Faculty

Chair

L. Michael Hayden
B.A., United States Naval Academy, 1978; M.A., University of California, Davis, 1984; Ph.D. 1987

Associate Chair

Terrance Worchesky
B.S., Drexel University, 1976; M.S., Georgetown University, 1982; Ph.D., 1983

Professors

Belay Demoz
Ph.D., University of Nevada and DRI, 1992

James Franson
B.S., Purdue University, 1970; Ph.D., California Institute of Technology, 1977

Associate Professors

Assistant Professors

Senior Lecturer

Lecturer

Research Professor

Research Associate Professors

Research Assistant Professors

Sergio De Souza-Machado
B.A., College of Wooster, 1988; M.S. University of Marland College Park, 1990; Ph.D.,University of Marland College Park, 1999

Professor Emeriti

Raymond M. Hoff
A.B., University of California, Berkeley, 1970; Ph.D., Simon Fraser University (Canada), 1975

Harvey S. Melfi
B.S., The Citadel, 1963; M.S. College of William and Mary, 1967; Ph.D., College of William and Mary, 1970

Morton H. Rubin
B.S., Massachusetts Institute of Technology, 1959; Ph.D., Princeton University, 1964

Geoffrey P. Summers
Ph.D. Oxford University, 1969

Associate Professor Emeriti

Adjunct Professors

Michael Fitelson
B.S., City College of New York, 1961; Ph.D., Pennsylvania State University, 1968

Mike Krainak
B.S., The Catholic University of America, 1979; M.S., The Johns Hopkins university, 1984; Ph.D., 1989

Nockolay Krotkov
M.S., Moscow Physical Technical Institute (Russia), 1985; Ph.D., P.P. Shirshov Institute of Oceanology, 1990

Mark Kuchner
A.B., Harvard University, 1994; Ph.D., California Institute of Technology, 2000

Affiliated Professors

Forrest Hall
B.S., University of Texas at Austin, 1963; M.S., University of Houston, 1968; Ph.D., 1970

Lorraine Remer
B.S., University of California, Davis, 1980; M.S., University of California, San Diego; Ph.D., University of California Davis, 1991

Affiliated Associate Professors

Susan Hoban
B.S., University of Maryland, College Park, 1983; M.S. University of Maryland, College Park, 1986; Ph.D., 1989

Bryan Jacobs
B.S., Drexel University, 1989; M.S., The Johns Hopkins University, 1994; Ph.D., University of Maryland, Baltimore County, 2003

William S. Olson
A.B., Cornell University, 1978; Ph.D., University of Wisconsin, 1987

Katja Pottschmidt
Ph.D., University of Tubingen (Germany), 1989

Vincent Ulrick 
B.S., Bloomsburg University, 2001; M.S., George Mason University, 2005; Ph.D., 2007

Affiliated Assistant Professors

Ruben Delgado
B.S., University of Puerto Rico, 1995; M.S., 2004; Ph.D., 2011

Donald Engel
B.S., Brown University, 2000; M.S., 2001; Ph.D., University of Pennsylvania, 2005

Katja Pottschmidt
B.S., University of Tubingen (Germany), 1997; Ph.D., 2002

Simone Lolli
B.S., University of Florence (Italy), 1996; Ph.D., Le Laboratoire de Meteorologie Dynamic (France), 2011

Courses in this program are listed under PHYS.

Physics students are trained to see and to understand nature in an especially profound way. They learn how to dissect a problem into its essential components, to understand the interrelation of the parts, and to apply mathematical and computational techniques to produce a solution. This type of training is obviously advantageous in many professions besides physics, so physics graduates are found in professions as diverse as patent law, medicine and finance.

UMBC’s Department of Physics offers a Bachelor of Science degree in Physics and a Bachelor of Arts degree in Physics Education. Either track can be taken as a terminal degree for graduation.

The Bachelor of Science degree qualifies a student for immediate professional employment or can be used as a basis for entrance into graduate school. The Bachelor of Arts degree is specifically designed for those students planning a career in high school teaching, and it is coordinated with the UMBC education department. This coordination allows students to obtain a degree in physics education in a four-year program that includes certification for teaching high school physics. This method fulfills the State of Maryland requirement for new high school teachers to major in the subject area that they teach.

A special feature of both degree tracks is the opportunity for undergraduates to participate in the faculty’s research programs. Many students doing this research are co-authors with their research mentors on papers at technical conferences and in research journals. To help support undergraduate research, the department presents the Langenburg Student Research Award each year to a junior or senior physics major. The Langenburg award is to support the student during the semester he or she is performing research. This award is in addition to University-supported research grants that are available to undergraduate students from the Office of the Provost and the Office of Research for their undergraduate research.

The departmental honors program requires the course Senior Research (PHYS 499H ), but this course can be taken as an elective by any student with consent of his or her academic advisor and a faculty research mentor. This course can be used as one of the two upper-level electives required for the Physics B.S. degree, and the credits earned in this course can be applied as upper-division credits toward the University graduation requirements. It is important for all students to work closely with their departmental academic advisor to take full advantage of the elective courses offered in physics and in other Departments, especially once a particular career path has been chosen.

The department offers minors in both physics and in astrophysics. The astrophysics minor is aimed especially at those students interested in pursuing careers in astronomy or astrophysics.

Also, the department offers a combined B.S./M.S. program for highly qualified students.

The Department is located in a new, 72,000-square-foot Physics Building, which includes many outstanding facilities for undergraduates. There is a tutorial center, the Alvin Meckler Reading Room containing a large number of texts and other physics-related books, and a computer laboratory with PCs configured for both Windows and Linux applications, and the physics student’s lounge. The department recently has purchased nearly $6 million worth of new equipment, including a 0.8 meter astronomical telescope, which is housed in a dome on the roof of the Physics Building. Other special facilities in the building include: a class-100 clean room, in which state-of-the-art photonic and electronic devices can be fabricated, and a microscopy facility containing a scanning electron microscope with special characterization attachments and an atomic force microscope. These facilities are used by students in optics courses, in the advanced laboratory course and in undergraduate research projects.

Typically about half the graduating seniors go on to graduate school. Recent UMBC Physics graduates have received PhD degrees at MIT, Harvard, Stanford, The Johns Hopkins University and the Universities of California at Berkeley, Illinois and Michigan, among others.

Career and Academic Paths

The career opportunities for physics majors are numerous and varied. Many of UMBC’s physics majors go on to pursue advanced degrees in physics and allied fields of science and engineering at the nation’s leading graduate schools. Other physics students find employment immediately upon graduation. Recent graduates are working in electro-optics, space physics, computer modeling and semiconductor research, among other fields, with employers such as Northrop Grumman, NASA Goddard Space Flight Center, the National Security Agency and Lawrence Livermore Laboratories. Other graduates have gone on to medical or law school or to other careers for which the problem-solving skills and understanding of the physical world learned in physics courses prepare them.

Several graduates of the physics B.S. program have chosen a career teaching high school physics. Additional students graduated from the B.A. program in Physics Education. The B.A. program in Physics Education is designed to allow students to complete their physics degree and their Maryland teaching certification in four years. The number of students enrolled in the physics education program has been increasing due to the shortage of high-school physics teachers.

The UMBC Department of Physics offers both M.S. and Ph.D. degrees in Applied Physics and Atmospheric Physics. Undergraduates making satisfactory progress in their physics and mathematics courses may obtain permission from their advisor to take graduate-level courses which can count toward their undergraduate degree requirements.

The areas of research emphasis in the graduate programs are non-linear and quantum optics, quantum computing, solid-state materials and nanophysics, photonics, atmospheric physics and astrophysics. All faculty have active research programs, and several of the faculty are internationally recognized in their field. The external research funding of the department exceeds $6 million per year. These funds come from such agencies as NASA, the National Science Foundation, the Office of Naval Research and the National Security Agency.

The department plays a major role in UMBC’s Joint Center for Earth Systems Technology (JCET) with NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center. There are 10 JCET research faculty affiliated with the Department of Physics. The department also participates in the Center in Astrophysics (CRESST) with NASA’s Laboratory for High Energy Astrophysics, with twenty-five researchers connected to the UMBC Physics Department, and the Center for Advanced Studies in Photonics Research (CASPR).

Academic Advising

All students considering a major or minor in physics, or a minor in astronomy, are strongly encouraged to contact the Department as soon as possible. There is a special faculty advisor for freshmen, transfer students and new physics majors. After their first year in the program, all majors are assigned to a permanent physics faculty academic advisor until they graduate.

In addition to following each student’s progress through the academic program and assisting the student with course selection, the faculty advisor is available to discuss such subjects as career goals, summer internships and opportunities for graduate study.

Honors Program

Students must apply for admission to the departmental honors program by the end of the first semester of their junior year. There is a university requirement of a GPA of 3.5 or better in the major and at least nine credits of honors course work. For physics majors, these requirements are met by taking PHYS 490 - Senior Seminar , PHYS 499H - Senior Research  and nine credits of upper-level elective courses, six of which must be lecture-type courses.

Student Organizations

UMBC’s chapter of the Society of Physics Students is open to all students. In 1999, it received an “Outstanding Chapter” award from the national office of the society. The chapter has its own study room in the Physics Building and sponsors activities such as on-campus speakers and social events. In addition, UMBC has a chapter of Sigma Pi Sigma, the national honor society in physics.

Special Opportunities

Undergraduates have the opportunity to participate in faculty research programs for credit or as paid student assistants. Academically strong undergraduate students can assist in teaching the introductory physics courses as Learning Assistants. This is excellent experience for future graduate students and for those students in the B.A. program in Physics Education. The department also employs students as tutors and laboratory assistants.

Programs

• Physics Education, B.A.

• Physics, B.S.

• Astrophysics Minor
• Physics Minor

• Physics, B.S./M.S.

Courses

• PHYS 100 - Ideas in Physics
• PHYS 100H - Honors Ideas In Physics
• PHYS 100Y - Ideas in Physics
• PHYS 101 - Ideas in Modern Physics
• PHYS 101H - Ideas in Modern Physics
• PHYS 105 - Ideas in Astronomy
• PHYS 106 - Introduction to Astrobiology
• PHYS 111 - Basic Physics I
• PHYS 112 - Basic Physics II
• PHYS 121 - Introductory Physics I
• PHYS 121H - Introductory Physics I - Honors
• PHYS 122 - Introductory Physics II
• PHYS 122H - Introductory Physics II
• PHYS 122L - Introductory Physics Laboratory
• PHYS 220 - Introduction to Computational Physics
• PHYS 224 - Vibrations and Waves
• PHYS 299 - Directed Research
• PHYS 303 - Thermal and Statistical Physics
• PHYS 304 - Fundamentals of Astrophysics
• PHYS 315 - Galaxies and the Interstellar Medium
• PHYS 320L - Electronics for Scientists
• PHYS 321 - Intermediate Mechanics
• PHYS 324 - Modern Physics
• PHYS 330L - Optics Laboratory
• PHYS 333 - Applied Physics in Archaeology and Art
• PHYS 335 - Physics and Chemistry of the Atmosphere
• PHYS 402 - Nuclear Physics
• PHYS 403 - Solid State Physics
• PHYS 405 - Stellar Astrophysics
• PHYS 406 - Extragalactic Astrophysics
• PHYS 407 - Electromagnetic Theory
• PHYS 408 - Optics
• PHYS 415 - Astroparticle Physics
• PHYS 416 - Cosmology
• PHYS 418 - Semiconductor Optical Devices
• PHYS 424 - Introduction to Quantum Mechanics
• PHYS 425 - Relativistic Physics
• PHYS 428 - Integrated Optics and Holography
• PHYS 430 - Introduction to Materials
• PHYS 431L - Modern Physics Laboratory
• PHYS 440 - Computational Physics
• PHYS 450 - Special Topics
• PHYS 480 - Techniques in Theoretical Physics
• PHYS 481 - Techniques in Theoretical Physics II
• PHYS 490 - Senior Seminar
• PHYS 499 - Senior Research
• PHYS 499H - Senior Research