who successfully defended his Ph.D. thesis entitled: “Bias, Uncertainty, and Ions”. Dr. Melvin’s thesis was completed under the direction of Professor Fred Salsbury. Please click here for a slideshow of photographs highlighting the event.

WFU Physics alum, Chaochao Dun (Ph.D. ’17), has been awarded the Chinese Government National Outstanding Self-funded Scholarship Award for 2017. This award was founded by Chinese government in 2003 with the purpose of rewarding the academic excellence of self-financed Chinese students studying overseas. This award is considered as the highest award given by Chinese government […]

Physics professor Oana Jurchescu has been awarded the Wake Forest University Undergraduate Research and Creative Activities Center’s (URECA) Faculty Award For Excellence in Mentorship in Research and Creative Work. The award was presented at the 2018 WFU Founders’ Day Convocation held in Wait Chapel on Feb. 15, 2018. The award recognizes faculty members who engage Wake Forest […]

The Wake Forest Angela F. Harper Fellowship is a one-time award designed to promote the summer research of physics majors or those working in the physics department under the mentorship of a Wake Forest University faculty member across the summer months.  Applications must be written by the student and submitted to Eric Carlson ecarlson@wfu.edu, though […]

Angela Harper (’17) was awarded the 2017 LeRoy Apker Award, in recognition for outstanding achievements in Physics. This award is given by the American Physical Society and two awards are presented each year, one to a student from a Ph.D. granting institution, and one to a student from a non-Ph.D. granting institution. Angela was selected for […]

Associate Professor Timo Thonhauser has been elected a 2017 Fellow of the American Physical Society (APS) by the APS Council of Representatives upon the recommendation of the Division of Computational Physics. This honor is in recognition of Dr. Thonhauser’s contributions to include van der Waals interactions in density functional theory. Congratulations Dr. Thonhauser!

Prof. Timo Thonhauser’s research group recently published work in Nature Communications on radioactive iodide molecular traps was highlighted by Wake Forest News. The traps are metal-organic framework materials that are cheaper and more efficient at capturing iodides from reprocessing spent nuclear power plant fuel rods.

The Physics department is pleased to announce that Reynolds Professor Emeritus Richard Williams is the inaugural winner of the annual  Physics Department Outstanding Alumni Award.  The department solicits nominations from alumni and a committee selects the winner.    Dr. Williams will accept the award at a special physics colloquium in Spring 2018.  Dr. Williams retired […]

On August 21, 2017, the Department of Physics hosted a solar eclipse viewing party to witness a partial solar eclipse as seen from Winston Salem, NC. Though maximum eclipse was obscured by cloud cover, department members were able to capture a few images utilizing 8″ schmidt-cassegrain telescopes with solar filters.