Department of Physics at the U of I

Research

Stan Kondov, a graduate student working with Professor Brian Demarco. He's looking at a glass enclosure, or a "glass cell", in which we cool atoms to just billionths of a degree above absolute zero. The glass cell is evacuated to pressures a millionth of a billionth below atmospheric pressure to isolate the atoms from room temperature. Stan will trap these atoms in a crystal made out of light and use them to try to understand why certain materials possess superlative thermoelectric properties. The ultimate goal is to use knowledge gained from this experiment to guide the development of new materials that could have a transformative impact on the energy economy. Photo by Toni Pitts.

The Department of Physics at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign—ranked among the top ten in the U.S. by the National Research Council of the National Academy of Sciences—is a world leader in physics research and education. We are committed to training new generations of researchers and leaders, to forging new partnerships with government and industry, and to applying the tools of physics to new problems to benefit the State of Illinois, the nation, and the world.

Major experimental and theoretical programs range from fundamental to applied research and are currently externally supported at a level of $29 million annually. In addition to our department's pre-eminence in traditional physics disciplines, such as condensed matter physics, nuclear physics, high energy physics, and astrophysics, we are also increasingly recognized for our strong programs in biological physics, mesoscopic physics, computational physics, and the physics of quantum information. Physics research also encompasses interdisciplinary collaborations with other Illinois science and engineering departments—many also ranked within the top ten U.S. programs.