Rob McTaggart

B.S., 1991; Assistant Department Head & Associate Professor, South Dakota State University Department of Chemistry, Biochemistry and Physics

Rob McTaggart graduated from WVU with a B.S. in Physics in 1991. As a WVU student in 1989, he became one of the first two Goldwater Scholars at West Virginia University. He went on to obtain his Ph.D. at Penn State ('99), where his dissertation characterized the bound state of a charm quark and an anti-charm quark that provides insight into the nature of the strong nuclear force that keeps nuclei together.

Since 2004, Dr. McTaggart has taught at South Dakota State University where is now an Associate Professor and Assistant Department Head of the Department of Chemistry, Biochemistry and Physics. He supports experiments to search for dark matter, neutrinoless double beta decay, and neutrino oscillation experiments at the Sanford Underground Research Facility (SURF).

He recently served as President of the North Central Chapter of the Health Physics Society, which includes North Dakota, South Dakota, Iowa, Wisconsin, and Minnesota.