Chair’s Message | Recognizing Faculty, Refurbishing Edwards Accelerator, Clippinger Labs

Dr. David Ingram, a professor in and chair of OHIO’s Department of Physics and Astronomy, conducts research inside the W.M. Keck Thin Film Analysis Facility, located within the Edwards Accelerator Lab on the Athens Campus. Photo by Rob Hardin

July 2020 Alumni e-newsletter

I first want to congratulate Martin Kordesch, the editor of this newsletter, for receiving the College of Arts & Sciences Dean’s Outstanding Teacher Award. Many of you may remember his music and physics, and we look forward each time to his standing wave flame demonstration at the department’s biennial Open House.

Another faculty member recognized by the university is Carl Brune. He has been named a Presidential Research Scholar for his research into nuclear astrophysics and how the elements we are made of are made in stars, supernovae, or neutron star collisions. Much of Carl’s research is done with the accelerator in the John E. Edwards Accelerator Laboratory. Carl, Zach Meisel, and others recently got a Major Research Instrumentation (MRI) grant from the National Science Foundation (NSF). This grant will enable us to replace the duoplasmatron source used for 4He and 3He beams with a higher intensity source for the same species.

The Clippinger Laboratories refurbishment project continues. The Chemistry addition is appearing before us in the parking lot on the north side of Clippinger. It is fascinating to watch the construction site activity. They are still on track to move in summer 2020. We have begun the detail planning for refurbishing first the east wing of Clippinger and then the west wing. The target dates are for the east wing to be ready by summer 2022 and the west wing the following summer. Currently, the plans call for the physics labs in the basement to moved up the second floor of west wing, where most of the faculty also will be located. The rest of the faculty and the research labs are to be located on the first floor of the east wing.

I want to thank all the alumni who keep in touch with us through their advisers or through LinkedIn. We love to hear from you and follow your careers. Our current students would appreciate you coming back to Athens to meet with them. They really do want to hear how other students have established their careers. Consider this an open invitation to return and see us.

David Ingram
Professor and Chair of Physics & Astronomy