JMU Physics Shines at the APS March Meeting

The national APS March Meeting was held in New Orleans, LA from March 13th-17th this year. A total of nine presentations during the conference were listed with authors and/or presenters from the James Madison Universty Department of Physics & Astronomy.

JMU physics senior Jacob Parkhouse was one of the listed authors for a talk titled “Impact and interaction of granular streams in waters.”   

JMU physics professor Dr. Costel Constantin was included as an author alongside chemistry professor Dr. Ashleigh Baber and chemistry student Will Andahazy for the poster, “Surface Plasmon Peak Resonance Discovered in Sulfuric Acid Treated PEDOT-PSS Conductive Polymers.”   

JMU physics professor Dr. Marcelo Dias presented his talk on “Cracking Sheets into Shapes: Linear actuators from non-linear crack behavior.”

JMU physics professors Dr. Anca Constantin and Dr. Klebert Feitosa presented their poster on the Demystifying the Expert events they hold here at JMU. The Demystifying the Expert events have been featured on this blog as well and can be read about here, here, here, here, here, and here.

Dr. Feitosa also gave a talk, “Stress distributions and bubble rearrangements in a compressed bubble raft,” with physics student Nicholas Albright also listed as an author.

Junior physics major Yvonne Kinsella presents her poster at the APS March Meeting.

Two students from the JMU Department of Physics and Astronomy also presented at the March Meeting.  On Wednesday afternoon, junior Yvonne Kinsella presented her poster “Adhesion of Au Thin Films on PMMA and Other Substrates.”  The following morning, senior Nick Sipes presented his talk “Selective Electroless Nickel Plating on PMMA using Chloroform Pre-Treatment.”   Both students work in Dr. Chris Hughes’ lab, so both presentations included him as an author. Additionally, the former presentation included Dr. Harry Hu for his help on instrumentation.

With so many presentations at the March Meeting with JMU authors, it is clear that the Department of Physics and Astronomy is not only doing great research but is doing a great job at getting students involved in research opportunities, as well as giving them opportunities to present at professional conferences.