Undergraduate Research Opportunities
There are a wide variety of research opportunities in the Department of Physics at Baylor University. Opportunities are listed below. Please contact the individual professors for more information.
Dr. Lorin Matthews’ research is focused on numerical modeling of the charging and dynamics of dust in plasma environments, which has applications ranging from planet formation to the operation of fusion plasma experiments. Students are given individual projects matched to their computational skills and work closely with graduate students and faculty in both computational and experimental dusty plasma physics. Please contact Dr. Matthews to apply for paid REU and summer research positions.
Dr. Jeffrey Olafsen’s research laboratory focuses on tabletop experiments broadly described as soft condensed matter physics and nonlinear dynamics. The projects are inherently interdisciplinary, often involving collaboration with faculty in other departments. Undergraduate students typically work independently at their own speed on a project matched to their strengths and interests. The tabletop nature of the investigations give students the opportunity to do a little of everything: electronics, machining, programming, theory, and data analysis.
Dr. Kenneth Park's research focuses on investigating materials properties and structures using density functional theory (DFT). A student will get a hands-on experience on calculating and simulating structures and properties of transition metal oxides using Kodiak, Baylor’s High Performance Computing Cluster system. This would be an ideal project for an undergraduate who would love to learn research topics at physics/chemistry interfaces as well as to experience high-performance computing.
Dr. Ben Rose's research focuses on observational cosmology with Type Ia supernovae. For the summer of 2024, Dr. Rose has multiple projects that undergraduates can participate in. We are analyzing new observations of galaxies that have hosted supernovae in order to improve our models of their formation. Additionally, we are analyzing simulated data sets of NASA's Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope with the goal of building a method to measure the growth of cosmic structure with supernovae.
Drs. Brinkerhoff, Dittmann, and Hatakeyama are engaged in an active research program on the Compact Muon Solenoid (CMS) experiment at CERN in Geneva, Switzerland. Members of Baylor Experimental High Energy Physics (HEP) Group are pursuing a variety of cutting-edge measurements with proton collisions at the energy frontier. A variety of opportunities are available for undergraduate students to learn various aspects of particle physics: data analysis, coding/scripting, hands-on detector development, electronics, and machine learning. For more information and an online application, visit here.