Bragging Rights

Comparison with Our Peers in Terms of Research Funding

With only 27 permanent faculty members, we receive competitive external funding of about $7.0 million each year. As the graph below shows, we do extremely well in terms of federally funded research per faculty when compared to our peers. The funding data on this graph comes from National Science Foundation report for the 2008 research funding (http://www.nsf.gov/statistics/nsf10311/content.cfm?pub_id=3944&id=2 Physics is Table 57) and the number of faculty data is taken from AIP 2011 Graduate Programs book.  The "projected funding" for K-State Physics is totally hypothetical --- it is the hypothetical funding we would have had at our 2008 rate of procuring extramural funding with the same number of faculty members as one of our much bigger peers say, North Carolina State.

Summary of Faculty Awards

Many of our faculty have received national and local awards and have collaborations with laboratories and institutes abroad as well as nationally. Physics faculty includes two Carnegie National Professor of the year winners, seven Fellows of American Physical Society (APS) and one of American Association for Advancement of Science (AAAS), four winners of outstanding junior investigator awards (given by NSF and DOE), five University Distinguished Professors and three winners of K-State's Presidential Award for Outstanding Undergraduate Teaching.  

K-State has won more High Energy Physics Outstanding Junior Investigator (OJI) awards from the Department of Energy (DOE) than any other US institution from 1994 when the High Energy Physics program began at K-State to 2008, when the DOE program changed from OJI to Early Career.

See http://www.phys.ksu.edu/news/awards/faculty.html for a complete listing of national and local awards won by K-State Physics faculty.

Summary of Student Awards

In last 15 years or so, 10 physics majors and one physics minor have won the Goldwater scholarship.  In addition, one of our students has won the Rhodes scholarship, one has won the Clare Booth Luce scholarship, three have won NSF Graduate Fellowships, and one student was a finalist for the Apker award of the American Institute of Physics for demonstrating exceptional potential for scientific research. In addition, our undergraduates regularly publish papers in refereed journals. 

See http://www.phys.ksu.edu/news/awards/undergraduate.html for a listing of recent national and local awards won by K-State Physics undergraduates or  http://www.phys.ksu.edu/news/awards/graduate.html for the listing for graduate student awards.