Physics professor Ben Frandsen recently received an Early Career Award from the United States Department of Energy. The award was given to 76 scientists from across the country this year to bolster the nation’s scientific workforce by providing support to exceptional researchers during the crucial early career years when many scientists do their most formative work. As part of the award, Frandsen will receive $750,000 in grants over the next five years to research the structure and magnetism of next-generation energy materials. The funds will also support numerous graduate and undergraduate student researchers.
News and Events

Dr. Kent Gee has been named the recipient of the Karl G. Maeser Distinguished Faculty Lecturer Award

After 3 years of being offered as 513R, elementary particle physics is finally an official course and accepted for credit in the physics major!

BYU Physics and Astronomy Professors Dr. Davis and Dr. Vanfleet recently received the 2024 award for outstanding achievement in technology transfer from the BYU Technology Transfer Office.

Dr. Michael Ware hopes to help students develop the skills to navigate discussion of science and religion

Dr. Stephens participated in a research project at the University of Arizona focused on studying brown dwarfs using the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST).

21 women student attend conference at Montana State University, where students engaged in keynote speeches, panels, and research presentations.

Dr. Powers initiated the effort to update BYU’s physics undergraduate lab curriculum in 2015. The revamped curriculum, aimed at teaching students how to construct knowledge from experiments.

In July 2025, Drs. Branton Campbell and Harold Stokes (BYU Emeritus Professor) will receive the Kenneth N. Trueblood Award from the American Crystallographic Association for exceptional achievement in computational crystallography.

A group of undergraduate students braved the heat and heights of the ESC roof to install a new weather station. The station is up and running, and will hopefully record data for years to come.

Using data from NASA's Hubble Space Telescope, a new study suggests that an object previously thought to be a binary system may be a rare triple system of orbiting bodies.

In early January 2025, a group of 16 students from Brigham Young University’s Physics & Astronomy Department showcased their research at the prestigious American Astronomical Society (AAS) in National Harbor, Maryland.