There is a definite need in high-tech industries for graduates who fall in the gap between someone graduating with an engineering degree and a regular Physics Ph.D. Students in this category might work in R&D, process control, interdisciplinary fields (such as medical physics and biophysics), stockpile stewardship and nuclear forensics, or computational physics. While none of our faculty specifically identify themselves as applied physicists, many have projects which naturally fall into the niche this program fills and have graduated students from within this program. Specifically, there are opportunities in the fields of: condensed matter/solid state physics; atomic and molecular physics/quantum optics; detector R&D; nuclear physics; accelerator physics; and instrumentation in observational astronomy.
