Undergraduate Degree In Physics Research Articles

Meet our new President: interview with Professor Dame Julia Goodfellow

I loved science and maths at school, which led to an undergraduate degree in physics. Through a final-year project I was introduced to the biosciences. From undertaking this first research project and getting a publication from it, I was hooked – especially on understanding how the structure of macromolecules was linked to their function.I had a typical academic career but at very different institutions – the Open University, Stanford University and Birkbeck, University of London. I began to take on leadership roles as head of department of crystallography and then deputy head of Birkbeck, so was able to take a wider perspective than just my own area of science. This increased even further when I became (the first woman) to run a research council as I had to liaise between academia and the government. I spent the last 10 years of my full-time career as Vice Chancellor of the University of Kent.During this time, I have always taken on wider roles to support the sector especially at a national level – the Council for Science and Technology, President of Universities UK, President of the Royal Society of Biology or Chair of the British Science Association.On retirement, I have taken on a few non-executive roles including Chair of Public Health England and a non-executive member of NHS England/I board. Currently, I am on the board of the Open University and a trustee of HEPI (the Higher Education Policy Institute).I have spent my career mainly in academia. During that time, I benefitted from learned societies including the Biochemical Society. As I progressed I realized that much of my role was to support others, earlier in their careers, whether within my research group, at the university or at a national level. Taking on this role, I can continue to support the biosciences and hopefully provide opportunities for others to flourish.First, I was very impressed by the inclusive way the strategy was developed under the leadership of Professor Sir Peter Downes. Bringing the Society and Portland Press closer together is especially important at this time of change, as well as aiming to make the Society more inclusive by embedding equality and diversity across all strands.The importance of supporting career development is key to ensuring a thriving and sustainable research community. The need for this community to come together to discuss science and to ensure that research can be published and disseminated widely are also important strands to this strategy.So a lot of thought and debate has gone into this strategy. We now need to put it into action!Like all those who communicate science through publishing journals, we are rightly moving to fully open access publications. This takes time – but I am impressed how forward and positively thinking Portland Press and the Society are about this far from easy to implement topic. So evolving open access will continue to be an opportunity and a challenge.We have rightly embedded EDI across all aspects of the Society’s new strategy. This is an area where I have taken a very active interest starting from the earliest stages of my career as one of the few women studying physics at undergraduate level. I think it will be challenging to bring our ambitions for an inclusive and diverse Society into practice, but one to which I am committed.Finally, supporting colleagues in these difficult and uncertain times especially those early on in their careers – we have seen the importance of molecular and cellular biosciences to society as scientists have contributed to control the COVID pandemic. We need to continue to encourage and support those entering into careers in the sciences.A flourishing and diverse community of scientists.Further evolution of open access publications.Ensuring we also look outward as excellent molecular biosciences is essential for our well-being as a society – as we have seen over the last few years.Finally, I realize I have not said anything about the employees of the Biochemical Society and Portland Press. They are a talented group of people under the leadership of the excellent Kate Baillie. Neither have I mentioned the Council of Trustees and members of the various Boards, Committees and Panels. I have been impressed with their expertise and commitment. I look forward to working with you all.

Visualizing and predicting the path to an undergraduate physics degree at two different institutions

Student attrition from a physics degree occurs differently at different types of institutions; each physics department needs to explore their own data to understand the points where there is an opportunity to improve retention.

Editorial introductions.

Editorial introductions.

Participation, performance, and outcomes in an undergraduate physics degree: Perspectives on gender and socioeconomic factors

Institutional contexts are different and to support equitable practices and outcomes each institution collects and make decisions based on appropriate data about the academic performance and experience of their students.

Editorial introductions.

Editorial introductions.

Editorial introductions.

Editorial introductions.

Profile of James H. Hurley

James “Jim” Hurley’s first introduction to crystal structures occurred when he was just 8 years old. While living north of Boulder, Colorado, his mother would take him to look for minerals near old mines in the mountains. “I learned the seven crystal systems at that age as part of learning how to identify the minerals that I found, and that came in handy later on when I did X-ray crystallography of proteins,” he says. James H. Hurley. Image credit: Calin Hurley (photographer). Hurley’s early fascination with minerals led him to a tentative interest in geology, but in college he decided to study physics instead. “As an undergraduate, I fell in love with the elegance of physics, and I was also fascinated by the complexity of life,” says Hurley. To combine those interests, Hurley pursued a doctorate in biophysics. “I thought there must be some way you could put the elegance and predictive power of physics at work to explain the incredible diversity and beauty of life, and that’s how I ended up in biophysics,” he says. Now a professor of molecular and cell biology at the University of California, Berkeley, Hurley was elected to the National Academy of Sciences in 2020. During his career, he has used precision tools, such as cryoelectron microscopy (cryo-EM), X-ray crystallography, and mass spectrometry to study the structure of proteins and membranes and the interplay between them. His work has answered fundamental questions about how these interactions influence the shape of cells and organelles and how pathogens can coopt these interactions to infect cells. In his Inaugural Article, Hurley describes the structure of an immune evasion protein of SARS-CoV-2, the virus responsible for the COVID-19 pandemic (1). After his undergraduate physics degree, Hurley studied high-energy physics at Fermilab, where he worked on a muon …

Editorial introductions

Editorial introductions

In conversation with Janet Thornton.

Professor Dame Janet Thornton is a pioneer in structural bioinformatics who has developed an extensive computational toolkit for the analysis of protein structure and inference of function and evolution. She began her career in science as a physicist, following an undergraduate degree in physics from the University of Nottingham with a Master's and PhD in biophysics in London. After undertaking a postdoctoral position in the group of Sir David Phillips at the University of Oxford, Janet returned to London where she eventually held professorial appointments at both University College London and Birkbeck College. During this period, she formed a number of long-standing and fruitful collaborations that, amongst other advances, led to the development of a software that revolutionised protein structure validation - PROCHECK - as well as a unique classification system for protein structures, CATH. Janet was Director of the European Bioinformatics Institute EMBL-EBI between 2001 until 2015 and played a pivotal role in launching ELIXIR, a pan-European infrastructure for biological data. She remains at EMBL-EBI as a senior scientist, and her group primarily focuses on understanding protein structure and function and how these contribute to our understanding of diseases and ageing. Her contributions to the life sciences have been distinguished through numerous awards and honours, and in 2012, she was appointed a Dame Commander of the Order of the British Empire for services to bioinformatics.

Editorial introductions

Current Opinion in Otolaryngology & Head and Neck Surgery was launched in 1993. It is one of a successful series of review journals whose unique format is designed to provide a systematic and critical assessment of the literature as presented in the many primary journals. The fields of otolaryngology and head and neck surgery are divided into 11 sections that are reviewed once a year. Each section is assigned a Section Editor, a leading authority in the area, who identifies the most important topics at that time. Here we are pleased to introduce the Journal's Section Editors for this issue. Section Editors David A. ShayeDavid A. ShayeDr David Shaye is a Facial Plastic & Reconstructive surgeon at Massachusetts Eye & Ear and an Assistant Professor of Otolaryngology-Head & Neck Surgery at Harvard Medical School. He earned his undergraduate degree in physics at Hamilton College, going on to become a U.S. Department of State Fulbright Scholar studying HIV/AIDS in Dominica. He earned his medical degree at Albany Medical College and completed a residency in Otolaryngology–Head & Neck Surgery at the University of California at Davis. Dr Shaye completed his fellowship in facial plastic and reconstructive surgery at the University of Minnesota. Dr Shaye focuses his research on global surgery, the delivery of surgical services to areas with limited resources. Specific research interests include cleft lip and palate, facial trauma, and surgical solutions in resource poor settings. Dr Shaye works with Doctors Without Borders in Nigeria, performing reconstructive surgery on children with Noma, a devastating oral facial gangrene that affects impoverished populations. He performs surgery for children with cleft lip and palate deformities in Zimbabwe, has collaborative research programs in Nepal to improve surgical access to remote regions, and has worked with the AO Alliance Facial Trauma Teaching Program to foster improved trauma education throughout low resource settings. Dr Shaye, his wife and 3 daughters relocate to Rwanda for 3 months per year where he operates and serves as faculty at the Central University Teaching Hospital in Kigali. Sherard A. TatumSherard A. TatumDr Tatum has dedicated his career to the reconstruction of children and adults with deformities of the face, head, and neck. He completed his undergraduate work at Rollins College in Winters Park, Florida, USA. He earned his medical degree at the University of South Florida, College of Medicine in Tampa, Florida, USA. He continued on to his residency in General Surgery and Otolaryngology at the Eastern Virginia Medical School in Norfolk, Virginia, USA. After his residency training, he went on to complete two fellowship years, one in craniomaxillofacial surgery at the University of Eppendorf in Hamburg, Germany, and one in facial plastic and reconstructive surgery at the University of California Davis Medical Center in Sacramento, USA. He is Board Certified in both otolaryngology and facial plastic and reconstructive surgery. He has been at the State University of New York Upstate Medical University, USA, since 1992, and is currently Interim Chair of Otolaryngology and Professor in Otolaryngology and Pediatrics. He is the Medical Director of the Central New York Cleft and Craniofacial Center, USA. He is Co-Director of the Craniomaxillofacial Surgery fellowship. He has given over 240 presentations and has authored, co-authored, or edited over 190 publications. He is active in the American Academy of Facial Plastic and Reconstructive Surgery, the American Academy of Otolaryngology – Head and Neck Surgery, and the American Cleft Palate – Craniofacial Association. He is or has been on the editorial boards of the Archives of Facial Plastic and Reconstructive Surgery and Current Opinion in Otolaryngology & Head and Neck Surgery. He specializes in cleft lip and cleft palate repair, orthognathic surgery, correction of craniosynostosis, and craniofacial syndromes such as Crouzon syndrome, Treacher Collins syndrome, Velo-cardio-facial syndrome, Pierre Robin sequence, and many others. He also performs trauma repair and reconstruction. He has been honored by Best Doctors in America, Patient's Choice, America's Best Physicians, and America's Top Plastic Surgeons. Dr Tatum has taken his expertise overseas to help children in Ekaterinaburg, Russia; Linyi, China; Ecuador; El Salvador, Vietnam, and Moldova. He has also traveled to Zagrab, Croatia, to do reconstructive work on those injured by the war. He has received service awards from the Onondaga County Medical Society, the American Academy of Facial Plastic and Reconstructive Surgery and the American Academy of Otolaryngology – Head and Neck Surgery for this work.

Editorial introductions

Editorial introductions

Teaching physics for tomorrow: Equipping students to change the world

Why should engineers have all the fun?

Robert J. Shalek, Ph.D., J.D.

We are saddened to report the death of Dr. Robert J. Shalek, who passed away at the age of 93 on April 20, 2015. Robert J. Shalek, Ph.D. was born in Chicago, IL in 1922. He earned his undergraduate degree in physics from the University of Illinois in Champaign. After graduating, he served in the US Army for 3 years as a Signal Corp officer. He returned home to Texas where his parents had moved and entered the graduate program at the Rice Institute (now Rice University). He earned two masters degrees (physics and mathematics) and went on to earn a Ph.D. in biophysics in 1953. Dr. Shalek was the second Rice Physics Fellow in the Department of Physics at the MD Anderson Hospital [currently The University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center (MDACC)]. During this time, he worked with Leonard Grimmett on one of the world's first 60Co units. Upon receiving his Ph.D. he spent a postdoctoral year at the Royal Cancer Hospital (now called the Royal Marsden Hospital) in London, England under the guidance of W. V. Mayneord, the Head of the Physics Department and author of the “Mayneord F factor.” After this postdoctoral year he returned to the Department of Physics at MDACC. He published over 100 scientific papers before retiring in 1985 after working at MDACC for 35 years. Among his many contributions to Medical Physics, he was Chairman of the Department of Radiation Physics (1961–1984) at MDACC following Dr. Leonard Grimmett and Dr. Warren Sinclair, both very experienced medical physicists from England. He and Dr. Gilbert Fletcher, the chairman of the Department of Radiation Therapy at MDACC from 1948 to 1981, recognized the need for medical physics quality assurance for national multi-institutional clinical trials and as such, along with the AAPM, proposed a center of physics quality assurance for clinical trials. He ultimately was awarded the first National Cancer Institute grant to create the Radiological Physics Center (RPC) and was its first Director from 1968 until 1985. He was one of AAPM's founding charter members and served as the AAPM's seventh president in 1966. He became a fellow of the AAPM and was awarded ASTRO's Gold Medal in 1996. He was the second recipient of the AAPM's William D. Coolidge Award in 1972 and the sixth recipient of the Marvin M. D. Williams Professional Achievement Award in 1994. His career has encompassed both basic research and the application of physics to clinical problems. His basic research included studies of oxygen reactions following radiation interactions1 and the proportion of direct and indirect radiation action in living cells.2 His clinically related work included the dosimetry of external treatment beams, brachytherapy dosimetry, and quality assurance in radiotherapy physics.3 In the 1960s he wrote one of the seminal papers4 on ferrous sulfate (Fricke) dosimetry that made chemical dosimetry available in the clinic. Also in the 1960s, he and his trainee (and later, colleague) Marilyn Stovall published a series of articles describing the MD Anderson method for implant dosimetry using computerized techniques.5–9 These publications helped disseminate these methods and enabled many institutions to introduce what were for the time very advanced brachytherapy calculation techniques. From right to left, Dr. Shalek, Dr. Hanson, and Dr. Ibbott at a reception in 2001 for Geoff Ibbott, the new RPC Director. While working at MDACC, Dr. Shalek studied law at the University of Houston during the evenings and received his J.D. in 1983. He lectured regularly on legal questions in medical physics and regularly gave professional legal advice to physicists. He also participated in medical malpractice suits, usually as an expert witness. Bob was especially proud of his book, Medical Physicists and Malpractice10 (authored with David Gooden) that outlines the legal framework of liability risk in radiation therapy, the impact on clinical physicists, and practical approaches for avoiding and managing such lawsuits. Dr. Shalek is survived by his wife Elaine V. Shalek, 6 children, 9 grandchildren, and 4 great grandchildren. His accomplishments in medical physics will be long remembered. Equally well known is the way he conducted himself throughout his career, always as a man of high principle and character. He truly was a credit to our profession and is remembered fondly by so many whose lives he touched during his incredibly successful and meaningful career.

Choosing to Major in Physics, or Not: Factors Affecting Undergraduate Decision Making

For the past 40 years, there has been apprehension in North American society, and particularly in the scientific community, concerning the decline of interest and enrollment in science degree programs at the post- secondary level. This trend has proven very difficult to reverse. The purpose of this study was to explore why students at an Atlantic Canadian university pursue a major in physics, and why other eligible students make different choices. Both the students themselves and their physics professors were consulted in the course of this investigation. With a poststructural, constructivist theoretical framework, an instrumental case study of this university is presented using a qualitative online survey for students and semi-structured interviews with their professors. Data from this study supports the theory of physics identity proposed by Hazari et al. (2010). The themes reflected the four dimensions of physics identity, namely, interest, recognition, performance, and competence, with interest appearing as the most important of the four. One additional dimension, the career prospects problem, was reflected within the themes of this study. This research begins to address the concern of declining enrollments by examining the decision-making process of first-year physics students to stay-the-course or to pursue other options with a clear indication that as physics educationalists, we need to clearly articulate viable career options available to those who hold an undergraduate physics degree. Else, students will choose degrees whose career paths have been clearly labeled by society.

In Memoriam: John Henry Holland—a pioneer of complex adaptive systems research (February 2, 1929–August 9, 2015)

“The study of cas is a difficult, exciting task. The returns are likely to be proportionate to the difficulty.” Holland (2006) On August 9, 2015, cancer took Prof. John Henry Holland away from us. Prof. Holland was a pioneer of Complex Adaptive Systems (CAS) research and a true inspiration. He is known not only for his work on CAS, Holland (1962, 1992)—which he would fondly write as “cas”—but also for his seminal work on adaptation in natural and artificial systems leading to the creation of genetic algorithms and eventually the fields of evolutionary computation, Holland (1995) and Learning Classifier Systems, Holland and Holyoak (1989). Holland was a truly interdisciplinary academic. He had an undergraduate degree in Physics from MIT (1950), an M.A. in Mathematics (1954) and possibly the first ever PhD in Computer Science (1959), both from the University of Michigan—a place where he also subsequently served as a Professor of Psychology, Electrical Engineering and Computer Science. Holland leaves behind his legacy in the form of a large number of thought-provoking articles, video lectures, books, and inspired people—ranging from colleagues, fellows and students to budding complexity enthusiasts. Two of his recent books summarize his views on CAS in both a longer, Holland (2012) as well as a shorter form, Holland (2014). It is easy to foresee that these works will serve not only as a guide to CAS but also guidance for future generations. Holland will indeed be greatly missed. Links to some of his online obituaries are as follows: Melanie Mitchell http://tinyurl.com/qcj22tv National Center for Science Education http://tinyurl.com/pm7ga8y New York Times http://tinyurl.com/p5cd22u Santa Fe Institute http://tinyurl.com/qhkgtxd The Scientist http://tinyurl.com/pns6t64 University of Michigan http://tinyurl.com/obbdpx5 Washington Post http://tinyurl.com/oalp27x

First Protein Crystallography Experiments on a Synchrotron

My story started in the winter of 1973/1974. I was a graduate student at UCLA, my thesis work was going nowhere, and my wife was expecting a baby in the early summer, while we had no health insurance that would pay for this happy event. It was clearly time to find a place other than Los Angeles to continue work in protein crystallography. Since I wanted to study crystal structure of the nerve growth factor (NGF), and the West Coast expert in that field was Eric Shooter at Stanford, I asked him if he would be willing to accept me as a postdoc. He was, but had no funds. However, somehow he contacted Keith Hodgson and the two of them managed to find some money, to the best of my recollection in the Department of Psychiatry. Although Keith agreed to let me work on the structure of NGF and a few other proteins, he stipulated that my primary objective should be to help in setting up the first in the world beamline devoted to the use of synchrotron radiation for single-crystal diffraction from protein crystals. To tell the truth, I initially had some problems understanding what exactly he had in mind—somehow my undergraduate degree in physics did not cover that particular subject. Thus, in the late spring of 1974, the team was established—Keith at the lead, two postdocs (Margueritte Yevitz Bernheim and myself) and a graduate student, James Phillips. We were joined by Julia Goodfellow (now Dame Julia) a year later. And the Stanford Synchrotron Radiation Project also officially commenced at about the same time.

A Conversation with Jerry Friedman

Jerome H. Friedman was born in Yreka, California, USA, on December 29, 1939. He received his high school education at Yreka High School, then spent two years at Chico State College before transferring to the University of California at Berkeley in 1959. He completed an undergraduate degree in physics in 1962 and a Ph.D. in high-energy particle physics in 1968 and was a post-doctoral research physicist at the Lawrence Berkeley Laboratory during 1968-1972. In 1972, he moved to Stanford Linear Accelerator Center (SLAC) as head of the Computation Research Group, retaining this position until 2006. In 1981, he was appointed half time as Professor in the Department of Statistics, Stanford University, remaining half time with his SLAC appointment. He has held visiting appointments at CSIRO in Sydney, CERN and the Department of Statistics at Berkeley, and has had a very active career as a commercial consultant. Jerry became Professor Emeritus in the Department of Statistics in 2007. Apart from some 30 publications in high-energy physics early in his career, Jerry has published over 70 research articles and books in statistics and computer science, including co-authoring the pioneering books Classification and Regression Trees and The Elements of Statistical Learning. Many of his publications have hundreds if not thousands of citations (e.g., the CART book has over 21,000). Much of his software is incorporated in commercial products, including at least one popular search engine. Many of his methods and algorithms are essential inclusions in modern statistical and data mining packages. Honors include the following: the Rietz Lecture (1999) and the Wald Lectures (2009); election to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences (2005) and the US National Academy of Sciences (2010); a Fellow of the American Statistical Association; Paper of the Year (JASA 1980, 1985; Technometrics 1998, 1992); Statistician of the Year (ASA, Chicago Chapter, 1999); ACM Data Mining Lifetime Innovation Award (2002), Emanuel & Carol Parzen Award for Statistical Innovation (2004); Noether Senior Lecturer (American Statistical Association, 2010); and the IEEE Computer Society Data Mining Research Contribution Award (2012).

Going to work with an undergraduate physics degree

Going to work with an undergraduate physics degree

Reflections of Kim Benjamin as a student, professional colleague, and personal friend

Kim was a very special person who I was privileged to know as a student, professional colleague, and a close personal friend. After completing his undergraduate degree in Physics at URI in 1975, he was accepted into the Masters Program in Ocean Engineering at the University of Rhode Island where I served as his advisor and major professor. While working on an NIH grant to develop two-dimensional planar arrays of ultrasonic transducers for medical diagnostic purposes, Kim developed his lifelong passion for acoustic transducers. Some of his early “experiences with transducers” will be shared in the presentation. During this time period, Kim also investigated and developed the use of FFT methods for the backward projection of acoustic fields from planar sources. His early contributions in this area laid the foundation for much of the subsequent acoustical holographic work by others over the following several decades and will be briefly reviewed. In the 1980s and 1990, it was clear that Kim was becoming a “transducer guru” as evidenced by his research, reports, and related ASA presentations. I will share some recollections of Kim from this period and our many “extended lunches” during the last several years.

Correlation of admissions statistics to graduate student success in medical physics

The purpose of this work is to develop metrics for evaluation of medical physics graduate student performance, assess relationships between success and other quantifiable factors, and determine whether graduate student performance can be accurately predicted by admissions statistics. A cohort of 108 medical physics graduate students from a single institution were rated for performance after matriculation based on final scores in specific courses, first year graduate Grade Point Average (GPA), performance on the program exit exam, performance in oral review sessions, and faculty rating. Admissions statistics including matriculating program (MS vs. PhD); undergraduate degree type, GPA, and country; graduate degree; general and subject GRE scores; traditional vs. nontraditional status; and ranking by admissions committee were evaluated for potential correlation with the performance metrics. GRE verbal and quantitative scores were correlated with higher scores in the most difficult courses in the program and with the program exit exam; however, the GRE section most correlated with overall faculty rating was the analytical writing section. Students with undergraduate degrees in engineering had a higher faculty rating than those from other disciplines and faculty rating was strongly correlated with undergraduate country. Undergraduate GPA was not statistically correlated with any success metrics investigated in this study. However, the high degree of selection on GPA and quantitative GRE scores during the admissions process results in relatively narrow ranges for these quantities. As such, these results do not necessarily imply that one should not strongly consider traditional metrics, such as undergraduate GPA and quantitative GRE score, during the admissions process. They suggest that once applicants have been initially filtered by these metrics, additional selection should be performed via the other metrics shown here to be correlated with success. The parameters used to make admissions decisions for our program are accurate in predicting student success, as illustrated by the very strong statistical correlation between admissions rank and course average, first year graduate GPA, and faculty rating (p<0.002). Overall, this study indicates that an undergraduate degree in physics should not be considered a fundamental requirement for entry into our program and that within the relatively narrow range of undergraduate GPA and quantitative GRE scores of those admitted into our program, additional variations in these metrics are not important predictors of success. While the high degree of selection on particular statistics involved in the admissions process, along with the relatively small sample size, makes it difficult to draw concrete conclusions about the meaning of correlations here, these results suggest that success in medical physics is based on more than quantitative capabilities. Specifically, they indicate that analytical and communication skills play a major role in student success in our program, as well as predicted future success by program faculty members. Finally, this study confirms that our current admissions process is effective in identifying candidates who will be successful in our program and are expected to be successful after graduation, and provides additional insight useful in improving our admissions selection process.PACS number: 01.40.‐d