NIST Physicist to Present General Public Lecture Related to Physics in Agriculture

Dr. Brian Washburn, physicist and project leader at National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST), will present the spring James R. Neff Lecture in Physics. This lecture, “Combing the Atmosphere for Trace Gases: How Advances in Physics can Help Agriculture” will be held Monday, March 10, at 4:30 p.m. in 102 Cardwell Hall at Kansas State University. The talk will be accessible to a non-technical audience in order to provide a basic understanding of this information for the general public.

Washburn will discuss a collaborative effort between NIST and K-State in which they monitor agricultural gas emissions with a focus on methane and ammonia from cattle towards improving regional inventories of agricultural methane and ammonia production, which will result in more precise methods that can be used to validate methane reduction strategies. This effort utilizes an innovative Nobel prize-winning tool pioneered at NIST, a laser frequency comb, that can provide trace gas concentrations at relevant time and spatial scales to monitor the sustainability of agroecosystems.

Dr. Washburn earned his Ph.D. from Georgia Institute of Technology in 2002. He was a postdoctoral fellow at NIST from 2002-2005 prior to joining the physics faculty at Kansas State University where he served as a regular faculty member until 2019. Brian joined NIST in 2019 where he now serves as a project leader in the Fiber Sources and Applications Group which is part of the Spectrum Technology and Research Division. He remains an adjunct professor on the physics faculty at K-State.

Students, faculty and community members are encouraged to attend this free public lecture to hear about this exciting research at the forefront of physics and agriculture and the NIST collaboration with the Physics, Agronomy, and Animal Sciences & Industry departments here at K-State. More information on the talk is available at https://www.phys.ksu.edu/about/events/neff/2025/spring/

Refreshments will be served prior to the lecture at 4:00 p.m. in Room 119 of Cardwell Hall.

This lecture series is supported by an endowment from Dr. James R. Neff in honor of his parents, Everett & Florine Neff. It is intended to represent Dr. Neff's gratitude for the opportunities and education he received at K-State and to acknowledge his parents as benefactors of this institution of higher learning.