North Carolina State University, Department of Physics: A Positive Environment For Graduate Students

[Music] so the North Carolina State Physics Department is just over a hundred years old and since that period we've grown to become one of the top physics departments in the United States we have traditional strengths and both their theoretical and experimental nuclear physics both hard and soft condensed matter biophysics and his physics education research along with the number of other faculty or doing things like atomic and molecular physics very computational physics across many different platforms so we really try to foster a an interdisciplinary approach to many of the problems that we've tackled we strive to have a very collegial environment not only for the faculty amongst themselves but also in terms of the student population we put the graduate students and undergraduates we try to make sure that the faculty are engaging readily with the students and the graduate students at all levels the graduate program at NC State has about 120 to 130 students if you will receive a well-rounded education here into in credit courses and advanced research my research focuses on nano fabricated structures that we use to manipulate biological molecules we then use these devices either to bring analytical insight into biological system or we use the biology to create a new physics students in my group do nano fabrication and semiconductor cleanroom is molecular biology and they do soft condensed matter physics so somebody who's joined my group we've worked on many different aspects so I thought I was gonna be a theoretician going into undergraduate and now I'm so far away from that at this point I am full on experimental physicist and I've learned to do just about everything you can possibly think of inside of the lab and surprising and wonderful at the same time so he had North Carolina State University my research is in the area of condensed matter physics and we are interested in creating materials and studying their properties at the atomic scale so we grow materials here one item at a time and the combined materials which keep do not exist in nature and we study their electronic and magnetic properties using a wide range of techniques here so for students were interested in coming here to NC State I would say this is a very wonderful and exciting environment to to study of physics careers because of the wide range of cutting-edge research which is taking place where so my research focus is on nuclear astrophysics and on how stars work and how they make the chemical elements that you're made out of the earth is made out of everything is made out of my research is all computational so we do computer simulations of supernovae we're starting to do computer simulations of neutron star mergers and we do computer simulations of nuclear reactions in those Astrophysical scenarios to create and understand chemicals doing research in computational astrophysics opens up a lot of different directions to go into because the skills you learn are universally applicable I came here from India to go to graduate school and I had no idea what to expect I was very hopeful but I knew that it would be challenging and this department has really helped me become a researcher and really have helped me along and so I'm very happy to be here if you're considering graduate school in physics I highly recommend the physics department at NC State we have outstanding research and astrophysics but a lot of other areas as well so even if you're not quite settled on a particular area we offer world-class research in a wide range of areas our lab studies ultra cold atomic gases in particular Fermi gases which have a spin of 1/2 and so what we do is we trap atoms that have a spin 1/2 up and it's been a half down in an optical trap and then we're able to control the interactions between those atoms just using a magnetic field and that allows us to simulate quite a wide variety of systems in nature we are one of the few groups in the world that actually creates these long really interactive Fermi gases in fact we were the first group in the world to create this department actually it's a very friendly department and we actually take very good care of our students and so we have a very encouraging atmosphere here both for the students and the faculty and the people really work well together here and so a student who works in an experimental group is actually able to talk to theorists as well as experiments experimenters in the same field which makes it particularly good to be here in my group we have an open culture where we can exchange our ideas with everyone and we can have a very good scientific calculon's not only with my peers but also with my adviser so when I first came to NC State I did not have that much experience in experimental physics and I did not have that good of a confidence in me in my post jokes James and my other grad students Eaton they all had helped me to grow as an experimental physicist and now I am very confident because when I leave NC State I know what have done for the last five six years and now we can compete with all the other researchers in our field the physics department really fosters a collaborative environment for your research and it's simply put a great place to work so if you come to NC s NC State that's going to be definitely something for you here and you definitely be working at the top of your field and whatever area you choose to pursue I have two advisors in two slightly different fields who have to varying different opinions about everything it makes it all a lot more interesting and a lot more easy a lot easier to learn and do new things I chose NC State because when I looked up all the things that are going on here I found at least half a dozen people that I would love to work with and that made it the decision pretty easy but for graduate students in C State is a great place to be with a very welcoming environment we're doing top-notch research and we engaged not only with in the physics department we have a much broader outreach to many departments across campus giving you so many different opportunities to succeed [Music]

Channel: WebsEdge Science

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Keywords: APS March Meeting 2018, APS March, APS March Meeting, APS 2018, APS Physics, Physics, physical science, particle, nano, nanoscience, graphene, semiconductors, quantum, Physicists, conductors, APS TV, North Carolina State University

Id: JUvvM7YUWRQ

Length: 6min 58sec (418 seconds)

Published: Fri Mar 02 2018