SURF Mentoring
Potential projects/topics: Research in high energy density physics and ultra-intense laser applications at off-campus large-scale national facilities. Theory, computational and experimental projects are available. First year students mostly participate in data analysis of previous experiments, which involve plenty of image processing. Student tasks include hardware and software development, data analysis, computer modeling, and theory.
Potential skills gained: image processing using ImageJ software, building and calibrating detectors, writing data analysis software, computer modeling using supercomputers
Required qualifications: physics 101, 102 or equivalent. first year calculus. Fluent in computer using Python, Matlab or Mathematica
Direct mentor: Faculty/P.I., Graduate Student, senior undergraduates
Research Areas
He currently holds the Andrew Hays Buchanan Professorship of Astrophysics at Rice University. Dr. Liang is a Fellow of the American Physical Society and a member of the Sigma Xi and Phi Beta Kappa Honor Societies. He has served the American Physical Society in various capacities, including chairing the Topical Group in Plasma Astrophysics (2003-2004). He is the author or coauthor of over three hundred publications in refereed journals, conference proceedings and monographs, in plasma physics, astrophysics, cosmology and applied physics, plus several scores of LLNL programmatic reports. His current research interests include relativistic plasma physics, laser-plasma interactions, high energy density physics, and high-energy astrophysics. He has co-organized a dozen international conferences on astrophysics and cosmology, including the biannual conference on High Energy Density Laboratory Astrophysics (HEDLA), which had its fifth meeting in March 2006 on Rice campus. He was a pioneer of high energy density physics, and contributed to several major reports on HEDP, including the NAS report on High Energy Density Physics chaired by Ron Davidson, and the SAUUL report chaired by Todd Ditmire.
