Physics: Home

Welcome! The University of Portland is consistently recognized as a university that provides an outstanding education, and in the Department of Physics, you will find students and professors who are excited about physics. We believe that the student-teacher relationship is a vital component of the academic experience.

Physics students at the University of Portland receive substantial individual attention from our faculty. Classes are small and students have the opportunity to participate in projects and faculty research. Currently, five faculty members teach in the Physics program. Each has a different specialty or interest, so you will experience a diversity of teachers in the program and a range of undergraduate research opportunities. Areas of faculty expertise include condensed matter, fluid dynamics, optics, ion beams, and nonlinear dynamics.

Additionally, there is a lot of opportunity for physics and friendship outside of the classroom and lab. The Physics Club regularly sponsors events for students ranging from colloquia to science demos to picnics and movies!

The Department of Physics has programs leading to the Bachelor of Science and the Bachelor of Arts degrees. We offer students an excellent preparation for graduate work or for immediate entrance into scientific careers. We have recent graduates who are pursuing advanced degrees in physics at Purdue, Vanderbilt, the universities of Colorado-Boulder, California-Riverside, and Florida-Gainesville, to name a few. Other graduates have moved into careers with, for example, Hewlett-Packard, Intel, and the United States Air Force.

The breadth of programs available at the University of Portland will enhance your education as a physics student. Many of our students complete a minor in mathematics or computer science while pursuing their physics major. In addition, our School of Engineering provides you the opportunity for advanced study in electronics, material science, and computers.

We invite you to explore our web pages, and to contact us if we can answer any further questions for you.

Oz Bonfim
Chair, Department of Physics
bonfim@up.edu

"My math and physics minors enriched my learning experience at the University of Portland. In the physics department, I enjoyed the flexibility of my upper division courses, which allowed us to cater the material to our interests. The techniques that I learned from my math courses directly applied to my Mechanical Engineering major, allowing me to perform more complicated data analyses. During my last semester at UP I was absent often due to my graduate school interviews. My professors were very accommodating, allowing me to turn in assignments off-schedule and sometimes even helping me catch up on the weekends.

"For my Fulbright Research Grant to Germany, I will be working with a team of professors and PhD students at the Institute of Applied and Experimental Mechanics at Universitaet Stuttgart. This team is working on a health monitoring technique for detecting defects in power line cables using ultrasonic waves. For my contribution to the project, I will be improving their current mathematical model for power line cables by using energy methods and taking more coupled cables into account. I feel prepared to tackle this project because of my UP education and the related health monitoring research that I conducted at UP with Dr. Doughty."

Natalie Higgins, '11

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