Third-year student Jeff Leiberton has been named a Goldwater Scholar, the premier undergraduate scholarship for students pursuing careers in mathematics, natural sciences, and engineering. He is the UI's 63rd Goldwater Scholar and 15th from the Department of Physics and Astronomy.

A paper by Arya Afshari, a postdoctoral scholar at the University of Iowa, was recently noted as being a Top 10 Percent Downloaded Paper in the Wiley Journal of Geophysical Research: Space Physics.

Congratulations to four graduate students in the Department of Physics and Astronomy who successfully defended their doctoral theses in April!

Dr. James Van Allen is listed among "9 Hawkeyes Who Deserve Recognition," a recent Iowa Stories article by the Iowa Center for Advancement.

Sawsan Daws graduated from the University of Iowa (UI) in 2020 with a Bachelor of Science degree in applied physics with a concentration in optics. Originally from Saudi Arabia, Daws chose to pursue her undergraduate studies in STEM at the UI because she was intrigued by the research facilities and resources the UI offered to its students. 

This week’s NASA announcement naming the four astronauts who will crew the Artemis Two mission to the Moon is being called “historic” by a physics and astronomy professor at the University of Iowa. Associate Professor Allison Jaynes says she was thrilled to see astronaut Christina Koch assigned to the lunar mission, the first in more than 50 years.

Professor and Departmental Executive Officer  Mary Hall Reno has been recognized as an Outstanding Referee for APS Physical Review Journals.

Graduate student Kenny Buffo was awarded an honorable mention for "Best Student Poster Presentation" at the American Astronomical Society's High Energy Astrophysics Division meeting, March 26-30, 2023.

Physics and Astronomy graduate student Riley Troyer received an acknowledgment from the Wiley Journal of Geophysical Research: Space Physics for having a publication in the top 10 percent of downloaded papers from the journal in 2021. The paper was a report on a new type of auroral emission called the Diffuse Auroral Eraser.

Jolene Pickett, a researcher in the Department of Physics and Astronomy, has been awarded a $62,099 grant from NASA to study data from the Cluster mission's Wide Band Data (WBD) plasma wave instrument.