Resources

In 1999 he department moved into a new 72,000 sq.ft Physics Building, which contains many outstanding facilities for undergraduates. There is a tutorial center, a study room, a resource room containing a large number of texts and other books, and a computer laboratory with a dozen  PCs, which are configured for both Windows and Linux applications and which are for the exclusive use of physics majors.

The department has recently purchased ~$6M worth of new equipment, including a 0.8m astronomical telescope, which is housed in a dome on the roof of the Physics Building. Other special features in the building include a class 100 clean room, in which state-of-the-art photonic and other devices can be fabricated and a microscope facility containing a scanning electron microscope with special characterization attachments and an atomic force microscope. These facilities can be used by students in new optics courses, in the advanced laboratory course and in undergraduate research projects.

The research programs in the department are growing rapidly in several areas of applied physics. The research includes satellite infrared spectroscopy of the atmosphere, atmospheric lidar, nonlinear and quantum optics, the photorefractive properties of polymers, theoretical and experimental studies of surfaces, the formation and properties of novel alloys, the effects of space radiation on semiconductors devices in satellites, electron and atomic force microscopyand astrophysics.

Research in the department is currently supported by NASA, the National Science Foundation, NIST, and the Office of Naval Research, with total annual external funding exceeding $6M. Several regular and research faculty participate in a Joint Center in Earth Systems Technology with NASA Goddard Space Flight Center. The department has also just formed a Joint Center in Astrophysics with the Laboratory for High Energy Astrophysics at Goddard Space Flight Center. The department offers graduate degrees in Applied Physics and Atmospheric Physics at both the M.S. and the Ph.D. levels.

Students have the opportunity to participate in research for credit by taking senior research (PHYS 499). Senior research is required for the honors program, but can be taken as an elective by any student with the consent of the academic advisor and of a faculty research mentor. Qualified undergraduates are often employed as research assistants in the summer by faculty members with outside grants and contracts, and by the department as tutors, graders, and laboratory assistants.

Undergraduate classes are small enough for the close student/faculty interaction which has always been the hallmark of a physics education at UMBC .