Physics Professor No Ordinary Fellow

Warren Rogers, Westmont physics professor, has been appointed to the prestigious position of fellow of the American Physical Society (APS). Each year, no more than one-half of one percent of the current membership of the society receive this recognition.

The society honored Rogers for “his vision and dedication to undergraduate education and his leadership in initiating and implementing the highly successful Conference Experience for Undergraduates (CEU) for the Division of Nuclear Physics (DNP).”

Rogers organized the eighth annual CEU last September for 90 American and Japanese students who have participated in nuclear science research. They attended the recent, jointly sponsored meeting of the APS Division of Nuclear Physics and the Japanese Physical Society, which was held in Maui.

The CEU provides the opportunity for undergraduate students who have conducted research in nuclear physics to present their research to the larger professional community and to one another. They compete for travel and lodging awards, funded by the National Science Foundation (NSF) and the Department of Energy. The CEU also enables students to meet with faculty and senior scientists about graduate school opportunities.

According to its Web site, the APS Fellowship Program was created to “recognize members who may have made advances in knowledge through original research and publication or made significant and innovative contributions in the application of physics to science and technology. They may also have made significant contributions to the teaching of physics or service and participation in the activities of the Society.”

Rogers received his doctorate in physics from the University of Rochester in New York. He did post-doctoral research at the University of Washington and taught at the State University of New York at Geneseo for six years before coming to Westmont in 1994. His area of expertise is in experimental nuclear and cosmic muon physics.

He and his students conducted NSF-funded nuclear physics research over the summer, building the Westmont College Cosmic Muon Detector Array (CMDA). They also worked with colleagues at the National Superconducting Cyclotron Laboratory of Michigan State University on the Modular Neutron Array Detector (MoNA), which Westmont helped build and install.

He currently serves on the APS Committee on Education (COE) and the Education Committee of the APS Division of Nuclear Physics.