Graduate Physics at UMBC

Over the past academic year the UMBC Physics Department has awarded 7 PhDs. Our most recent graduates include:

Dr. Eric Maddy

Thesis Title: Investigation of Spatial and Temporal Resolution of Atmospheric CO₂ from the Atmospheric Infrared Sounder (11/07)

Present Position: Research scientist at QSS Division of Perot Systems in Lanham, Maryland

Dr. Raymond Rogers

Thesis Title: Raman LIDAR Measurements of Hygroscopic Effects on Aerosol Extinctions (8/07)  

Present Position: Research Scientist at NASA Langley

Dr. Felicita Russo

Thesis Title: An Investigation of Raman LIDAR Aerosol Measurements and Their Application to the Study of the Aerosol Indirect Effect (7/07)

Present Position: Post-doctoral Researcher in Napoli.

Dr. Jianming Wen
Thesis Title: Transverse Correlation in Entangled Photons and Light-Matter Interactions (1/07)
Present Position: Post-doctoral Research Scientist, UMBC

Dr. Michelle Comer
Thesis Title: Retrieving Carbon Monoxide Abundance From Atmospheric Infrared Sounder (AIRS) (12/06)
Present Position: Post-doctoral Teaching Associate, UMBC

Dr. Eric Moore
Thesis Title: Plastic Strain and Grain Size Effects in Surface Roughness of a Model Aluminum Alloy (9/06)
Present Position: Post-doctoral Teaching Fellow, Frostburg State University

Dr. Sulakshana Thanvantri
Thesis Title: Quantum Coherence Effects in Light-Matter Interactions (9/06)
Present Position: Post-doctoral Research Fellow, LSU Department of Physics

Applied Physics Ph.D. Program

The general research areas have sufficient overlap that students in any can benefit from courses offered in the other. Both optics and materials areas have relevance to research programs in other departments including physical chemistry, electrical engineering, and mechanical engineering. The astrophsyics program has a strong link to the NASA Goddard facilities through the JCA and CREST NASA/UMBC programs. Applied Physics graduate students have the opportunity to interact with graduate students and faculty in several other departments at UMBC and government laboratories.

Atmospheric Physics Ph.D. Program

The Atmospheric Physics M.S. and Ph.D. program provides students with a fundamental background in graduate applied physics combined with an in-depth grounding in the fundamentals of atmospheric physics. Course topics cover a wide range of topics in atmospheric physics, global climate change, observational techniques, and satellite data analysis. An extremely wide range of thesis topics will be available to the student via both the tenure-track faculty and the JCET faculty.

The program is structured to provide concentrations in atmospheric radiative transfer, remote sensing, inverse problems, observational techniques (LIDAR, Fourier Transform Spectroscopy, Satellite Radiometry), and in the general problems of global climate change and atmospheric pollution. The student will acquire a solid core of basic physics by taking some of the courses offered in UMBC's Applied Physics Ph.D. Students have the opportunity to interact with graduate students and faculty in several other departments at UMBC and will have many resources at NASA/Goddard Space Flight Center available to them via UMBC's Joint Center for Earth Systems Technology (JCET), a cooperative venture between UMBC and NASA/Goddard.

There are close working relationships between the Applied and Atmospheric Physics programs and other research institutions in the Baltimore-Washington area. These include the National Institute for Standards and Technology (NIST) in Gaithersburg, Maryland, the Naval Research Laboratory in Washington, D.C., and the NASA Goddard Space Flight Center (GSFC) in Greenelt, Maryland. A formal cooperative agreement, the Joint Center for Earth Systems Technology (JCET), was recently initiated between UMBC and GSFC.