Message From the Chair

I hope you are staying safe and healthy during this difficult time for the entire world. This is my first year as chair and it has been an eventful year so far. First of all, I am honored to be entrusted with the challenging job of being the chair of our vibrant department. Professor Hong Luo served as the chair for 9 years and made enduring contributions to the success and growth of the department. Thank you, Hong!

There are so many inspiring stories from our department community and these stories are the ones that keep us motivated.  Hannah Seppala (mentored by Professor Priya R. Banerjee) received the 2019 Goldwater scholarship, the country’s most prestigious and competitive research scholarship offered for undergraduate STEM students. This is an excellent continuation of the department’s recent success in winning the Goldwater scholarships over the past five years. Julia Quebral won the SUNY Chancellor’s award for Student Excellence, and Julia along with Edward Schwartz are our Outstanding Seniors. Once again, nine of our students won the Sekula scholarship with GPAs equal or higher than 3.9!. Four of our undergraduate students have received the Om and Saraswathi Bahethi Foundation Scholarships through a generous endowment set up by our alumnus Dr. Om Bahethi (PhD, 1973).

On the graduate student side, Ibraheem Alshareedah received the Student Research Achievement Award at the 2020 Biophysical Societies meeting in San Diego, CA. Four PhD students and two MS students received the Om and Saraswathi Bahethi Foundation Scholarships in 2019-2020.

We are excited to announce that Professor Igor Zutic received the SUNY Chancellor’s Award for Excellence in Scholarship and Creative Activities, one of the prestigious SUNY-wide awards recognizing consistently outstanding scholarly and creative productivity.  Congratulations Igor! We welcome Professor Tim Thomay who started as an Assistant Professor in the department in Fall 2019 and his research is in the field of experimental condensed matter physics. Welcome Tim! 

We are sad to inform that Professor Emeritus Piyare Lal Jain passed away on Oct 28th, 2019 in Buffalo, NY. Professor Lal joined the department in 1954, when UB was a private school, and retired after nearly 50 years in service. Professor Lal will be missed by the colleagues at the department and UB.

I would like to end this letter with a proud achievement by everyone in the department. In the middle of March, as the entire world started fighting the virus pandemic, UB made the move to distance-learning mode of instruction. Within a week of the decision, every instructor, staff and TA in the department made the smoothest switch to make sure that our students are not affected in any way and they continue to receive the best instruction. This is a great achievement and I am proud of the hard work that went behind the scenes to implement this. The creativity and passion shown during this time will be the inspiration and the leading light for the department’s future as we work our way out of this pandemic.

Stay in touch with us and we would love to hear about your work and life. Be safe, stay healthy and I am sure we will have more stories to share in the future.

Best regards,

Murthy Ganapathy
Chair and Professor of Physics