This is a three year grant for the renewal of regional undergraduate participation in ongoing research programs in the Department of Physics, Florida State University. Applications for ten Summer Junior Fellowship positions are solicited from 160 colleges and universities throughout the southeastern region of the United States. Applicants' interests are matched with the research programs and extra attention is given to applications from women and minorities. The main focus of the program is to provide research experience for undergraduate physics majors in the southeast region, with usually 9 out of 10 fellowships going to students outside of FSU. The laboratories include a S-FN Tandem Van de Graaff, a superconducting LINAC, four smaller accelerators used for environmental and implantation studies, and a particle physics detector laboratory as well as active programs at Brookhaven, Fermilab and CERN, an ultra-high resolution infrared spectrometer, a helium atom scattering spectrometer, a liquid crystal laboratory, and a number of low temperature solid state research facilities. Approximately 15 to 20 faculty members will be directly involved with Summer Junior Fellows. In addition to joint research activities, all Fellows will attend a seminar designed for the program and will present papers and talks on their summer research near the end of the appointment. Each summer two or three of the Fellows will work with the host group (nuclear physics), with the seminar series, short courses in computer programming and machine shop techniques, and the student talks providing the common links between the different areas of physics.
