Welcome to Academic Years 2022-2023

Dear Physics Department Members:

I welcome you all to the Fall semester of 2022. I am looking forward to an exciting semester, with almost all classes to be taught in-person.

Exciting developments continue to occur in physics worldwide. Closer to home, we will have two new faculty members joining us this semester, - Drs. Samyukta Sam Krishnamurthy and Nikolay Golubev. We have strong overall enrollment as well as URM enrollment. We will be expanding our outreach efforts significantly (I will be in touch with all in this email about that separately later). Our international collaborative program in applied physics instruction at the Hebei University of Technology, Tianjin, China will begin its 3rd semester.

I take this opportunity to draw your attention to the email that we all received from President Robbins on Friday regarding COVID-19 mitigation. At the cost of coming across as saying the obvious, I am requesting all to go through the email carefully. I say this because COVID transmission continues to persist even as we are probably reaching herd immunity - the two are not mutually contradictory. President Robbins' email gives all the steps the University is taking to mitigate this. It also lists the steps the UA is taking to prevent the spread of the monkeypox virus. Do please (re)read the email, in particular the sections on showing respect for each other's decision about face coverings.

Have a productive and exciting semester.

Sumit Mazumdar
Professor and Head
Department of Physics