A Message From the Chair
Our internationally recognized award-winning faculty members contribute
directly through the department or via associated institutes within the
university over $8 million annually in research funding. Our tenured,
tenure-track, and research faculty members publish in the top
international peer-reviewed journals in all areas of physics and give
numerous invited talks at major international professional meetings and
at major universities around the world. Likewise, our faculty members
collaborate with other universities and national laboratories on major
experiments and projects both nationally and internationally. At the
same time, our faculty members have won the highest teaching excellence
awards at the university and in the College of Natural Sciences and
Mathematics. The department currently has on the order of 85 Ph.D.-seeking graduate
students, all of who are supported. Graduate students typically are
supported as teaching assistants for up to two years after entering our
graduate program, during which time they are generally occupied in
taking the core graduate courses in physics. Afterwards, they are
generally supported as research assistants while they are completing
their Ph.D. theses. In addition to the tenured and tenure-track faculty,
the department is home to research and instructional faculty members, as
well as a significant number of post-doctoral fellows. Our
undergraduate students have numerous opportunities to participate in
active research projects as part of faculty research groups, and our
Society of Physics Students provides an active social and professional
organization for our majors, including a lounge area within the
department for their exclusive use. The department is associated with two major research institutes at the
university, the Texas Center for Superconductivity at the University of
Houston and the Center for Advanced Materials. The department also hosts
the Mission-Oriented Seismic Research Center and the Institute for Space
Systems Operations, as well as being affiliated with the Texas Learning
and Computation Center. Our department offers a very congenial atmosphere for professionals and
students alike in a modern urban environment with a classic university
campus ambiance. If you are interested in obtaining more information
about us, please do not hesitate to contact us. Lawrence Pinsky, Ph.D.
Thank you for your interest in the Department of Physics at the
University of Houston. Our department has a strong record of research
involvement and achievements as well as a dedication to providing a
personally tailored educational experience to both our undergraduate and
graduate students. Our goal is to prepare our undergraduates to succeed
in any physics graduate program in the country or to flourish in
industry if that is their choice. We continually re-examine our
undergraduate curriculum to make it current and relevant in today's
ever-changing world, and we prepare our graduate students for successful
careers in science throughout the world. We are also one of the leading
physics departments in the country in outreach to high school teachers
and students.
Chairman