Welcome to the Department of Physics and Astronomy
at California State University Long Beach!

Department & Physics News

The Nobel prize in Physics has been given to Saul Perlmutter, Brian P. Schmidt, and Adam G. Ries for "the discovery of the accelerating expansion of the universe through observation of distant supernovae". See the official website of the announcement.

The Nobel prize in Chemistry has been given to D. Shechtman for "the discovery of quasicrystals." See the official website of the announcement. Note: this topic is one of the semester projects offered in our Intro. to Solid State Physics class (PHYS-470/569).

Michael Peterson:

Welcome to our new faculty member!

His area of expertise is in condensed matter theory. More specifically, his present interests are in strongly correlated systems and quantum topological phases.

Kathryn Beck:

Welcome our teacher in residence of the PhysTEC program for academic year 2011-2012!

Graduate student Sam Koshy obtained for the second time a NASA Graduate Student Award. Sam is the only student from a non-PhD granting University to obtain this award this year!

One of our faculty, Andreas Bill, was awarded the 2011 Faculty Award for Excellence (aka the "Pretty Darn Good Professor award") of the College of Natural Sciences and Mathematics.

This summer two of our faculty, Thomas Gredig and Andreas Bill, co-organized a conference entitled Trends on Nanoscale Superconductivity and Magnetism, International  workshop,

Cali, Colombia, June 29-July 1, 2011.

Congratulations to our students for obtaining the following awards:

• Sam Koshy - NASA Graduate Student Award.
• Jill Pestana, Stephanie Sodergren - NASA summer research internship.
• Tom Baker - CSULB Graduate Research Fellowship and Philip Ord Johnson awards.
• Brandon Kawata - John and Terry Milligan award.
• Chris Safranski - Philip Ord Johnson award.
• Daniel Javier - Richard and Florence Scalettar Scholarship.
• Matthew Werber and Anastasia Woo - Richard Scalettar Special Scholarship.
• Ralph Damato Simon George Physics Scholarship.
• Brian Flores, Victoria Marsh, Hanming Yuan, Ramsey Noah and Ryan Hashi - Physics Department Scholarship Fund.

Did you know?

(short bar: entry salary, long bar: salary after 10 years). According to this study by the US website PayScale, physicists are the sixth-highest-earning group of graduates, with a median salary of $98,800 after at least 10 years in the workforce. And physicists will receive a salary boost from earning a Master's or a Ph.D. Read the complete article in Physics World by clicking on the chart above.

Why study Physics?

(a link to the American Physical Society that presents many reasons and facts)

Our department hosted the Physics GRE Boot Camp organized by the California Professoriate for Access to Physics Careers (CPAPC) on February 26-27, 2011. This has been a success with 36 students from Central Valley to Southern California attending.

In 2010 the department had the largest number of Physics Master's students graduating among Master's granting institutions in the nation! See more news in our Physics & Astronomy Department Newsletter.

Weekly News in Physics:

• APS Weekly NewsBrief.
• Spotlighting Exceptional Research.
• Focus of the Physical Review.

Newsletters from Physical Societies:

• American Association of Physics Teachers (AAPT).
• American Physical Society (APS).
• Newsletter of the National Society of Hispanic Physicists.

• Waves and Packets (a publication of the National Society of Black Physicists and several African Physical Societies).

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