Featured

In memory of Firas Mansour

An exceptional teacher and colleague, Firas dedicated his professional life to physics education and to the well-being of his students. With a larger than life personality replete with wit and charm, Firas had a passion for physics and physics education. He will be sorely missed.

Sattar Taheri-Araghi

Research in experimental biology

During his PhD studies in Waterloo Sattar Taheri Araghi studied antimicrobial peptides, now he is a faculty member at CSUN

Graduate student in a quest to learn how machine learning works

Anna Golubeva, PhD student in theoretical condensed matter physics at U. of Waterloo, works in the group of Prof. Roger Melko who was recently awarded a prestigious Vanier fellowship

Artificial intelligence teaches itself to solve gnarly quantum challenges

Rather than battle it out to obsolescence, new research shows how quantum and classical systems can evolve together.

SIN Bin

2016, problem 3

Can you solve it? The Sir Isaac Newton Exam, as we all know and love it, continues to offer challenging problems to high school students around the world. Flex your Physics brains with this problem from the 2018 Sir Isaac Newton Exam!

Message from the Chair

One of the most satisfying rewards for serving as department chair has been the opportunity to meet many of you and to hear what you are up to. Whether its research on string theory, market research, banking, teaching, or founding a startup, I’m amazed at the breadth of accomplishment our graduates have enjoyed.

36 years went by too fast!

Join us on December 5th at 4pm to celebrate Rohan

When asked what he would miss most about the department, Rohan replied that the support he received from all levels including the department chairs, and the administrative staff, but most of all, the students. Rohan is a special educator who has touched the lives of thousands of students and has left them with a positive memory of their time at the University of Waterloo.

Professor Will Percival

Distinguished Research Chair in Astrophysics in the Department of Physics & Astronomy at the University of Waterloo

The University of Waterloo's newly created Distinguished Chair in Astrophysics, Prof. Will Percival, coming from the Institute of Cosmology & Gravitation at the University of Portsmouth, is leading an effort to understand why the Universal expansion is accelerating.

Zahra Fakhraai

Zahra Fakhraai is the recipient of 2015 Sloan fellowship in Chemistry, 2017 Journal of Physical Chemistry B Lectureship Award, and 2017 University of Waterloo Young Alumni award. Zahra identifies as a material scientist interested in materials properties in small length scales and extremely slow dynamics.

Undergraduate Physics and Astronomy student wins co-op triple crown

Emily Pass, now a fourth-year undergraduate co-op student in the department of Physics and Astronomy won faculty, provincial and national Co-op Student of the Year Awards in March 2018. This co-op triple crown award was given for the work Emily did developing a data analysis program that rapidly detects objects in the Kuiper Belt, a region of space beyond Neptune. Emily acknowledges her long term passion in Astronomy combined with Physics education  she obtained at Waterloo for her success leading to “wonderful opportunities and possibilities” for the future career growth.

Vanier Scholarship Success for our Graduate Students

Out of the about 160 scholarships awarded each year nationwide over all fields, five of our students have been awarded in this funding round.

Alzheimer's disease: one lipid bilayer at a time

Dr. Zoya Leonenko and her research group are using atomic force microscopy to study neuronal membranes, producing results that suggest the mechanisms that trigger Alzheimer's Disease.

Telltales of frustrated interactions

In a recent Nature Communications paper, Gingras and collaborators exposed in a spin ice material — a system in which the microscopic atomic magnetic moments experience frustrated interactions, and closely mimic the behaviour of the protons in common water ice — an heretofore unnoticed analogy with classical gases.

SIN Bin

2018, problem 12

Can you solve it? The Sir Isaac Newton Exam, as we all know and love it, continues to offer challenging problems to high school students around the world. Flex your Physics brains with this problem from the 2018 Sir Isaac Newton Exam!