3/14/2003

Congratulations to Nathan George (BS Physics, French, Applied Mathematics: 2001, MS Pure Mathematics: 2002) Nathan has been awarded a prestigious Gates Cambridge Trust Scholarship.

Nathan will use the scholarship to attend Cambridge University for post-graduate study in mathematics. He was one of 42 U.S. students to win the scholarship, and was chosen from a field of 500 applicants.

He is currently serving as a faculty member in the mathematics department at the University of New Mexico-Los Alamos. He is also a research assistant at Los Alamos National Labs and serves as editor for the Central European Journal of Mathematics. He plans to work for the National Security Agency this summer.

While at NC State, Nathan was a Caldwell Scholar, represented NC State for the National Ethics Bowl, and was a charter member of Student Leadership Consultants. Nathan's award marks the second time in its three-year history that the Gates Cambridge Trust has selected an NC State student as a scholarship recipient.

Construction work on chilled water loop will disrupt traffic on Stinson Drive.

A major overhaul of the chilled water loop on North Campus will begin this summer and continue through 2005. During parts of this work new pipe will be laid below Stinson Drive (the road coming down the hill to the front of Cox), requiring the road to be torn up.

We will distribute additional information (such as the date work will begin) as it becomes available.

Subfields of first-year graduate students. What are the plans of first-year physics graduate students? According to the AIP Statistical Research Center, the major subfields of first-year students who plan to receive a PhD and are enrolled in a physics or astronomy graduate program are shown in the table below:

Subfield:	US Citizens (%)	Foreign Citizens (%)
Undecided	25	21
Astronomy/Astrophysics	19	8
Condensed Matter	14	22
Particle and Fields	9	13
Nuclear	4	5
Atomic and Molecular	3	4
Relativity and Gravitation	3	1
Optics and Photonics	3	5

Faculty start up costs: The Cornell Higher Education Research Institute (CHERI) recently surveyed Department Heads, Deans, and Provosts on start up costs in science and engineering departments. (See ilr.cornell.edu/cheri for the full survey results.) While there's no breakout for physics explicitly, or for public research I's like NC State, some of the numbers are of interest:

1) According to Department Heads at private Research I universities, average assistant professor startup varied across disciplines ($337,000 to $475,000) with chemistry, biochemistry and chemical engineering startups typically the highest.

3) The range of startups estimated by Deans at all institutions was $183,000 from public non-research 1 to $456,000 for private research I.

4) The mean startup cost estimated by Provosts at public Research I's was $404,000.

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