The physics department at Puget Sound is committed to providing a wide array of undergraduate research opportunities for our students. These include senior thesis projects and summer research on campus, working one-on-one with Puget Sound physics faculty. The “Summer Research Grants in Science and Mathematics” program provides students with a stipend and a summer housing option, as well as a forum for poster presentation at the Fall Student Research Symposium.

Many students continue their summer research into the following school year and make additional presentations of their work at both regional and national conferences including those of the Washington Space Grant Consortium, the Murdock College Science Research Conference, The American Physical Society, and the Acoustical Society of America.

Puget Sound research students have co-authored papers with faculty in peer-reviewed journals including Physical Review C (nuclear physics), Journal of Physics G (nuclear and particle physics), and Applied Optics.

Off-campus summer research opportunities are also available through a variety of programs including “Research Experiences for Undergraduates” (REU), sponsored by the National Science Foundation. Recent Puget Sound physics students have done summer research at institutions including the University of Washington, University of Arkansas, University of Virginia, University of Southern California, University of Oklahoma, Baylor University, and the Los Alamos National Laboratory in New Mexico.