Honors List

The Departmental Honors Program provides additional depth to the student's knowledge in a special area of contemporary physics and grounds this knowledge in their understanding of the world around them

Academic Year Convocation Date Departmental Honors Student Departmental Honors Thesis Director Departmental Honors Thesis Title Eoin Gray Scholarship Award (Best Graduating Senior) The Feynman Award (Best Student in Contemporary Physics) Rayburn Lab Award
2022-2023 May 13, 2023 Michael Bess Diana Dragomir Atmospheric Composition of 55 Cancri e Michael Bess   Emilio Perez de Juan
Stephanie Hansen Ylva Pihlström SiO Maser Dependency on the Circumstellar Shell of AGB Stars
2021-2022 May 14, 2022 Will Crockett Mousumi Roy A Physicist's Approach to the Water Cycle:
Long-Term Changes in the Water Retention
Properties of Soils in the Sevilleta Shrubland
Benjamin Cochran Kevin Baca Will Crockett
2020-2021   Adam Yañez Sally Seidel and Martin Hoeferkamp Charge Collection in 3D Silicon Sensors Kyle Kennard Josef Sorenson Josef Sorenson
Josef Sorenson Paul Schwoebel Paschen breakdown in dielectric and varistor granule filled spark gaps
2019-2020 May 16, 2020

Julie Campos

Ivan Deutsch

Explorations in Quantum Optimal Control

Eric R. Putney Eric R. Putney Adam Yanez
Ivey Davis Rouzbeh Allahverdi

A New Model for Early Kinetic Decoupling of Dark Matter

Ryan Gibbons Michael Gold Analysis and Instrumentation for a Xenon-doped Liquid Argon System
Eric Putney Huaiyu Duan Numerical Analysis of Collective Neutrino Oscillations in Dense Neutrino Media
Kyle Ritchie Rouzbeh Allahverdi

Decay of Coherent Scalar Field Oscillations

Dilys Ruan

Greg Taylor Discovery of a Pulsar Wind Nebula Around PSR B0950+08

Brady Spears

Mousumi Roy Inversion of Muon Flux for Purposes of Resolving Subsurface Densities
2018/2019 May 11, 2019 Patrick M. Brown Rouzbeh Allahverdi Non-standard Thermal Histories
and Temperature of the Universe
Benjamin L. Reichelt Julie A. Campos Eric Putney
Gavin P. Gonzales Marek Osinski Synthesis and Characterization of Colloidal ZnTe/ZnS and ZnTe/ZnSe Quantum Dots
Kylar L. Greene Ylva Pihlström Determining periods of Mira Variables using the VVV sky survey
Patrick R. Latimer Ylva Pihlström High-Resolution Multi-Epoch Astrometry of Water Fountain IRAS 16552-3050
Lauren M. Zundel Alejandro Manjavacas Arevalo Temporal Evolution of Radiative Heat
Transfer Between Graphene Nanodisks
2017/2018 May 12, 2018 Ivan V. Rajen Martin Hoeferkamp
Sally Seidel
Measuring Charged Particle Beam Fluence Beyond 1015 neq/cm2 Using Planar and 3D Silicon Diodes Roderick D. Cochran
Dennis C. Robinson Brown
Benjamin L. Reichelt  
2016/2017 May 13, 2017 Zachary A. Castillo Dinesh Loomba Viability of Integrating Op-Amps for Event Detection in Time Projection Chambers Montie S. Avery
Gregory J. Ottino
Veronica J. Dike
Gregory J. Ottino
 
Veronica J. Dike  Gregory Taylor Detecting pulsar polarization below 100 MHz with the LWA
Gregory J. Ottino Douglas Fields Vernier Scan Analysis PHENX Run 15 p+p, √s = 200 GeV
Austin C. Vaitkus Dinesh Loomba The Effect of CS2 on Diffusion and Light Yield in Optical Time Projection Chambers
2015/2016 May 14, 2016 Nelly E. Ayllon Sally Seidel Development of a Method for Measuring Charged Particle Beam Fluence Beyond 1016 1-MeV-neutron equivalent/cm2 Cameron W. Trapp Cameron W. Trapp  
Alexandre F. Mills Michael Gold Scintillation of Xenon doped Liquid Argon in the BACON Detector
Brad M. Philipbar Michael Gold R&D Leading Toward the Deep Underground Neutrino Experiment
Cameron W. Trapp Ylva Pihlström The High Frequency Calibrator Conundrum: Pipeline and Identification Algorithm for Potential Calibrator Sources
2014/2015 May 9, 2015 Alexandria M. Doerfler James Thomas Development of a Total Internal Reflection Illumination System for Fluorescence Correlation Spectroscopy Michael J. McCrackan Joshua D. Martin  
Tarraneh Eftekhari Gregory Taylor A Low Frequency Survey of Giant Pulses from the Crab Pulsar
Michael J. McCrackan Gregory Taylor Low Frequency Study of Rotating Radio Transients
Joshua D. Martin Dinesh Loomba Multivariate Moments to Characterize Nuclear Recoil Track Directionality in Low-Pressure TPCs
2013/2014 May 17, 2014 Ezequiel E. Carrasco Ivan Deutsch Simulating a Boson Sampler Skylar T. Scott Samuelle Bourgault  
Stav Gold Mousumi Roy A Linear Analysis of a Two-Phase Flow Model of Melt Percolation
Haley E. McDuff Sally Seidel Effect of Humidity on Reverse Breakdown in 3D Silicon Sensors for Particle Tracking
2012/2013 May 11, 2013       Jacek K. Osinski Evan A. Ottesen
Stephen C. Pietromonaco
 
2011/2012 May 12, 2012 Brian P. Josey Sally Seidel Charge Collection Distance of Diamond Vertex Detectors Rodrigo Osuna Orozco Nathan Giannini
Randy J. Lafler
Roberto S. Rosales
 
Rodrigo Osuna Orozco Mousumi Roy Generation of Melt Streamline Patterns from Lithosphere Thickness Irregularities
Paige S. Romero John McGraw Optical Variability of the Young Stellar Object GM Aurigae
2010/2011 May 14, 2011 Chad A. McCoy Gary Cooper Cross Calibration for using Neutron Activation Analysis with Copper Samples to measure D-T Fusion Yields Chad A. McCoy
Bolestaw L. Osinski
Thomas S. Mahony  
Bolestaw L. Osinski Kevin Malloy Thermal Characterization of MBBA, 5CB, and 8CB for Thermal Switches Using the 3ω Method
2009/2010 May 15, 2010 Kyle W. Martin Carlton Caves An Analysis of an Epistemic Toy Theory of Quantum Mechanics with Connections to the Stabilizer Formalism and Local Hidden Variable Tables Kyle W. Martin Paul V. Klimov  
2008/2009 May 16, 2009 Nguyen S. Phan Dinesh Loomba
John Matthews
Keith Rielage

Acrylic Attenuation Measurements for the MiniCLEAN Dark Matter Detector

Nguyen S. Phan Matthew E. Gooden  
2007/2008 May 17, 2008 Tiffany R. Hayes Richard Rand

Search for Extraplanar Molecular Gas in NGC 891

Aaron B. Zimmerman Aaron B. Zimmerman  
Thuso S. Simon John McGraw

milliCTI

Aaron B. Zimmerman Colston Chandler
Douglas Fields
Helicity Effects on Quantum Scattering
2006/2007 May 12, 2007 Paul Martin J.M. Geremia Quantum Optical Coherent State Discrimination Paul Martin Jean Kurtz  
Kathrin Spendier James Thomas Spatial Control of Spontaneous Fluorescence by Stimulated Emission
2005/2006 May 13, 2006 Lance E. Edens Patricia Henning
Richard Rand
Analysis of the Hydrogen Gas Distribution in the Galaxy HIZSS 3 David C. Hebert Lukas M. Baumgartel  
2004/2005 May 14, 2005 David L. Hayes Ivan Deutsch Quantum Logic with Spin 1/2 Neutral Atoms in Double Gaussian Wells David L. Hayes Adam K. Norman  
Adam K. Norman David Dunlap Damage Induced in α-Quartz by High-Energy Heavy Ions
2003/2004 May 15, 2004 Wayne M. Schlingman Robert Duncan Temperature-Entropy Wave in Self-Organized 4He  Wayne M. Schlingman David L. Hayes  
2002/2003 May 17, 2003 n/a n/a n/a Ghazi Zouaoui Gavin Mendel-Gleason  
2001/2002 May 11, 2002 Nicolas Menicucci Carlton Caves Local Realistic Hidden-Variable Model for the States and Dynamics of Liquid-State NMR Information Processing Veronica Mata-Bruni
Nicolas Menicucci
Maureen M. Ballard  
Katherine Smith Dinesh Loomba Weak Lensing Results for Galaxy Cluster Abell 781
2000/2001   Raquel Fraga Enciñas Richard Rand VLA Mapping of M83 at 6cm      
Cristina Murray Patricia Henning New Galaxies in the Southern Zone of Avoidance: an HI Survey