physics thesis guidelines

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Thesis Information

Upcoming thesis defenses.

If you are defending this term and do not see your information listed, please contact Sydney Miller in the APO.

Forming a Thesis Committee

When : Doctoral Students – After completing the written and oral exams and generally by the beginning of their third Year of study. Forming their committees at this stage will allow students to consult with all members of the committee during their studies and can provide additional advice and mentorship for them.

How : Register for thesis research under subject number 8.ThG, form a thesis committee, meet with full committee, and submit a formal thesis proposal to the department.

Thesis Committee Formation

Student should consult with their Research Supervisor to discuss the Doctoral Thesis Committee Proposal Form which will name the 3 required members of the Physics Doctoral Committee and a descriptive preliminary thesis title. 

Doctoral Committee must include 3 members with MIT Physics faculty appointments:

• Committee Chair: Research Supervisor from MIT Physics Faculty or Research Supervisor from outside MIT Physics + Co-Supervisor/Chair from MIT Physics Faculty
• Selected Reader: from MIT Physics Faculty (in the same/similar research area, selected by student and supervisor)
• Assigned Reader: from MIT Physics Faculty (in different research area, selected by the Department’s faculty Graduate Coordinator.)

The Form should include the names of the Student, Chair, and Selected Reader and a Thesis Title, when it is forwarded to the Academic Programs Office via email to [email protected] and Sydney will work with Faculty Graduate Coordinator Will Detmold , who will identify the Assigned Reader.

Following the consultation with their supervisor, the student should reach out to the proposed Selected Reader to secure an electronic signature or email confirmation in lieu of signature to serve on this committee. (Form should include either signature or date of email agreement.) It will take approximately 2-3 weeks before an Assigned Reader will be added and Sydney will provide an introduction to this final member of your Doctoral Committee. Please note: you may not form your committee and defend your thesis in the same semester.

Thesis Committee Meeting and Proposal

Once the Thesis Committee is established, the student should send all members a draft description of the proposed thesis topic and set up the first committee meeting with all members attending together in real time. A formal 2-page written Thesis Proposal should result from this important meeting and be sent to Sydney for the student’s academic record.  

Thesis Proposal

You should discuss your thesis research with your committee members all together in real time at your first committee meeting. Following this full discussion about your thesis topic, please write up your formal Thesis Proposal to reflect the mutually-agreed thesis plans and forward the Proposal to the graduate program at the APO using [email protected] for Sydney to document in the department’s academic records.

Thesis Research

Following the formation of the doctoral committee and submission of the thesis proposal, the student will continue to work on their thesis research in consultation with their Research Supervisor and other members of their Committee. This important communication paves the way for the thesis defense and degree completion.

When students are ready to defend, they should complete an ‘ Application for Advanced Degree ’ with the Registrar and schedule a thesis defense with all committee members attending in real time, whether in person or by video. Announcements for the defense will be coordinated by the Academic Programs Office and students should be in close contact with Sydney Miller during their final term or study.

Further details about this last stage of your studies will be available separately.

Thesis Defense

If there is even a slight possibility that you may finish this term, please complete an Application for Advanced Degree at the Registrar’s website at the beginning of the term. It is easy to remove your name if your plans change, but this timely step will avoid late fees!

Once you have scheduled your defense, please send this information to Sydney at [email protected] :

• Thesis Title:
• Committee Members:
• Meeting Details: (can be sent in the final week before the defense)

She will create the email notifications for our physics community and the MIT Events and Physics Calendar listings. This information you provide her is also used to generate the defense grade sheet for your defense.

Please send your committee members a thesis draft to help them prepare for your defense and plan to spend around two weeks making thesis revisions after your successful defense. The date you submit your thesis document to the department will determine whether it is for a Fall, Spring, or Summer degree.

Thesis Formatting

Archival copies of all theses must adhere carefully to principles specified by the MIT Libraries for formatting and submission. For complete information about how to format your thesis, refer to the  Specifications for Thesis Preparation .

Graduate Program Coordinator Sydney Miller can review your title page and abstract for accuracy before you submit the thesis. You may send these to her at  [email protected].

Required Signatures and Documentation

• Signatures:  The MIT Archives require an electronic PDF document and the Department needs a separate additional stand-alone title page with electronic/scanned signatures of   the student, research supervisor, and co-supervisor (if applicable). Theses are accepted by Associate Department Head, Professor  Lindley Winslow . Please send your documents to  [email protected]  and the APO staff will forward your thesis submitted to the MIT Library Archives.
• Thesis defense grade sheets:  Before accepting a PhD thesis, the Academic Programs Office must have a signed thesis defense grade sheet from the research supervisor indicating a “Pass” on the thesis defense.
• Thesis letter grade:  Before accepting an SM thesis, Academic Programs must have received a letter or email from the research supervisor, assigning a final thesis grade of A, B, or C.

Finalizing and Submitting your Thesis to MIT

Departments collect the thesis documents on behalf of the MIT Thesis Library Archives and Physics graduate students will submit their thesis to Sydney Miller.  Review overall information from MIT about  thesis specifications and format .

Please see the attached doctoral title page format for Physics and send your draft of the title/cover page and abstract to Sydney for review and any necessary edits. Once these are approved, please prepare the full document, with pagination appropriate for double-sided printing.

Theses may be completed and signed on any date of the year and the degree requirements are completed when the thesis is submitted. This is the final day of student status and payroll. (International students are eligible for Optional Practical Training starting on the following day.)

MIT awards degrees at the end of each term:

• Fall Term degree is in February. (Theses due second Friday in January.)
• Spring Term degree is in May. (Theses due second Friday in May.)
• Summer Term degree is in September. (Theses due second Friday in August.)

Thesis submissions are electronic files and you will submit the following to Sydney:

• A complete thesis document, without signatures
• A title page with electronic signatures from yourself, your supervisor (and co-supervisor, if required). Sydney will work with the Associate Head, Lindley Winslow , whose signature is required for the department and this will be added after you submit your document to the department/Sydney.
• A separate abstract page

Doctoral students also complete and submit the  Proquest/UMI form  (PDF), with attached title page and abstract (no signatures).

In addition to submitting your thesis to the department for the library archives, you may also  add your thesis to DSpace .

Digital Submission Guidelines

All theses are being accepted by the MIT Libraries in  digital form only . Digital theses are submitted electronically to the Physics Department, along with a separate signed title page. Students on the degree list will receive specific guidance about submission from the Academic Programs Office.

General Thesis Policies

All theses are archived in the MIT Libraries. An archival fee must be paid before a student’s final candidacy for a degree can be officially approved.

After all required materials have been submitted to the Academic Programs Office, a thesis receipt will be sent by email.

Thesis Due Dates

Check the MIT Academic Calendar for deadlines to submit your online degree application.

Thesis submission deadlines Graduating in May: Second Friday in May Graduating in September: Second Friday in August Graduating in February: Second Friday in January We strongly recommend that your defense be scheduled at least three weeks prior to the submission date. Consult with Academic Administrator Shannon Larkin to determine your thesis submission timeline.

Thesis FAQs

The information on this page is applicable for both PhD and Masters (with the exception of an Oral defense) degree candidates.

How do I submit a Thesis Proposal? When is it due?

Students register for thesis research units and assemble a thesis committee in the term following passing the Oral Exam.

The first step is for the student and research supervisor to agree on a thesis topic. An initial Graduate Thesis Proposal Cover Sheet (PDF) (Master’s Degree candidates should see process in section below) must be submitted to Academic Programs by the second week of the term.

The form requires

• an initial thesis title
• the name and signature of the research supervisor
• the name of one additional reader for the thesis committee agreed upon by the student and advisor

A third reader from the MIT Physics faculty, who is not in the same research area but whose background makes him or her an appropriate departmental representative on the committee, will be assigned by the Graduate Program Faculty Coordinator. If a student has a co-supervisor (because the main supervisor is from outside the MIT Physics faculty), the thesis committee will consist of four people: research supervisor, co-supervisor, selected reader, and assigned reader.

After the student is notified of the assigned reader, he or she should convene an initial thesis committee meeting within the same term. The student should also register for 8.THG beginning in this term, and in each term thereafter. 8.THG registration should be for up to 36 units, depending on whether the student is also still taking classes and/or receiving academic credit because of a teaching assistantship. All post-qual students should routinely register for a standard total 36 units.

Master’s degree candidates should complete an SM Thesis Proposal Cover Sheet (PDF). A second reader for the Master’s degree thesis committee is assigned by the Graduate Program Faculty Coordinator. Note that there is no public defense required for an SM degree.

See the Doctoral Guidelines for additional information.

I am going to graduate soon–what do I have to do in terms of paperwork etc.?

Please reference the Registrar’s complete graduation checklist . Students should reference this list at the START of the semester prior to graduation. Your research area’s administrative office and the Physics APO will also help you manage the final stage of your degree.

How do I get on/off the Degree List?

Fill out the Degree Application through the student section of WebSIS . Petitioning to be on the degree list for a particular commencement is required. Note that it is easier to be removed from the degree list to be added, so students are encouraged to apply for the degree list if there is any reasonable chance they will complete the PhD in the coming term.

The WebSIS degree list is used to communicate information about thesis defense announcements and grade sheets, thesis formats, and completion dates, so it is important to file a degree application to be on the list in a timely way. The standard deadline for filing a degree application without being assessed a late fee is the Friday of the first week of the term in which a student anticipates graduating. Removing oneself from the degree list requires an email to Academic Programs .

When is my thesis due? Can I get an extension?

Students can defend and submit their thesis on any dates that work for their committees, but MIT confers degrees only 3 times each year: in May, September and February. Thesis submission deadlines Graduating in May: Second Friday in May Graduating in September: Second Friday in August Graduating in February: Second Friday in January We strongly recommend that your defense be scheduled at least three weeks prior to the submission date. Consult with Academic Administrator Shannon Larkin to determine your thesis submission timeline.

Note that these deadlines are already more generous that the Institute thesis deadline. Students desiring extensions should contact the Academic Administrator, Shannon Larkin .

How do I find a room for my Thesis Defense?

Many Divisions have conference and/or seminar rooms which can be used for oral exams and defenses. These locations are recommended to keep your Thesis Defense comfortable and in familiar territory. Students who cannot book a room in their research area should contact Sydney Miller in the Physics APO to check availability of a Physics departmental conference room (often difficult to schedule due to heavy demand) or to help schedule a classroom through the Registrar’s Office.

When I submit my thesis to Physics Academic Programs, what do I need to bring?

Please refer to the Graduate Thesis Submission Guidelines .

College of Arts & Sciences

General Guidelines for Scientific Writing

The objective of your writing assignments is to illustrate that you are doing or have done, and that you understand how your specific project fits within broader fields of physics. We want to see that you understand why your research is important, and that you can explain it to a fellow physics major.

Scientific writing is not easy; you must work at it. We have provided some guidelines and advice that should help you in your efforts.

(1) The hardest thing about scientific writing is to explain complicated concepts in a way that someone else can understand. This is no easy task; be prepared to revise your writing many times to achieve clarity.

(2) “A picture is worth a thousand words.” It is very difficult to construct good self-explanatory figures and captions, but they are worth the effort. There are many possibilities in constructing a figure. (i) Put more than one curve, each clearly labelled on a plot. (ii) Use an inset in the figure to show a geometry, a blow-up of a curve, or an experimental setup. (iii) Put two figures on top of or next to each other in order to gain enhanced understanding from the fact that the eye can directly compare them.

(3) The figure caption is an integral part of the figure. The editorial style of the caption is as follows: The first “sentence'” of a caption is not a sentence but a label (i.e. no verb). All subsequent sentences must be sentences (i.e. subject, verb, and object). The figure with its caption must be able to stand on its own. Don’t say important things can be found in the text.

(4) The fundamental unit of writing is a sentence.  “Use the active voice; it has more impact.”‘ If you doubt this, contrast the sentence above (actually two sentences joined by a semicolon) with its passive voice alternate: “the active voice is to be preferred for its greater impact.” Every sentence must be understandable on its own terms. If you find yourself saying  “A second sentence will make this first one clear,'” go back and rewrite the first until it is clear on its own.

(5) A paragraph consists of sentences assembled to make a single point. If you discover two (or more!) points in one paragraph, break it up. There is no minimum number of sentences in a paragraph.

(6) Paragraphs can be constructed in several ways. (i) The most conventional and easiest pattern for a scientific writer is to start with a sentence that gives the point to be made. Subsequent sentences develop the argument so that by the end of the paragraph the point is made. (ii) Alternately the paragraph has a smooth introduction from the last paragraph and then goes into an argument whose concluding sentence is the point of the paragraph. Use this less often than (i). (iii) Really brilliant writers can place the point of a paragraph in the middle and still be clear. Neither you nor I are that good. If you find the main point in the middle of a paragraph, rewrite!

(7) Tricks of the trade. To help the reader find things in the paper, consider using: (i) an italicized (or underlined) phrase at the beginning of the paragraph to alert the reader to the subject matter (as we did here), (ii) numbered subpoints so the reader can easily find them (as we have done several times), (iii) display equations (as opposed to inline equations) to define the most important symbols, and (iv) detailed labels on figures to identify curves.

(8) The most common style errors are: (1) Using different symbols or phrases for the same concept. Once you carefully pick a symbol or phrase stick to it; do not redefine your notation; (2) Omitting the hyphens from unit modifiers. (Definition: a unit modifier is two or more adjectives or nouns which as a whole serve as a single adjective. Put hyphens between parts of a unit modifier.) Example: spin-polarized neutrons.

(9) The proposal must be thorough, but the writing should be concise, succinct. Do not underestimate the power of the simple declarative sentence. Shun flowery language, technical jargon, and unexplained terms or acronyms. Do not assume your reader will automatically understand abbreviations such as XAFS or WIMPS’s; define these terms precisely— x-ray absorption fine structure (XAFS), weakly interacting massive particles (WIMP).

(10) Include only necessary equations! There is a terrible tendency to include lots of equations. The best research proposals include no equations at all, and your final paper should include only equations that are necessary to understand results you are presenting. If you feel you need a bunch of equations, try making a figure or a table that indicates the procedure. Self-explanatory figures demonstrate that you know what you are doing. (We recognize that it is difficult to construct good figures and nearly impossible to construct good tables.)

Acknowledgments The advice given in this handout is based on advice distributed by Prof. J. Wilkins of the Ohio State University Physics Department and by the Research Corporation. It has been collated and assembled by J. Freericks and A. Liu, with minor modifications by J. S. Urbach.

Physics-3XX Links

Physics 499x: Independent Research (Senior Thesis)

General Guidelines for Oral Presentations

Guidelines for the Senior Research Paper

Recent Senior Thesis Projects

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Harvard phd theses in physics, 2001-.

BAILEY, STEPHEN JOHN, B.S. (Washington) 1995. A Study of B → J/y K (*)0 X Decays. (Huth)

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FOX, DAVID CHARLES, A.B. (Princeton) 1991. (Harvard) 1994. The Structure of Clusters of Galaxies. (Loeb)

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KING, GAVIN MCLEAN, B.S. (Bates College) 1997 (Dartmouth college) 2001. Probing the Longitudinal Resolution of a Solid State nanopore Microscope with Nanotubes. (Golovchenko)

MANLEY, SULIANA, B.A.(Rice University) 1997. (Harvard University) 2001. Mechanical stability of fractal colloid gels. (Weitz)

MICHNIAK,JR.,ROBERT ALLEN, B.S. (University of Michigan) 1997. (Harvard University) 2001. Enhanced Buffer Gas Loading: Cooling and Trapping of Atoms with Low Effective Magnetic Moments. (Doyle)

MODY, AREEZ MINOO, B.S. (Caltech) 1994. Thermodynamics of ultracold singly charged particles. (Heller)

ODOM, BRIAN CARL, B.S. (Stanford University) 1995. (Harvard University) 1999. Measurement of the Electron g-Factor in a Sub-Kelvin Cylindrical Cavity . (Gabrielse)

OXLEY, PAUL KEVIN, B.A. (Oxford University) 1994. Production of Slow Antihydrogen from Cold Antimatter Plasmas . [PDF: ~5.9 MB](Gabrielse)

ROESER, CHRISTOPHER ALLAN DEWALD, B.A. (University of Chicago) 1998. Ultrafast Dynamics and Optical Control of Coherent Phonons in Tellurium. (Mazur)

SHPYRKO, OLEG GRIGORY, B.S. (Moscow Institute of Physics and Technology) 1995. Experimental X-Ray Studies of Liquid Surfaces. (Pershan)

SON, JOHN SANG WON, B.A. (Columbia University) 1996. Superstring Theory in AdS_3 and Plane Waves . [PDF: ~450 KB](Minwalla)

ZELEVINSKY, TANYA, S.B. (MIT) 1999. (Harvard University) 2001. Helium 2^3 P Fine Structure Measurement in a Discharge Cell. (Gabrielse)

ZUMBÜHL, DOMINIK MAX, Diploma, M.S. (Swiss Federal Institute of Technology), 1998. Coherence and Spin in GaAs Quantum Dots . [PDF: ~2.7 MB] (Marcus)

ANDRÉ, AXEL PHILIPPE, M.S. (Imperial College) 1997. (HarvardUniversity) 1999. Nonclassical States of Light and Atomic Ensembles: Generation and New Applications. (Lukin)

BIERCUK, MICHAEL JORDAN, Local Gate Control in Carbon Nanotube Quantum Devices. (Marcus)

CHEN, HAOYU HENRY, (University Maryland) 1998. (Harvard University) 2000. Surfaces in Solid Dynamics and Fluid Statics . [PDF: ~2.5 MB] (Brenner)

CONRAD, JACINTA CARMEL, S.B. (University of Chicago) 1999. ( Harvard University) 2002. Mechanical Response and Dynamic Arrest in Colloidal Glasses and Gels. (Weitz)

DASGUPTA, BIVASH R., B.S.C. (Presidency College) 1995. (Indian Institute of Technology) 1997. Microrheology and Dynamic Light Scattering Studies of Polymer Solutions. (Weitz)

HANCOX, CINDY IRENE, B.A. (University of California, Berkeley) 1997. ( Harvard University) 2002. Magnetic trapping of transition-metal and rare-earth atoms using buffer-gas loading. (Doyle)

HOUCK, ANDREW A., B.S.E. (Princeton University) 2000. Novel Techniques Towards Nuclear Spin Detection. (Marcus/Chuang)

LEE, HAK-HO, B.S. (Seoul National University) 1998. Microelectronic/Microfluidic Hybrid System for the Manipulation of Biological Cells. (Westervelt).

NEITZKE, ANDREW M., A.B. (Princeton University) 1998. Toward a Nonperturbative Topological String. (Vafa)

PODOLSKY, DANIEL, B.S. ( Stanford University) 1998. (Harvard University) 2000. Interplay of Magnetism and Superconductivity in Strongly Correlated Electron Systems. (Demler)  

RAPPOCCIO, SALVATORE ROCCO, B.A. (Boston University ) 2000. Measurement of the ttbar Production Cross Section in ppbar Collisions at sqrt (s) = 1.96 TeV. (Foland)

SPECK, ANDREW J., (Williams College) 2000. (Harvard) 2002. Two Techniques Produce Slow Antihydrogen . [PDF: ~9.2 MB] (Gabrielse)

TEE, SHANG YOU, B.S. ( Columbia University) 1995. (Stevens Institute of Technology) 1997. Velocity Fluctuations in Sedimentation and Fluidized Beds. (Weitz)

THOMPSON, DAVID MATTOON, (Yale) 1999 B.S./M.S. Holography and Related Topics in String Theory . [PDF: ~440 KB] (Strominger)

ZHU, CHENG, B.S. ( Tsinghua University) 1996. (Chinese Science and Technology University) 1997. Gas phase atomic and molecular process . (Lukin/Dalgarno)

BABICH, DANIEL MICHAEL, A.B. ( Princeton University) 2002. ( Harvard University) 2005. Cosmological Non-Gaussianity and Reionization . (Loeb)

BARNETT, RYAN LEE, B.S. ( Ohio State University) 2000. ( Harvard University) 2002. Studies of Strongly correlated Systems: From First Principles Computations to Effective Hamiltonians and Novel Quantum Phases. (Demler)

BOWLES, ANITA MARIE, B.S. ( University of Colorado) 1996. ( Harvard University) 1998. Stress Evolution in Thin Films of a Polymer . (Weitz/Spaepen)

CHIJIOKE, AKOBUIJE DOUGLAS EZIANI, B.S.E. ( Duke University) 1996. (Massachusetts Institute of Technology) 1998. Infrared absorption of compressed hydrogen deuteride and calibration of the ruby pressure gauge . [PDF: ~2.6 MB](Silvera)  

CYRIER, MICHELLE CHRISTINE, B.S. ( University of California , Berkeley) 2000. Physics From Geometry: Non-Kahler Compactifications, Black Rings and dS/CFT. (Strominger)

DESAI, MICHAEL MANISH, B.A. ( Princeton University ) 1999. ( University of Cambridge ) 2000. Evolution in Large Asexual Populations. (Murray/Fisher)

EISAMAN, MATTHEW D, A.B. (Princeton) 2000. (Harvard University) 2004. Generation, Storage and Retrieval of Nonclassical States of Light Using Atomic Ensembles . [PDF: ~7 MB] (Lukin)

HOLLOWAY, AYANA TAMU, A.B. ( Princeton University) 1998. The First Direct Limit on the t Quark Lifetime. ( Franklin)

HOWARD, ANDREW WILLIAM, S.B. (Massachusetts Institute of Technology) 1998. (Harvard University) 2001. Astronomical Searches for Nanosecond Optical Pulses. (Horowitz)

HUANG, JIAN, BS (Jilin University, P.R.China)1998. Theories of Imaging Electrons in Nanostructures . [PDF: ~8.4 MB] (Heller)

JONES, GREGORY CHAPMAN, B.S. (University of Missouri, Columbia) 2001. Time-dependent solutions in gravity . (Strominger)

KILIC, CAN, B.S. ( Bogazici University) 2000. Naturalness of Unknown Physics: Theoretical Models and Experimental Signatures. (Arkani-Hamed)  

 LAKADAMYALI, MELIKE, B.S. ( University of Texas , Austin ) 2001. Real-Time Imaging of Viral Infection and Intracellular Transport in Live Cells. (Zhuang)

MAHBUBANI, RAKHI, MSci (University of Bristol) 2000. Beyond the Standard Model: The Pragmatic Approach to the Gauge Hierarchy Problem . [PDF: ~1.5 MB] (Arkani-Hamed)

MARSANO, JOSEPH DANIEL, B.S. (University of Michigan) 2001. (Harvard University) 2004. The Phase Structure of Yang-Mills Theories and their Gravity Duals. (Minwalla)

NGUYEN, SCOTT VINH, B.S. (University of Texan, Austin) 2000. Buffer gas loading and evaporative cooling in the multi-partial-wave regeime. (Doyle)  

PAPADODIMAS, KYRIAKOS, B.A. ( University of Athens ) 2000. Phase Transitions in Large N Gauge Theories and String Theory Duals. (Minwalla)

PARROTT, ROBERT ELLIS, B.A. (Dartmouth College) 1997. (Dartmouth College) 1999. Topics in Electron Dynamics in Moderate Magnetic Fields . (Heller)  

POTOK, RONALD MICHAEL, B.S. ( University of Texas Austin) 2000. Probing Many Body Effects in Semiconductor Nanostructures. (Goldhaber-Gordon/Marcus)

RUST, MICHAEL JOSEPH, B.S. ( Harvey Mudd College ). Fluorescence Techniques for Single Virus Particle Tracking and Sub-Diffraction Limit Imaging. (Zhuang)

SAGE, JENNIFER NICOLE FUES, B.A. ( Washington University ) 1997. ( Harvard University ) 2000. Measurements of Lateral Boron Diffusion in Silicon and Stress Effects on Epitaxial Growth . (Aziz/Kaxiras)

TAYLOR, JACOB MASON, A.B. ( Harvard College ) 2000. Hyperfine Interactions and Quantum Information Processing in Quantum Dots. (Lukin)

THALER, JESSE KEMPNER, S.B. (Brown University). ( Harvard University) 2004. Symmetry Breaking at the Energy Frontier . (Arkani-Hamed)

THAMBYAHPILLAI, SHIYAMALA NAYAGI, M.S. (Imperial College) 1999. Brane Worlds and Deconstruction. (Randall)

VAISHNAV, JAY Y., B.S. (University of Maryland) 2000. ( Harvard University) 2002. Topics in Low Energy Quantum Scattering Theory. [PDF:  ~3.8 MB] (Heller)

VITELLI, VINCENZO, B.S. (Imperial College) 2000. Crystals , Liquid Crystals and Superfluid Helium on Curved Surfaces. (Nelson)  

WALKER, DEVIN GEORGE EDWARD, B.S. (Hampton University) 1998. ( Harvard University ) 2001. Theories on the Origin of Mass and Dark Matter. (Arkani-Hamed/Georgi)

WHITE, OLIVIA LAWRENCE, B.S. ( Stanford University ) 1997. Towards Real Spin Glasses: Ground States and Dynamics. (Fisher)

YIN, XI, B.S. (University of Science and Technology of China) 2001. Black Holes, Anti de Sitter Space, and Topological Strings. (Strominger)

YANG, LIANG, B.S. (Yale University) 1999. ( Harvard University) 2002. Towards Precision Measurement of the Neutron Lifetime using Magnetically Trapped Neutrons. (Doyle)

YAVIN, ITAY, B. Sc. (York University, Ontario) 2002. Spin Determination at the Large Hadron Collider. [PDF: ~662 KB] (Arkani-Hamed)

CHILDRESS, LILIAN ISABEL, B.A. (Harvard College) 2001. Coherent manipulation of single quantum systems in the solid state . (Lukin)

CLARK, DAMON ALISTAIR Biophysical Analysis of Thermostatic Behavior in C. elegans . (Samuel) 

ERNEBJERG, MORTEN, MPhys (University of Oxford) 2002. Field Theory Methods in Two-Dimensional and Heterotic String Theories . (Strominger)

FARKAS, DANIEL MARTIN, B.S. (Yale University) 2000. An Optical Reference and Frequency Comb for Improved Spectroscopy of Helium . (Gabrielse)

GINSBERG, NAOMI SHAUNA, B.A. (University of Toronto) 2000. (Harvard University) 2002. Manipulations with spatially compressed slow light pulses in Bose-Einstein condensates. (Hau)

HOFFMAN, LAUREN K., B.S. (California Institute of Technology) 2002. Orbital Dynamics in Galaxy Mergers . (Loeb)

HUANG, LISA LI FANG, B.S. (UCLA) 1999. Black Hole Attractors and Gauge Theories . (Strominger)

HUNT, THOMAS PETER, B.S. (Stanford University) 2000. Integrated Circuit / Microfluidic Chips for Dielectric Manipulation . (Westervelt)

IMAMBEKOV, ADILET, B.S. (Moscow Institute of Physics and Technology) 2002. Strongly Correlated Phenomena with Ultracold Atomic Gases . (Demler)

JAFFERIS, DANIEL LOUIS, B.S. (Yale) 2001. Topological String Theory from D-Brane Bound States . (Vafa)

JENKS, ROBERT A., B.A. (Williams College) 1998. Mechanical and neural representations of tactile information in the awake behaving rat somatosensory system . (Stanley/Weitz)

LEBEDEV, ANDRE, B.S. (University of Virginia) 1999. Ratio of Pion Kaon Production in Proton Carbon Interactions . (Feldman) 

LIU, JIAYU, B.S. (Nanjing University of China) 2002. (Harvard) 2004. Microscopic origin of the elasticity of F-actin networks . (Weitz)

MATHEY, LUDWIG GUENTER, Vordiplom (University of Heidelberg) 1998. Quantum phases of low-dimensional ultra-cold atom systems. (Castro-Neto/Halperin)

MAXWELL, STEPHEN EDWARD Buffer Gas Cooled Atoms and Molecules: Production, Collisional Studies, and Applications. (Doyle)

MO, YINA, B.S. (University of Science and Technology China) 2002. Theoretical Studies of Growth Processes and Electronic Properties of Nanostructures on Surfaces. (Kaxiras)

PARUCHURI, SRINIVAS S., B. S. (Cornell) 2000. (Harvard University) 2002. Deformations of Free Jets . (Brenner//Weitz)

QIAN, JIANG Localization in a Finite Inhomogeneous Quantum Wire and Diffusion through Random Spheres with Partially Absorbing Surfaces. (Halperin)

RITTER, WILLIAM GORDON, B.A. (University of Chicago) 1999. Euclidean Quantum Field Theory: Curved Spacetimes and Gauge Fields. (Jaffe)

SARAIKIN, KIRILL ANATOLYEVICH, B.S. (Moscow Institute for Physics and Technology) 1999. Black Holes, Entropy Functionals, and Topological Strings. (Vafa)

SCHULZ, ALEXIA EIRINN, B.A. (Boston University ) 1998. (Harvard University) 2000. Astrophysical Probes of Dark Energy. (White/Huth)

SCHUSTER, PHILIP CHRISTIAN, S.B. (Massachusetts Institute of Technology) 2003. ( Harvard University ) 2006. Uncovering the New Standard Model at the LHC . (Arkani-Hamed)

SEUN, SIN MAN, B.A. (Smith College) 2000.  B.E. (Dartmouth College) 2000. Measurement of p-K Ratios from the NuMI Target . (Feldman)

SHERMAN, DANIEL JOSEPH, B.A. (University of Pennsylvania ) 2001. Measurement of the Top Quark Pair Production Cross Section with 1.12 fb -1 of pp Collisions at sqrt (s) = 1.96 TeV. ( Franklin )

SIMONS, AARON, B.S. (California Institute of Technology) 2002. Black Hole Superconformal Quantum Mechanics. (Strominger)

SLOWE, CHRISTOPHER BRIAN, AB/AM (Harvard University). Experiments and Simulations in Cooling and Trapping of a High Flux Rubidium Beam. (Hau)

STRIEHL, PIERRE SEBASTIAN, Diploma (University of Heidelberg) 2004. A high-flux cold-atom source for area-enclosing atom interferometry. (Prentiss)

TORO, NATALIA, S.B. (Massachusetts Institute of Technology) 2003. Fundamental Physics at the Threshold of Discovery . (Arkani-Hamed) 

WISSNER-GROSS, ALEXANDER DAVID, S.B. (Massachusetts Institute of Technology) 2003. (Harvard University ) 2004. Physically Programmable Surfaces. (Kaxiras)

WONG, WESLEY PHILIP, B.S. (University of British Columbia) 1999. Exploring single-molecule interactions through 3D optical trapping and tracking: from thermal noise to protein refolding . (Evans/Nelson)

ZAW, INGYIN, B.A. (Harvard College) 2001.  (Harvard University) 2003. Search for the Flavor Changing Neutral Current Decay t → qZ in  pp Collisions at √s = 1.96 TeV. (Franklin)

BRAHMS, NATHANIEL CHARLES, Sc.B. (Brown University) 2001. Trapping of 1 μ β Atoms Using Buffer Gas Loading . (Doyle, Greytak)

BURBANK, KENDRA S., B.A. (Bryn Mawr College) 2000. (Harvard University) 2004. Self-organization mechanisms in the assembly and maintenance of bipolar spindles. (Fisher/Mitchison)

CAMPBELL, WESLEY C., B.S. (Trinity University) 2001. Magnetic Trapping of Imidogen Molecules . (Doyle)

CHAISANGUANTHUM, KRIS SOMBOON, B.S. (Harvard University ) 2001. An Enquiry Concerning Charmless Semileptonic Decays of Bottom Mesons . (Morii)

CHANG, DARRICK, B.S. (Stanford University) 2001. Controlling atom-photon interactions in nano-structured media. (Lukin)

CHOU, JOHN PAUL, A.B. (Princeton University) 2002. (Harvard University) 2006. Production Cross Section Measurement using Soft Electron Tagging in pp Collisions at √s  = 1.96 TeV . (Franklin)

DEL MAESTRO, ADRIAN GIUSEPPE, B.S. (University of Waterloo) 2002,  (University of Waterloo) 2003. The Superconductor-Metal Quantum Phase Transition in Ultra-Narrow Wires . (Sachdev)

DI CARLO, LEONARDO, B.S. (Stanford University) 1999. (Stanford University) 2000. Mesocopic Electronics Beyond DC Transport . (Marcus)

DUNKEL, EMILY REBECCA, B.S. (University of California Los Angeles) 2001. Quantum Phenomena in Condensed Phase Systems . (Sachdev/Coker)

FINKLER, ILYA GRIGORYEVICH, B.S. (Ohio State University) 2001. Nonlinear Phenomena in Two-Dimensional and Quasi-Two-Dimensional Electron Systems. (Halperin)

FITZPATRICK, ANDREW LIAM, B.S. (University of Chicago) 2004. (Harvard University) 2005. Broken Symmetries and Signatures . (Randall)

GARG, ARTI, A.B., B.S. (Stanford University) 2000. (Stanford University) 2001. (University of Washington) 2002. Microlensing Candidate Selection and Detection Efficiency for the Super MACHO Dark Matter Search . (Stubbs)

GERSHOW, MARC HERMAN, B.S. (Stanford University) 2001. Trapping Single Molecules with a Solid State Nanopore . (Golovchenko)

GRANT, LARS, B.S. (McGill University) 2001. Aspects of Quantization in AdS/CFT . (Vafa/Minwalla)

GUICA, MONICA MARIA, B.A. (University of Chicago) 2003. Supersymmetric Attractors, Topological Strings, and the M5-Brane CFT . (Strominger)

HANNEKE, DAVID ANDREW, B.S. (Case Western) 2001. (Harvard University) 2003. Cavity Control in a Single-Electron Quantum Cyclotron: An Improved Measurement of the Electron Magnetic Moment. (Gabrielse) 

HATCH, KRISTI RENEE, B.S. (Brigham Young University) 2004 Probing the mechanical stability of DNA by unzipping and rezipping the DNA at constant force. (Prentiss)

HOHLFELD, EVAN BENJAMIN, B.S. (Stanford University) 2001. Creasing, Point-bifurcations, and the Spontaneous Breakdown of Scale-invariance . (Weitz/Mahadevan)

KATIFORI, ELENI, Ptichion (University of Athens) 2002.  (Harvard University) 2004. Vortices, rings and pollen grains: Elasticity and statistical physics in soft matter .  (Nelson)

LAPAN, JOSHUA MICHAEL, B.S. (Massachusetts Institute of Technology) 2002.  (Harvard University) 2006. Topics in Two-Dimensional Field Theory and Heterotic String Theory .  (Strominger)

LE SAGE, DAVID ANTHONY, B.S. (University of California Berkeley) 2002. First Antihydrogen Production within a Combined Penning-Ioffe Trap . (Gabrielse)

LI, WEI, B.S. (Peking University) 1999. (Peking University) 2002. Gauge/Gravity Correspondence and Black Hole Attractors in Various Dimensions . (Strominger)

LU, PETER JAMES, B.A. (Princeton University) 2000.  (Harvard University) 2002. Gelation and Phase Separation of Attractive Colloids . (Weitz)

MUNDAY, JEREMY NATHAN, B.S. (Middle Tennessee State University) 2003.  (Harvard University) 2005. Attractive, repulsive, and rotational QED forces: experiments and calculations . (Hau/Capasso)

RAJU, SUVRAT, B.S. (St. Stephen’s College) 2002.  (Harvard University) 2003. Supersymmetric Partition Functions in the AdS/CFT Conjecture . (Arkani-Hamed/Denef/Minwalla)

RISTROPH, TRYGVE GIBBENS, B.S. (University of Texas at Austin) 1999. Capture and Ionization Detection of Laser-Cooled Rubidium Atoms with a Charged Suspended Carbon Nanotube . (Hau)

SVACHA, GEOFFRY THOMAS, B.S. (University of Michigan) 2002. Nanoscale nonlinear optics using silica nanowires . (Mazur)

TURNER, ARI M., B.A. (Princeton University) 2000. Vortices Vacate Vales and other Singular Tales . (Demler)

BAUMGART, MATTHEW TODD, B.S. (University of Chicago) 2002.  The Use of Effective Variables in High Energy Physics . (Georgi/Arkani-Hamed)

BOEHM, JOSHUA ADAM ALPERN, B.S.E. (Case Western Reserve University) 2003. (Harvard University) 2005. A Measurement of Electron Neutrino Appearance with the MINOS Experimen t. (Feldman)

CHEUNG, CLIFFORD WAYNE, B.S. (Yale University) 2004. (Harvard University) 2006. From the Action to the S-Matrix . (Georgi/Arkani-Hamed)

DORET, STEPHEN CHARLES B.A. (Williams College) 2002, A.M. (Harvard University) 2006. A buffer-gas cooled Bose-Einstein condensate . (Doyle)

FALK, ABRAM LOCKHART, B.A. (Swarthmore College) 2003. (Harvard University) 2004. Electrical Plasmon Detection and Phase Transitions in Nanowires . (Park)

HAFEZI, MOHAMMAD, (Sharif University of Technology, Tehran - Ecole Polytechnique, Paris) 2003. (Harvard University) 2005, Strongly interacting systems in AMO physics . (Lukin)

HECKMAN, JONATHAN JACOB, A.B. (Princeton University) 2004. (Harvard University) 2005 F-theory Approach to Particle Physics . (Vafa)

HICKEN, MALCOLM STUART, B.S. (Brigham Young University) 1999. (Harvard University) 2001. Doubling the Nearby Supernova Type Ia Sample . (Stubbs/Kirshner)

HOHENSEE, MICHAEL ANDREW, B.A. (New York University) 2002. (Harvard University) 2004. Testing Fundamental Lorentz Symmetries of Light . (Walsworth)

JIANG, LIANG, B.S. (California Institute of Technology) 2004.  T owards Scalable Quantum Communication and Computation: Novel Approaches and Realizations . (Lukin)

KAPLAN, JARED DANIEL, B.S. (Stanford University) 2005. Aspects of Holography . (Georgi/Arkani-Hamed)

KLEIN, MASON JOSEPH, B.S. (Calvin College) 2002. Slow and Stored Light in Atomic Vapor Cells . (Walsworth)

KRICH, JACOB JONATHAN, B.A. (Swarthmore College) 2000, MMath (Oxford University) 2003. (Harvard University) 2004. Electron and Nuclear Spins in Semiconductor Quantum Dots . (Halperin)

LAHIRI, SUBHANEIL, M.A. (Oxford University) 2003. Black holes from fluid mechanics. (Yin/Minwalla)

LIN, YI-CHIA, B.S. (National Taiwan Normal University) 1999. (National Tsing Hua University) 2001. Elasticity of Biopolymer Networks. (Weitz)

LUO, LINJIAO, B.S. (University of Science and Technology China) 2003. Thermotactic behavior in C. elegans and Drosophila larvae. (Samuel)

PADI, MEGHA, B.S. (Massachusetts Institute of Technology) 2003. A Black Hole Quartet: New Solutions and Applications to String Theory. (Strominger)

PASTRAS, GEORGIOS, DIPLOMA (University of Patras) 2002. (Harvard University) 2004. Thermal Field Theory Applications in Modern Aspects of High Energy Physics.  (Denef/Arkani-Hamed)

PEPPER, RACHEL E., B.S. (Cambridge) 2004. Splashing, Feeding, Contracting: Drop impact and fluid dynamics of Vorticella (Stone)

SHAFEE, REBECCA, B.S. (California Institute of Technology) 2002. (Harvard University) 2004. Measuring Black Hole Spin. (Narayan/McClintock)

WANG, CHRISTINE YI-TING, B.S. (National Taiwan University) 2002. (Harvard University) 2004. Multiode dynamics in Quantum Cascade Lasers: from coherent instability to mode locking. (Hoffman/Capasso)

ZHANG, YIMING, B.S. (Peking University) 2003. (Harvard University) 2006. Waves, Particles, and Interactions in Reduced Dimensions . (Marcus)

BARTHEL, CHRISTIAN, Diploma (University of Kaiserslautern) 2005. Control and Fast Measurement of Spin Qubits . (Marcus)

CAVANAUGH, STEVEN, B.S. (Rutgers College) 2005. (Harvard University) 2006. A Measurement of Electron Neutrino Appearance in the MINOS Experiment after Four Years of Data . (Feldman)

CHERNG, ROBERT, WEN-CHIEH, B.S. (Massachusetts Institute of Technology) 2004. Non-Equilibrium Dynamics and Novel Quantum Phases of Multicomponent Ultracold Atoms . (Demler)

FOLETTI, SANDRA ELISABETTA, Diploma (Federal Institute of Technology Zurich) 2004. Manipulation and Coherence of a Two-Electron Logical Spin Qubit Using GaAs Double Quantum Dots . (Yacoby)

GIRASH, JOHN ANDREW, B.S. (University of Western Ontario) 1990. (University of Western Ontario) 1993. A Fokker-Planck Study of Dense Rotating Stellar Clusters . (Stubbs/Field)

GOODSELL, ANNE LAUREL, B.A. (Bryn Mawr College) 2002. (Harvard University) 2004. Capture of Laser-Cooled Atoms with a Carbon Nanotube . (Hau)

GORSHKOV, ALEXEY VYACHESLAVOVICH, A.B. (Harvard College) 2004. (Harvard University) 2006. Novel Systems and Methods for Quantum Communication, Quantum Computation, and Quantum Simulation . (Lukin)

GUISE, NICHOLAS DAMIEN SUN-WO, B.S. (California Institute of Technology) 2003. Spin-Flip Resolution Achieved with a One-Proton Self-Excited Oscillator. (Gabrielse)

HARTMAN, THOMAS EDWARD, A.B. (Princeton University) 2004. Extreme Black Hole Holography. (Strominger)

HIGH, FREDRICK WILLIAM, B.A. (University of California Berkeley) 2004. The Dawn of Wide-Field Sunyaev-Zel’dovich Cluster Surveys: Efficient Optical Follow-Up. (Stubbs)

HOOGERHEIDE, DAVID PAUL, B.S. (Western Michigan University) 2004. Stochastic Processes in Solid State Nanoporers. (Golovchenko)

HUMMON, MATTHEW TAYLOR, B.A. (Amherst College) 2002, (Harvard University) 2005. Magnetic trapping of atomic nitrogen and cotrapping of NH. (Doyle)

KATS, YEVGENY, B.S. (Bar-Ilan University) 2003. (Bar-Ilan University) 2005. Physics of Conformal Field Theories. (Georgi/Arkani-Hamed)

KOROLEV, KIRILL SERGEEVICH, B.S. (Moscow Institute of Physics and Technology) 2004. Statistical Physics of Topological Emulsions and Expanding Populations. (Nelson)

LAIRD, EDWARD ALEXANDER, M.Phys (University of Oxford) 2002. (Harvard University) 2005. Electrical Control of Quantum Dot Spin Qubits . (Marcus)

LAROCHELLE, PHILIPPE, B.S. (Massachusetts Institute of Technology) 2003. Machines and Methods for Trapping Antihydrogen. (Gabrielse)

LI, GENE-WEI, B.S. (National Tsinghua University) 2004. Single-Molecule Spatiotemporal Dynamics in Living Bacteria. (Nelson/Xie)

MAZE RIOS, JERONIMO, B.S. (Pont Catholic University), 2002. (Pont Catholic University) 2004. Quantum Manipulation of Nitrogen-Vacancy Centers in Diamond: from Basic Properties to Applications. (Lukin)

PATTERSON, DAVID, A.B. (Harvard College) 1997. Buffer Gas Cooled Beams and Cold Molecular Collisions. (Doyle)  

PENG, AMY WAN-CHIH, B.Sc. (University of Auckland), (Australian National University) 2005. Optical Lattices with Quantum Gas Microscope . (Greiner)

QI, YANG, B.S. (Tsinghua University) 2005. Spin and Charge Fluctuations in Strongly Correlated Systems . (Sachdev)

ROJAS, ENRIQUE ROBERTSON, B.A. (University of Pennsylvania) 2003. The Physics of Tip-Growing Cells. (Nelson/Dumais)

SEO, JIHYE, B.S. (Korea Adv. Inst. of Science & Technology) 2003. (Harvard University) 2010. D-Branes, Supersymmetry Breaking, and Neutrinos . (Vafa)

SIMON, JONATHAN, B.S. (California Institute of Technology) 2004. Cavity QED with Atomic Ensembles. (Lukin/Vuletic)

SLATYER, TRACY ROBYN, Ph.B. (Australian National University) 2005. (Harvard University) 2008. Signatures of a New Force in the Dark Matter Sector. (Finkbeiner)

TAFVIZI, ANAHITA, B.S. (Sharif University of Technology) 2004. Single-Molecule and Computational Studies of Protein-DNA Interactions. (Cohen/Mirny/van Oijen)

WINKLER, MARK THOMAS, B.S.E. (Case Western Reserve) 2004. Non-Equilibrium Chalcogen Concentrations in Silicon: Physical Structure, Electronic Transport, and Photovoltaic Potential. (Mazur)

ANNINOS, DIONYSIOS Theodoros,B.A. (Cornell University) 2006, (Harvard University) 2008. Classical and Quantum Symmetries of de Sitter Space . (Strominger) >

BAKR, WASEEM S., B.S. (Massachusetts Institute of Technology) 2005. Microscopic studies of quantum phase transitions in optical lattices . (Greiner)

BARAK, GILAD, B.S. (Hebrew University) 2000, (Tel Aviv University) 2006. Momentum resolved tunneling study of interaction effects in ID electron systems .(Yacoby)

BARANDES, JACOB AARON, B.A. (ColumbiaUniversity) 2004. Exploring Supergravity Landscapes . (Denef)

BISWAS, RUDRO RANA, B.S. (Calcutta University) 2003, (Harvard University) 2011. Explorations in Dirac Fermions and Spin Liquids . (Sachdev)

CHEN, PEIQIU, B.S. (University of Science and Technology China) 2004, (Harvard University) 2005. Molecular evolution and thermal adaptation . (Nelson/Shakhnovich)

FREUDIGER, CHRISTIAN WILHELM, Diploma (Technische Universitat of München) 2005, (Harvard University) 2007. Stimulated Raman Scattering (SRS) Microscopy . (Zhuang/Xie)

GALLICCHIO, JASON RICHARD, B.S. (University of Illinois at Urbana Champaign) 1999, (University of Illinois at Urbana Champaign) 2001. A Multivariate Approach to Jet Substructure and Jet Superstructure . (Schwartz)

GLENDAY, ALEXANDER, B.A. (Williams College) 2002. Progress in Tests of Fundamental Physics Using  a 3He and 129Xe Zeeman Maser . (Stubbs/Walsworth)

GOLDMAN, JOSHUA DAVID, A.B. (Cornell University) 2002, (University of Cambridge) 2003, (Imperial College London) 2004. Planar Penning Traps with Anharmonicity Compensation for Single-Electron Qubits. (Gabrielse)

HUH, YEJIN, B.S. (Yale University) 2006, (Harvard University) 2008. Quantum Phase Transitions in d-wave Superconductors and Antiferromagnetic Kagome Lattices . (Sachdev)

KASHIF, LASHKAR, B.S. (Yale University) 2003. Measurement of the Z boson cross-section in the dimuon channel in pp collisions at sqrt{s} = 7 TeV . (Huth)

KAZ, DAVID MARTIN, B.S. (University of Arizona) 2003, (Harvard University) 2008. Colloidal Particles and Liquid Interfaces: A Spectrum of Interactions. (Manoharan)

KOLTHAMMER, WILLIAM STEVEN, B.S. (Harvey Mudd College) 2004, (Harvard University) 2006. Antimatter Plasmas Within a Penning-Ioffe Trap . (Gabrielse)

LEE-BOEHM, CORRY LOUISE, B.S.E. (University of Colorado) 2004, (Harvard University) 2011. B0 Meson Decays to rho0 K*0, f0 K*0, and rho- K*+, Including Higher K* Resonances . (Morii)

MARTINEZ-OUTSCHOORN, VERENA INGRID, B.A. (Harvard University) 2004, (Harvard University) 2007. Measurement of the Charge Asymmetry of W Bosons Produced in pp Collisions at sqrt(s) = 7 TeV with the ATLAS Detector . (Guimaraes da Costa)

MCCONNELL, ROBERT PURYEAR, B.S. (Stanford University) 2005, (Harvard University) 2007. Laser-Controlled Charge-Exchange Production of Antihydrogen . (Gabrielse)

MCGORTY, RYAN, B.S. (University of Massachusetts) 2005, (Harvard University) 2008. Colloidal Particles at Fluid Interfaces and the Interface of Colloidal Fluids . (Manoharan)

METLITSKI, MAXIM A., B.Sc. (University of British Columbia) 2003, (University of British Columbia) 2005. Aspects of Critical Behavior of Two Dimensional Electron Systems . (Sachdev)

MOON, EUN GOOK, B.S. (Seoul National University) 2005 Superfluidity in Strongly Correlated Systems . (Sachdev)

PETERSON, COURTNEY MARIE, B.S. (Georgetown University) 2002,(University of Cambridge) 2003, (Imperial College London) 2004, (Harvard University) 2007. Testing Multi-Field Inflation . (Stubbs/Tegmark)

PIELAWA, SUSANNE, Diploma (UNIVERSITY OF ULM) 2006, (Harvard University) 2009. Metastable Phases and Dynamics of Low-DimensionalStrongly-Correlated Atomic Quantum Gases . (Sachdev)

PRASAD, SRIVAS, A.B. (Princeton University) 2005, (Harvard University) 2007. Measurement of the Cross-Section of W Bosons Produced in pp Collisions at √s=7 TeV With the ATLAS Detector . (Guimaraes da Costa)

ROMANOWSKY, MARK, B.A. (Swarthmore College) 2003. High Throughput Microfluidics for Materials Synthesis . (Weitz)

SMITH, BEN CAMPBELL, B.A. (Harvard University) 2005. Measurement of the Transverse Momentum Spectrum of W Bosons Produced at √s = 7 TeV using the ATLAS Detector . (Morii)

TANJI, HARUKA, B.S. (University of Tokyo) 2002, (University of Tokyo) 2005, (Harvard University) 2009. Few-Photon Nonlinearity with an Atomic Ensemble in an Optical Cavity . (Lukin/Vuletic)

TRODAHL, HALVAR JOSEPH, B. Sc. (Victoria University) 2005, (Harvard University) 2008. Low Temperature Scanning Probe Microscope for Imaging Nanometer Scale Electronic Devices. (Westervelt)

WILLIAMS, TESS, B.Sc. (Stanford University) 2005. Nanoscale Electronic Structure of Cuprate Superconductors Investigated with Scanning Tunneling Spectroscopy. (Hoffman)

ANDERSEN, JOSEPH, B.S. (Univ. of Queensland) 1999. Investigations of the Convectively Coupled Equatorial Waves and the Madden-Julian Oscillation. (Huth)

BREDBERG, IRENE, M.PHYS., M.Sc. (Univ. of Oxford) 2006, 2007. The Einstein and the Navier-Stokes Equations:  Connecting the Two . (Strominger)

CHURCHILL, HUGH, B.A., B.M. (Oberlin College) 2006. Quantum Dots in Gated Nanowires and Nanotubes. (Marcus)

CONNOLLY, COLIN Inelastic Collisions of Atomic Antimony, Aluminum, Eerbium and Thulium Below . (Doyle)

CORDOVA, CLAY, B.A. (Columbia University) 2007. Supersymmetric Spectroscopy. (Vafa)

DILLARD, COLIN, S.B. (Massachusetts Institute of Technology) 2006. Quasiparticle Tunneling and High Bias Breakdown in the Fractional Quantum Hall Effect. (Kastner/Silvera)

DOWD, JASON, A.B. (Washington Univ.) 2006;(Harvard Univ.) 2008. Interpreting Assessments of Student Learning in the Introductory Physics Classroom and Laboratory. (Mazur)

GOLDSTEIN, GARRY Applications of Many Body Dynamics of Solid State Systems to Quantum Metrology and Computation (Chamon/Sachdev)

GUREVICH, YULIA, B.S. (Yale University) 2005. Preliminary Measurements for an Electron EDM Experiment in ThO. (Gabrielse)

KAGAN, MICHAEL, B.S. (Univ. of Michigan) 2006; (Harvard Univ.) 2008. Measurement of the W ± Z production cross section and limits on anomalous triple gauge couplings at √S = 7 TeV using the ATLAS detector. (Morii)

LIN, TONGYAN, S.B. (Massachusetts Institute of Technology) 2007; (Harvard Univ.) 2009. Signals of Particle Dark Matter. (Finkbeiner)

McCLURE, DOUGLAS, B.A. (Harvard University) 2006; (Harvard University) 2008. Interferometer-Based Studies of Quantum Hall Phenomena. (Marcus)

MAIN, ELIZABETH, B.S.(Harvey Mudd College) 2004; (Harvard Univ.) 2006. Investigating Atomic Scale Disordered Stripes in the Cuprate Superconductors with Scanning Tunneling Microscopy. (Hoffman)

MASON, DOUGLAS Toward a Design Principle in Mesoscopic Systems . (Heller/Kaxiras)

MULUNEH, MELAKU, B.A. (Swarthmore College) 2003. Soft colloids from p(NIPAm-co-AAc): packing dynamics and structure. (Weitz)

PIVONKA, ADAM Nanoscale Imaging of Phase Transitions with Scanning Force Microscopy . (Hoffman)

REAL, ESTEBAN, A.B. (Harvard University) 2002; (Harvard University) 2007. Models of visual processing by the retina. (Meister/Franklin)

RICHERME, PHILIP, S.B. (Massachusetts Institute of Technology) 2006; (Harvard University) 2008. Trapped Antihydrogen in Its Ground State. (Gabrielse)

SANTOS, LUIZ, B.S. (Univ. Fed. Do Espito Santo) 2004. Topological Properties of Interacting Fermionic Systems. (Chamon/Halperin)

SCHLAFLY, EDWARD, B.S. (Stanford University) 2007; (Harvard University) 2011. Dust in Large Optical Surveys. (Finkbeiner)

SETIAWAN, WIDAGDO, B.S. (Massachusetts Institute of Technology) 2007. Fermi Gas Microscope . (Greiner)

SHUVE, BRIAN, B.A.Sc. (University of Toronto) 2007; (Harvard University) 2011. Dark and Light: Unifying the Origins of Dark and Visible Matter. (Randall)

SIMMONS-DUFFIN, DAVID, A.B., A.M. (Harvard University) 2006. Carving Out the Space of Conformal Field Theories. (Randall)

TEMPEL, DAVID, B.A. (Hunter College) 2007. Time-dependent density functional theory for open quantum systems and quantum computation. (Aspuru-Guzik/Cohen)  

VENKATCHALAM, VIVEK, S.B. (Massachusetts Institute of Technology) 2006. Single Electron Probes of Fractional Quantum Hall States. (Yacoby)  

VLASSAREV, DIMITAR, B.S. (William and Mary) 2005; (Harvard University) 2007. DNA Characterization with Solid-State Nanopores and Combined Carbon Nanotube across Solid-State Nanopore Sensors . (Golovchenko)  

WANG, WENQIN, B.S. (Univ. of Science and Technology of China) 2006. Structures and dynamics in live bacteria revealed by super-resolution fluorescence microscopy. (Zhuang)

WANG, YIHUA Laser-Based Angle-Resolved Photoemission Spectroscopy of Topological Insulators. (Gedik / Hoffman)

WISSNER-GROSS, ZACHARY Symmetry Breaking in Neuronal Development. (Yanik /Levine)

YONG, EE HOU, B.Sc. (Stanford University) 2003. Problems at the Nexus of Geometry and Soft Matter: Rings, Ribbons and Shells. (Mahadevan)

ANOUS, TAREK Explorations in de Sitter Space and Amorphous Black Hole Bound States in String Theory . (Strominger)

BABADI, MEHRTASH Non-Equilibrium Dynamics of Artificial Quantum Matter . (Demler)

BRUNEAUX, LUKE Multiple Unnecessary Protein Sources and Cost to Growth Rate in E.coli. (Prentiss)

CHIEN, YANG TING Jet Physics at High Energy Colliders Matthew . (Schwartz)

CHOE, HWAN SUNG Choe Modulated Nanowire Structures for Exploring New Nanoprocessor Architectures and Approaches to Biosensing. (Lieber/Cohen)

COPETE, ANTONIO BAT Slew Survey (BATSS): Slew Data Analysis for the Swift-BAT Coded Aperture Imaging Telescope . (Stubbs)

DATTA, SUJIT Getting Out of a Tight Spot: Physics of Flow Through Porous Materials . (Weitz)

DISCIACCA, JACK First Single Particle Measurements of the Proton and Antiproton Magnetic Moments . (Gabrielse)

DORR, JOSHUA Quantum Jump Spectroscopy of a Single Electron in a New and Improved Apparatus . (Gabrielse )

DZYABURA, VASILY Pathways to a Metallic Hydrogen . (Silvera)

ESPAHBODI, SAM 4d Spectra from BPS Quiver Dualities. (Vafa)

FANG, JIEPING New Methods to Create Multielectron Bubbles in Liquid Helium . (Silvera)

FELDMAN, BEN Measurements of Interaction-Driven States in Monolayer and Bilayer Graphene . (Yacoby)

FOGWELL HOOGERHEIDE, SHANNON Trapped Positrons for High-Precision Magnetic Moment Measurements . (Gabrielse)

FUNG, JEROME Measuring the 3D Dynamics of Multiple Colloidal Particles with Digital Holographic Microscopy . (Manoharan)

GULLANS, MICHAEL Controlling Atomic, Solid-State and Hybrid Systems for Quantum Information Processing. (Lukin)

JAWERTH, LOUISE MARIE The Mechanics of Fibrin Networks and their Alterations by Platelets . (Weitz)

JEANTY, LAURA Measurement of the WZ Production Cross Section in Proton-Proton Collision at √s = 7 TeV and Limits on Anomalous Triple Gauge Couplings with the ATLAS Detector . (Franklin)

JENSEN, KATHERINE Structure and Defects of Hard-Sphere Colloidal Crystals and Glasses . (Weitz)

KAHAWALA, DILANI S Topics on Hadron Collider Physics . (Randall)

KITAGAWA, TAKUYA New Phenomena in Non-Equilibrium Quantum Physics . (Demler)

KOU, ANGELA Microscopic Properties of the Fractional Quantum Hall Effect . (Halperin)

LIN, TINA Dynamics of Charged Colloids in Nonpolar Solvents . (Weitz)

MCCORMICK, ANDREW Discrete Differential Geometry and Physics of Elastic Curves . (Mahadevan)

REDDING, JAMES Medford Spin Qubits in Double and Triple Quantum Dots . (Marcus/Yacoby)

NARAYAN, GAUTHAM Light Curves of Type Ia Supernovae and Preliminary Cosmological Constraints from the ESSENCE Survey . (Stubbs)

PAN, TONY Properties of Unusually Luminous Supernovae . (Loeb)

RASTOGI, ASHWIN Brane Constructions and BPS Spectra . (Vafa)

RUEL, JONATHAN Optical Spectroscopy and Velocity Dispersions of SZ-selected Galaxy Clusters . (Stubbs)

SHER, MENG JU Intermediate Band Properties of Femtosecond-Laser Hyperdoped Silicon . (Mazur)

TANG, YIQIAO Chirality of Light and Its Interaction with Chiral Matter . (Cohen)

TAYCHATANAPAT, THITI From Hopping to Ballistic Transport in Graphene-Based Electronic Devices . (Jarillo-Herrero/Yacoby)

VISBAL, ELI  Future Probes of Cosmology and the High-Redshift Universe . (Loeb)

ZELJKOVIC, ILIJA Visualizing the Interplay of Structural and Electronic Disorders in High-Temperature Superconductors using Scanning Tunneling Microscopy . (Hoffman)

ZEVI DELLA PORTA, GIOVANNI Measurement of the Cross-Section for W Boson Production in Association With B-Jets in Proton-Proton Collisions at √S = 7 Tev at the LHC Using the ATLAS Detector . (Franklin)

AU, YAT SHAN LinkInelastic collisions of atomic thorium and molecular thorium monoxide with cold helium-3. (Doyle)

BARR, MATTHEW Coherent Scattering in Two Dimensions: Graphene and Quantum Corrals . (Heller)

CHANG, CHI-MING Higher Spin Holography. (Yin)

CHU, YIWEN Quantum optics with atom-like systems in diamond. (Lukin)

GATANOV, TIMUR Data-Driven Analysis of Mitotic Spindles . (Needleman/Kaxiras)

GRINOLDS, MICHAEL Nanoscale magnetic resonance imaging and magnetic sensing using atomic defects in diamond. (Yacoby)

GUERRA, RODRIGO Elasticity of Compressed Emulsions . (Weitz)

HERRING, PATRICK LinkLow Dimensional Carbon Electronics. (Jarillo-Herrero/Yacoby)

HESS, PAUL W. LinkImproving the Limit on the Electron EDM: Data Acquisition and Systematics Studies in the ACME Experiment. (Gabrielse)

HOU, JENNIFER Dynamics in Biological Soft Materials . (Cohen)

HUBER, FLORIAN Site-Resolved Imaging with the Fermi Gas Microscope. (Greiner)

HUTZLER, NICHOLAS A New Limit on the Electron Electric Dipole Moment . (Doyle)

KESTIN, GREG Light-Shell Theory Foundations. (Georgi)

LYSOV, VYACHESLAV From Petrov-Einstein to Navier-Stokes. (Strominger)

MA, RUICHAO Engineered Potentials and Dynamics of Ultracold Quantum Gases under the Microscope. (Greiner)

MAURER, PETER Coherent control of diamond defects for quantum information science and quantum sensing. (Lukin)

NG, GIM SENG Aspects of Symmetry in de Sitter Space. (Strominger)

NICOLAISEN, LAUREN Distortions in Genealogies due to Purifying Selection. (Desai)

NURGALIEV, DANIYAR A Study of the Radial and Azimuthal Gas Distribution in Massive Galaxy Clusters. (Stubbs)

RUBIN, DOUGLAS Properties of Dark Matter Halos and Novel Signatures of Baryons in Them . (Loeb)

RUSSELL, EMILY Structure and Properties of Charged Colloidal Systems. (Weitz)

SHIELDS, BRENDAN Diamond Platforms for Nanoscale Photonics and Metrology. (Lukin)

SPAUN, BENJAMIN A Ten-Fold Improvement to the Limit of the Electron Electric Dipole Moment. (Gabrielse)

YAO, NORMAN Topology, Localization, and Quantum Information in Atomic, Molecular and Optical Systems. (Lukin)

YEE, MICHAEL Scanning Tunneling Spectroscopy of Topological Insulators and Cuprate Superconductors. (Hoffman)

BENJAMIN, DAVID ISAIAH Impurity Physics in Resonant X-Ray Scattering and Ultracold Atomic Gases . (Demler)

BEN-SHACH, GILAD Theoretical Considerations for Experiments to Create and Detect Localised Majorana Modes in Electronic Systems. (Halperin/Yacoby)

CHANG, WILLY Superconducting Proximity Effect in InAs Nanowires . (Marcus/Yacoby)

CHUNG, HYEYOUN Exploring Black Hole Dynamics . (Randall)

INCORVIA, JEAN ANNE CURRIVAN Nanoscale Magnetic Materials for Energy-Efficient Spin Based Transistors. (Westervelt)

FEIGE, ILYA ERIC ALEXANDER Factorization and Precision Calculations in Particle Physics. (Schwartz)

FRENZEL, ALEX Terahertz Electrodynamics of Dirac Fermions in Graphene. (Hoffman)

HSU, CHIA WEI Novel Trapping and Scattering of Light in Resonant Nanophotonic Structures. (Cohen)

JORGOLLI, MARSELA Integrated nanoscale tools for interrogating living cells. (Park)

KALRA, RITA RANI An Improved Antihydrogen Trap. (Gabrielse)

KOLKOWITZ, SHIMON JACOB Nanoscale Sensing with Individual Nitrogen-Vacancy Centers in Diamond. (Lukin)

LAVRENTOVICH, MAXIM OLEGOVICH Diffusion, Absorbing States, and Nonequilibrium Phase Transitions in Range Expansions and Evolution. (Nelson)

LIU, BO Selected Topics in Scattering Theory: From Chaos to Resonance. (Heller)

LOCKHART, GUGLIELMO PAUL Self-Dual Strings of Six-Dimensional SCFTs . (Vafa)

MAGKIRIADOU, SOFIA Structural Color from Colloidal Glasses. (Manoharan)

MCIVER, JAMES W. Nonlinear Optical and Optoelectronic Studies of Topological Insulator Surfaces. (Hoffman)

MEISNER, AARON MICHAEL Full-sky, High-resolution Maps of Interstellar Dust. (Finkbeiner)

MERCURIO, KEVIN MICHAEL A Search for the Higgs Boson Produced in Association with a Vector Boson Using the ATLAS Detector at the LHC. (Huth)

NOWOJEWSKI, ANDRZEJ KAZIMIERZ Pathogen Avoidance by Caenorhabditis Elegans is a Pheromone-Mediated Collective Behavior. (Levine)

PISKORSKI, JULIA HEGE Cooling, Collisions and non-Sticking of Polyatomic Molecules in a Cryogenic Buffer Gas Cell. (Doyle)

SAJJAD, AQIL An Effective Theory on the Light Shell. (Georgi)

SCHADE, NICHOLAS BENJAMIN Self-Assembly of Plasmonic Nanoclusters for Optical Metafluids. (Manoharan)

SHULMAN, MICHAEL DEAN Entanglement and Metrology with Singlet-Triplet Qubits. (Yacoby)

SPEARMAN, WILLIAM R. Measurement of the Mass and Width of the Higgs Boson in the H to ZZ to 4l Decay Channel Using Per-Event Response Information. (Guimaraes da Costa)

THOMPSON, JEFFREY DOUGLAS A Quantum Interface Between Single Atoms and Nanophotonic Structures. (Lukin)

WANG, TOUT TAOTAO Small Diatomic Alkali Molecules at Ultracold Temperatures. (Doyle)

WONG, CHIN LIN Beam Characterization and Systematics of the Bicep2 and Keck Array Cosmic Microwave Background Polarization Experiments. (Kovac)

AGARWAL, KARTIEK Slow Dynamics in Quantum Matter: the Role of Dimensionality, Disorder and Dissipation. (Demler)

ALLEN, MONICA Quantum electronic transport in mesoscopic graphene devices. (Yacoby)

CHAE, EUNMI Laser Slowing of CaF Molecules and Progress towards a Dual-MOT for Li and CaF. (Doyle)

CHOTIBUT, THIPARAT Aspects of Statistical Fluctuations in Evolutionary and Population Dynamics. (Nelson)

CHOWDHURY, DEBANJAN Interplay of Broken Symmetries and Quantum Criticality in Correlated Electronic Systems. (Sachdev)

CLARK, BRIAN Search for New Physics in Dijet Invariant Mass Spectrum. (Huth)

FARHI, DAVID Jets and Metastability in Quantum Mechanics and Quantum Field Theory. (Schwartz)

FORSYTHE, MARTIN Advances in Ab Initio Modeling of the Many-Body Effects of Dispersion Interactions in Functional Organic Materials. (Aspuru-Guzik/Ni)

GOOD, BENJAMIN Molecular evolution in rapidly evolving populations. (Desai)

HART, SEAN Electronic Phenomena in Two-Dimensional Topological Insulators. (Yacoby)

HE, YANG Scanning Tunneling Microscopy Study on Strongly Correlated Materials. (Hoffman)

HIGGINBOTHAM, ANDREW Quantum Dots for Conventional and Topological Qubits. (Marcus/Westervelt)

HUANG, DENNIS Nanoscale Investigations of High-Temperature Superconductivity in a Single Atomic Layer of Iron Selenide. (Hoffman)

ISAKOV, ALEXANDER The Collective Action Problem in a Social and a Biophysical System. (Mahadevan)

KLALES, ANNA A classical perspective on non-diffractive disorder. (Heller)

KOBY, TIMOTHY Development of a Trajectory Model for the Analysis of Stratospheric Water Vapor. (Anderson/Heller)

KOMAR, PETER Quantum Information Science and Quantum Metrology: Novel Systems and Applications. (Lukin)

KUCSCKO, GEORG Coupled Spins in Diamond: From Quantum Control to Metrology and Many-Body Physics. (Lukin)

LAZOVICH, TOMO Observation of the Higgs boson in the WW* channel and search for Higgs boson pair production in the bb ̅bb ̅ channel with the ATLAS detector. (Franklin)

LEE, JUNHYUN Novel quantum phase transitions in low-dimensional systems. (Sachdev)

LIN, YING-HSUAN Conformal Bootstrap in Two Dimensions. (Yin)

LUCAS, ANDREW Transport and hydrodynamics in holography, strange metals and graphene. (Sachdev)

MACLAURIN, DOUGAL Modeling, Inference and Optimization with Composable Differentiable Procedures. (Adams/Cohen)

PARSONS, MAXWELL Probing the Hubbard Model with Single-Site Resolution. (Greiner)

PATEJ, ANNA Distributions of Gas and Galaxies from Galaxy Clusters to Larger Scales. (Eisenstein/Loeb/Finkbeiner)

PITTMAN, SUZANNE The Classical-Quantum Correspondence of Polyatomic Molecules. (Heller)

POPA, CRISTINA Simulating the Cosmic Gas: From Globular Clusters to the Most Massive Haloes. (Randall)

PORFYRIADIS, ACHILLEAS Gravitational waves from the Kerr/CFT correspondence . (Strominger)

PREISS, PHILIPP Atomic Bose-Hubbard systems with single-particle control. (Greiner)

SHAO, SHU-HENG Supersymmetric Particles in Four Dimensions. (Yin)

YEN, ANDY Search for Weak Gaugino Production in Final States with One Lepton, Two b-jets Consistent with a Higgs Boson, and Missing Transverse Momentum with the ATLAS detector. (Huth)

BERCK, MATTHEW ELI Reconstructing and Analyzing the Wiring Diagram of the Drosophila Larva Olfactory System. (Samuel)

COUGHLIN, MICHAEL WILLIAM Gravitational Wave Astronomy in the LSST Era. (Stubbs)

DIMIDUK, THOMAS Holographic Microscopy for Soft Matter and Biophysics. (Manoharan)

FROST, WILLIAM THOMAS Tunneling in Quantum Field Theory and the Fate of the Universe. (Schwartz)

JERISON, ELIZABETH Epistasis and Pleiotropy in Evolving Populations. (Desai)

KAFKA, GARETH A Search for Sterile Neutrinos at the NOνA Far Detector. (Feldman)

KOSHELEVA, EKATERINA Genetic Draft and Linked Selection in Rapidly Adapting Populations. (Desai)

KOSTINSKI, SARAH VALERIE Geometrical Aspects of Soft Matter and Optical Systems. (Brenner)

KOZYRYEV, IVAN Laser Cooling and Inelastic Collisions of the Polyatomic Radical SrOH. (Doyle)

KRALL, REBECCA Studies of Dark Matter and Supersymmetry. (Reece)

KRAMER, ERIC DAVID Observational Constraints on Dissipative Dark Matter. (Randall)

LEE, LUCY EUNJU Network Analysis of Transcriptome to Reveal Interactions Among Genes and Signaling Pathways. (Levine)

LOVCHINSKY, IGOR Nanoscale Magnetic Resonance Spectroscopy Using Individual Spin Qubits. (Lukin)

LUPSASCA, ALEXANDRU The Maximally Rotating Black Hole as a Critical Point in Astronomy. (Strominger)

MANSURIPUR, TOBIAS The Effect of Intracavity Field Variation on the Emission Properties of Quantum Cascade Lasers. (Capasso/Yacoby)

MARANTAN, ANDREW WILLIAM The Roles of Randomness in Biophysics: From Cell Growth to Behavioral Control. (Mahadevan)

MASHIAN, NATALIE Modeling the Constituents of the Early Universe. (Loeb/Stubbs)

MAZURENKO, ANTON Probing Long Range Antiferromagnetism and Dynamics in the Fermi-Hubbard Model. (Greiner)

MITRA, PRAHAR Asymptotic Symmetries in Four Dimensional Gauge and Gravity Theories. (Strominger)

NEAGU, IULIA ALEXANDRA Evolutionary Dynamics of Infection. (Nowak/Prentiss)

PETRIK WEST, ELIZABETH A Thermochemical Cryogenic Buffer Gas Beam Source of ThO for Measuring the Electric Dipole Moment of the Electron. (Doyle)

RUDELIUS, THOMAS Topics in the String Landscape and the Swampland. (Vafa)

SAKLAYEN, NABIHA Laser-Activated Plasmonic Substrates for Intracellular Delivery. (Mazur)

SIPAHIGIL, ALP Quantum Optics with Diamond Color Centers Coupled to Nanophotonic Devices. (Lukin)

SUN, SIYUAN Search for the Supersymmetric Partner to the Top Quark Using Recoils Against Strong Initial State Radiation. (Franklin)

TAI, MING ERIC Microscopy of Interacting Quantum Systems. (Greiner)

TOLLEY, EMMA Search for Evidence of Dark Matter Production in Monojet Events with the ATLAS Detector. (Morii)

WILSON, ALYSSA MICHELLE New Insights on Neural Circuit Refinement in the Central Nervous System: Climbing Fiber Synapse Elimination in the Developing Mouse Cerebellum Studied with Serial-Section Scanning Electron Microscopy. (Lichtman/Samuel)

BAUCH, ERIK Optimizing Solid-State Spins in Diamond for Nano- to Millimeter scale Magnetic Field Sensing. (Walsworth)

BRACHER, DAVID OLMSTEAD Development of photonic crystal cavities to enhance point defect emission in silicon carbide. (Hu: SEAS)

CHAN, STEPHEN KAM WAH Orthogonal Decompositions of Collision Events and Measurement Combinations in Standard Model $VH\left(b\bar{b}\right)$ Searches with the ATLAS Detector. (Huth)

CHATTERJEE, SHUBHAYU Transport and symmetry breaking in strongly correlated matter with topological order. (Sachdev)

CHOI, SOONWON Quantum Dynamics of Strongly Interacting Many-Body Systems. (Lukin)

CONNORS, JAKE Channel Length Scaling in Microwave Graphene Field Effect Transistors. (Kovac)

DAHLSTROM, ERIN KATRINA Quantifying and modeling dynamics of heat shock detection and response in the intestine of Caenorhabditis elegans. (Levine)

DAYLAN, TANSU A Transdimensional Perspective on Dark Matter. (Finkbeiner)

DOVZHENKO, YULIYA Imaging of Condensed Matter Magnetism Using an Atomic-Sized Sensor. (Yacoby)

EVANS, RUFFIN ELEY An integrated diamond nanophotonics platform for quantum optics. (Lukin)

FLEMING, STEPHEN Probing nanopore - DNA interactions with MspA. (Golovchenko)

FRYE, CHRISTOPHER Understanding Jet Physics at Modern Particle Colliders. (Schwartz)

FU, WENBO The Sachdev-Ye-Kitaev model and matter without quasiparticles. (Sachdev)

GOLDMAN, MICHAEL LURIE Coherent Optical Control of Atom-Like Defects in Diamond: Probing Internal Dynamics and Environmental Interactions. (Lukin)

HE, TEMPLE MU On Soft Theorems and Asymptotic Symmetries in Four Dimensions. (Strominger)

HOYT, ROBERT Understanding Catalysts with Density Functional Theory and Machine Learning. (Kaxiras)

KAPEC, DANIEL STEVEN Aspects of Symmetry in Asymptotically Flat Spacetimes. (Strominger)

LEE, ALBERT Mapping the Relationship Between Interstellar Dust and Radiation in the Milky Way. (Finkbeiner)

LEE, JAEHYEON Prediction and Inference Methods for Modern Astronomical Surveys (Eisenstein, Finkbeiner)

LUKIN, ALEXANDER Entanglement Dynamics in One Dimension -- From Quantum Thermalization to Many-Body Localization (Greiner)

NOVITSKI, ELISE M. Apparatus and Methods for a New Measurement of the Electron and Positron Magnetic Moments. (Gabrielse)

PATHAK, ABHISHEK Holography Beyond AdS/CFT: Explorations in Kerr/CFT and Higher Spin DS/CFT. (Strominger)

PETERMAN, NEIL Sequence-function models of regulatory RNA in E. coli. (Levine)

PICK, ADI Spontaneous Emission in Nanophotonics. (Johnson: MIT)

PO, HOI CHUN Keeping it Real: An Alternative Picture for Symmetry and Topology in Condensed Matter Systems. (Vishwanath)

REN, HECHEN Topological Superconductivity in Two-Dimensional Electronic Systems. (Yacoby)

ROXLO, THOMAS Opening the black box of neural nets: case studies in stop/top discrimination. (Reece)

SHTYK, OLEKSANDR Designing Singularities in Electronic Dispersions (Chamon, Demler)

TONG, BAOJIA Search for pair production of Higgs bosons in the four b quark final state with the ATLAS detector. (Franklin)

WHITSITT, SETH Universal non-local observables at strongly interacting quantum critical points. (Sachdev)

YAN, KAI Factorization in hadron collisions from effective field theory. (Schwartz)

AMATOGRILL, JESSE A Fast 7Li-based Quantum Simulator (Ketterle, Greiner)

BARON, JACOB Tools for Higher Dimensional Study of the Drosophila Larval Olfactory System (Samuel)

BUZA, VICTOR Constraining Primordial Gravitational Waves Using Present and Future CMB Experiments (Kovac)

CHAEL, ANDREW Simulating and Imaging Supermassive Black Hole Accretion Flows (Narayan, Dvorkin)

CHIU, CHRISTIE Quantum Simulation of the Hubbard Model (Greiner)

DIPETRILLO, KARRI Search for Long-Lived, Massive Particles in Events with a Displaced Vertex and a Displaced Muon Using sqrt{s} = 13 TeV pp-Collisions with the ATLAS Detector (Franklin)

FANG, SHIANG Multi-scale Theoretical Modeling of Twisted van der Waals Bilayers (Kaxiras)

GAO, PING Traversable Wormholes and Regenesis (Jafferis)

GONSKI, JULIA Probing Natural Supersymmetry with Initial State Radiation: the Search for Stops and Higgsinos at ATLAS (Morii)

HARVEY, SHANNON Developing Singlet-Triplet Qubits in Gallium Arsenide as a Platform for Quantum Computing (Yacoby)

JEFFERSON, PATRICK Geometric Deconstruction of Supersymmetric Quantum Field Theories (Vafa)

KANG, MONICA JINWOO Two Views on Gravity: F-theory and Holography (Jafferis)

KATES-HARBECK, JULIAN Tackling Complexity and Nonlinearity in Plasmas and Networks Using Artificial Intelligence and Analytical Methods  (Desai, Nowak)

KLEIN, ELLEN Structure and Dynamics of Colloidal Clusters (Manoharan)

LEVIN, ANDREI Single-Electron Probes of Two-Dimensional Materials (Yacoby)

LIU, XIAOMENG Correlated Electron States in Coupled Graphene Double-Layer Heterostructures (Kim)

LIU, LEE Building Single Molecules – Reactions, Collisions, and Spectroscopy of Two Atoms (Ni)

MARABLE, KATHRYN Progress Towards a Sub-ppb Measurement of the Antiproton Magnetic Moment (Gabrielse)

MARSHALL, MASON New Apparatus and Methods for the Measurement of the Proton and Antiproton Magnetic Moments (Gabrielse)

MCNAMARA, HAROLD Synthetic Physiology: Manipulating and Measuring Biological Pattern Formation with Light (Cohen)

MEMET, EDVIN Parking, Puckering, and Peeling in Small Soft Systems (Mahadevan)

MUKHAMETZHANOV, BAURZHAN Bootstrapping High-Energy States in Conformal Field Theories (Jafferis)

OLSON, JOSEPH Plasticity and Firing Rate Dynamics in Leaky Integrate-and-Fire Models of Cortical Circuits (Kreiman)

PANDA, CRISTIAN Order of Magnitude Improved Limit on the Electric Dipole Moment of the Electron (Gabrielse)

PASTERSKI, SABRINA Implications of Superrotations (Strominger)

PATE, MONICA Aspects of Symmetry in the Infrared (Strominger)

PATEL, AAVISHKAR Transport, Criticality, and Chaos in Fermionic Quantum Matter at Nonzero Density (Sachdev)

PHELPS, GREGORY A Dipolar Quantum Gas Microscope (Greiner)

RISPOLI, MATTHEW Microscopy of Correlations at a Non-Equilibrium Phase Transition (Greiner)

ROLOFF, JENNIFER Exploring the Standard Model and beyond with jets from proton-proton collisions at sqrt(s)=13 TeV with the ATLAS Experiment (Huth)

ROWAN, MICHAEL Dissipation of Magnetic Energy in Collisionless Accretion Flows (Narayan and Morii)

SAFIRA, ARTHUR NV Magnetic Noise Sensing and Quantum Information Processing, and Llevitating Micromagnets over Type-II Superconductors (Lukin)

SHI, YICHEN Analytical Steps Towards the Observation of High-Spin Black Holes (Strominger)

THOMSON, ALEXANDRA Emergent Dapless Fermions in Strongly-Correlated Phases of Matter and Quantum Critical Points (Sachdev)

WEBB, TATIANA The Nanoscale Structure of Charge Order in Cuprate Superconductor Bi2201 (Hoffman)

WESSELS, MELISSA Progress Toward a Single-Electron Qubit in an Optimized Planar Penning Trap (Gabrielse)

WILLIAMS, MOBOLAJI Biomolecules, Combinatorics, and Statistical Physics (Shakhnovich, Manoharan)

XIONG, ZHAOXI Classification and Construction of Topological Phases of Quantum Matter (Vishwanath)

ZOU, LIUJUN An Odyssey in Modern Quantum Many-Body Physics (Todadri, Sachdev)

ANDEREGG, LOÏC Ultracold molecules in optical arrays: from laser cooling to molecular collisions (Doyle)

BALTHAZAR, BRUNO 2d String Theory and the Non-Perturbative c=1 Matrix Model (Yin)

BAUM, LOUIS Laser cooling and 1D magneto-optical trapping of calcium monohydroxide (Doyle)

CARR, STEPHEN Moiré patterns in 2D materials (Kaxiras)

COLLIER, SCOTT Aspects of local conformal symmetry in 1+1 dimensions (Yin)

DASGUPTA, ISHITA Algorithmic approaches to ecological rationality in humans and machines (Mahadevan)

DILLAVOU, SAMUEL Hidden Dynamics of Static Friction (Manoharan)

FLAMANT, CEDRIC Methods for Converging Solutions of Differential Equations: Applying Imaginary Time Propagation to Density Functional Theory and Unsupervised Neural Networks to Dynamical Systems (Kaxiras)

HUANG, KO-FAN (KATIE) Superconducting Proximity Effect in Graphene (Kim)

JONES, NATHAN Toward Antihydrogen Spectroscopy (Gabrielse)

KABCENELL, AARON Hybrid Quantum Systems with Nitrogen Vacancy Centers and Mechanical Resonators (Lukin)

KATES-HARBECK, JULIAN Tackling complexity and nonlinearity in plasmas and networks using artificial intelligence and analytical methods (Desai)

KIVLICHAN, IAN Faster quantum simulation of quantum chemistry with tailored algorithms and Hamiltonian s (Aspuru-Guzik, Lukin)

KOSOWSKY, MICHAEL Topological Phenomena in Two-Dimensional Electron Systems (Yacoby)

KUATE DEFO, RODRICK Modeling Formation and Stability of Fluorescent Defects in Wide-Bandgap Semiconductors (Kaxiras)

LEE, JONG YEON Fractionalization, Emergent Gauge Dynamics, and Topology in Quantum Matter (Vishwanath)

MARABLE, KATHRYN Progress towards a sub-ppb measurement of the antiproton magnetic moment (Gabrielse)

MCNAMARA, HAROLD Synthetic Physiology: Manipulating and measuring biological pattern formation with light (Cohen)

MEMET, EDVIN Parking, puckering, and peeling in small soft systems (Mahadevan)

NGUYEN, CHRISTIAN Building quantum networks using diamond nanophotonics (Lukin)

OLSON, JOSEPH Plasticity and Firing Rate Dynamics in Leaky Integrate-and-Fire Models of Cortical Circuits (Samuel)

ORONA, LUCAS Advances In The Singlet-Triplet Spin Qubit (Yacoby)

RACLARIU, ANA-MARIA On Soft Symmetries in Gravity and Gauge Theory (Strominger)

RAVI, AAKASH Topics in precision astrophysical spectroscopy (Dvorkin)

SHI, JING Quantum Hall Effect-Mediated Josephson Junctions in Graphene (Kim)

SHI, ZHUJUN Manipulating light with multifunctional metasurfaces (Capasso, Manoharan)

STEINBERG, JULIA Universal Aspects of Quantum-Critical Dynamics In and Out of Equilibrium  (Sachdev)

WILD, DOMINIK Algorithms and Platforms for Quantum Science and Technology (Lukin)

WU, HAI-YIN Biophysics of Mitotic Spindle Positioning in Caenorhabditis elegans Early Embryos (Needleman)

YU, LI Quantum Dynamics in Various Noise Scenarios (Heller)

BARKLEY, SOLOMON Applying Bayesian Inference to Measurements of Colloidal Dynamics (Manoharan)

BHASKAR, MIHIR Diamond Nanophotonic Quantum Networks (Lukin)

BINTU, BOGDAN Genome-scale imaging: from the subcellular structure of chromatin to the 3D organization of the peripheral olfactory system (Dulac,  Zhuang,  Nelson)

CHEN, MINGYUE On knotted surfaces in R 4   (Taubes,  Vafa)

CHO, MINJAE Aspects of string field theory (Yin)

DIAZ RIVERO, ANA Statistically Exploring Cracks in the Lambda Cold Dark Matter Model (Dvorkin)

DWYER, BO NV centers as local probes of two-dimensional materials (Lukin)

GATES, DELILAH Observational Electromagnetic Signatures of Spinning Black Holes (Strominger)

HANNESDOTTIR, HOFIE Analytic Structure and Finiteness of Scattering Amplitudes (Schwartz)

HART, CONNOR Experimental Realization of Improved Magnetic Sensing and Imaging in Ensembles of Nitrogen Vacancy Centers in Diamond (Walsworth, Park)

HÉBERT, ANNE A Dipolar Erbium Quantum Gas Microscope (Greiner)

JI, GEOFFREY Microscopic control and dynamics of a Fermi-Hubbard system (Greiner)

JOE, ANDREW Interlayer Excitons in Atomically Thin van der Waals Semiconductor Heterostructures (Kim)

KEESLING, ALEXANDER Quantum Simulation and Quantum Information Processing with Programmable Rydberg Atom Arrays (Lukin)

KRAHN, AARON Erbium gas quantum microscope (Greiner)

LANGELLIER, NICHOLAS Analytical and Statistical Models for Laboratory and Astrophysical Precision Measurements (Walsworth, Dvorkin)

LEMMA, BEZIA Hierarchical phases of filamentary active matter  (Dogic, Needleman)

LEVINE, HARRY Quantum Information Processing and Quantum Simulation with Programmable Rydberg Atom Arrays (Lukin)

LEVONIAN, DAVID A Quantum Network Node Based on the Silicon Vacancy Defect in Diamond (Lukin)

LIN, ALBERT Characterizing chemosensory responses of C. elegans with multi-neuronal imaging (Samuel)

LIU, SHANG Symmetry, Topology and Entanglement in Quantum Many-Body Systems (Vishwanath)

LIU, YU Bimolecular chemistry at sub-microkelvin temperatures (Ni)

MACHIELSE, BART Electronic and Nanophotonic Integration of a Quantum Network Node in Diamond (Lukin)

MELISSA, MATTHEW Divergence and diversity in rapidly evolving populations (Desai)

MILBOURNE, TIMOTHY All Features Great and Small: Distinquishing the effects of specific magnetically active features on radial-velocity exoplanet detections  (Walsworth)

MITCHELL, JAMES Investigations into Resinicolous Fungi (Pfister, Samuel)

MONDRIK, NICHOLAS Calibration Hardware and Methodology for Large Photometric Surveys (Stubbs)

NANDE, ANJALIKA Mathematical modeling of drug resistance and the transmission of SARS-CoV-2 (Hill, Desai)

PLUMMER, ABIGAIL Reactions and instabilities in fluid layers and elastic sheets (Nelson)

RODRIGUEZ, VICTOR Perturbative and Non-Perturbative Aspects of Two-Dimensional String Theory (Yin)

ROSENFELD, EMMA Novel techniques for control and transduction of solid-state spin qubits (Lukin)

SAMUTPRAPHOOT, POLNOP A quantum network node based on a nanophotonic interface for atoms in optical tweezers (Lukin)

SCHITTKO, ROBERT A method of preparing individual excited eigenstates of small quantum many-body systems  (Greiner)

SCHNEIDER, ELLIOT Stringy ER = EPR (Jafferis)

SONG, XUE-YANG Emergent and topological phenomena in many-body systems: Quantum spin liquids and beyond  (Vishwanath)

ST. GERMAINE, TYLER Beam Systematics and Primordial Gravitational Wave Constraints from the BICEP/Keck Array CMB Experiments (Kovac)

TORRISI, STEVEN Materials Informatics for Catalyst Stability & Functionality (Kaxiras, Kozinsky)

TURNER, MATTHEW Quantum Diamond Microscopes for Biological Systems and Integrated Circuits (Walsworth)

URBACH, ELANA Nanoscale Magnetometry with Single Spin Qubits in Diamond  (Lukin)

VENKAT, SIDDHARTH Modeling Excitons in Transition Metal Dichalcogenide Monolayers (Heller)

VENKATRAMANI, ADITYA Quantum nonlinear optics: controlling few-photon interactions (Lukin, Vuletić)

WANG, ANN A search for long-lived particles with large ionization energy loss in the ATLAS silicon pixel detector using 139 fb^{−1} of sqrt{s} = 13 TeV pp collisions (Franklin)

WILBURN, GREY An Inverse Statistical Physics Method for Biological Sequence Analysis (Eddy, Nelson)

XU, LINDA Searching for Dark Matter in the Early and Late Universe (Randall)

YI, KEXIN Neural Symbolic Machine Reasoning in the Physical World (Mahadevan, Finkbeiner)

YIN, JUN Improving our view of the Universe using Machine Learning  (Finkbeiner)

YU, YICHAO Coherent Creation of Single Molecules from Single Atoms (Ni)

ZHANG, JESSIE Assembling an array of polar molecules with full quantum-state control (Ni)

ZHAO, FRANK The Physics of High-Temperature Superconducting Cuprates in van der Waals Heterostructures (Kim)

ZHOU, LEO Complexity, Algorithms, and Applications of Programmable Quantum Many-Body Systems (Lukin)

ANDERSEN, TROND Local electronic and optical phenomena in two-dimensional materials (Lukin)

ANDERSON, LAUREL Electrical and thermoelectric transport in mixed-dimensional graphitic mesoscopic systems (Kim)

AUGENBRAUN, BENJAMIN Methods for Direct Laser Cooling of Polyatomic Molecules (Doyle)

BALL, ADAM Aspects of Symmetry in Four Dimensions (Strominger)

BOETTCHER, CHARLOTTE New avenues in circuit QED: from quantum information to quantum sensing (Yacoby)

BORGNIA, DAN The Measure of a Phase (Vishwanath)

BROWNSBERGER, SASHA Modest Methods on the Edge of Cosmic Revolution: Foundational Work to Test Outstanding Peculiarities in the ΛCDM Cosmology (Randall, Stubbs)

BULLARD, BRENDON The first differential cross section measurements of tt̅ produced with a W boson in pp collisions (Morii)

CANATAR, ABDULKADIR Statistical Mechanics of Generalization in Kernel Regression and Wide Neural Networks (Pehlevan)

CESAROTTI, CARI Hints of a Hidden World (Reece)

CHALUPNIK, MICHELLE Quantum and photonic information processing with non-von Neumann architectures (Lončar)

CHEN, YU-TING A Platform for Cavity Quantum Electrodynamics with Rydberg Atom Arrays (Vuletić)

CONWAY, WILL Biophysics of Kinetochore Microtubules in Human Mitotic Spindles (Needleman)

DIETERLE, PAUL Diffusive waves, dynamic instability, and chromosome missegregation: dimensionality, discreteness, stochasticity (Amir)

DORDEVIC, TAMARA A nanophotonic quantum interface for atoms in optical tweezers (Lukin)

ENGELKE, REBECCA Structure and Properties of Moiré Interfaces in Two Dimensional Materials (Kim)

FAN, XING An Improved Measurement of the Electron Magnetic Moment (Gabrielse)

FOPPIANI, NICOLÒ Testing explanations of short baseline neutrino anomalies (Guenette)

GHEORGHE, ANDREI Methods for inferring dynamical systems from biological data with applications to HIV latency and genetic drivers of aging (Hill)

HAEFNER, JONATHAN Improving Kr-83m Calibration and Energy Resolution in NEXT Neutrinoless Double Beta Decay Detectors (Guenette)

KOLCHMEYER, DAVID Toy Models of Quantum Gravity (Jafferis)

MCNAMARA, JAKE The Kinematics of Quantum Gravity (Vafa)

MENKE, TIM Classical and quantum optimization of quantum processors (Aspuru-Guzik, Oliver)

MICHAEL, MARIOS Parametric resonances in Floquet materials (Demler)

OBIED, GEORGES String Theory and its Applications in Cosmology and Particle Physics (Dvorkin, Vafa)

PARIKH, ADITYA Theoretical & Phenomenological Explorations of the Dark Sector (Reece)

PATTI, TAYLOR Quantum Systems for Computation and Vice Versa (Yelin)

PIERCE, ANDREW Local thermodynamic signatures of interaction-driven topological states in graphene (Yacoby)

PIRIE, HARRIS Interacting quantum materials and their acoustic analogs (Hoffman)

REZAI, KRISTINE Probing dynamics of a two-dimensional dipolar spin ensemble (Sushkov)

SAMAJDAR, RHINE Topological and symmetry-breaking phases of strongly correlated systems: From quantum materials to ultracold atoms (Sachdev)

SCURI, GIOVANNI Quantum Optics with Excitons in Atomically Thin Semiconductors (Park)

SHEN, YINAN Mechanics of Interpenetrating Biopolymer Networks in the Cytoskeleton and Biomolecular Condensates (Weitz)

SON, HYUNGMOK Collisional Cooling and Magnetic Control of Reactions in Ultracold Spin-polarized NaLi+Na Mixture (Ketterle)

SUSHKO, ANDREY Structural imaging and electro-optical control of two dimensional semiconductors (Lukin)

TANTIVASADAKARN, NATHANAN Exploring exact dualities in lattice models of topological phases of matter (Vishwanath)

VANDERMAUSE, JONATHAN Active Learning of Bayesian Force Fields (Kozinsky)

ZHOU, HENGYUN Quantum Many-Body Physics and Quantum Metrology with Floquet-Engineered Interacting Spin Systems (Lukin)

ZHU, ZOE Multiscale Models for Incommensurate Layered Two-dimensional Materials (Kaxiras)

AGMON, NATHAN D-instantons and String Field Theory (Yin)

ANG, DANIEL Progress towards an improved measurement of the electric dipole moment of the electron (Gabrielse)

BADEA, ANTHONY Search for massive particles producing all hadronic final states in proton-proton collisions at the LHC with the ATLAS detector (Huth)

BEDROYA, ALEK The Swampland: from macro to micro (Vafa)

BURCHESKY, SEAN Engineered Collisions, Molecular Qubits, and Laser Cooling of Asymmetric Top Molecules (Doyle)

CONG, IRIS Quantum Machine Learning, Error Correction, and Topological Phases of Matter (Lukin)

DAVENPORT, IAN Optimal control and reinforcement learning in simple physical systems (Mahadevan)

DEPORZIO, NICK Dark Begets Light: Exploring Physics Beyond the Standard Model with Cosmology (Dvorkin, Randall)

FAN, RUIHUA Quantum entanglement and dynamics in low-dimensional quantum many-body systems (Vishwanath)

FORTMAN, ANNE Searching for heavy, charged, long-lived particles via ionization energy loss and time-of-flight in the ATLAS detector using 140.1 fb-1 of √s = 13 TeV proton-proton collision data (Franklin)

GABAI, BARAK From the S-matrix to the lattice: bootstrapping QFTs (Yin)

GARCIA, ROY Resource theory of quantum scrambling (Jaffe)

GELLY, RYAN Engineering the excitonic and photonic properties of atomically thin semiconductors (Park)

GUO, HAOYU Novel Transport Phenomena in Quantum Matter (Sachdev)

HIMWICH, MINA Aspects of Symmetry in Classical and Quantum Gravity (Strominger)

HU, YAOWEN Coupled-resonators on thin-film lithium niobate: Photonic multi-level system with electro-optic transition (Lončar)

KHABIBOULLINE, EMIL Quantum Communication and Thermalization, From Theory to Practice (Lukin)

KIM, SOOSHIN Quantum Gas Microscopy of Strongly Correlated Bosons (Greiner)

KING, ELLA Frankenstein's Tiniest Monsters: Inverse Design of Bio-inspired Function in Self-Assembling Materials (Brenner)

LIN, ROBERT Finding and building algebraic structures in finite-dimensional Hilbert spaces for quantum computation and quantum information (Jaffe)

LIU, YU Spin-polarized imaging of interacting fermions in the magnetic phases of Weyl semimetal CeBi (Hoffman)

LU, QIANSHU Cosmic Laboratory of Particle Physics (Reece)

MEISENHELDER, COLE Advances in the Measurement of the Electron Electric Dipole Moment (Gabrielse)

MENDOZA, DOUGLAS Optimization Algorithms for Quantum and Digital Annealers (Aspuru-Guzik)

MILLER, OLIVIA Measuring and Assessing Introductory Students' Physics Problem-Solving Ability (Mazur)

MORRISON, THARON Towards antihydrogen spectroscopy and CW Lyman-alpha via four-wave mixing in mercury (Gabrielse)

NARAYANAN, SRUTHI Soft Travels to the Celestial Sphere (Strominger)

NIU, LAUREN Patterns and Singularities in Elastic Shells (Mahadevan)

OCOLA, PALOMA A nanophotonic device as a quantum network node for atoms in optical tweezers (Lukin)

RABANAL BOLAÑOS, GABRIEL Measuring the production of three massive vector bosons in the four-lepton channel in pp collisions at √s= 13 TeV with the ATLAS experiment at the LHC (Franklin)

SENGUL, CAGAN Studying Dark Matter at Sub-Galactic Scales with Strong Gravitational Lensing (Dvorkin)

SHU, CHI Quantum enhanced metrology in the optical lattice clock (Vuletić)

SPITZIG, ALYSON Using non-contact AFM to study the local doping and damping through the transition in an ultrathin VO2 film (Hoffman)

TARAZI, HOURI UV Completeness: From Quantum Field Theory to Quantum Gravity (Vafa)

WILLIAMS, LANELL What goes right and wrong during virus self assembly? (Manoharan)

YODH, JEREMY Flow of colloidal and living suspensions in confined geometries (Mahadevan)

ZHANG, GRACE Fluctuations, disorder, and geometry in soft matter (Nelson)

AGIA, NICHOLAS On Low-Dimensional Black Holes in String Theory (Jafferis)

BAO, YICHENG Ultracold molecules in an optical tweezer array: From dipolar interaction to ground state cooling (Doyle)

BLOCK, MAXWELL Dynamics of Entanglement with Applications to Quantum Metrology (Yao)

CONTRERAS, TAYLOR Toward Tonne-Scale NEXT Detectors: SiPM Energy-Tracking Planes and Metalenses for Light Collection (Guenette)

DOYLE, SPENCER From Elements to Electronics: Designing Thin Film Perovskite Oxides for Technological Applications (Mundy)

EBADI, SEPEHR Quantum simulation and computation with two-dimensional arrays of neutral atoms (Greiner)

FRASER, KATIE Probing Undiscovered Particles with Theory and Data-Driven Tools (Reece)

GHOSH, SOUMYA Nonlinear Frequency Generation in Periodically Poled Thin Film Lithium Niobate (Lončar)

HAO, ZEYU Emergent Quantum Phases of Electrons in Multilayer Graphene Heterostructures (Kim)

HARTIG, KARA Wintertime Cold Extremes: Mechanisms and Teleconnections with the Stratosphere (Tziperman)

LEE, SEUNG HWAN Spin Waves as New Probes for Graphene Quantum Hall Systems (Yacoby)

LEEMBRUGGEN, MADELYN Buckling, wrinkling, and crumpling of simulated thin sheets (Rycroft)

LI, CHENYUAN Quantum Criticality and Superconductivity in Systems Without Quasiparticles (Sachdev)

MILLER, NOAH Gravity and Lw_{1 + infinity} symmetry (Strominger)

OZTURK, SUKRU FURKAN A New Spin on the Origin of Biological Homochirality (Sasselov)

PAN, GRACE Atomic-scale design and synthesis of unconventional superconductors (Mundy)

POLLACK, DANIEL Synthesis, characterization, and chemical stability analysis of quinones for aqueous organic redox flow batteries (Gordon)

SAYDJARI, ANDREW Statistical Models of the Spatial, Kinematic, and Chemical Complexity of Dust (Finkbeiner)

SHACKLETON, HENRY Fractionalization and disorder in strongly correlated systems (Sachdev)

SKRZYPEK, BARBARA The Case of the Missing Neutrino: Astrophysical Messengers of Planck-Scale Physics (Argüelles-Delgado)

TSANG, ARTHUR Strong Lensing, Dark Perturbers, and Machine Learning (Dvorkin)

XU, MUQING Quantum phases in Fermi Hubbard systems with tunable frustration (Greiner)

YE, BINGTIAN Out-of-equilibrium many-body dynamics in Atomic, Molecular and Optical systems (Yao)

ZAVATONE-VETH, JACOB Statistical mechanics of Bayesian inference and learning in neural networks (Pehlevan)

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• Dissertation

As you prepare your final master’s thesis or Ph.D. dissertation, it is vital that you follow all of The Graduate School’s policies and procedures to ensure that the publication of your research adheres to Duke University guidelines. Review the online dissertation guidelines.

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Senior Thesis and Honors

All Physics majors who pursue research with a faculty member have the opportunity to complete a Senior Thesis. Completing a Senior Thesis is not required for a Bachelor’s degree in Physics but is required for graduation with Honors.

On this page, we provide guidelines for applying to graduate with Honors, applying to complete a Senior Thesis, choosing a thesis research topic, writing the Senior Thesis, and preparing the thesis presentation.

Honors Requirements

Physics majors are granted a Bachelor of Science in Physics with Honors if they satisfy these two requirements beyond the general Physics major requirements.

• The student completes a Senior Thesis by meeting the deadlines and requirements described in the Senior Thesis guidelines section below. 
• The student completes course work with an overall GPA of 3.30 or higher, and a GPA of 3.50 or higher in courses required for the Physics major.

The student applies for the Honors Program by completing an Honors Program Application Form by mid-May.  Eligibility is confirmed by the Director of Undergraduate Studies.

Senior Thesis Guidelines

• Students must submit a Senior Thesis Application Form once they identify a research project in consultation with a faculty member with whom they are conducting theoretical, computational, or experimental physics research. The application form is attached to this webpage and is also available from the Student Services Specialist. The application must be submitted by 4 pm on Friday prior to the Thanksgiving break of the academic year in which the student plans to graduate. 
• Credit for the project is assigned by the research advisor within the framework of PHYSICS 205 , Senior Thesis Research. A minimum of 3 units of PHYSICS 205 must be completed for a letter grade during the student’s Senior year. Work completed in the Senior Thesis program may not be used as a substitute for regular required courses for the Physics major.
• A written thesis and presentation of the work at its completion are required for the Senior Thesis. The Senior Thesis candidate is required to present the project at the department's Senior Thesis Presentation Program in mid to late May. The expectation is that the student's advisor, second reader, and all other Senior Thesis candidates attend. Students may invite their family and friends as guests. 

Timeline for Completing a Senior Thesis & Applying for Honors in Physics

• First week of October: Students receive information about Senior Thesis Application via email (sent from the Student Services Specialist).
• Mid-November, before Thanksgiving break: Senior Thesis Application is due by 4pm on the Friday before Thanksgiving break. No late submissions will be accepted. Students will be notified if their application is approved after Thanksgiving break.
• First week of April: Students sign up for a date/time to present their Senior Thesis; presentations are scheduled in May. At this point, you should have your thesis title and abstract ready for submission.
• Students present their Senior Thesis in front of their advisor, second reader, other presenters, and guests. 
• Students submit the final version of their Senior Thesis shortly after the presentation; the precise deadline will be announced in early May.
• Students who present their Senior Thesis AND meet the GPA requirements must complete the Honors Program Application by mid-May to graduate with Honors. 

Choosing a thesis topic and writing the thesis

No later than the autumn quarter of your senior year, but preferably earlier, during a summer research position.

No later than winter quarter of your senior year.

When you have completed your senior thesis, you should be an expert on the particular area of research discussed in your thesis. Some projects are independent of the advisor’s research; some projects are a well-defined sub-area within the advisor’s broader research program.

Your thesis advisor, as well as graduate students and/or postdocs with whom you have worked closely, can provide advice. The Hume Center for Writing and Speaking is also a useful resource:  http://undergrad.stanford.edu/tutoring-support/hume-center

Students normally find a Senior Thesis topic and advisor through the Summer Research Program. Other sources are courses such as Physics 59 (Frontiers in Physics Research), faculty web pages and resources on the Undergraduate Research and Independent Projects web page: https://undergrad.stanford.edu/opportunities/research

Broad “review articles” in the field and references therein provide valuable background information. Your advisor and group members should also be able to point you to relevant papers.

You are required to enroll in Physics 205 (Senior Thesis Research) under your advisors’ section during your senior year for a minimum of 3 units. The course must be taken for letter grade. 1 unit = 3 hours of research per week.

No, you cannot earn course credit and get paid for the same work.

An advisor may occasionally have funds to support you during the academic year, but you cannot earn course credit for the same work.

The following links contain information on how to apply for funding during the academic year and during the summer term – Student Grants:  https://undergrad.stanford.edu/opportunities/research/get-funded Physics Summer Research Program:  https://physics.stanford.edu/academics/undergraduate-students/summer-research

The length of the thesis varies, depending on the type of thesis. A more theoretical thesis, perhaps fairly dense with equations, may be shorter than an experimental thesis containing a number of figures showing the experimental setup, plots of the data, fits to the data, etc. Most theses are between 20 and 60 pages long.

Electronic versions of Physics Senior Theses written in 2010 or later are available online here: http://searchworks.stanford.edu/catalog?f[collection][]=ds247vz0452

The thesis should contain the following elements:

• A title page listing the title, the student author, the primary and secondary readers, and the date.
• An abstract, which could be on the title page or inside the document.
• An acknowledgment at the beginning or after the abstract.
• Table of contents.
• A body, divided into sections and subsections.
• A bibliography of references at the end. Include page numbers.

Each table should have a caption above the table and each figure should have a caption below the figure. Include a reference to each table and figure in the text.  If you have a large number of detailed plots, or a very long detailed derivation, consider putting it in an Appendix so that the text flows better.

One-and-a-half spacing is best. It makes it easier to read and easier for your readers to mark up.

Yes, but it must be physics related and you must have a faculty member in Physics as the second reader.

Yes, a literature review should be included.

Your target audience should be students in your major. Other Physics majors should be able to follow the thesis and understand what you did – although they might not follow all the details.

Yes, as long as you include a citation to the publication.

Several Stanford professors have done research based on the results of my research. May I include some of their results because they greatly enrich my overall project or does the thesis have to be 100% on data I took myself? It is definitely OK to include other data as long as you provide credit and appropriate citations.

Preparing the thesis presentation

It is typical to use slides prepared with the presentation software of your choice.

Students should bring their own laptop and any necessary adapters.

•  PRACTICE!!
• The   presentation s   are   15 minutes and 5 minutes for questions . The next presenter will be asked to set up at the 20-minute mark.
• Practice presenting from your laptop in the same room well before the actual presentation. In this way, you can avoid embarrassing delays due to technical problems or missing connectors, etc. Any technical delays will only reduce your speaking time.
• Make sure you start your presentation with an  accessible  overview. The audience will contain mainly non-experts in the field you are going to discuss. This is often the most difficult aspect of any presentation since you must bring along the non-experts while explaining later technical results and their importance without losing the audience.
• PRACTICE!! (A good strategy is to do timed 15-minute practice sessions in front of your classmates, especially those who will also be presenting a thesis. Encourage your audience to give you feedback and to ask questions afterward about anything that was not clear.)

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Graduate students are highly encouraged to seek out research areas by taking to the faculty early on in their MS program.  In theory, your research (including writing your thesis and defending) is supposed to take one year.  On average it takes about 1.5 years.  One semester to find what type of research you are going to conduct, another semester to actually do your research, and lastly, one semester to write and defend your thesis.

If you arrive as a new graduate student (lets say) this Fall 2019 and want to graduate in two years (Spring 2021), you should be talking to faculty members about prospective thesis projects starting Spring 2020. This way, you can familiarize yourself in the lab and with your advisor.  You could then start to conduct your research Summer 2020 and finish up your research in Fall 2020, and finally write and defend your thesis in Spring 2021.  Keep in mind that in order to graduate (e.g. in Spring 2021) you have to enroll in Thesis 799A after completing a thesis committee form. Students must also apply to graduate the semester they intend to graduate. Details can be found on the Graduate Affairs website .

Below are useful documents and links for your thesis.

Thesis manual(s) and other useful documents for graduate students:

• Thesis formatting information
• Thesis formatting guidelines (pdf)

Steps for YOUR thesis defense:

• Determine a defense date.
• You must give a complete working copy of your thesis to your committee members at least two weeks prior to your defense date.
• You must submit information to Suzanne Sorger ( [email protected] ) via email  5 working  days prior to your date, which will include the following:
• Defense date and time,
• Committee members,
• Abstract of your thesis (do not include as an attachment, write your abstract in the email),
• Request a room (usually P-250, but other larger rooms can be requested),
• Make sure when you are requesting a room, it does not interfere with other classes listed in the SDSU class schedule.

Please allocate approximately 2 hours for your defense.  A typical defense allotted time is as follows:

• approximately 45 minutes for your presentation (give or take 10 minutes),
• about 10-15 minutes of general audience questions,
• 30 minutes of closed door questions with your committee members,
• 15-30 minutes of committee members (only) deciding your entire future (if you passed or failed).

Once ALL of your committee members have decided you passed and you have obtained the signature page with their approval, and you have made all necessary corrections to your thesis, your next step is to submit your thesis to Montazuma Publishing and begin the publication process.  All of the information on the submission and publication process can be found on the Montezuma Publishing website.

DISCLAIMER:  Please note all documents found here are for information purposes only.  Please refer to Montezuma Publishing for updated information on ALL documents found on this page.  This page was last updated January 2019.

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GW Department of Physics Guide to the PhD

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The purpose of this guide is to clarify the formal steps required to successfully propose and defend a PhD in physics at GW. It is assumed that students have passed all other formal requirements (coursework, etc., as specified in the CCAS Virtual Student Handbook and departmental requirements) prior to entering their PhD research project. If you are uncertain what these requirements are, ask the physics director of graduate studies . In this guide, the abbreviation DGS refers to the director of graduate studies or the DGS’ designated representative.

All PhD students must read the complete guide and then download and submit the form acknowledging that you have read it. Linked on this page are several other forms that will need to be filled in at various stages as you progress through the project. All forms need to be signed and certified by the DGS. Also, various steps may require giving advance notice before going on to the next step. The time periods associated with these advance notices are firm requirements, not suggestions.

Approved by Physics Graduate Committee: March 23, 2017 Amendments Approved by Physics Graduate Committee: September 2017 Amendments Approved by Physics Graduate Committee: March 2019

Please download and sign the signature page to acknowledge that you have read and understood the instructions laid out in this guide.

Acknowledgment of Department Guide to the PhD (PDF)

Find a physics faculty member and agree with him/her on a Ph.D. project; this faculty member is going to be your Ph.D. advisor (also referred to as dissertation director, supervisor, etc.). If your primary advisor is not a physics faculty member at GW, you will need a GW physics faculty member as co-advisor. The expectation is that you present your dissertation proposal no later than the third year of your studies . Delay beyond that may indicate lack of academic progress and may lead to dismissal.

Start researching your project under your Ph.D. advisor’s guidance and prepare a proposal. You do not need to include already performed original work in the proposal; outline the project, its original content and scientific significance, resources needed, how you expect to achieve your goals and specify a tentative and feasible timeline. The narrative of the proposal should not exceed 15 pages , not counting references. If you have material for more than 15 pages, condense it into 15 pages. For a mandatory proposal document template contact the physics graduate studies advisor .

Timeline to Proposal: In the fourth semester, you take one of the advanced graduate courses “Astrophysics/Biophysics/Nuclear and Particle Physics I or II” and work with an advisor in a “Topics-In” class. You continue immersion in the research group during the following summer. By the end of that semester, you also have passed the General 1 Examination. By the beginning of your fifth semester, you thus should have developed a clear idea where your research interest lies. The department therefore expects that you present a dissertation proposal not later than in your fifth semester. In order to help you, the DGS tracks your progress towards that goal.

If you have not passed your dissertation proposal by the end of the fifth semester, the DGS will usually recommend to the CCAS associate dean of graduate studies that you be put on probation for the next (sixth) semester. You need to present a dissertation proposal by the end of the probation period. Before making such a recommendation, the DGS discusses with you and your advisor your progress, and whether you should be recommended for probation and consults with the Physics Graduate Committee. The DGS’s decision takes into account your annual candidate report and mitigating circumstances, including but not limited to: switching advisors, passing the general examination in the fourth semester (retake) and personal hardship. In such cases, the recommendation for probation can be delayed by one semester. That means you will definitely be recommended for probation for the seventh semester if you have not presented a dissertation proposal by the end of the sixth semester.

At the end of the probationary period, the DGS discusses again your progress with you and our advisor. If you have presented a dissertation proposal, the DGS recommends to the CCAS associate dean of graduate studies that the probation be lifted. If you have not, the DGS will, after consultation with the Physics Graduate Committee, decide whether to recommend that the associate dean of graduate studies terminate you from the program for lack of academic progress. The DGS’s decision takes into account your annual candidate report and, in addition, mitigating circumstances which were not considered when probation was recommended.

When you pass the general examination and as part of the feedback to each annual candidate report, you receive an email to remind you of these rules.

When your advisor agrees that your proposal is ready to be presented to the public, your advisor and you need to decide on your  Dissertation Research Committee , composed of your advisor (and your co-advisor if necessary) and two readers. The choice of readers needs to be endorsed by the DGS. The Research Committee stays in place for the duration of your dissertation project. Readers are physics faculty members who have an active interest in your project and have the necessary expertise to provide additional help and guidance for your project. (If at any time during the course of your Ph.D. research a reader should no longer be available to serve on the committee, the reader must be replaced immediately while your project is still on-going. This replacement requires the approval of the DGS. Such approval is also required if a reader is to be replaced for any other reason.)

The formal thesis proposal defense may be scheduled after the DGS receives written consent (use the Dissertation Proposal Research Committee Sign-Off form) from all members of the Research Committee that your proposal is ready for presentation. Announcements must be sent out to the entire Physics Department at least two weeks in advance. Announcement templates are available from the Physics Department . Please note: Unless the DGS agrees that there are valid mitigating circumstances, presentations should not be scheduled outside of regular lecturing or exam periods. (Inconvenience, scheduling problems, or being too busy otherwise are not mitigating circumstances. Plan ahead.)

The thesis proposal defense is conducted publicly in front of the entire Research Committee. The proceedings are chaired by the DGS. The Ph.D. candidate gives a 20-minute presentation followed by a public Q&A session between readers and candidate. After that, the chair may invite the public to pose questions. Following these, there is a discussion with the readers in a closed session. The advisor should not engage in presenting the project, but may provide brief clarifications if necessary. The chair does not participate in the discussion. The whole process lasts typically 90 minutes.

At the conclusion of the proposal defense, the Proposal Examination Form is filled in and certified by the chair and signed by the members of the Research Committee. In addition, the Advancement to Candidacy Form is filled in and signed by the DGS, certifying that you have satisfied all prerequisites for starting your PhD project and recording the members of your Research Committee. The DGS sends this document to CCAS as the official record of the start of your candidacy.

M. Phil. Degree:  Students who have advanced to candidacy and have completed at least 48 course credits are eligible for the M. Phil. degree. Upon request, the DGS files the necessary form, Degree Along The Way (M. Phil.) Form, with CCAS; the student applies to the registrar and pays a modest fee.

After passing the PhD general examination, you are required to submit a progress report to the DGS (with details as specified by the Physics Graduate Committee). If you do not have an advisor yet, it will detail your endeavors to identify and integrate with a research group.

Once a year,   usually at the end of spring semester, until the Ph.D. project is concluded, you and your advisor are required to submit a progress report to the DGS (with details as specified by the Physics Graduate Committee); the DGS gives copies of these reports to the readers. Doctoral students are also required to hold annual meetings with their entire research committee (the dissertation director(s) and readers should be present at the same time) and report the outcome of the meeting as a part of their regular annual reporting process. The student is responsible for organizing the meeting (with their dissertation director's assistance). The meetings should occur annually with the first meeting being held no later than 1 year after the thesis proposal defense (this new rule is effective starting June 1st, 2023). 

The readers provide advice and guidance and evaluate your progress between proposal and defense. You are encouraged to take advantage of their expertise. You and your academic advisor must inform the DGS and the readers immediately of major changes in the project’s scope or direction.

As of 2019, GW has revised the steps necessary before graduation. Keep these steps in mind when you plan your dissertation. Confirm all of the following dates with CCAS or Electronic Theses and Dissertations Submission (ETD) at GW , not with the DGS.

Intent to Graduate:  You must apply to the registrar for PhD graduation in spring/summer/fall by early February/July/October; check exact dates with registrar’s office. This is an “intent to graduate;” your thesis need not be finished, you need not have defended. If your defense is delayed, you can roll the application over to the next semester without new costs.

Thesis Pre-Clearance:  Deadline for all these items is early April/July/November; check ETD for exact dates. You must have completed the ETD workshop on dissertation formatting and publishing requirements, and submitted a pre-version of your thesis for formatting clearance to the library/ETD. This makes sure there is no last-minute formatting scramble. Your thesis does not need to be final.

You also need to submit the Dissertation Examination/Defense Form (CCAS)  to the CCAS Graduate Studies Office. This does not certify that your defense is successful, but that you plan to defend your dissertation in the current semester. Signature of the DGS is required (“Defense Committee Chair”). All Readers and Committee Members must be listed.

Dissertation Defense Completion: The Dissertation Defense must be completed by mid-April/July/November; check CCAS/ETD for exact dates. After the successful dissertation defense, the DGS submits the Final Dissertation Committee Signoff Form to the CCAS Graduate Studies Office.

ETD Approval Completion:  Often, the Dissertation Committee will request changes. After these have been approved, upload your final, approved dissertation to Proquest via the university ETD site . ETD must certify that you have indeed successfully uploaded by early May/August/December; check ETD for exact dates. It is not enough to upload in time; by the deadline, ETD must have approved that your upload fulfils all specifications, including formatting. Not doing wild formatting changes after the pre-clearance is imperative for success.

When you finish research work on your project, write up your findings in a thesis document that must follow established guidelines; for a document template and further instructions contact the Physics Graduate Studies Advisor . You must then seek formal approval of your completed dissertation from the Research Committee. The state of the thesis at this stage should be a finished product in form, appearance, and scientific scope and content. It is bad practice to deliver an unfinished product and rely on post-examination revisions to correct deficiencies, and readers should not sign off on such unfinished drafts.

Satisfactory state of your thesis is certified by the members of the Research Committee in the Dissertation Research Committee Approval Form . All members of the Research Committee unanimously agree that the Ph.D. dissertation draft presented to them is acceptable in its current form and suitable for distribution to the examiners (see following paragraph) in preparation for the dissertation defense. If only one member of the Research Committee disagrees, the form cannot be filed, the defense cannot go forward at this point in time and you need to continue working on improvements until all members are in agreement.

The form also specifies departmental and outside examiners for the dissertation defense. The Physics Department limits the number of examiners to two: one from within the department (preferably from a different area of expertise) and one from outside the department. None of the examiners can have had a direct role in the dissertation research process. (They may be affiliated with the same research group as the candidate, as long as they were not involved in any of the project’s work and have no vested interest in its outcome.) The two examiners plus the members of the Research Committee form your Defense Examination Committee . The DGS chairs the committee.

You send the completed form to the DGS, whose signature certifies approval of the Research Committee and proper appointment of the Examination Committee. The Ph.D. defense must not be scheduled without this certification. It is customary to informally discuss tentative defense dates with prospective committee members prior to DGS approval.

After this form is submitted to the DGS, get the DGS signature on the Dissertation Examination/Defense Form (CCAS)  and submit it to CCAS. Signature of the DGS is required (“Defense Committee Chair”). All readers and committee members must be listed. Be reminded that CCAS has an early-April/July/November deadline.

The CCAS Graduate Student Handbook  lays out requirements and best practices for PhD examinations in the Columbian College.

The Defense Examination Committee consists of the Research Committee formed at the time of the proposal defense augmented by two examiners — one from within the Physics Department and one from the outside, as specified in Step 2 — and by the DGS, who chairs the actual defense proceedings.

The version of the dissertation that is to be defended must be circulated to all examination committee members at least one month prior to the examination. Announcements of the examination must be sent out to the entire Physics Department at least two weeks in advance. Announcement templates are available from the Physics Department . Please note: Unless the DGS agrees that there are valid mitigating circumstances, examinations should not be scheduled outside of regular lecturing and exam periods. (Inconvenience, scheduling problems, or being too busy otherwise, are not mitigating circumstances. Plan ahead.)

The dissertation defense is conducted publicly in front of the entire Examination Committee. The DGS chairs the proceedings, but does not participate in the discussion. As part of the public part of the examination, you present your Ph.D. project and its scientific outcome in a 25-min lecture, followed by a Q&A session between examiners, readers and you. The advisor should not engage in presenting the project, but may provide brief clarifications if necessary. The chair may invite the public to pose questions as well. At the discretion of the chair, part of the examination may take place in a closed session. Further details of how to conduct the examination are specified in the CCAS Graduate Student Handbook .

The decision to pass the dissertation and defense is reached in closed session by majority vote of the two examiners and the two readers; director(s) and chair do not vote. A split 2-2 vote counts as ‘pass’. Possible outcomes are (a) dissertation accepted as presented; (b) dissertation accepted subject to successful completion of mandatory revisions within specified timeframe; or (c) dissertation is unacceptable. The outcome of the defense is certified by the signatures of all members of the Examination Committee in the Final Examination Committee Sign-Off (Physics) document. (The actual vote tally is not recorded.)

If revisions of the dissertation should be necessary, the form needs to clearly specify their scope, extent and the expected timeline for submission of the revised, final version, and the committee members (readers or examiners, not a thesis advisor) who will sign off. (Ideally, at this stage none of the revision requests should come from the Research Committee since they already had ample opportunity to request corrections prior to signing off on the thesis under Presenting Your Proposal.)

If the dissertation was accepted as presented, skip this step.

If revisions are necessary, the correspondingly revised thesis is examined by the committee members designated in the previous step. If revisions take significantly longer than the previously agreed upon expected timeframe, the DGS must be notified, who will then decide whether the delay warrants reconvening the examination committee for an executive session to assess the situation.

If the revised dissertation is found acceptable, the Final Dissertation Committee Signoff (CCAS) Form (PDF) is signed by the DGS certifying that all requirements have been successfully completed and you may be awarded a Ph.D. Degree. The DGS submits this form and the Application for Graduation Form  to CCAS. You upload the final version of the thesis to the ProQuest dissertation library (for further information, see the GW Office of Graduate and Postdoctoral Affairs website ). Students and their faculty advisors are responsible for complying with the ETD formatting requirements to ensure the final approval and acceptance by ProQuest.

The day you successfully upload the thesis to ProQuest is the day your thesis is finally approved. This day also determines the semester in which your degree is awarded. If a “graduation date” has been set for you (e.g., by granting an extension request), you need to have uploaded your thesis successfully to ProQuest by that date. Graduations are counted as “Fall term” when the upload is finished by early January of the following term. Ph.D. degrees are conferred only during May graduation. For exact dates and other terms, see the GW Academic Calendar .

Timeline for PhD Proposal Defense (PDF)

Timeline for PhD Thesis Defense (PDF)  

• PhD Proposal LaTeX Template (ZIP)
• PhD Thesis LaTeX Template (ZIP)
• PhD (proposal/thesis) Defense Announcement Template (DOC)
• Proposal Examination Form (PDF)
• Dissertation Proposal Research Committee Sign-Off (PDF)
• Advancement to Candidacy Form (PDF)
• Dissertation Examination Research Committee Approval (PDF)
• Dissertation Examination/Defense Form (PDF)
• Physics Examination Committee Sign-Off Form (PDF)
• CCAS Final Dissertation Committee Sign‐Off Form (PDF)
• Annual PhD Candidate Report Form (PDF)
• Memo about the dual enrollment option for Physics PhD graduate students (PDF)
• Degree Along the Way Application Form (PDF)

MIT Libraries logo MIT Libraries

MIT Specifications for Thesis Preparation

Approved November 2022 for use in the 2022-2023 academic year. Updated March 2023 to incorporate changes to MIT Policies and Procedures 13.1.3 Intellectual Property Not Owned by MIT .

View this page as an accessible PDF .

Table of Contents

• Thesis Preparation Checklist

Timeline for submission and publication

• Bachelor’s degree thesis
• Graduate degree thesis

Dual degree theses

Joint theses, what happens to your thesis, title selection, embedded links.

• Special circumstances

Signature page

Abstract page.

• Acknowledgments

Biographical notes

Table of contents, list of figures.

• List of tables
• List of supplemental material

Notes and bibliographic references

Open licensing, labeling copyright in your thesis, use of previously published material in your thesis, digital supplementary material, physical supplementary material, starting with accessible source files, file naming.

• How to submit thesis information to the MIT Libraries

Placing a temporary hold on your thesis

Changes to a thesis after submission, permission to reuse or republish from mit theses, general information.

This guide has been prepared by the MIT Libraries, as prescribed by the Committee on Graduate Programs and the Committee on Undergraduate Program, to assist students and faculty in the preparation of theses. The Institute is committed to the preservation of each student’s thesis because it is both a requirement for the MIT degree and a record of original research that contains information of lasting value.

In this guide, “department” refers to a graduate or undergraduate program within an academic unit, and “thesis” refers to the digital copy of the written thesis. The official thesis version of record, which is submitted to the MIT Libraries, is the digital copy of the written thesis that has been approved by the thesis committee and certified by the department in fulfillment of a student’s graduation requirement.

The requirements in this guide apply to all theses and have been specified both to facilitate the care and dissemination of the thesis and to assure the preservation of the final approved document. Individual departments may dictate more stringent requirements.

Before beginning your thesis research, remember that the final output of this research—your thesis document—should only include research findings that may be shared publicly, in adherence with MIT’s policy on Open Research and Free Interchange of Information . If you anticipate that your thesis will contain content that requires review by an external sponsor or agency, it is critical that you allow sufficient time for this review to take place prior to thesis submission. 

Questions not answered in this guide should be referred to the appropriate department officer or to the MIT Libraries ( [email protected] ).

• Final edited and complete thesis PDF is due to your department on the date specified in the Academic Calendar.
• Hold requests should be submitted to the Vice Chancellor for Undergraduate and Graduate Education or TLO concurrent with your thesis submission.
• Thesis information is due to the MIT Libraries before your date of graduation.
• Departments must transfer theses to the MIT Libraries within 30 days from the last day of class (end of term).
• One week later (30 days from the last day of classes + 7 days) or one week after the degree award date (whichever is later) the MIT Libraries may begin publishing theses in DSpace@MIT.
• If you have requested and received a temporary (up to 90-day) hold on the publication of your thesis from the Vice Chancellor, your thesis will be placed on hold as soon as it is received by the Libraries, and the 90-day hold will begin 30 days from the last day of class (end of term).
• If your thesis research is included in a disclosure to the TLO, the TLO may place your thesis on temporary hold with the Libraries, as appropriate.

Submitting your thesis document to your department

Your thesis document will be submitted to your department as a PDF, formatted and including the appropriate rights statement and sections as outlined in these specifications. Your department will provide more specific guidance on submitting your files for certification and acceptance.

Your department will provide information on submitting:

• A PDF/A-1  of your final thesis document (with no signatures)
• Signature page (if required by your department; your department will provide specific guidance)
• Original source files used to create the PDF of your thesis (optional, but encouraged)
• Supplementary materials  (optional and must be approved by your advisor and program)

Degree candidates must submit their thesis to the appropriate office of the department in which they are registered on the dates specified in the Academic Calendar. ( Academic Calendar | MIT Registrar ). September, February, and May/June are the only months in which degrees are awarded.

Bachelor’s degree theses

Graduate degree theses, submitting your thesis information to the libraries.

Information about your thesis must be submitted to the Libraries thesis submission and processing system  prior to your day of graduation. The information you provide must match the title page and abstract of your thesis . See How to submit thesis information to the MIT Libraries section for more details .

The academic department is required to submit the thesis to the MIT Libraries within one month after the last day of the term in which the thesis was submitted ( Faculty Regulation 2.72 ). The thesis document becomes part of the permanent archival collection. All thesis documents that have been approved will be transferred electronically to the MIT Libraries by a department representative via the MIT Libraries thesis submission and processing system .

The full-text PDF of each thesis is made publicly available in DSpace@MIT . A bibliographic record will appear in the MIT Libraries’ catalog, as well as the OCLC database WorldCat, which is accessible to libraries and individuals worldwide. Authors may also opt-in to having their thesis made available in the ProQuest Dissertations & Theses Global database.

Formatting specifications

Your work will be a more valuable research tool for other scholars if it can be located easily. Search engines use the words in the title, and sometimes other descriptive words, to locate works. Therefore,

• Be sure to select a title that is a meaningful description of the content of your manuscript; and
• Do: “The Effects of Ion Implantation and Annealing on the Properties of Titanium Silicide Films on Silicon Substrates”
• Do: “Radiative Decays on the J/Psi to Two Pseudoscalar Final States”

You may include clickable links to online resources within the thesis file. Make the link self-descriptive so that it can stand on its own and is natural language that fits within the surrounding writing of your paragraph. The full URL should be included as a footnote or bibliography citation (dependent on citation style).

• Sentence in thesis: Further information is available on the MIT Writing and Communications Center’s website . The full-text PDF of each thesis is made publicly available in DSpace@MIT .
• Footnote or Bibliography: follow the rules of your chosen citation style and include the full website URL, in this case http://libraries.mit.edu/mit-theses

Sections of your thesis

Required (all information should be on a single page)

The title page should contain the title, name of the author (this can be the author’s preferred name), previous degrees, the degree(s) to be awarded at MIT, the date the degree(s) will be conferred (May/June, September, or February only), copyright notice (and legend, if required), and appropriate names of thesis supervisor(s) and student’s home department or program officer.

The title page should have the following fields in the following order and centered (including spacing) :

Thesis title as submitted to registrar

Author’s preferred name

Previous degree information, if applicable

Submitted to the [department name] in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree(s) of

[degree name]

Massachusetts Institute of Technology

Month and year degree will be granted (May or June, September, February ONLY)

Copyright statement

This permission legend MUST follow: The author hereby grants to MIT a nonexclusive, worldwide, irrevocable, royalty-free license to exercise any and all rights under copyright, including to reproduce, preserve, distribute and publicly display copies of the thesis, or release the thesis under an open-access license.

[Insert 2 blank lines]

Note: The remaining fields are left aligned and not centered

Authored by: [Author name]

[Author’s department name] (align with the beginning of the author’s name from the previous line)

[Date thesis is to be presented to the department] (align with the beginning of the author’s name from the first line)

Certified by: [Advisor’s full name as it appears in the MIT catalog]

   [Advisor’s department as it appears in the MIT catalog] (align with the beginning of the advisor’s name from the previous line), Thesis supervisor

Accepted by: [name]

[title – line 1] (align with the beginning of the name from the previous line)

[title – line 2] (align with the beginning of the name from the first line)

Note: The name and title of this person varies in different degree programs and may vary each term; contact the departmental thesis administrator for specific information

• Students in joint graduate programs (such as Harvard-MIT Health Sciences and Technology and Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution) should list both their MIT thesis supervisor and the supervisor from the partner academic institution.
• The name and title of the department or the program officer varies in different degree programs and may vary each term. Contact the departmental graduate administrator for specific information.
• For candidates receiving two degrees, both degrees to be awarded should appear on the title page. For candidates in dual degree programs, all degrees and departments or programs should appear on the title page, and the names of both department heads/committee chairs are required. Whenever there are co-supervisors, both names should appear on the title page.

Here are some PDF examples of title pages:

• Bachelor’s Degree – using a Creative Commons license
• PhD candidate – using a Creative Commons license
• Master’s candidate – dual degrees
• Masters’ candidates – multiple authors
• Masters’ candidates – multiple authors with dual degrees and extra committee members
• Bachelor’s Degree – change of thesis supervisor

Title page: Special circumstances – change of thesis supervisor

If your supervisor has recently died or is no longer affiliated with the Institute:

• Both this person and your new supervisor should be listed on your title page
• Under the new supervisor’s name, state that they are approving the thesis on behalf of the previous supervisor
• An additional page should be added to the thesis, before the acknowledgments page, with an explanation about why a new supervisor is approving your thesis on behalf of your previous supervisor. You may also thank the new supervisor for acting in this capacity
• Review this PDF example of a title page with a change in supervisor

If your supervisor is external to the Institute (such as an industrial supervisor):

• You should acknowledge this individual on the Acknowledgements page as appropriate, but should not list this person on the thesis title page
• The full thesis committee and thesis readers can be acknowledged on the Acknowledgements page, but should not be included on the title page

Not Required

Please consult with your department to determine if they are requiring or requesting an additional signature page.

Each thesis must include an abstract of generally no more than 500 words single-spaced. The abstract should be thought of as a brief descriptive summary, not a lengthy introduction to the thesis. The abstract should immediately follow the title page.

The abstract page should have the following fields in the following order and centered (including spacing):

• Thesis title

Submitted to the [Department] on [date thesis will be submitted] in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree of [Name of degree to be received]

[Insert 1 blank line]

Single-spaced summary; approximately 500 words or less; try not to use formulas or special characters

Thesis supervisor: [Supervisor’s name]

Title: [Title of supervisor]

The Abstract page should include the same information as on the title page. With the thesis title, author name, and submitting statement above the abstract, the word “ABSTRACT” typed before the body of the text, and the thesis supervisor’s name and title below the abstract.

Acknowledgements

An acknowledgement page may be included and is the appropriate place to include information such as external supervisor (such as an industrial advisor) or a list of the full thesis committee and thesis readers. Please note that your thesis will be publicly available online at DSpace@MIT , which is regularly crawled and indexed by Google and other search-engine providers.

The thesis may contain a short biography of the candidate, including institutions attended and dates of attendance, degrees and honors, titles of publications, teaching and professional experience, and other matters that may be pertinent. Please note that your thesis will be publicly available online at DSpace@MIT , which is regularly crawled and indexed by Google and other search-engine providers.

List of Tables

List of supplemental material.

Whenever possible, notes should be placed at the bottom of the appropriate page or in the body of the text. Notes should conform to the style appropriate to the discipline. If notes appear at the bottom of the page, they should be single-spaced and included within the specified margins.

It may be appropriate to place bibliographic references either at the end of the chapter in which they occur or at the end of the thesis.

The style of quotations, footnotes, and bibliographic references may be prescribed by your department. If your department does not prescribe a style or specify a style manual, choose one and be consistent. Further information is available on the MIT Writing and Communications Center’s website .

Ownership of copyright

The Institute’s policy concerning ownership of thesis copyright is covered in Rules and Regulations of the Faculty, 2.73 and MIT Policies and Procedures 13.1.3 . Copyright covers the intellectual property in the words and images in the thesis. If the thesis also includes patentable subject matter, students should contact the Technology Licensing Office (TLO) prior to submission of their thesis.

Under these regulations, students retain the copyright to student theses.

The student must, as a condition of a degree award, grant to MIT a nonexclusive, worldwide, irrevocable, royalty-free license to exercise any and all rights under copyright, including to reproduce, preserve, distribute and publicly display copies of the thesis, or release the thesis under an open-access license. The MIT Libraries publish the thesis on DSpace@MIT , allowing open access to the research output of MIT.

You may also, optionally, apply a Creative Commons License to your thesis. The Creative Commons License allows you to grant permissions and provide guidance on how your work can be reused by others. For more information about CC: https://creativecommons.org/about/cclicenses/ . To determine which CC license is right for you, you can use the CC license chooser .

You must include an appropriate copyright notice on the title page of your thesis. This should include the following:

• the symbol “c” with a circle around it © and/or the word “copyright”
• the year of publication (the year in which the degree is to be awarded)
• the name of the copyright owner
• the words “All rights reserved” or your chosen Creative Commons license
• Also include the following statement below the ©“ The author hereby grants to MIT a nonexclusive, worldwide, irrevocable, royalty-free license to exercise any and all rights under copyright, including to reproduce, preserve, distribute and publicly display copies of the thesis, or release the thesis under an open-access license.”
• Also include the following statement below the © “The author hereby grants to MIT a nonexclusive, worldwide, irrevocable, royalty-free license to exercise any and all rights under copyright, including to reproduce, preserve, distribute and publicly display copies of the thesis, or release the thesis under an open-access license.”

You are responsible for obtaining permission, if necessary, to include previously published material in your thesis. This applies to most figures, images, and excerpts of text created and published by someone else; it may also apply to your own previous work. For figures and short excerpts from academic works, permission may already be available through the MIT Libraries (see here for additional information ). Students may also rely on fair use , as appropriate. For assistance with copyright questions about your thesis, Ask Scholarly Communications .

When including your own previously published material in your thesis, you may also need to obtain copyright clearance. If, for example, a student has already published part of the thesis as a journal article and, as a condition of publication, has assigned copyright to the journal’s publisher, the student’s rights are limited by what the publisher allows. More information about publisher policies on reuse in theses is available here.

Students can hold onto sufficient rights to reuse published articles (or excerpts of these) in their thesis if they are covered by MIT’s open access policy. Learn more about MIT’s open access policy and opt-in here . Ask Scholarly Communications for more information.

When including your own previously published articles in your thesis, check with your department for specific requirements, and consider the following:

• Ensure you have any necessary copyright permissions to include previously published material in your thesis.
• Be sure to discuss copyright clearance and embargo options with your co-authors and your advisor well in advance of preparing your thesis for submission.
• Include citations of where portions of the thesis have been previously published.
• When an article included has multiple authors, clearly designate the role you had in the research and production of the published paper that you are including in your thesis.

Supplemental material and research data

Supplemental material that may be submitted with your thesis is the materials that are essential to understanding the research findings of your thesis, but impossible to incorporate or embed into a PDF. Materials submitted to the MIT Libraries may be provided as supplemental digital files or in some cases physical items. All supplementary materials must be approved for submission by your advisor. The MIT Libraries can help answer questions you may have about managing the supplementary material and other research materials associated with your research.

Contact [email protected] early in your thesis writing process to determine the best way to include supplemental materials with your thesis.

You may also have other research data and outputs related to your thesis research that are not considered supplemental material and should not be submitted with your thesis. Research materials include the facts, observations, images, computer program results, recordings, measurements, or experiences on which a research output—an argument, theory, test or hypothesis, or other output—is based. These may also be termed, “research data.” This term relates to data generated, collected, or used during research projects, and in some cases may include the research output itself. Research materials should be deposited in appropriate research data repositories and cited in your thesis . You may consult the MIT Libraries’ Data Management Services website for guidance or reach out to Data Management Services (DMS)( [email protected] ), who can help answer questions you may have about managing your thesis data and choosing suitable solutions for longer term storage and access.

• Supplementary information may be submitted with your thesis to your program after approval from your thesis advisor. 
• Supplemental material should be mentioned and summarized in the written document, for example, using a few key frames from a movie to create a figure.
• A list of supplementary information along with brief descriptions should be included in your thesis document. For digital files, the description should include information about the file types and any software and version needed to open and view the files.
• Issues regarding the format of non-traditional, supplemental content should be resolved with your advisor.
• Appendices and references are not considered supplementary information.
• If your research data has been submitted to a repository, it should not also be submitted with your thesis.
• Follow the required file-naming convention for supplementary files: authorLastName-kerb-degree-dept-year-type_supplemental.ext
• Captioning ( legally required ): text versions of the audio content, synchronized with the video: ways to get your video captioned
• Additional content, not required:
• For video, an audio description: a separate narrative audio track that describes important visual content, making it accessible to people who are unable to see the video
• Transcripts: should capture all the spoken audio, plus on-screen text and descriptions of key visual information that wouldn’t otherwise be accessible without seeing the video

For physical components that are integral to understanding the thesis document, and which cannot be meaningfully conveyed in a digital form, the author may submit the physical items to the MIT Libraries along with their thesis document. When photographs or a video of a physical item (such as a model) would be sufficient, the images should be included in the thesis document, and a video could be submitted as digital supplementary material.

An example of physical materials that would be approved for submission as part of the thesis would be photographs that cannot be shared digitally in our repository due to copyright restrictions. In this case, the photographs could be submitted as a physical volume that is referred to in the thesis document.

As with digital supplementary information and research materials, physical materials must be approved for submission by your advisor. Contact [email protected] early in your thesis writing process to determine if physical materials should accompany your thesis, and if so how to schedule a transfer of materials to the MIT Libraries.

Creating your thesis document/digital format

You are required to submit a PDF/A-1 formatted thesis document to your department. In addition, it is recommended that original files, or source files, (such a .doc or .tex) are submitted alongside the PDF/A-1 to better ensure long-term access to your thesis.

You should create accessible files that support the use of screen readers and make your document more easily readable by assistive technologies. This will expand who is able to access your thesis. By creating an accessible document from the beginning, there will be less work required to remediate the PDF that gets created. Most software offers a guide for creating documents that are accessible to screen readers. Review the guidelines provided by the MIT Libraries .

In general:

• Use styles and other layout features for headings, lists, tables, etc. If you don’t like the default styles associated with the headings, you can customize them.
• Avoid using blank lines to add visual spacing and instead increase the size of the spaces before and/or after the line.
• Avoid using text boxes.
• Embed URLs.
• Anchor images to text when inserting them into a doc.
• Add alt-text to any images or figures that convey meaning (including, math formulas).
• Use a sans serif font.
• Add basic embedded metadata, such as author, title, year of graduation, department, keywords etc. to your thesis via your original author tool.

Creating a PDF/A-1

PDF/A-1 (either a or b) is the more suitable format for long term preservation than a basic PDF. It ensures that the PDF format conforms to certain specifications which make it more likely to open and be viewable in the long term. It is best for static content that will not change in the future, as this is the most preservation-worthy version and does not allow for some complex elements that could corrupt or prevent the file from being viewable in the future. Guidelines on how to convert specific file types to PDF/A .

In general: (should we simplify these bullets)

• Convert to PDF/A directly from your original files (text, Word, InDesign, LaTeX, etc.). It is much easier and better to create valid PDF/A documents from your original files than from a regular PDF. Converting directly will ensure that fonts and hyperlinks are embedded in the document.
• Do not embed multimedia files (audio and video), scripts, executables, lab notebooks, etc. into your PDF. Still images are fine. The other formats mentioned may be able to be submitted as supplemental files.
• Do not password protect or encrypt your PDF file.
• Validate your PDF/A file before submitting it to your department.

All digital files must be named according to this scheme: authorLastName-kerb-degree-dept-year-type_other.ext

• Thesis PDF: macdonald-mssimon-mcp-dusp-2023-thesis.pdf
• Signature page: macdonald-mssimon-mcp-dusp-2023-sig.pdf
• Original source file: macdonald-mssimon-mcp-2023-source.docx
• Supplemental file: macdonald-mssimon-mcp-2023-supplmental_1.mov
• Second supplemental file: macdonald-mssimon-mcp-2023-supplmental_2.mov
• Read Me file about supplemental: macdonald-mssimon-mcp-2023-supplemental-readme.txt

How to submit thesis information to the MIT Libraries

Before your day of graduation, you should submit your thesis title page metadata to the MIT Libraries  prior to your day of graduation. The submission form requires Kerberos login.

Student submitted metadata allows for quicker Libraries processing times. It also provides a note field for you to let Libraries’ staff know about any metadata discrepancies.

The information you provide must match the title page and abstract of your thesis . Please have a copy of your completed thesis on hand to enter this information directly from your thesis. If any discrepancies are found during processing, Libraries’ staff will publish using the information on the approved thesis document. You will be asked to confirm or provide:

• Preferred name of author(s)as they appear on the title page of the thesis
• ORCID provides a persistent digital identifier that distinguishes you from every other researcher. The goal is to support the creation of a permanent, clear, and unambiguous record of scholarly communication by enabling reliable attribution of authors and contributors. Read ORCID FAQs to learn more
• Department(s)
• A license is optional, and very difficult to remove once published. The Creative Commons License allows you to grant permissions and provide guidance on how your work can be reused by others. Read more information about CC .
• Thesis supervisor(s)
• If you would like the full-text of your thesis to be made openly available in the ProQuest Dissertation & Theses Global database (PQDT), you can indicate that in the Libraries submission form.
• Open access inclusion in PQDT is at no cost to you, and increases the visibility and discoverability of your thesis. By opting in you are granting ProQuest a license to distribute your thesis in accordance with ProQuest’s policies. Further information can be found in the ProQuest Dissertations and Theses Author FAQ .
• Full-text theses and associated supplemental files will only be sent to ProQuest once any temporary holds have been lifted, and the thesis has been published in DSpace@MIT.
• Regardless of opting-in to inclusion in PQDT, the full text of your thesis will still be made openly available in DSpace@MIT . Doctoral Degrees: Regardless of opting-in the citation and abstract of your thesis will be included in PQDT.

Thesis research should be undertaken in light of MIT’s policy of open research and the free interchange of information . Openness requires that, as a general policy, thesis research should not be undertaken on campus when the results may not be published. From time to time, there may be a good reason for delaying the distribution of a thesis to obtain patent protection, or for reasons of privacy or security. To ensure that only those theses that meet certain criteria are withheld from distribution and that they are withheld for the minimum period, the Institute has established specific review procedures.

Written notification of patent holds and other restrictions must reach the MIT Libraries before the thesis in question is received by the MIT Libraries. Theses will not be available to the public prior to being published by the MIT Libraries. The Libraries may begin publishing theses in DSpace@MIT one month and one week from the last day of classes.

Thesis hold requests should be directed to the Technology Licensing Office (TLO) ( [email protected] ) when related to MIT-initiated patent applications (i.e., MIT holds intellectual property rights; patent application process via TLO). Requests for a thesis hold must be made jointly by the student and advisor directly to the MIT Technology Licensing Office as part of the technology disclosure process.

Thesis hold or restricted access requests should be directed to the Office of the Vice Chancellor ([email protected]) when related to:

• Student-initiated patents (student holds intellectual property rights as previously determined by TLO) [up to 90-day hold]
• Pursuit of business opportunities (student holds intellectual property rights as previously determined by TLO)[up to 90-day hold]
• Government restrictions [up to 90-day hold]
• Privacy and security [up to 90-day hold]
• Scholarly journal articles pending publication [up to 90-day hold]
• Book publication [up to 24-month hold]

In the unusual circumstance that a student wants to request a hold beyond the initial 90-day period, they should contact the Office of Vice President for Research , who may consult with the TLO and/or the Office of the Vice Chancellor, as appropriate to extend the hold. Such requests must be supported by evidence that explains the need for a longer period.

Find information about each type of publication hold, and to learn how to place a hold on your thesis

After publication

Your thesis will be published on DSpace@MIT . Theses are processed by the MIT Libraries and published in the order they are transferred by your department. The Libraries will begin publishing theses in DSpace@MIT one month and one week from the last day of classes.

All changes made to a thesis, after it has been submitted to the MIT Libraries by your department, must have approval from the Vice Chancellor or their designee. Thesis documents should be carefully reviewed prior to submission to ensure they do not contain misspellings or incorrect formatting. Change requests for these types of minor errors will not be approved.

There are two types of change requests that can be made:

• Errata: When the purpose is to correct significant errors in content, the author should create an errata sheet using the form and instructions (PDF)  and obtain approval first from both the thesis supervisor or program chair, before submitting for review by the Vice Chancellor.
• Substitution: If the purpose of the change is to excise classified, proprietary, or confidential information, the author should fill out the  application form (PDF) and have the request approved first by the thesis supervisor or program chair, before submitting for review by the Vice Chancellor.

Students and supervisors should vet thesis content carefully before submission to avoid these scenarios whenever possible.

You are always authorized to post electronic versions of your own thesis, in whole or in part, on a website, without asking permission. If you hold the copyright in the thesis, approving and/or denying requests for permission to use portions of the thesis in third-party publications is your responsibility.

MIT Libraries Thesis Team https://libguides.mit.edu/mit-thesis-faq [email protected] | https://thesis-submit.mit.edu/

Distinctive Collections Room 14N-118 | 617-253-5690 https://libraries.mit.edu/distinctive-collections/

Technology Licensing Office [email protected] | 617-253-6966 http://tlo.mit.edu/

Office of the General Counsel [email protected]  | 617-452-2082 http://ogc.mit.edu/

Office of Graduate Education Room 3-107 | 617-253-4680 http://oge.mit.edu/ [email protected]

MIT Libraries,  Scholarly Communications https://libraries.mit.edu/scholarly/ Ask Scholarly Communications

Office of  the Vice Chancellor Room 7-133 | 617-253-6056 http://ovc.mit.edu [email protected]

Office of the Vice President for Research Room 3-234 | 617-253-8177 [email protected]

MIT Writing and Communications Center Room E18-233 [email protected] | https://cmsw.mit.edu/writing-and-communication-center/

Department of Physics

Senior Theses

The senior thesis is the capstone of the physics major and an opportunity for intellectual exploration broader than courses can afford. It is an effort that spans the whole academic year. The thesis is a great opportunity to dive into research on an aspect of physics which most engages you. Whether your thesis is on biophysics, gravity and cosmology, condensed matter, or string theory, writing it is way to put to use all that you have learned in coursework so far—and to make a contribution to scientific knowledge. Even for topics outside of the mainstream of physics, for example with a focus on policy, or neuroscience, or finance, we expect you to apply your undergraduate physics education to the problem you focus on.

You can build on previous work in your senior thesis, for example summer work or a junior paper. However, it is equally acceptable to start a brand new project in the fall of your senior thesis with an adviser you have not previously worked with. In any case, in order to have a level playing field, your thesis will be evaluated based on work done during the academic year.

You must submit your choice of adviser and topic in Canvas by 3:00pm October 3. Your adviser must have a full-time faculty appointment at Princeton University. Your adviser can be one of your junior paper advisers, but need not be. If your adviser does not have their primary appointment in the Physics Department, you must communicate your choice of second reader in Canvas by October 3, and this second reader must have a full-time faculty appointment at Princeton University with their primary appointment in the Physics Department.

You must turn in a draft of content for your senior thesis by 3:00pm January 16, as explained in the section entitled Fall term draft .

The final version of your senior thesis is due by 3:00pm of the University's deadline for submitting the senior thesis, April 29. The requirements for formatting and submitting your final senior thesis are somewhat detailed;  please consult the section entitled Thesis Formatting and Submission . The page on important dates gives a complete listing of dates and deadlines relevant to the senior thesis. In case of any confusion about dates and deadlines, the page on important dates should be regarded as authoritative.

An oral examination conducted by the the Senior Committee at the end of the senior year serves as the senior departmental examination. This exam is described in more detail below in the section entitled Oral Examination .

Department of Physics Independent Work Guide

Senior committee.

A committee of several faculty in Physics oversees all the senior theses. In AY 2024-2025, the committee members are Professor(s) William Jones (chair), Lyman Page, Shinsei Ryu and Jason Puchalla. The senior committee is assisted by Karen Olsen, the Undergraduate Administrator. The committee meets with the seniors at the beginning of the academic year to outline what is expected and to help them get started on choosing advisers and topics. The committee may establish milestones during the year (e.g. a due date for a thesis outline and/or an oral progress report) in addition to the ones indicated on this webpage; any such additional milestones will be announced to all seniors via e-mail and clearly indicated on the important dates  page. You are encouraged at any time to approach members of the senior committee with questions or concerns about the progress of your thesis work.

Getting Started

The best advice in finding an advisor is to go to several faculty members in areas of research that you are interested in, and see what topics they propose. If you have a topic to propose yourself, great: shop it around to faculty and see what they think. Most topics come from faculty as part of the work their research groups are conducting. When you have a tentative topic in mind, start by reading some of the literature, ideally at the Scientific American level, in order to understand the highlights and context of the work you'll embark on. If you're undecided between topics, this first stage of reading should help you choose. Make sure to circle back to your prospective adviser with questions, and confirm with them before the deadline that they are in fact prepared to advise you on a topic that you have both agreed on. It's important to start this process at the very beginning of term, because false starts are possible.

The most important advice we can give is to make a fast start on your senior thesis, and focus on it particularly at the start of the fall term. Adjust your courses accordingly; for instance, senior fall is not the right time to shop five courses. Experience suggests that distractions and delays occur from time to time, both expected (e.g. grad school applications) and unexpected (e.g. your adviser disappears to a conference just when you need help). If you have a good start on your thesis you can put it aside briefly when such a delay occurs. If you don't, it becomes harder and harder to catch up. Regardless of where you are in the term—and especially early on—the best advice is to set your senior thesis at top priority.

Students considering thesis topics mostly or entirely outside of physics should consider the application procedure outlined in the section below entitled Alternative grading rubric .  Please note that time is of the essence in applying for an alternative grading rubric.

Fall Term Draft

A draft of content to be included in your senior thesis must be turned in to Canvas by 3:00pm on January 16. The second reader must be identified in Canvas at the time you turn in this draft of content. (Even if you have previously identified your second reader, e.g. because you are working with a primary advisor outside the department, please confirm this choice at the time of turning in your draft of content.) This draft of content will be assigned a P/D/F grade by your advisor and second reader, and the grade will be reported to the senior committee; however, it will not appear on your Princeton transcript. The draft of content is intended to serve as a status check and a way to start the conversation with your advisor and second reader about the spring term end game for your thesis. The guidelines for the draft of content are as follows:

• The minimum length is 7 pages, plus front matter and bibliography.
• The document should be written in full sentences and paragraphs, in the style you intend for the final version of your senior thesis. An outline of work to follow can be included at the end, but the main focus of the document should be on what you have understood and done so far.
• Formatting should be the same that you intend to use in the final version of your senior thesis; in particular, front matter (including the Student Acknowledgment of Original Work, signed), introduction, main body, and bibliography should be present, with all the formatting as you intend for the final version of your senior thesis. In short, follow the guidelines in the Primary grading rubric .  Indicate clearly in the front matter that the document is a draft of content.
• While it is anticipated that your results will be quite incomplete, do make an effort to communicate the background in an accessible fashion that starts with the fundamentals and demonstrates your understanding of the context of your ongoing work.

Thesis Formatting and Submission

You must submit your thesis electronically as a PDF file.  The first few pages of your senior thesis are called the front matter.  Front matter must include in the first two pages the title, the student's name, an abstract, the Student Acknowledgment of Original Work, and a signature following this acknowledgment. The wording of the Acknowledgment must be as set forth in the current edition of Rights, Rules, and Responsibilities: "This paper represents my own work in accordance with University regulations.”   The Page formatting should be suitable for printing on standard 8.5" x 11" paper with one to one and a half inch margins all around the main text. All fonts should be between 10 and 14 points, and line spacing should be anywhere between double spacing and 1.5 spacing. Pages should be numbered, with numbers no closer than half an inch to any edge of the page. Figures should be clear and legible, with descriptive captions.  Figures should be  your original work or else credit should be clearly given in the caption to the figure creator.  You should request permission to re-use figures made by colleagues.  There is no length requirement, but a total length (including front matter, bibliography, figures, appendices, etc) of 50 to 100 pages is about right for most topics.

The deadline for submission of the senior thesis is 3 pm April 29. For the spring semester of 2024, no hard copy submission will be required.   By that deadline, you must submit your thesis electronically in Canvas.  You must provide an electronic signature for the Student Acknowledgment of Original Work.  Your signature will serve as confirmation that the  submitted version is the official version.  By the end of the day on April 29, you must also send electronic copies of your thesis to your advisor and second reader.  You must also submit your thesis electronically to Mudd Library in order to graduate. Details on the Mudd Library submission process will come by email.  

To set high goals for the thesis, and at the same time to accommodate the breadth of experience that physics majors seek, the Physics Department has a dual rubric approach to grading. The primary grading rubric for the senior thesis is the one set forth in detail in the section below entitled Primary grading rubric .  It should be used for all theses which are primarily focused on a topic in physics, broadly construed. Applied physics, biophysics, astrophysics, plasma physics, and mathematical physics (among others) are fields in which this primary rubric should be used. Every student is advised to take pains to make their thesis accessible to physicists outside their discipline. Doing so is part of good presentation, and it is part of showing the student's own mastery of their topic. The physical principles involved should be explained clearly, starting at the level of undergraduate physics courses. Any necessary jargon should be introduced with clear explanations.

Written presentation is also important and will affect the final grade. Good presentation includes all aspects of scholarly writing, including clear explanations, organization, and citations; correct spelling, grammar, and formatting; a style that is at once accessible and precise; and a logical structure including front matter, introduction, main body, conclusion, and bibliography. 

Primary grading rubric

The main basis for the final grade will be the physics content contained in the thesis as a document. Physics content could include, for example, theoretical ideas, calculations, modeling, and predictions; experimental methods, description of apparatus, results, and data analysis; and an assessment of the significance of the work reported in the thesis against the backdrop of the larger field of which it is part. Physics content can be particularly noteworthy—for instance a really new theoretical idea or a genuinely impactful experimental result—but humbler advances, such as verification or extension of published calculations, or successful calibration of an experimental device, are also highly esteemed. In short, new research results are desirable but not required for even the highest grades.  Scholarly substance is the key.

Written presentation is also important and will affect the final grade. Good presentation includes all aspects of scholarly writing, including clear explanations, organization, and citations; correct spelling, grammar, and formatting; a style that is at once accessible and precise; and a logical structure including front matter, introduction, main body, conclusion, and bibliography.

Grade recommendations from the adviser and second reader are communicated to the senior committee, along with short text descriptions describing and assessing the thesis. The letter grade from the Oral examination will count for 10% of the senior thesis grade. The following grade descriptions are representative of Physics Department grading practices. Any individual thesis may have qualities spread across several of these descriptions, and it is ultimately up to the judgement of the Physics Department faculty to balance the considerations in any given case in order to come up with the final grade.

• A+. A substantial, professional-level contribution to some field of physics, with outstanding presentation and truly impressive content. For example, there may be original results suitable or almost suitable for publication in a peer-reviewed journal which physicists working in this field often publish in. Or the thesis may be a brilliantly written review paper which could usefully be shared with professional colleagues. A written statement from the advisor justifying the A+ must be included.
• A. The thesis deals with some topic in physics in an unusually thorough way, with unexpected insights and/or an especially clear presentation. The advisor should have learned new things from it. This grade should be used for work that goes far beyond "doing a good job."
• A-. The thesis covers some topic in physics well and goes into significant depth. It is written in a professional style with only minor flaws. The student shows mastery of the subject.
• B+. The thesis covers a topic in physics well, and in some depth. The presentation and physics content are good but leave room for improvement.
• B. The thesis covers a topic in physics fairly well. Presentation and physics content are fairly good, but some deficiencies may be noted.
• B-. The thesis addresses a topic in physics but without the depth expected for senior independent work. There may be significant errors or an inadequate presentation.
• C+. The thesis contains an overview of a topic in physics, but the physics content is mostly superficial. The presentation may be inadequate, and there may be significant errors or omissions.
• C. The thesis contains a partial or superficial overview of a topic in physics. The thesis gives little evidence of understanding of the relevant physics. The presentation is sloppy, and there are significant errors or omissions.
• C-. The thesis contains some correct information about a topic in physics, but it fails to show understanding of the relevant physics. The presentation is incomplete, with serious errors or omissions.
• D. The lowest passing grade. The thesis is deficient in multiple respects, with minimal physics content, poor presentation, and/or poor scholarship.
• F. There are several ways an F can result. One way is for the thesis to be largely incomplete and incorrect. A second way is for the thesis not to be turned in on time, accounting for any extensions granted, or for a document to be turned in without a clear written indication that it is the official version of the student's senior thesis. A third way is for the thesis to be turned in on time but with issues that prevent it from being accepted. Examples of this last are omitting from the first two pages the title, the student's name, the abstract, the Student Acknowledgment of Original Work, or a signature following this acknowledgment. Formatting that renders the thesis unreasonably difficult to read may also prevent it from being accepted and result in an F.

Alternative grading rubric

Students wishing to branch out and work on a senior thesis topic that is mostly or entirely outside of physics will have their theses graded using an alternative grading rubric customized to their field of work, provided they receive approval from the senior committee of a proposal submitted electronically in Canvas no later than 3pm October 10.  The proposal must consist of the following points:

• Student's name.
• Adviser's name. The adviser must sign next to their name to indicate their endorsement of the proposed grading rubric.
• Second reader's name. As with all theses in the Physics Department, your adviser and the second reader should both have full-time faculty appointments at Princeton University, and at least one of them should have their primary appointment in the Physics Department.
• A tentative thesis title (200 characters or less).
• Summary of proposed work (1500 to 2000 characters).
• Give us a simple description of the area of scholarship your thesis falls in. For example, "Climate policy" or "Behavioral neuroscience."
• Provide a short explanation of why you are interested in this area, and why it should be of general interest to professional physicists.
• Provide an adaptation of the primary grading rubric that you feel is suitable to your thesis work. The text to adapt is the entire contents of the section entitled Primary grading rubric . Leave the second, third, and fourth paragraphs unchanged, as these sections will be applied in any case; likewise the criteria for an F cannot be changed. Changes to the rest of the text should be at the minimal level needed in order for it to be fairly applied to the work you are going to do. For example, if you are working on climate policy, replacing "physics" by "climate policy" throughout should be a good start. Topics which have some physics content but are primarily outside of physics should include in the grading rubric some measure of how well the physics is developed and presented.

The senior committee may adjust or rewrite the grading rubric you propose before approving it, and the final rubric will go to your adviser and second reader as well as to you.

Proposals that are approved will allow a thesis to be graded at the same standard as other Physics Department senior theses, but in a different direction. Students who do pursue a topic outside of physics should make a particular effort to make their thesis accessible to physicists and students of physics, and this effort will be counted as part of a good presentation. If a proposal is not received on time by the senior committee or is not approved, thesis work will be graded according to the Primary grading rubric : In particular, the physics content will then be the main basis for the final grade.

A fall term draft of content as outlined in the section entitled Fall term draft is required for all theses.

Oral examination

The oral examination will be scheduled near the end of the academic year, after you have turned in your senior thesis. You should prepare a presentation with a planned duration of 20 minutes. Use standard visual aids, i.e. PowerPoint or similar. Presentations should be well organized and thoughtful; in particular:

• If you want to use a laptop, you are responsible for making sure things work!
• Have enough paper copies of your presentation material so that every committee member can have their own copy. Paper copies are useful even when you use PowerPoint from a laptop and serve as a backup in case of a technical glitch.
• Limit your main presentation to approximately 15 slides (depending on your style). If you have more material, prioritize it and put extra material at the end as backup slides.
• Do not expect committee members to flip through your thesis during the exam; your presentation should be self-contained.
• Emphasize graphical material in your slides (including key equations).
• If you have text in your slides, focus on terse summaries and avoid long segments of text.
• Rehearse! You can rehearse before a group of friends, or your advisor, or a graduate student, or an empty room.

The senior committee is entitled to ask questions both about the thesis and about undergraduate physics. The grade for the oral depends on both the quality of the presentation and your ability to answer questions.

The oral examination will be assigned a letter grade by the senior committee.  The letter grade for the oral examination will count for 10% of the senior thesis grade.

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Physics & Astronomy

Thesis guidelines.

Department of Physics & Astronomy

Senior Thesis Guidelines

Senior thesis is the culminating experience of the physics major. Students should have conversations with faculty members about potential projects early in the winter semester of their junior year. They should also discuss whether they will pursue a one-semester thesis, a full year thesis, or honors thesis. Students choosing a one-semester thesis should also discuss whether it will occur in the fall or winter semester. Students opting for a full-year thesis must make satisfactory process in the Fall semester to be permitted to register for a second semester of thesis. After the first mid-semester progress report, the advisor, in consultation with the full department will decide if sufficient progress has been demonstrated, and decisions will be issued before the October break. Honors thesis is discussed in more detail below. 

Independent of which option is chosen, Juniors (including students abroad) must notify the department chair of at least two potential thesis advisors by a March 10 . Based on student preference and faculty availability, the physics department will assign thesis advisors soon after. I f you are abroad, you will need to coordinate finding a thesis advisor and submitting your thesis plan by email. Students will need to have the registration hold on Physics 457 and/or Physics 458 removed during the appropriate preregistration period.

During the semester(s) in which a student is registered for thesis, two seminar presentations will be scheduled. These include a mid-semester progress report and a final thesis presentation, as described below:

• Mid-Semester Progress Report – a 10-15 minute formal presentation using visual aids that describes progress to date and future plans.
• Final Thesis Presentation – a final formal presentation of the thesis, with visual aids, that is open to the public. Talks are scheduled in half-hour slots, typically during the latter half of the last week of classes. Students will prepare a ~20 minute presentation, leaving time for questions from the audience. Students finishing thesis in the Winter semester also have the option to present at the Mt. David research summit in lieu of presenting at the department seminar.

Finished theses are due on Monday of exam week, at 4 p.m., when one written copy and a pdf version must be turned in to the department chair . Students are encouraged to view past senior theses on display in the department’s seminar room, Carnegie 321, to get a sense of previous finished products, and to consult their advisor about technical writing issues. Each thesis is read by the advisor and a second reader, another faculty member who is assigned by the department. Following final thesis presentations, the department discusses each student’s written document and oral presentations before recommending a thesis grade to the advisor.

Honors Thesis

Students who have a strong academic record and are particularly motivated independent learners may be nominated to participate in the Honors Program. Details of the Honors Program and schedule are available at https://www.bates.edu/honors/ . Honors thesis requires a full year in which students receive credit for both Physics 457 and 458, and involves a substantial integration of skills from a broad array of physics classes. It should focus on a novel topic of interest to a community of physicists that might ultimately provide results appropriate for acceptance in a peer-reviewed journal. As indicated in the college’s honors guidelines online, an honors thesis should be an exceptional thesis. Working with their advisor, students define a research question of interest and develop an appropriate experimental plan or theoretical approach. Students should be conversant with relevant background literature, and must take primary responsibility in moving the project along. In so doing, they may learn how to design apparatus, acquire and analyze data, develop theoretical models or write computer programs, while at the same time becoming more fluent with the language of physics at the advanced undergraduate/early graduate student level. By the end of the project honors students are expected to develop “expert” knowledge, in the sense they can explain all elements of the project including the motivation for doing it, describe its accomplishments in the context of related work in the literature, and note directions in which future work could move. Successful students should be able to engage in a technical discussion of the project with experts such as the advisor and outside examiner, and should also be able to articulate to non-experts the basic findings of the project and their significance.

The written document should be considered the equivalent of an “A” thesis. It should be composed in clear, concise and grammatically correct language that is accessible to non-experts while still conveying sophisticated physics content to experts. Writers should consult advisors regarding technical issues of scientific writing and formatting the thesis. Most writers find scientific word processing software such as LaTex particularly helpful for incorporating equations and graphs into the text. A useful resource for writing a technical scientific document is the American Institute of Physics AIP Style Manual ( http://www.aip.org ). Students also gain a sense of effective scientific writing from reading the literature in preparation for the project and discussing it with their advisor.

In addition to the written document, students give an oral presentation open to the public and then submit to an oral examination by the honors panel. Guidelines for the oral examination are spelled out on the honors thesis webpage ( https://www.bates.edu/honors/protocol-for-the-honors-exam/ ). Just prior to the oral examination, students give a 20 minute formal presentation suitable for a general audience, in order to share their accomplishments with department faculty, students and friends. After taking questions from the audience for a short time, everyone leaves the room except for the members of the examination panel, the advisor and the candidate, at which time the oral examination process commences. During the oral examination students should be prepared to discuss the thesis work as well as any relevant background material, displaying their level of mastery of the project and understanding of physics in response to questions from the panel. Ultimately the honors panel evaulates the written thesis and oral exam, and averages these in a suitable way to determine whether honors shall be awarded, as describe in the general honors guidelines.

Honors Nomination Process

Students should discuss the possibility of honors thesis with potential advisers early in the winter semester of the junior year. Usually, honors thesis students have achieved at least a 3.5 GPA at Bates. Students should indicate interest in honors thesis on the one-page thesis description due March 1, and if the department approves, register for Physics 457 for the coming fall semester.

Often, honors thesis students conduct relevant research during the summer prior to the senior year. The nature and extent of this work is to be agreed upon by the student and advisor. Similarly, advisor and student agree upon a schedule and plan for communicating about thesis progress throughout the semester.

Honors thesis students give mid-semester progress reports as described above. They also give a formal presentation during the last week of classes, with visual aids. This presentation is an important stage in the honors process. In it students describe their progress, outline future plans and give a timetable for completion of the thesis. Prior to the beginning of the winter semester, the physics department decides whether to formally nominate the student for honors. These nominations are due at the end of the first week of the winter semester.

At any time prior to the submission of the written thesis, if the thesis advisor thinks that the student is not meeting the expectations of the department for a satisfactory honors thesis, the advisor has the authority to withdraw the student from the honors program.

A student formally nominated for honors may decide to withdraw from the program at any time prior to the thesis submission date or oral examination date.

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Stony Brook University students, faculty, and staff with a Net ID can access citations and/or the full-text of dissertations and theses (1967-present) authored by Stony Brook University graduates in ProQuest’s Dissertations & Theses@Stony Brook database. If you are not affiliated with SBU, you may be able to borrow a bound hardcopy (if available) through your institution's interlibrary loan department.

In 2010, the Graduate School at Stony Brook University formally instituted electronic submission for theses and dissertations. A small percentage of works in electronic format were submitted as early as 2006. A subset of citations or full text electronic theses and dissertations (2006-2020) can be found in Stony Brook University Libraries digital repository at https://ir.stonybrook.edu/xmlui/handle/11401/73112/browse . 

Students are encouraged to deposit an open access copy of their dissertation or theses in Stony Brook University Libraries’ Academic Commons at https://commons.library.stonybrook.edu/electronic-disserations-theses/ .

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How to Write a Master Degree Thesis As a Physics Major

Table of Contents

Your First Scientific Paper Ought to be good!

Structure and contents of a master degree thesis.

This guide was written some years ago as a guideline for students at the Physics Master level at the University of Oslo. I had at that time been the final censor for about 30 students, and I was getting very frustrated of struggling with the thesis trying to find the main points in it. Somebody has already observed that it is Scandinavian-centric – of course, it is!

A Master Degree Thesis is a Project

Before starting a Master’s Degree Thesis, you need to consider several things. The most important being:

• A Master Degree is very similar to a research project. What you learn when writing your thesis you will find useful when you join a research project and have to write project reports.
• You are the one that states the premises for the thesis. You are the one that solves all problems related to the thesis. At the outset, nobody else knows what you expected to do.
• You are judged by your thesis, not by the amount of work you may have done during your Master’s Degree. You cannot expect the censor to judge you from what your supervisor tells him about your efforts.

This means that you have to do a great deal of effort in structuring the thesis if your goal is to get a good result. This is not wasted effort; the writing process can be an important aid to help you realize what you should do and in what sequence the individual parts should be done.

A thesis should have a rigorous structure

A thesis is in a way the complete documentation of a project. This means that a certain amount of information has to be included and preferably in a certain sequence. If you feel that such a structure is hindering you in designing your thesis in the way you want to present it, it is up to you to use a different structure. Just try to include all the necessary information and make it easy to find.

Chapter 1: What I want to do and why

This chapter is the most important chapter in the thesis, and in my experience, the chapter students spend the least amount of time writing. The purpose of this chapter is to

• Polish the problem statement and present it to the reader
• Create a believable reason for this problem to be the subject for a master thesis

This chapter is not supposed to be long and boring – 2 pages may be enough, 4 pages is probably too much – but it normally needs to be rewritten about 5 times before it is good enough. What you really do in this chapter is to create a requirement specification for your own master’s degree project. This also helps clarify to yourself what you really want to do. If your arguments are clear enough, it also tells the censor what you were trying to do.

• Do not mix problem statement and solution proposals
• Create verifiable requirements. That way it is possible to see whether you have solved the problem or not.
• Others may have worked with similar problems – have you checked available publications?

This is what is known as the “selling phase” of the thesis. Spend some efforts in presenting convincing arguments as to the importance of taking a close look at the problem you intend to work on.

• Treating a proposal for a solution as if it were a problem statement (this is a very common mistake).
• Thinking that the problem proposed by your supervisor is known to everybody including the censor (also a very common mistake).
• Starting out with a proposal for a solution and trying to derive a fitting problem statement.

Chapter 2: How I intend to attack the problem

This chapter is a transitional chapter, where you are supposed to present a solution to the problem statement in chapter 1. It is solution time! But do not be satisfied with just one – with some brainstorming and a bit of fantasy I am sure that you can come up with at least five. Some of the solutions may look promising, some may look hopeless – analyze! Can you combine two or more solutions?

• Presenting only one solution

Chapter 3: Technical details pertaining to the chosen solution

This chapter is always easy to find, it is present in every thesis. The important task is to set limits and only include what is necessary in order to follow the progress of the project. Thus a brutal editing process is usually necessary. Do you think it is too hard to cut interesting stuff? Put it in an appendix!

• What is interesting to you may very well be peripheral (and even boring) to others.
• Known technology does not belong in this chapter. Use references or write a short summary (which should be put in an appendix and referred to).
• Leaving out reasoning or references because “they are obvious”. The thesis is not written for you, but for others that do not have your background.

Chapter 4: What was the result of the project?

This chapter is a concentrate of what you have discovered during the project. This is where you write down what experiences you have gained that can be of use for others, interesting side tracks that you did not have time to explore, in short: Everything that can be useful for others to know. Try to structure the information in a way that makes it possible to navigate.

• A part of this chapter should be reserved for evaluation. Have you realized your own requirements from chapter 1? If not, what do you think is the reason?
• Copying the lab journal into this chapter (you have created a lab journal, I hope). The lab journal is written for you by you, this chapter is written for others by

Chapter 5: The conclusion

Now it is time to take a breath and think about what you are doing. The conclusion should not be an extract of the lab journal, but a message to the reader. Imagine that a busy reader is supposed to find the essence of your thesis in 5 minutes. What is he going to read?

• The problem statement (chapter 1)
• The conclusion (this chapter)

This means that you have to extract the essence of what you want to say in this chapter. How well would you say the project went? Was the requirement specification realized? Are there any promising possibilities for further work? Include it, while doing the best you can in order to “sell” the results to the reader. This is your Grand Finale, your result depends a lot on how you are able to collect loose threads and finish in style.

• To compare your results with the requirement specification. If you do not, the censor will. You can explain deviations better than he can (or will).
• Making too long a conclusion. Do it in one page (or less).

Written last and inserted first: The concentrate

Having produced an acceptable conclusion, there is only one small detail left. The essence of the complete thesis must be shrunk down to about half a page. This means that you have to squeeze in the requirement specification and the conclusion in an even smaller space than you did before – and (very important) it must tempt the reader into reading the rest of the thesis!

When you have finally squeezed in everything you want to say in half a page, put this page in front of the rest. This means: After the cover, but before the table of contents. This is your big “sell”, so make it look good!

Details you must remember

• Table of contents
• List of figures

Put some efforts into the language

• Do not use overlong sentences. A full stop gives the reader room to breathe.
• Remove empty sentences and ditto expressions.
• Do not write too impersonally. It will only put the reader to sleep

Create correct reference lists

Creating an acceptable reference list is an important part of every report, and therefore also an important part of your thesis. You have several possibilities for placing references:

• As part of the text
• At the bottom of the page (as a footnote)
• At the end of the thesis (as a reference list)

A reference list at the end of the thesis is probably less disturbing than references on each page.

A reference shall contain:

The surname of the author, the given name (or initials), the title, the ISBN (if possible), the edition, the place of publication, the publisher, and the publishing date.

ISO has two recommendations, R 77 [i ] and R 690 [ii ] that specifies what a reference list should contain.

An example of a reference list

[i] .          International Organization for Standardization. Bibliographical References; essential elements. Geneve 1958. (ISO recommendation R 77)

[ii].        International Organization for Standardization. Bibliographical References; essential and supplementary elements. Geneve 1968. (ISO recommendation R 690)

Master’s in Mathematics, Norway. Interested in Network-based time synchronisation.

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Department of Physics

Thesis writing and submission.

A PhD thesis should be presented within four years after the start of full-time research. The following notes and guidelines are intended to help students to do that.

To see examples of previous theses from students in the Department please look at the WRAP archive .

Thesis Writing

Use of papers published during the phd studies.

(This guideline refers to use of papers written while studying for a PhD. There are separate University regulations covering a PhD based entirely on published work.)

Where a candidate has produced a large body of published work, these published papers may constitute a part of the thesis provided that:

• the papers are substantial, self-contained, and published in reputable peer reviewed journals
• the candidate was the principal author of the papers
• the work was performed during the period of PhD registration
• the thesis includes a substantial introduction to the methodology employed that puts the papers in context and, in the case of multiple authors, established the candidate’s contribution to the published work. Typically this introduction would be around 50 pages.

The time required to write a thesis is longer than is often supposed. A respectable timetable, allowing for the possibility arising of the need for further experimental observations or calculations and for the checking the literature, might be:

This means that writing should normally begin around 6 months before the planned submission date (e.g. 6 months before a student's funding completes). In any case, in the final year of your PhD you will be asked to complete a Thesis Plan to help assess your progress towards submission.

Presentation of thesis

Please ensure you read the Guide to examinations for higher degrees by research (warwick.ac.uk) before starting your thesis, paying particular attention to the model title page. The abstract should be limited to 300 words on one A4 Page .

The Physics Department guidelines for the presentation of theses for the degrees of PhD, MPhil and MSc are as follows:-

• The PhD thesis shall not exceed 70,000 words excluding appendices, footnotes, tables and bibliography. For appendices there is a 5000 word limit. MSc by Research 40,000 words, exclusive of appendices, footnotes, tables and bibliography
• A thesis submitted for the degree of PhD should be an original investigation characterised by rigorous methodology and capable of making a significant contribution to knowledge commensurate with the normal period of registration for a full or part time student.
• You should not feel that your thesis must necessarily be as long as the maximum word limit allowed…Theses which exceed the word limit may not be accepted for examination.
• The appropriate lengths for Physics theses are as follows:- Ph.D. - 90 to 110 pages of text M.Phil. - 70 to 90 pages of text M.Sc. - 50 to 70 pages of text plus essential diagrams, tables etc.
• Students are advised not to include unessential data as appendices in the bound thesis.

The guidelines in 1(a) and (2) above at first sight appear different, because the University regulations do not mention figures and diagrams. Counting the equivalent number of words that would fit in the space of a figure, with on average 350 words to a double spaced side of A4, the University regulations effectively limit the final bound thesis to 200 pages including everything. In practice this is far longer than necessary.

In practice a suitable target would be a PhD thesis of ~100 pages of text with ~50 diagrams. Within this length, the original contribution should exceed any background material that can be found in a text book or thesis submitted previously from the same group.

Note especially the last paragraph from the University Regulations - it is only necessary to write sufficient to demonstrate the aims of a PhD have been satisfied, and no more. All the work done during three years does not have to appear in the final thesis. It is always possible to finish early and write papers afterwards, while awaiting the viva.

The thesis should be no longer than necessary to provide a succinct introduction to the field of study for the non-specialist, to present your results and to discuss what conclusions can be drawn from the results in the context of current knowledge of the field. These conclusions should be backed up with adequate references from the published literature.

Before Writing

Adequate preparation before beginning to write can help greatly to obtain a logically arranged, readable thesis and to shorten both the thesis and the writing time. First analyse the problem by answering the following questions.

What information do I want to present? What background can I assume? What is the most sensible sequence in which to present the information?

Make a detailed outline. Identify as many subdivisions as possible. It is easier to combine subheadings, or eliminate them, than to insert new ones later. Plan tables and figures. It is a good idea to make extra prints of photographic illustrations such as micrographs at the time you are dealing with them rather than wait until you are preparing the thesis. Avoid duplication of results in tables and figures unless there is specific justification. Consign material that would disturb the smooth flow of an argument to an Appendix. Bulky material such as computer programmes should normally be omitted; if appropriate, copies should be left with the supervisor.

Some excellent tips are contained in a short article Writing your thesis by J.M. Pratt (Chemistry in Britain, 20 (December 1998. 1114-5) which you would do well to read. (But note that he allows 250 page theses - we most certainly do not!); and in Communicating in Science: Writing and Speaking by V Booth, CUP 1985.

Scientific writing is not exempt from the rules of good grammar, spelling and punctuation! Keep a dictionary handy (and use a good spell checker, but don't rely on it!)

Avoid long, meandering and contorted sentences, but do not achieve brevity by becoming telegraphic - do not omit a’s and the’s. Remember that it is an invariable rule that every sentence begins with a capital letter, contains at least one verb and ends with a full stop. Good punctuation is an aid to clarity; if someone familiar with the subject has to re-read a sentence to understand it, the sentence probably needs more punctuation, or reconstruction. Go through paragraphs when you have written them, trying to put yourself in the place of the reader rather than the writer.

Avoid vague and inexact terms: for instance, y increases as x increases is preferable (if appropriate) to y changes with x , the signal duration was very small is almost meaningless - the signal was very small compared with the recovery time is much better. Whenever possible quantitative, rather than qualitative, comparisons should be used: z increased by 25% more than y for the same change in x . Define all non-standard terms, symbols and abbreviations where first used, and stick to them. Try to develop your arguments in a logical manner, this may be quite different from the chronological order in which you performed the research!

Copying (Plagiarism)

Any material copied word for word MUST be placed in quotation marks and the original source fully referenced. This principle applies to diagrams as well as text. Students are reminded that plagiarism - reproducing another person’s work as your own - is considered a very serious offence. Your attention is drawn to the following paragraph

‘The Thesis must be entirely the candidate's own work, and all sources used should be fully referenced and acknowledged in the thesis. There is no distinction to be made between plagiarism of reviews or summaries of existing knowledge on a subject and original research work.

The University's regulations on plagiarism appear in the University Calendar-Regulation 11 ’,

This cheating guideline should be read in conjunction with The University of Warwick Regulation 11

It is also a requirement to complete the Library's Course: Avoiding Plagiarism (warwick.ac.uk) Moodle course as part of your degree.

The general style of presentation should conform to that required for scientific papers in reputable journals. The thesis will be longer than typical research papers. It will therefore require a list of contents. A suitable style is that adopted for Institute of Physics journals, as described in Notes for Authors . An alternative style guide can be found from Review of Modern Physics , although you will need to change some peculiarities of US English. In particular, SI units should be used, figures and tables should have captions in words, standard notation for physical quantities and units should be used. This notation is to be found in the pamphlet ‘Quantities, Units and Symbols’ 2nd Edn (London: the Royal Society, 1975), which is among a number of useful publications listed in ‘Notes for Authors’. Number all pages including diagrams, illustrations and tables. Collect all references and put them either at the end of the thesis or at the end of individual chapters.

After Writing

When you have completed the first draft (of a chapter, for example) put it aside for a day or two. Then, coming to it afresh, read it carefully for a final revision, making sure notation and symbols are uniform throughout and consistent with what you have used in other chapters. Look out for obscurities, duplication or omissions. Adequate marginal annotation of your manuscript will help the typist and minimise the number of corrections to the typescript.

Proof read the typescript for typographical errors and accidental omissions. This requires the utmost care if the thesis is not to be spoiled by residual minor errors. Allow yourself enough time for this essential final stage; it cannot be hurried. You can expect your supervisor to read and comment on your first or second drafts in general terms, but not rewrite it for you. Remember, it is your thesis!

Regulations

The University provides some relevant documents which should be read in conjunction with this page:

• Guide to Examinations for Higher Degrees by Research
• University Calendar , Regulation 38 Governing Research Degrees

You should note that, among other requirements, the University insists that the thesis have an abstract, a declaration regarding joint work, and a specification in the bibliography of the set of guidelines used - in your case this document. Further information on the examinations process can be found on the Doctoral College website - click here

Thesis submission

It is very useful to the Department if you could make sure the following pieces of information are provided to the Postgraduate Programmes Officer ( [email protected] )

• The date and time of your PhD viva and where it is being held.
• The outcome of your viva (e.g. pass with no corrections / pass with minor corrections / etc).
• Contact details, including alternative email addresses, so we can keep in touch with you (please complete form found here )

Nomination of Examiners form

Prior to the submission of your thesis, please complete the Nomination of Examiners Form at least one month before you intend to submit. Your supervisor will help you complete part 2 of the form.

Please email your completed form to Physics PG [email protected] or alternatively hand to Rosalind in P522

It will then be approved by the Director of Graduate Studies or the Head of Department and then submitted to the Doctoral College for final approval.

For information and guidance on submitting your thesis, please see: Submitting Your Thesis

The Doctoral College will inform us when you have submitted, so please don't worry about advising the department yourself.

From the time of submission the Student Records office provide an automatic 4-month extension to your University Card, so access to the Department, Library etc is still possible.

Once your thesis has been submitted to the Doctoral College your nominated internal examiner will set a date for your viva. Please see the Doctoral College pages for further information. How long this is after the time you submitted depends entirely on the availability of both the internal and external examiners, but the process must be completed within four months.

For further information on the submission and viva processes, including how to prepare and courses provided at Warwick please use the links provided.

• Guide to examinations for higher degrees by research
• Research Student Skills Programme

Final Submission of Corrected Thesis

After any “minor corrections” on your thesis have been completed these must then be approved by your internal examiner. Once approved you are then able to submit the final version of your thesis, further details can be found here: final thesis submission form

The final electronic copy of your thesis will be used for storage in the University’s institutional repository. Theses stored in this way will be accessible through the British Library (BL) EThOS service. Details on this service can be found on the following link: http://www2.warwick.ac.uk/services/library/main/research/instrep/faqs/theses

If your examiners recommended a “resubmission” or then please contact the Director of Graduate Studies for further information.  

Depending on when you submit your final corrected thesis and the date at which this is approved by the University Senate committee, you will then be able to graduate either in the summer (July) or winter (January) University graduation ceremonies. More information can be found here .

The University will contact you directly with details about registering for the appropriate graduation ceremony.

If you have any queries regarding the submission deadline to attend either of these ceremonies, please contact either the Postgraduate Programmes Officer or the Doctoral College .

Up to date information on dates of Degree Ceremonies can be found here.

Alumni Information

Information on alumni activities and services can be found via the Department's Alumni and Careers website

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Databases of Theses and Dissertations

Theses and dissertations can be an important part of your research. Often, they contain a thorough literature review which can help you track down resources. When you are working on your thesis or dissertation, it is important that you are aware of all other research being done in your topic so you don't repicate someone else's work.

• Physics Department Honors & Senior Theses pdf format; arranged by year, 1999-date.
• Physics Department Recent PhD Recipients 1994-date Graduate name and dissertation title. Search the library catalog by author or title.
• W&M Digital Archive This link opens in a new window Student & faculty research, student publications, digitized material from the Special Collections Research Center, and select university records. Coverage: Varies by title.

Submitting your thesis to the Digital Archive

• W&M physical standards for theses and dissertations These are the requirements for formatting your thesis or dissertation.
• Submit your theses to W&M's digital archive
• Digital Archive Licenses You must complete the digital archive license and you have the option to add a creative commons license to your work.
• Embargo Form Embargo delays the release or availability of scholarly work due to patents pending, sensitive data, or pending publication. The embargo form must be completed by the student author and the thesis/dissertation advisor and submitted to designated archivists as directed on the form.
• Creative Commons - description and examples
• Creative Commons - the comics
• Physics dept senior and honors research guidelines

Want to Bind Your Dissertation?

You can bind one -- or multiple -- copies of your thesis or dissertation at Long’s Roullet Bookbinders in Norfolk, Virginia.

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Physics Theses & Dissertations

Theses and dissertations published by graduate students in the Department of Physics, College of Sciences, Old Dominion University, since Fall 2016 are available in this collection. Backfiles of all dissertations (and some theses) have also been added.

In late Fall 2023 or Spring 2024, all theses will be digitized and available here. In the meantime, consult the Library Catalog to find older items in print.

Theses/Dissertations from 2024 2024

Dissertation: Spectroscopy of Atmospheres , Randika Dodangodage

Dissertation: Longitudinal Solid Polarized Target for CLAS12 and Study of Spin Structure of Nucleons , Pushpa Pandey

Dissertation: Development of One and Two Current Transition Amplitudes With Two Body Final States , Keegan H. Sherman

Theses/Dissertations from 2023 2023

Dissertation: Deep Virtual Pion Pair Production , Dilini Lakshani Bulumulla

Dissertation: Spectra of Atmospheric and Astronomical Molecules , W. D. Cameron

Thesis: Exploring the Dependence of Bulges in Spiral Galaxies on Their Environment , William Jackson Clark

Dissertation: Design and Construction of a Longitudinally Polarized Solid Nuclear Target for CLAS12 , Victoria Lagerquist

Dissertation: Optics Studies for Multipass Energy Recovery at CEBAF: ER@CEBAF , Isurumali Neththikumara

Dissertation: Measurements of Magnetic Field Penetration of Materials for Superconducting Radiofrequency Cavities , Iresha Harshani Senevirathne

Dissertation: Nb 3 Sn Coating of Twin Axis Cavity and Other Complex SRF Cavity Structures , Jayendrika Kumari Tiskumara

Theses/Dissertations from 2022 2022

Dissertation: Dual Energy Electron Storage Ring Cooler Design for Relativistic Ion Beams , Bhawin Dhital

Dissertation: Experimental Investigation of All-Optical Production of Metastable Krypton , Joshua Carl Frechem

Dissertation: Multi-Technique Characterization of Superconducting Materials for Particle Accelerator Applications , Junki Makita

Dissertation: Investigating Gluonic Operators in Coordinate Space , Wayne Henry Morris III

Dissertation: Characterization of Losses in Superconducting Radio-Frequency Cavities by Combined Temperature and Magnetic Field Mapping , Ishwari Prasad Parajuli

Thesis: Development of High Conductivity Copper Coatings for SRF Cavity , Himal Pokhrel

Dissertation: Studies of BONuS12 Radial GEM Detector and TCS Beam Spin Asymmetry in CLAS12 , Jiwan Poudel

Dissertation: Ion Production and Mitigation in DC High-Voltage Photo-Guns , Joshua T. Yoskowitz

Theses/Dissertations from 2021 2021

Dissertation: Quasiclassical Computations of Compton-Scattered Spectra , Erik Scott Johnson

Dissertation: Exploring QCD Factorization at Moderate Energy Scales , Eric Alan Moffat

Dissertation: J/ψ Photoproduction Near Threshold With CLAS12 , Joseph Newton

Dissertation: Numerical Calculation of Losses of Trapped Vortices Under Strong RF Meissner Current and DC Superheating Field in Type II Superconductors , Walive Pathiranage Manula Randhika Pathirana

Dissertation: Spectator Proton Detection and Reconstruction in Deep Inelastic D(E,EP S ) Scattering , David Payette

Dissertation: Space Charge Effects in Low Energy Magnetized Electron Beams , W. M. Sajini Anushika Kumari Wijethunga

Theses/Dissertations from 2020 2020

Dissertation: Molecular Spectroscopy: A Study of Molecules in Earth and Planetary Atmospheres , Mahdi Yousefi Atashgah

Dissertation: Simulation and Development of the Radial Time Projection Chamber for the BONuS12 Experiment in CLAS12 , Nathan M. Dzbenski

Dissertation: Trend Analyses of the Abundances of Atmospheric Molecules , Anton Fernando

Dissertation: Deeply Virtual Compton Scattering at Hall A, Jefferson Lab , Mohamed Nuhman Hashir Rashad

Dissertation: Measurement of Pion-Pion Final State Interactions in η → π +π −γ with CLAS at Jefferson Lab , Torri C. Jeske

Dissertation: Measurement of the Photon Beam Asymmetry in γP → K + Σ 0 at E γ = 8.5 GeV with GlueX , Nilanga Indrajie Wickramaarachchi

Theses/Dissertations from 2019 2019

Dissertation: Effect of Alkali on the Efficiency and Reliability of Cu(In,Ga)Se2 Solar Cells , Shankar Karki

Dissertation: Validation of Neutrino Energy Estimation Using Electron Scattering Data , Mariana Khachatryan

Dissertation: Characterization of Argon and Ar/Cl 2 Plasmas Used for the Processing of Niobium Superconducting Radio-Frequency Cavities , Jeremy J. Peshl

Dissertation: Optical Excitation of Metastable Krypton and Photoassociative Spectroscopy of Ultracold RbAr , Grady R. White

Theses/Dissertations from 2018 2018

Dissertation: Ion Bunch Formation Strategies for the JLEIC Collider , Bamunuvita Randika Prasad Gamage

Dissertation: Crab Cavity Requirements for the Jefferson Lab Electron-Ion Collider , Salvador Isaac Sosa Güitrón

Thesis: Fabrication of an Apparatus for All-Optical Production of Metastable Krypton , Lindsay M. Thornton

Dissertation: Development of a 300 KV DC High Voltage Photogun and Beam Based Studies of Alkali Antimonide Photocathodes , Yan Wang

Theses/Dissertations from 2017 2017

Dissertation: R&D of a High-Performance DIRC Detector For a Future Electron-Ion Collider , Stacey Lee Allison

Dissertation: Nuclear Chiral Axial Currents and Applications to Few-Nucleon Systems , Alessandro Baroni

Dissertation: Crabbing System for an Electron-Ion Collider , Alejandro Castilla

Dissertation: Inverse Compton Light Source: A Compact Design Proposal , Kirsten Elizabeth Deitrick

Thesis: Test of New Readout Electronics for the BONuS12 Experiment , Mathieu Ehrhart

Dissertation: Instrument Design Optimization with Computational Methods , Michael H. Moore

Dissertation: Photoproduction and Radiative Decay of ηt Meson in CLAS at JLAB , Georgie Mbianda Njencheu

Dissertation: Nonlinear Dynamics of Vortices in Different Types of Grain Boundaries , Ahmad K. Sheikhzada

Dissertation: Searching for Heavy Photons With Detached Vertices in the Heavy Photon Search Experiment , Holly Szumila-Vance

Theses/Dissertations from 2016 2016

Dissertation: CEBAF Upgrade Bunch Length Measurements , Mahmoud Mohamad Ali Ahmad

Thesis: Discipline-Based Planetary Education Research and Computational Fluid Dynamics Analysis of Mars , Filis Coba

Dissertation: Emergence of Collective Light Scattering in Atomic 87 Rb Samples , Kasie Jean Kemp

Dissertation: Investigation of Multi-Photon Excitation in Argon with Applications in Hypersonic Flow Diagnostics , Jack L. Mills

Dissertation: Forward Light Scattering in an Extended Sample of Cold Atoms , Stetson Roof

Dissertation: Electroproduction of Neutral Pion Off Helium-4 , Bayram Torayev

Dissertation: Plasma Processing of Superconducting Radio Frequency Cavities , Janardan Upadhyay

Theses/Dissertations from 2015 2015

Dissertation: Development of Superconducting Spoke Cavities for High-Velocity Applications , Christopher Shawn Hopper

Thesis: Mapping of Electric and Magnetic Fields of Superconducting Cavities , Kevin Kennedy. Mitchell

Dissertation: Photoassociative Spectroscopy of Ultracold Argon and Krypton Confined in a Magneto Optical Trap , Maha Khaled Omar

Dissertation: Studies of Two-Nucleon Interactions and Few-Body Electromagnetic Structure in Chiral Effective Field Theory , Maria Piarulli

Dissertation: Meson Photo-Couplings From Lattice Quantum Chromodynamics , Christian J. P. Shultz

Dissertation: Catalysis of Stark-Tuned Interactions Between Ultracold Rydberg Atoms , Aye Lu Win

Theses/Dissertations from 2014 2014

Dissertation: Direct Measurements of Two Photon Exchange on Lepton-Proton Elastic Scattering Using Simultaneous Electron-Positron Beams in CLAS , Dasuni Kalhari Adikaram

Dissertation: Investigation and Optimization of a New Compact Superconducting Cavity for Deflecting and Crabbing Applications , Subashini Uddika De Silva

Dissertation: Measurement of Single and Double Spin Asymmetries in Semi-Inclusive Deep-Inelastic Scattering on Proton and Deuteron , Suman Bandhu Koirala

Dissertation: Photoproduction of π0 on Hydrogen With CLAS From 1.1 GeV - 5.45 GeV Using e+e –γ Decay , Michael C. Kunkel

Dissertation: Analytic Evolution of Singular Distribution Amplitudes in QCD , Asli Tandogan

Theses/Dissertations from 2013 2013

Dissertation: Measurement of the Spin Structure Function GD1 of the Deuteron and Its Moments at Low Q2 , Krishna P. Adhikari

Dissertation: Three-Point Correlator and Pion Form Factor in Quantum Chromodynamics: Methods of Calculation for Two-Loop Spectral Density , Islam Bedir

Dissertation: Visualizing and Understanding Tectonism and Volcanism on Earth and Other Terrestrial Bodies , Mladen M. Dordevic

Dissertation: Measurement of Polarized Proton-Proton Elastic Scattering at the Relativistic Heavy Ion Collider (RHIC) , Ivan Koralt

Dissertation: Double Spin Asymmetry in d →(e→e'p)n , Michael Mayer

Dissertation: Characterization of Microwave Discharge Plasmas for Surface Processing , Milka Nikolic

Dissertation: Spin Dependence in Polarized Proton-Proton Elastic Scattering at RHIC , Donika Plyku

Theses/Dissertations from 2012 2012

Dissertation: Single and Double Spin Asymmetries for Pion Electro-Production From the Deuteron in the Resonance Region , Sharon L. Careccia

Dissertation: Case Studies in Many-Body Physics , Ana Samolov

Dissertation: Laser Processing of Metals and Polymers , Senthilraja Singaravelu

Dissertation: Application of Chebyshev Formalism to Identify Nonlinear Magnetic Field Components in Beam Transport System , Michael Spata

Dissertation: Modeling, Visualizing, and Understanding Complex Tectonic Structures on the Surface and in the Sub-Surface , Steven Wild

Theses/Dissertations from 2011 2011

Dissertation: Triple Coincidence Beam Spin Asymmetry Measurements in Deeply Virtual Compton Scattering , Mustafa Canan

Dissertation: Excitation-Induced Ge Quantum Dot Growth on Si(100)-2X1 by Pulsed Laser Deposition , Ali Oguz Er

Dissertation: Epistemic Strategies for Solving Two-Dimensional Physics Problems , Mary Elyse Hing-Hickman

Dissertation: Compensation Techniques in Accelerator Physics , Hisham Kamal Sayed

Dissertation: Photoproduction of the Φ(1020) Meson in Neutral Decay Mode γP → ΦP → K(S)K(L)P , Heghine Seraydaryan

Theses/Dissertations from 2010 2010

Dissertation: Spectroscopic Study of Ultracold Rubidium Atoms in an Optical Dipole Force Trap , Eman Mohammed Ahmed

Dissertation: Feasibility and Conceptual Design of a C.W. Positron Source at CEBAF , Serkan Golge

Dissertation: Beyond the Born Approximation: A Precise Comparison of e+p and e-p Elastic Scattering in the CEBAF Large Acceptance Spectrometer (CLAS) , Megh Raj Niroula

Dissertation: Nuclear Electromagnetic Currents in Chiral Effective Field Theory , Saori Pastore

Dissertation: Exclusive π- Electro-Production From the Neutron in the Resonance Region , Jixie Zhang

Theses/Dissertations from 2009 2009

Dissertation: Light Scattering in Ultracold High Density Rubidium Vapor , Salim Balik

Dissertation: High-Energy Amplitudes in Gauge Theories in the Next-to-Leading-Order , Giovanni Antonio Chirilli

Dissertation: Characterization of Microwave Cavity Discharges in a Supersonic Flow , Dareth Janette Drake

Dissertation: Comparative Study of Forward and Diffusely Scattered Light in a Coherently Prepared Ultracold Rubidium Gas , Rocio Gisel Olave Gonzalez

Dissertation: Spin Structure of the Deuteron , Nevzat Guler

Dissertation: Neutron Structure Functions Measured with Spectator Tagging , Svyatoslav Tkachenko

Theses/Dissertations from 2008 2008

Dissertation: Investigation of (E, 2E) Collisions and Related Phenomena , Jason Manuel Martinez

Dissertation: Photoassociative Spectroscopy of Ultracold Metastable Argon and Study of Dual Species Trap Loss in a Rubidium-Metastable Argon MOT , Michael K. Shaffer

Theses/Dissertations from 2007 2007

Dissertation: Measurements of Correlated Pair Momentum Distributions in -3He(e,e',p,p)n with CLAS , Hovhannes Baghdasaryan

Theses/Dissertations from 2006 2006

Thesis: Running Coupling Constant and Transition From Low to High Energies in Quantum Chromodynamics , Alexander Babansky

Dissertation: The ²H( e, e'p ) n Reaction at High Four-Momentum Transfer , Hassan F. Ibrahim

Dissertation: Investigation of Ultracold Rubidium Atoms in a Pulsed Far off Resonance Trap , Minarni Minarni

Theses/Dissertations from 2005 2005

Dissertation: Investigation of the Superconducting Properties of Niobium Radio-Frequency Cavities , Gianluigi Ciovati

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Dissertation and Thesis Submission

All dissertations and theses must be submitted online through Stony Brook University's ProQuest/UMI ETD administrator site.  All candidates should check with their dissertation advisor and graduate program director regarding additional departmental requirements.

Graduation and Degree Requirements

Submission Guides

Guidelines for the Preparation of Theses and Dissertations - Electronic Submissions  

Guidelines for the Preparation of Dissertations - Electronic Submissions for the PhD in Music Composition  

Page Numbering Tips  

Thesis and dissertation templates

Submission specifications

• Digital copy must be submitted after successfully defended.  Submission Instructions
• Once submitted an email notification will be sent to the student and to the Graduate School.  No changes can be made after submitting, except for format changes as directed by the Graduate School.  Submissions are reviewed in order and will take an estimate of three weeks after the semester. 
• Updates will be sent to the email address used to submit by [email protected] .  Students should add this email address to their contacts and regularly check their email inbox. 
• Adobe is available in campus SINC sites for PDF conversion.
• Submission Deadlines: 4:00 pm EDT for the May and August and by 4:00 pm EST for the December.
• Students may email a PDF of their thesis/dissertation to [email protected] for a format review before officially submitting if they wish. The thesis/dissertation must be submitted to ProQuest by the deadline regardless of when a student's format review request is answered.
• Co-authorship or copyright permissions must accompany submission in the supplemental files section if any content, including manuscript and appendices, is under another copyright or were supported by a third party. Review UMI Copyright Guide and ProQuest Copyright Guide
• Students are encouraged to submit copy of theses or dissertation to Academic Commons after their submission is fully accepted by the Graduate School. 
• Students must contact ProQuest and Academic Commons if they wish to embargo their work.

Andrea Idini

How to write a thesis in theoretical physics.

Your thesis is like your first love: it will be difficult to forget. In the end, it will represent your first serious and rigorous academic work, and this is no small thing. - U. Eco

A Thesis in theoretical physics

You visited an advisor and got a topic to work on in theoretical physics, congratulations! Now the only thing you are left to do is study; do the research; wrap it up and write it down. As for the Tools of the trade article, this list has a down-to-earth approach on providing a pragmatical look on tools and advice regarding your thesis. As in other articles I will be as general as possible and as specific as needed. I will describe my suggestions for doing a thesis in general -> in physics -> theoretical physics -> theoretical nuclear physics -> and my Lund group in particular. Both at undergraduate, graduate and PhD level.

There are entire libraries, websites, and initiatives dedicated to the craft of writing in general and academic writing in particular. Nice initiatives and tools on general writing are shut up and write , Hemingway App . There is also plenty of material to take inspiration regarding academic writing. Most interestingly, there is a whole 300-pager by Umberto Eco: “How to write a thesis” ( here you can read the review and excerpt). Online you can find the book if you wish but don’t waste precious thesis time (this post is already long more than enough). Keep in mind that Eco’s book was written in the context of Italian humanities where a thesis lasts easily more than a year of pure writing, therefore is more applicable to a PhD’s than an undergraduate’s thesis. Lund University (LU from now on) has its own resources on academic writing. There are courses, workshops and an interesting website .

Learning to have a strong academic writing is a lifelong endavour. It is not possible to master every process at any given stage of your studies. However, following advice and practicing you will become better and more confident on your writing.

Bibliographic Research

Textbook, journals and articles, bibliographic tools, programming, scope, tone, language, following up.

The thesis is the final academic document testifying some work required for the attainment of a degree. There are theses for bachelor, master students, licenciate, and PhD degrees. Theses are used even for some professional or professor habilitation in some countries and circumstances. Therefore, even though topics, length and depth might differ from thesis to thesis, they have always the same primary audiences: the people handing out the degree. In LU the B.Sc. and M.Sc. graduation theses are refereed by one or two external examiners. In our case, they are usually people in mathematical physics, that have experience in many-body systems but not necessary in your method of choice or nuclear physics.

When writing anything, the first thing to keep in mind is the reader. Like your examiners, other people that might read your thesis are knowledgeble of the field, but not of the argument. For example in our case, they will be your students colleagues that might need to pick up your work. That is, prospective physicists but not necessarely with a nuclear or theoretical physics background. You can give for granted that the reader knows what is a Lorentz transformation or quantum state, but you should not abuse field-specific jargon and use it without introduction. Every acronym, method and code must be introduced and referred to with references.

The use of references has to be strategic. Being the thesis an official document for the attainment of degree, it has to “stand on its own feet”. The reader from your target audience has to be able to read comfortably without need of constantly referring to the literature. Of course, you need to use references and literature, especially to provide plenty of examples and material to study in more depth. However, within reason, everything you use for your results needs to be introduced explicitly so that the content and context of your work is clear.

The work done for a thesis in physics is usually a work centered in research, either by critically reviewing previous research results or by developing original research guided by the supervisor. Bachelor and Master theses are 15, 30, or 60 credits, corresponding to 10, 20 or 40 weeks of full time work respectively. The goals are usually set by the supervisor, and the amout of supervision and independence will dependend on the specific project and adjusted according to performance.

Last and probably least, another consequence of being an official document it is that the thesis has often to adhere to some official or unofficial guidelines. Usually concerning length, structure, format and rarely content. For Lund physics department, you can find the guidelines here and here . Here is the checklist for registration of a Physics diploma work in LU. Pay particular attention to the learning outcomes.

The first thing when approaching thesis work, is to understand the scientific background and context to your work. This is done by reading articles and books suggested by the supervisor that are instrumental to the problem. Some articles are worth to read and understand in detail, others to skim to grasp the main concepts and results. Only experience can judge how much to devote to each article and how to read and understand effectively. It is not an exact science but an art that improves with experience.

Your thesis work is the opportunity to delve into the literature and start to gain this experience, picking the brain and experience of an expert supervisor, so make the most of it. Try to read academic literature every day. Read everything that you think is worth to cite and everything you will cite in your work. Read modern developments on journals and the arXiv of your field. It is not uncommon for a thesis work to review dozens and even few hundreds articles. The articles your supervisor cites you are only the starting point of a journey of understanding.

In the writing of your thesis, especially in the introduction you will need to refer to the literature, in order to point the reader providing context and pointers to concept and tools you used in your work. In the same way, scientists use references in articles, and often in books. Therefore, you can use the bibliography of the article you read as an important tool for your bibliographic research. You can follow citations in two ways:

• upstream, looking at an article references to understand on which other works is based,
• and downstream, looking at works that cited the said articles and use it for follow-up works.

This is crucial to understand the scientific foundation and impact of a work.

At LU a short training course is given in Language and Library .

There are different outlets of scientific publications. Textbooks are published by a publisher. Articles of different type get published by a journal. Topical journals are the traditional and always good way to read and update about new results in a field. The editorial collocation of an article is an indication about subject, novelty, and median impact of a publication. Unofficially and roughly they can be cathegorized in the following way.

• Textbooks: you encountered textbooks in your basic education. Academic textbooks are often more advanced but they are written to be a comprehensive, reliable, organized, and pedagogically useful treatment of an argument. There are few updated books in nuclear physics, in the later years the community is relying more and more on articles.
• Review papers: they are long overview of an argument published in a journal. More updated, limited and cutting-edge than a book, may contain new results. They are a good starting point to work on an argument, especially if books are not available. Journals publishing reviews are e.g. Review on Modern Physics and Reports on progress in physics
• Articles: these are the “standard” scientific publications, describing new results in as much detail as needed for understanding and reproduction. It is good practice to periodically read issues of the journal publishing articles in the field you want to be updated. For physics a good resources are the APS journals , in particular Physical Review C (shortened PRC) for nuclear physics and Physical Review E for many-body systems and non-linear phenomena. In these journals, some particularly interesting articles get featured on the homepage as editorial suggestions.
• Letters: these are short articles, to communicate particularly novel results and timely results that the community should take quick notice. For this reason, on average letters have higher impact and the selection is often stricter. Topical journals like PRC have “rapid communication” sections for letters. Letters are often targeted to a wider public of physicists and even scientists in general. Being featured in Physical Review Letters (shortened PRL), Nature and Science is an achievement for any physicist.

To organize the work of the bibliographic research and citation, apart from the quite important brain and internet, sometimes is useful to be helped by tools:

• Zotero to organize your article library.
• Scholar and web of science to find scientists, topics, articles and track citations.

Some people use Mendeley, but I don’t feel right endorsing bibliographic options owned by editorial companies.

This will probably be your first experience in original scientific work. Arguably, your objectives shoud be:

• To learn as much as possible.
• To do a good research job, that feeds into the primary objective.
• To present it properly. That is part of the learning outcomes for the diploma work.
• To think about the role of science and your work in business, society and in your future.

Here is the list of learning outcomes for the diploma work of B.Sc. and M.Sc. . These are no small technicalities, but set the expectation of the quality of your work required by not only LU, but the ministry of research and education. Be mindful of the responsability that the title you are applying for carries.

To organize the work according to these requirements, you have to coordinate with your supervisor. Set a timeline and schedule. Keep in mind that the most open and available of the supervisors is probabily a busy person, and has other duties to attend to and frequent trips. Be sure that he is available for any strict bureaucratic or work request you have from your project.

The time management is your responsability and to be open about duties and request you have is an important part of efficient project management and hence successfull work. Check the deadlines and appointments. According to the type of work and credits you have for the project (1 credit are 25-30 hours of work), the work load will be set accordingly and the supervisor will help you set realistic goals.

Some research requires coding to simulate and understand the physical system and formalism. The tools of the trade article can help you find some tools and resources. Regarding the context of the thesis work, one word of advice is to not trying to do it all. Choose few tools to perfect and focus on getting most done and be effective for your project.

To help the organization of the work and collaboration, it is sometimes efficient to use git. For this reason at the division of mathematical-physics we set up our own Gitlab server (not to be confused with the public gitlab.com). Focus the objectives and the structure the code accordingly.

It is good practice to use git as versioning system (not anymore v1, v2) and when you get the hang of it, it is convenient to use also for important documents, such as the thesis.

The tone and language of the thesis have to be gauged according the objective and the audience. The audience are your examiners, and your fellow students. You have to write for prospective students that need to understand the scientific context, have a good bibliography to start from, and a report of your results useful to reproduce and continue your work. Even more than usual, write only what you really know to be correct. Typos happen. Imprecise concepts, incorrect statements, wrong equations, will not help your reader, and therefore you.

Scientific writing has to be crisp and precise. Use short and clear phrases. Keep the grammar simple and exact. Choose your words precisely. The objective is first and foremost a dry, correct , and objective account of your research and results.

A modified version of George Orwell’s rules for writing can be used: > A scrupulous writer, in every sentence that he writes, will ask himself […]: What am I trying to say? What words will express it? What image or idiom will make it clearer? […] I think the following rules will cover most cases:

• Never use a metaphor, simile, or other figure of speech which you are used to seeing in print .
• Never use a long word where a short one will do.
• Without compromising precision , if it is possible to cut a word out, always cut it out.
• Never use the passive where you can use the active. Use the first person singular, when is work you (and only you) have done. Use the first person plural to refer to the group or the community. Use “One” to refer to an eventual reader. Use the passive voice when needed, especially to refer to the work itself
• Never use a foreign phrase ~~, a scientific word, ~~ or a jargon word if you can think of an everyday English equivalent. Use the scientific words respecting their context and meaning
• Break any of these rules sooner than say anything outright barbarous wrong .

In addition,

• Equations are part of a phrase, use punctuation when introducing (not : but ,) and after the equation (usually , or .)
• I cannot stress this enough: define everything you use. Every symbol and index in an equation, quantum number, content of a figure, axes of a plot… etc… Attach captions to figures and tables.
• Refer to equations as Eq. (*). Figures as Fig. *. Tables as Table *.
• Write, both thesis and code, for yourself of the future. When you will have forgotten what was that index in the third line of equation (7.24) about.

If you read as suggested, you will pick up the style of your discipline. Try to imitate it.

For more information, a short training course is given in LU regarding Language and Library .

Being the thesis an official document, it is extra important to respect official rules. One of the most relevant regards plagiarism. Literal quotes of other works have to be in quotes and properly referred. Not original figures have also to be cited, even when the copyright is available and free to use. Plagiarism is a serious offence, and can ruin careers and lives. LU has a zero-tolerance policy on plagiarism on diploma works, including self-plagiarism (copying one own’s work). To guarantee this, al thesis are passed through a plagiarism detection system called URKUND. Submit the thesis to URKUND few days in advance of the deadline.

The number of pages of a report varies enomoursly according to topic and originality. A research thesis requires less pages than a review one. At the Physics department of Lund a (somewhat) strict limit of pages for diploma works is in place:

• 15 credits B.Sc. report: 25 pages max;
• 30 credits M.Sc. report: 40 pages max;
• 60 credits M.Sc. report: 50 pages max.

This can work also as indicative size for similar works.

Other constrains might be in place, depending on your field, University and situation. Formalities such as cover page are often in place. Moreover, Lund’s physics department also imposes the sections that have to be present in a thesis.

The title of the thesis should illustrate the work you have done. There is no point in too general titles (“Nuclear physics”); too specific titles (“Study of 2+ states in rotational bands using HFBTHO code in the Praseodymium isotopic chain”) on the other hand discourage the reader that might be interested in more general concepts. As with many things related to writing, you will have to strike a balance. Let’s use the latter example to guide you through the process, considering you evaluate this to be your contribution. Your study might not only be interesting for people looking for 2+ states. For sure, if your study is in physics, the results should not depend on the code used. Hence, without loss of information, “Study of rotational bands in the Praseodymium isotopic chain” is definetely more useful for people that need to decide if your thesis deserves a second look.

When writing, you should always ask yourself what is needed here, why, and how is it possible to improve it. Especially for important sections like title and abstract.

The abstract is a short summary of few lines. It regards the premise, main method and results and conclusion of your work. A thesis summary is not much different from an article, therefore you have plenty of examples under your hand.

In the appendix of the diploma work are specified the necessary sections and content of a thesis.

If you allow me a kitchen metaphor, consider the thesis as a hamburger: the Introduction is the restaurant, table and plate; the Method the bottom bread; the Results the patty; the Conclusion the condiments; the Bibliography the top bun; the Appendix , code and other documentation your complementary fries and beverage.

Introduction

The introduction is the support and presentation for your work. It is needed to introduce your work and its scientific context. Use what you have read but don’t exagerate with background information. A thesis is not a textbook. The main objective of having context is to introduce the significance of your work. Why are you doing what you are doing, and how does this help the scientific community. One of your student colleagues should be able to be introduced to the topic, have the pointers to the literature needed to understand deeper, and be compelled to continue reading.

The method section is the foundation of your work. It is not strictly required by the syllabus and can eventually be merged with “results”. However, is good practice to keep them separate. Here you should introduced the techniques that will be used in the result section, in order to decrease the reliance of external reference material and make your thesis self-sufficient.

For example, Hartree-Fock method, or cellular automata, are examples of well-known techniques that might be needed to understand your work. A brief and to the point description of this well-known method will help the reader. But restrain yourself and describe only the methods which are most relevant to your work. Other background information should be referenced to literature. Remember the page limit and to preserve the sanity and disposition of advisors and examiners. Think that we have to read few of these theses in a week, and while we want to verify you understand, reading pages of well known irrelevant details does not put us in the mood for a positive evaluation.

The results section is where “the beef” is. The main content of your work, your original contribution. Here you use the methods introduced, within the scientific context explained in the introduction, to provide new insight into the topic of your thesis. Depending on the type of thesis, stage of studies, ambition, field, it can be radically different. The results section is the one most comparable to articles. Therefore, you should take inspiration from the literature on how to present your results.

Here more than ever you have to consider Orwell’s suggestion: ask yourself “What am I trying to say? What words will express it? What image or idiom will make it clearer?”. Try to focus a message and think of the best way to convey it.

A common mistake is thinking of the thesis as a simple laboratory report, where you are tempted to list all your trials in chronological order. Introducing results chronologically might be an efficient strategy (often a thesis progresses in complexity and builds on previous results), but it is not always the best strategy. Focus on the scientific message, and select those results that are important to illustrate that message.

Conclusion and Outlook

The conclusion gives the flavour and aftertaste. What you want the reader to take away and remember? What are the discoveries you made in your work, and how do they fit with and contribute to our understanding?

Moreover, an outlook must also be provided. That is, suggesting possible avenues for continuing the journey you started. What should we do next? Why?

Bibliography

The good researched and redacted bibliography is an essential part of a text. It provides both motivation, context and possibility to investigate deeper. In good bibliographies you can find insightful texts and hidden gems. An expert examiner (or referee) can almost judge the quality of a work by only looking at the attached bibliography. The bibliography is a good marker of quality because is a marker of the intellectual “diet” of a person. The more varied, deep, sophisticated is the diet the higher quality the work will usually come to be. An intellectual is just as good as his/her reading list and scientists make no exception.

Curate your reading list and demonstrate good use of the bibliography. Readers will be grateful.

Appendix and others

Appendix is an additional part of the text. It is a good and sometimes necessary addition. Interesting derivations, ancillary results, additional content, can enrich the text and provide details for the not-so-average reader. In the main text you target the audience of examiner and fellow students, that need to understand the scientific contribution you made. The appendix will be reserved for the reader that want more details. The student that have to pick up the work. Someone that might want to implement something you derived. Who want to know the nitty gritty of your results in order to reproduce them.

Before my time, way back when dinosaur roamed the earth, codes used to be attached in the appendix. Today is not that useful to have a line-by-line printout of the code. It is way easier to provide a link to a public or semi-public repository (like the division’s gitlab ), and often codes are now too complicated to be printed out with ease. However, this is an excellent example of the content of an appendix: something perhaps not directly scientifically relevant, but informative for people that want to look closer and work it out for themselves.

As I described in the article Tools of the trade , physics and theoretical physics in particular use Latex for scientific writing. This comes from a general tendency to prefer opensource and Linux-based tools. Moreover, latex has the perfect equation typeset. To write Latex you can use whatever text editor, but I find Kile to be the easiest editor. Some people use Lyx or Overleaf .

Since the bibliography in a thesis is substantial, is useful to use the proper instrument to cite it. I suggest to use bibtex, since is the most automatic and complete way to reference literature in latex. You have to put bibtex references in a separate .bib file, and cite it with \cite{...} . Figures and equation can be labelled with \label{...} and \ref{...} . Here is a short introduction to Latex by A. Cottrell, and a short tutorial on overleaf.com .

When the thesis is done and delivered. You will have to present it (and sometimes defend it) in front of the examiners. This usually consists in a presentation, that in LU Physics consists in 30 minutes or less. If your thesis needs to have a clear scientific message, this is doubly true for the presentation. In a presentation everything needs to be purposefully presented with the objective of delivering a single, impactful, scientific message.

A good exercise is: think of you thesis, and summarize the conclusion in 10 simple words or less. Now question everything: “does this help me deliver this 10 word message?”. Build your presentation on this.

Reason by blocks: the single presentation needs to build up to a single message; the single slide needs to have a single message that helps the presentation; the single figure and text needs to convey a single message that helps the slide. You get the jist.

If you have to revolutionize the structure you use in your thesis, or cut out many results, so be it. A presentation have to be convincing and compelling, not a complete account of your work. In fact quite the opposite. In the most prestigious conferences often you have few minutes to summarise years of work.

Also in the presentation, the most important attribute is precision. Avoid touching subjects you are not sure of and employ a specific and correct vocabulary adequate for your subject.

It is fairly common that after the presentation, the examiners request some changes before agreeing on the final mark. Don’t be discouraged, scientific work and writing is a lifelong endavour and this is an excellent opportunity to polish your craft. Maybe your last opportunity to confront yourself with professionals in scientific writing.

If your work is particularly original and potentially impactful, your advisor can propose to publish it in a scientific journal. If that’s the case, you can use results, figures and paragraphs you have produced in the thesis. You will discuss with your supervisor the type of article and the style to adopt.

In most cases, substantial revision is needed, because the format of an article is quite different from a thesis. A scientific article has a lower degree of self-sufficiency and a higher reliance on external sources. For example, in your thesis you might need to define Hartree Fock, in an article is not necessary in most cases, since it is a well known method and can be referenced. This might imply also that the notation you used might need a revision.

In this case, your supervisor will guide you very closely. It is good practice to offer a first draft, revised as asked. This first draft will probably need extensive correction, but again this is common. Having a publication out of a thesis up to several factors not always under your control, but certainly does feel good to have a test of the scientific maturity you have reached in such a short amount of time, and definetly will help future PhD publications.

This concludes this guide. Don’t hesitate to contact me for more explanation and suggest modification. Sorry if it’s long, I did not have time to make it shorter. To compensate, you deserve a Seal of approval to have arrived here!

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Home > Arts and Sciences > Physics > PHYSICSETD

Physics Theses, Dissertations, and Masters Projects

Theses/dissertations from 2023 2023.

Ab Initio Computations Of Structural Properties In Solids By Auxiliary Field Quantum Monte Carlo , Siyuan Chen

Constraining Of The Minerνa Medium Energy Neutrino Flux Using Neutrino-Electron Scattering , Luis Zazueta

Experimental Studies Of Neutral Particles And The Isotope Effect In The Edge Of Tokamak Plasmas , Ryan Chaban

From The Hubbard Model To Coulomb Interactions: Quantum Monte Carlo Computations In Strongly Correlated Systems , Zhi-Yu Xiao

Theses/Dissertations from 2022 2022

Broadband Infrared Microspectroscopy and Nanospectroscopy of Local Material Properties: Experiment and Modeling , Patrick McArdle

Edge Fueling And Neutral Density Studies Of The Alcator C-Mod Tokamak Using The Solps-Iter Code , Richard M. Reksoatmodjo

Electronic Transport In Topological Superconducting Heterostructures , Joseph Jude Cuozzo

Inclusive and Inelastic Scattering in Neutrino-Nucleus Interactions , Amy Filkins

Investigation Of Stripes, Spin Density Waves And Superconductivity In The Ground State Of The Two-Dimensional Hubbard Model , Hao Xu

Partial Wave Analysis Of Strange Mesons Decaying To K + Π − Π + In The Reaction Γp → K + Π + Π − Λ(1520) And The Commissioning Of The Gluex Dirc Detector , Andrew Hurley

Partial Wave Analysis of the ωπ− Final State Photoproduced at GlueX , Amy Schertz

Quantum Sensing For Low-Light Imaging , Savannah Cuozzo

Radiative Width of K*(892) from Lattice Quantum Chromodynamics , Archana Radhakrishnan

Theses/Dissertations from 2021 2021

AC & DC Zeeman Interferometric Sensing With Ultracold Trapped Atoms On A Chip , Shuangli Du

Calculation Of Gluon Pdf In The Nucleon Using Pseudo-Pdf Formalism With Wilson Flow Technique In LQCD , Md Tanjib Atique Khan

Dihadron Beam Spin Asymmetries On An Unpolarized Hydrogen Target With Clas12 , Timothy Barton Hayward

Excited J-- Resonances In Meson-Meson Scattering From Lattice Qcd , Christopher Johnson

Forward & Off-Forward Parton Distributions From Lattice Qcd , Colin Paul Egerer

Light-Matter Interactions In Quasi-Two-Dimensional Geometries , David James Lahneman

Proton Spin Structure from Simultaneous Monte Carlo Global QCD Analysis , Yiyu Zhou

Radiofrequency Ac Zeeman Trapping For Neutral Atoms , Andrew Peter Rotunno

Theses/Dissertations from 2020 2020

A First-Principles Study of the Nature of the Insulating Gap in VO2 , Christopher Hendriks

Competing And Cooperating Orders In The Three-Band Hubbard Model: A Comprehensive Quantum Monte Carlo And Generalized Hartree-Fock Study , Adam Chiciak

Development Of Quantum Information Tools Based On Multi-Photon Raman Processes In Rb Vapor , Nikunjkumar Prajapati

Experiments And Theory On Dynamical Hamiltononian Monodromy , Matthew Perry Nerem

Growth Engineering And Characterization Of Vanadium Dioxide Films For Ultraviolet Detection , Jason Andrew Creeden

Insulator To Metal Transition Dynamics Of Vanadium Dioxide Thin Films , Scott Madaras

Quantitative Analysis Of EKG And Blood Pressure Waveforms , Denise Erin McKaig

Study Of Scalar Extensions For Physics Beyond The Standard Model , Marco Antonio Merchand Medina

Theses/Dissertations from 2019 2019

Beyond the Standard Model: Flavor Symmetry, Nonperturbative Unification, Quantum Gravity, and Dark Matter , Shikha Chaurasia

Electronic Properties of Two-Dimensional Van Der Waals Systems , Yohanes Satrio Gani

Extraction and Parametrization of Isobaric Trinucleon Elastic Cross Sections and Form Factors , Scott Kevin Barcus

Interfacial Forces of 2D Materials at the Oil–Water Interface , William Winsor Dickinson

Scattering a Bose-Einstein Condensate Off a Modulated Barrier , Andrew James Pyle

Topics in Proton Structure: BSM Answers to its Radius Puzzle and Lattice Subtleties within its Momentum Distribution , Michael Chaim Freid

Theses/Dissertations from 2018 2018

A Measurement of Nuclear Effects in Deep Inelastic Scattering in Neutrino-Nucleus Interactions , Anne Norrick

Applications of Lattice Qcd to Hadronic Cp Violation , David Brantley

Charge Dynamics in the Metallic and Superconducting States of the Electron-Doped 122-Type Iron Arsenides , Zhen Xing

Dynamics of Systems With Hamiltonian Monodromy , Daniel Salmon

Exotic Phases in Attractive Fermions: Charge Order, Pairing, and Topological Signatures , Peter Rosenberg

Extensions of the Standard Model Higgs Sector , Richard Keith Thrasher

First Measurements of the Parity-Violating and Beam-Normal Single-Spin Asymmetries in Elastic Electron-Aluminum Scattering , Kurtis David Bartlett

Lattice Qcd for Neutrinoless Double Beta Decay: Short Range Operator Contributions , Henry Jose Monge Camacho

Probe of Electroweak Interference Effects in Non-Resonant Inelastic Electron-Proton Scattering , James Franklyn Dowd

Proton Spin Structure from Monte Carlo Global Qcd Analyses , Jacob Ethier

Searching for A Dark Photon in the Hps Experiment , Sebouh Jacob Paul

Theses/Dissertations from 2017 2017

A global normal form for two-dimensional mode conversion , David Gregory Johnston

Computational Methods of Lattice Boltzmann Mhd , Christopher Robert Flint

Computational Studies of Strongly Correlated Quantum Matter , Hao Shi

Determination of the Kinematics of the Qweak Experiment and Investigation of an Atomic Hydrogen Møller Polarimeter , Valerie Marie Gray

Disconnected Diagrams in Lattice Qcd , Arjun Singh Gambhir

Formulating Schwinger-Dyson Equations for Qed Propagators in Minkowski Space , Shaoyang Jia

Highly-Correlated Electron Behavior in Niobium and Niobium Compound Thin Films , Melissa R. Beebe

Infrared Spectroscopy and Nano-Imaging of La0.67Sr0.33Mno3 Films , Peng Xu

Investigation of Local Structures in Cation-Ordered Microwave Dielectric a Solid-State Nmr and First Principle Calculation Study , Rony Gustam Kalfarisi

Measurement of the Elastic Ep Cross Section at Q2 = 0.66, 1.10, 1.51 and 1.65 Gev2 , YANG WANG

Modeling The Gross-Pitaevskii Equation using The Quantum Lattice Gas Method , Armen M. Oganesov

Optical Control of Multi-Photon Coherent Interactions in Rubidium Atoms , Gleb Vladimirovich Romanov

Plasmonic Approaches and Photoemission: Ag-Based Photocathodes , Zhaozhu Li

Quantum and Classical Manifestation of Hamiltonian Monodromy , Chen Chen

Shining Light on The Phase Transitions of Vanadium Dioxide , Tyler J. Huffman

Superconducting Thin Films for The Enhancement of Superconducting Radio Frequency Accelerator Cavities , Matthew Burton

Theses/Dissertations from 2016 2016

Ac Zeeman Force with Ultracold Atoms , Charles Fancher

A Measurement of the Parity-Violating Asymmetry in Aluminum and its Contribution to A Measurement of the Proton's Weak Charge , Joshua Allen Magee

An improved measurement of the Muon Neutrino charged current Quasi-Elastic cross-section on Hydrocarbon at Minerva , Dun Zhang

Applications of High Energy Theory to Superconductivity and Cosmic Inflation , Zhen Wang

A Precision Measurement of the Weak Charge of Proton at Low Q^2: Kinematics and Tracking , Siyuan Yang

Compton Scattering Polarimetry for The Determination of the Proton’S Weak Charge Through Measurements of the Parity-Violating Asymmetry of 1H(E,e')P , Juan Carlos Cornejo

Disorder Effects in Dirac Heterostructures , Martin Alexander Rodriguez-Vega

Electron Neutrino Appearance in the Nova Experiment , Ji Liu

Experimental Apparatus for Quantum Pumping with a Bose-Einstein Condensate. , Megan K. Ivory

Investigating Proton Spin Structure: A Measurement of G_2^p at Low Q^2 , Melissa Ann Cummings

Neutrino Flux Prediction for The Numi Beamline , Leonidas Aliaga Soplin

Quantitative Analysis of Periodic Breathing and Very Long Apnea in Preterm Infants. , Mary A. Mohr

Resolution Limits of Time-of-Flight Mass Spectrometry with Pulsed Source , Guangzhi Qu

Solving Problems of the Standard Model through Scale Invariance, Dark Matter, Inflation and Flavor Symmetry , Raymundo Alberto Ramos

Study of Spatial Structure of Squeezed Vacuum Field , Mi Zhang

Study of Variations of the Dynamics of the Metal-Insulator Transition of Thin Films of Vanadium Dioxide with An Ultra-Fast Laser , Elizabeth Lee Radue

Thin Film Approaches to The Srf Cavity Problem: Fabrication and Characterization of Superconducting Thin Films , Douglas Beringer

Turbulent Particle Transport in H-Mode Plasmas on Diii-D , Xin Wang

Theses/Dissertations from 2015 2015

Ballistic atom pumps , Tommy Byrd

Determination of the Proton's Weak Charge via Parity Violating e-p Scattering. , Joshua Russell Hoskins

Electronic properties of chiral two-dimensional materials , Christopher Lawrence Charles Triola

Heavy flavor interactions and spectroscopy from lattice quantum chromodynamics , Zachary S. Brown

Some properties of meson excited states from lattice QCD , Ekaterina V. Mastropas

Sterile Neutrino Search with MINOS. , Alena V. Devan

Ultracold rubidium and potassium system for atom chip-based microwave and RF potentials , Austin R. Ziltz

Theses/Dissertations from 2014 2014

Enhancement of MS Signal Processing for Improved Cancer Biomarker Discovery , Qian Si

Whispering-gallery mode resonators for nonlinear and quantum optical applications , Matthew Thomas Simons

Theses/Dissertations from 2013 2013

Applications of Holographic Dualities , Dylan Judd Albrecht

A search for a new gauge boson , Eric Lyle Jensen

Experimental Generation and Manipulation of Quantum Squeezed Vacuum via Polarization Self-Rotation in Rb Vapor , Travis Scott Horrom

Low Energy Tests of the Standard Model , Benjamin Carl Rislow

Magnetic Order and Dimensional Crossover in Optical Lattices with Repulsive Interaction , Jie Xu

Multi-meson systems from Lattice Quantum Chromodynamics , Zhifeng Shi

Theses/Dissertations from 2012 2012

Dark matter in the heavens and at colliders: Models and constraints , Reinard Primulando

Measurement of Single and Double Spin Asymmetries in p(e, e' pi(+/-,0))X Semi-Inclusive Deep-Inelastic Scattering , Sucheta Shrikant Jawalkar

NMR study of paramagnetic nano-checkerboard superlattices , Christopher andrew Maher

Parity-violating asymmetry in the nucleon to delta transition: A Study of Inelastic Electron Scattering in the G0 Experiment , Carissa Lee Capuano

Studies of polarized and unpolarized helium -3 in the presence of alkali vapor , Kelly Anita Kluttz

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• Aug 21 – PhD Thesis Defence – Alicia Martin

Tuesday, August 13, 2024 | By jtitone

Doctoral thesis defence in Physics

Alicia Martin, a Doctor of Philosophy candidate in the Department of Physics, will defend her thesis titled “Monte Carlo Validation of Dose, Quality Assurance Protocols and Shielding in Radiation Therapy” on Wednesday, Aug. 21 at 1 p.m., in Plaza building room 600F.

The examination committee includes Brian Roy, Chair; Thad Harroun, Supervisor; Kevin Ross Diamond, External Examiner (McMaster University); Shahryar Rahnamayan, Internal External Examiner, and Kirill Samokhin and Edward Sternin, Committee Members.

Tags: FMS , Physics , Thesis defence Categories: Events

FMS News and Events

• Aug 19 – Master of Science Project Presentation – Samiha Tasmin
• Aug 2 – Master of Science Thesis Defence – Fardad Pirri
• July 23 – PhD Thesis Defence – Gregory Foran
• July 15 – Master of Science thesis defence – Abhishek Kumar
• May 31 – Master of Science Thesis Defence – Pierre Simiganoschi
• May 29 – Master of Science Thesis Defence – Quanjian Li
• May 21 – Doctor of Philosophy Thesis Defence – Frank Betancourt
• May 16 – Master of Science Thesis Defence – Georgina Louise Gardner

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