About Us
The Department of Physics engages in cutting-edge, internationally respected research, while delivering extraordinary educational value offering degree plans at the undergraduate and graduate levels in areas of study relevant to today’s scientific and industrial challenges. Our faculty and students are advancing the fundamental state of knowledge in many fields. While there are many opportunities for students to get involved in research, interdisciplinary collaboration is fostered and encouraged, allowing students with diverse interests to find a research home.
There are three major research centers associated with our department:
- William B. Hanson Center for Space Sciences
- Alan G. MacDiarmid NanoTech Institute
- Quantum Information Science Initiative
The Department holds regular colloquia that offer a forum for invited scientists to present modern research in a fashion accessible to those with a background in physics, but who are not experts in the field. Talks are aimed at the graduate level.
Key to your physics education is an interdisciplinary approach that underscores our view that physics provides the foundation needed to understand the technological world. We enjoy close and enthusiastic collaborations with many of the University’s departments, including biology, electrical engineering, chemistry, materials science and geosciences.
Our Beginnings
Physics has been an integral part of The University of Texas at Dallas since the institution’s founding in 1969. The first graduates of a young UT Dallas earned master’s degrees in physics. But our roots go back even further – physics, relativity and space sciences formed the bedrock of research at UT Dallas’s precursor, the Graduate Research Center of the Southwest and its research arm, the Southwest Center for Advanced Studies.
Read more and see historical photos: