Dear Friends,

As co-chairs of this storied department, we are pleased to welcome you to one of the primary places that its stories are told – the department website.   With ~25 faculty, 9 staff, ~60 graduate students, and ~100 undergraduate majors, there are many stories worth telling, and reading. The department does ground-breaking research in each of our three thrust areas – nano and quantum science (which we used to call “hard condensed matter physics), biophysics and imaging (which we used to call, and still encompasses “soft-condensed matter physics”) and particle-astrophysics and cosmology (which we have long called particle astrophysics and cosmology).   As you would expect, most of this research is led by our distinguished and energetic faculty.   But we pride ourselves on the excellence and creativity of our students — not just our graduate students, but also our undergraduate majors — who are partners with the faculty, and often leaders, in our research. Our students stay with us but a few years, and then go off to diverse success – in research, in industry, and in pursuits that nominally have no connection to physics but in which we are confident that their training as rigorous thinkers serves them in good stead. We are proud of our alumni and especially appreciate when they maintain their connection to us. Then there are the hundreds of other CWRU students who are with us more briefly — in introductory courses, SAGES seminars, and even advanced and graduate courses; we welcome their interest and engagement and strive to always serve them well in their many varied pursuits. Of course, the unsung heroes are our dedicated staff who keep the whole enterprise humming, despite the head-in-the-clouds academics who surround them.

              With the generous assistance of Evan Lim (CWRU Physics 1971), we are re-energizing the department’s efforts to tell the stories of all these people, and to strengthen the bonds to our alumni. We hope you will visit our website physics.case.edu often, Like us on Facebook, follow us on Twitter, and look for us on other social media sites – and in the public media and scientific journals!

Best wishes,

Corbin Covault 

Professor and co-Chair of Physics  

Glenn Starkman

Professor and co-Chair of Physics