Program Overview

The Department of Physics at NC State is dedicated to providing an exciting intellectual climate for our graduate students by advancing the frontier in pure and applied physics and offering complementary courses. The Physics Department at NC State has a diverse research program with strengths in Nanoscience, Nuclear Physics, Astrophysics, Computational Physics, Optics, Biophysics, Materials Physics, and Physics Education Research. The graduate program supports ~110 students. Well equipped research labs are available in the recently renovated Riddick Hall, on the nationally renowned NC State Centennial Campus and at the Triangle Universities Nuclear Laboratory. This diversity of our research program offers excellent opportunities in most areas of contemporary physics. We are committed to designing a program of graduate study that is tailored to the background, experience and interests of individual students.

The goal of our program is to graduate fully functional professionals that can conceive and execute experiments, analyse the results, grasp their significance, and communicate them efficiently in peer-reviewed publications, posters and oral presentations.

Physics At A Glance:

• 44 research faculty engaged in forefront research in Nanoscience, Nuclear Physics, Astrophysics, Computational Physics, Optics, Biophysics, Materials Physics, and Physics Education Research
• Excellent graduate student to faculty ratio of 2.2:1
• Faculty Excellence
  • 5 NSF Presidential Young Investigators/Career Awards
  • 19 American Physical Society Fellows
  • 2 DOE Outstanding Junior Investigators
  • 1 Fellow of the National Academy of Science
  • 3 Fellows of American Association for the Advancement of Science
  • 2 Fellows of the Optical Society of America
  • 3 Fellows of the American Vacuum Society
  • Numerous other individual faculty Awards and Honors
• $7,562,535 of externally federally funded research in 2005-2006 - - $9,939,331 in total research expenditures
• Major participant in national and international research collaborations.

The department awards both masters (MS) and doctoral (Ph.D.) degrees. Demographically, the department boasts a diversity that includes many international and female students. The African-American and native-American proportions are several times the national average for graduate physics programs.

Recent renovated Riddick Hall is home to the Physics Department offices as well as to the majority of research and teaching space.

The department occupies most of the recently renovated Riddick Hall, a 64,000 square-foot building that contains numerous research and instructional laboratories, lecture rooms, offices, and a well-equipped instrument shop. In addition, the contiguous NC State Centennial Campus houses several departmental nano-science/materials laboratories, and the CHiPS Center in several buildings. Major facilities for nuclear physics research are provided by the Triangle Universities Nuclear Laboratory. General descriptions of our research programs may be found under our research area descriptions.

Physics Department Graduate Programs Office
py-grad-program@ncsu.edu
204 Riddick Hall
North Carolina State University
Raleigh, NC 27695-8202
Phone 919-515-8706, fax: 919-515-6538