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Student Comings and Goings

The department is pleased to welcome our new class of 13 first year graduate students, four of who are on university fellowships:  Aleksandra Abova-Volkova, Joseph Benigno, Victoria Blackmon (DuBois Graduate Fellowship), Graham Doskoch (University Provost Fellowship), William Eshbaugh, Joe Kulikowski, Tyler Matheny, Amanda Nemeth (University Provost Fellowship), John Pace (STEM Fellowship), Hasith Perara, Andres Tellez Mora, and Braden Warr.  This cohort is working in all our research areas and comes from Kansas, Louisiana, New Jersey, New York, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Texas, Finland, Mexico, Sri Lanka, and, of course, West Virginia. 

Departures:

Please join us in congratulating our newest alumni who completed their graduate careers in the past year:

  • Adam Payne, completed his PhD dissertation, Application of Global Search Methods to Materials Prediction and Design, under the supervision of Professor Aldo Romero.  Adam is currently a Physical Scientist at the U.S. Department of Energy.
  • Robbyn Trappen, completed his PhD dissertation, Depth Dependent Atomic Valence Determination in La0.7Sr0.3MnO3 Thin Films Using Synchrotron Techniques, under the supervision of Associate Professor Mikel Holcomb.  Robbyn is currently a Postdoctoral Fellow in the Department of Physics and Astronomy at the University of Waterloo.
  • Steven Brandt, completed his PhD dissertation, Control of charged particle dynamics and electron power absorption dynamics utilizing voltage waveform tailoring in capacity driven radio-frequency plasmas, under the supervision of  Dr. Julian Schulze.
  • Golnoosh Golpayegani, completed her PhD dissertation, Searches for Fast Radio Bursts, under the supervision of Professor Duncan Lorimer.  Golnoosh is currently a Data Scientist at Jam City Games.
  • Saeed Yousefi Sarraf, completed his PhD dissertation, Ultrafast Optical Properties of La0.7Sr0.3MnO3 Thin Films, under the supervision of Associate Professor Mikel Holcomb.  Saeed is currently a Postdoctoral Scholar in the Department of Materials Science and Engineering at UC Davis.
  • Nihan Pol, completed his PhD dissertation, Modeling the Galactic Compact Binary Neutron Star Population and Studying the Double Pulsar System, under the supervision of Professor Maura McLaughlin.  Nihan is currently a Postdoctoral Fellow in the Department of Physics and Astronomy at Vanderbilt University.
  • Dustin Schrecongost, completed his PhD dissertation, On-Demand Nanoscale Phase Manipulation of Vanadium Dioxide by Scanning Probe Lithography, under the supervision of Associate Professor Cheng Cen.
  • Additionally, Cuyler Beatty completed his MS and is currently employed as an Applied Physicist/Electrical Engineer at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory.