Missouri S&T Physics

08/21/2026

Kyle Foster, a doctoral student in Physics, successfully defended his dissertation, titled “Nonlinear Photoionization Dynamics in Laser-Cooled Atoms: Continuous-Wave Methods and Ultrafast Light-Source Development.” His advisor is Dr. Daniel Fischer. Congratulations!

08/20/2026

A group of faculty, students, and postdocs from our department is at the Missouri State Fair in Sedalia, MO to share their excitement about physics.
Thank you, Arpith, Dr. Hodovanets, Jayashani, Simarpreet, Dishari, Dr. Saito, and Dr. Kumar.

08/14/2026

What an amazing day of STEM, creativity, innovation, and engagement! Last Saturday, Dr. Wang and a cohort of our post-docs and graduate students joined our phenomenal outreach team at the Great Outdoors Science Festival at the St. Louis Science Center , sharing the beauty of physics and Missouri S&T research with more than 5,000 visitors of all ages.
We heard many wonderful comments about what a special and inspiring day it was. A huge thank you to our outreach team for all their preparation, enthusiasm, and dedication to engaging with so many visitors throughout the day.

08/14/2026

Warm congratulations to Dr. Xiaojie Wang, assistant professor of physics, on receiving a competitive NSF award for “Optimizing the Design of the Next Generation Gamma-Ray Observatory in Chile”! We look forward to seeing deeper into our universe with SWGO thanks to Xiaojie's work.

08/10/2026

Our majors are doing cool things - like being the CEO of the Mars Rover Design Team!

Sofia Tripp is our Chief Executive Officer. A senior in Electrical Engineering and Physics, she has been on the team for four years. As CEO she oversees behind-the-scenes work that keeps the team running efficiently, giving the rest of the team the freedom to focus, stay curious, and pursue new opportunities to grow. Her favorite rover memory is “finding out that we scored a 93 on the science task and celebrating with everyone!” during the 2025 URC. This year she looks forward to seeing how much will change in the upcoming rover and see the new things we end up trying.

08/10/2026

Physics undergraduate Connor Coolbaugh spent his summer at a Research Experience for Undergraduates (REU) at Washington University. REUs are competitive summer research programs funded by the National Science Foundation. WTG, Connor!

08/05/2026

We wish a very happy 90th birthday to Professor Emeritus Jerry Peacher who worked in our department for 53 years.

08/04/2026

Dr. Halyna Hodovanets with two of her graduate students, Jayashani Wickramasinghe and Sachin Gunasekara, spent the third week of June at the Kaleidoscope Discovery Center where they served as summer camp instructors. During this week's camp, the participants grew crystals of sugar, looked at the elements from the periodic table, played games (periodic table bingo, periodic table battleship, and crossword), used mirror to find the mirror symmetry in different dinosaur footprints and other objects, learned about the rotational symmetry, made crystal structures using Play-Doh and toothpicks, learned about magnetism, built levitating magnetic train, learned about interference and diffraction and human eye and its limitations, and learned about the black holes (LIGO team). The participants visited the Physics Department laboratories where they learned about: X-ray diffraction, crystal growth of quantum materials, superconductivity demonstrations, optics experiments, and LIGO lab.

08/03/2026

The Missouri S&T Physics Department recently hosted a four-week Summer Opportunity for Advancing Research in Quantum (SOAR-Q) pilot undergraduate research program, entitled "Quantum Sciences: From Microcosmos to Macrocosmos."
Led by Dr. Simeon Mistakidis, Dr. Aleksandr Chernatynskiy, and Dr. Xiaojie Wang, the program provided six undergraduate students with an immersive introduction to cutting-edge research in quantum science and technology.
More information about the program is available at https://sites.mst.edu/soarq/.