The Departmental Honors Program provides additional depth to the student's knowledge in a special area of contemporary physics and grounds this knowledge in their understanding of the world around them
| Academic Year | Convocation Date | Departmental Honors Student | Departmental Honors Thesis Director | Departmental Honors Thesis Title | Eoin Gray Scholarship Award (Best Graduating Senior) | The Feynman Award (Best Student in Contemporary Physics) | Rayburn Lab Award |
| 2022-2023 | May 13, 2023 | Michael Bess | Diana Dragomir | Atmospheric Composition of 55 Cancri e | Michael Bess | Emilio Perez de Juan | |
| Stephanie Hansen | Ylva Pihlström | SiO Maser Dependency on the Circumstellar Shell of AGB Stars | |||||
| 2021-2022 | May 14, 2022 | Will Crockett | Mousumi Roy | A Physicist's Approach to the Water Cycle: Long-Term Changes in the Water Retention Properties of Soils in the Sevilleta Shrubland |
Benjamin Cochran | Kevin Baca | Will Crockett |
| 2020-2021 | Adam Yañez | Sally Seidel and Martin Hoeferkamp | Charge Collection in 3D Silicon Sensors | Kyle Kennard | Josef Sorenson | Josef Sorenson | |
| Josef Sorenson | Paul Schwoebel | Paschen breakdown in dielectric and varistor granule filled spark gaps | |||||
| 2019-2020 | May 16, 2020 | Julie Campos |
Ivan Deutsch | Eric R. Putney | Eric R. Putney | Adam Yanez | |
| Ivey Davis | Rouzbeh Allahverdi | ||||||
| Ryan Gibbons | Michael Gold | Analysis and Instrumentation for a Xenon-doped Liquid Argon System | |||||
| Eric Putney | Huaiyu Duan | Numerical Analysis of Collective Neutrino Oscillations in Dense Neutrino Media | |||||
| Kyle Ritchie | Rouzbeh Allahverdi | ||||||
Dilys Ruan |
Greg Taylor | Discovery of a Pulsar Wind Nebula Around PSR B0950+08 | |||||
Brady Spears |
Mousumi Roy | Inversion of Muon Flux for Purposes of Resolving Subsurface Densities | |||||
| 2018/2019 | May 11, 2019 | Patrick M. Brown | Rouzbeh Allahverdi | Non-standard Thermal Histories and Temperature of the Universe |
Benjamin L. Reichelt | Julie A. Campos | Eric Putney |
| Gavin P. Gonzales | Marek Osinski | Synthesis and Characterization of Colloidal ZnTe/ZnS and ZnTe/ZnSe Quantum Dots | |||||
| Kylar L. Greene | Ylva Pihlström | Determining periods of Mira Variables using the VVV sky survey | |||||
| Patrick R. Latimer | Ylva Pihlström | High-Resolution Multi-Epoch Astrometry of Water Fountain IRAS 16552-3050 |
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| Lauren M. Zundel | Alejandro Manjavacas Arevalo | Temporal Evolution of Radiative Heat Transfer Between Graphene Nanodisks |
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| 2017/2018 | May 12, 2018 | Ivan V. Rajen | Martin Hoeferkamp Sally Seidel |
Measuring Charged Particle Beam Fluence Beyond 1015 neq/cm2 Using Planar and 3D Silicon Diodes | Roderick D. Cochran Dennis C. Robinson Brown |
Benjamin L. Reichelt | |
| 2016/2017 | May 13, 2017 | Zachary A. Castillo | Dinesh Loomba | Viability of Integrating Op-Amps for Event Detection in Time Projection Chambers | Montie S. Avery Gregory J. Ottino |
Veronica J. Dike Gregory J. Ottino |
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| Veronica J. Dike | Gregory Taylor | Detecting pulsar polarization below 100 MHz with the LWA | |||||
| Gregory J. Ottino | Douglas Fields | Vernier Scan Analysis PHENX Run 15 p+p, √s = 200 GeV | |||||
| Austin C. Vaitkus | Dinesh Loomba | The Effect of CS2 on Diffusion and Light Yield in Optical Time Projection Chambers | |||||
| 2015/2016 | May 14, 2016 | Nelly E. Ayllon | Sally Seidel | Development of a Method for Measuring Charged Particle Beam Fluence Beyond 1016 1-MeV-neutron equivalent/cm2 | Cameron W. Trapp | Cameron W. Trapp | |
| Alexandre F. Mills | Michael Gold | Scintillation of Xenon doped Liquid Argon in the BACON Detector | |||||
| Brad M. Philipbar | Michael Gold | R&D Leading Toward the Deep Underground Neutrino Experiment | |||||
| Cameron W. Trapp | Ylva Pihlström | The High Frequency Calibrator Conundrum: Pipeline and Identification Algorithm for Potential Calibrator Sources | |||||
| 2014/2015 | May 9, 2015 | Alexandria M. Doerfler | James Thomas | Development of a Total Internal Reflection Illumination System for Fluorescence Correlation Spectroscopy | Michael J. McCrackan | Joshua D. Martin | |
| Tarraneh Eftekhari | Gregory Taylor | A Low Frequency Survey of Giant Pulses from the Crab Pulsar | |||||
| Michael J. McCrackan | Gregory Taylor | Low Frequency Study of Rotating Radio Transients | |||||
| Joshua D. Martin | Dinesh Loomba | Multivariate Moments to Characterize Nuclear Recoil Track Directionality in Low-Pressure TPCs | |||||
| 2013/2014 | May 17, 2014 | Ezequiel E. Carrasco | Ivan Deutsch | Simulating a Boson Sampler | Skylar T. Scott | Samuelle Bourgault | |
| Stav Gold | Mousumi Roy | A Linear Analysis of a Two-Phase Flow Model of Melt Percolation | |||||
| Haley E. McDuff | Sally Seidel | Effect of Humidity on Reverse Breakdown in 3D Silicon Sensors for Particle Tracking | |||||
| 2012/2013 | May 11, 2013 | Jacek K. Osinski | Evan A. Ottesen Stephen C. Pietromonaco |
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| 2011/2012 | May 12, 2012 | Brian P. Josey | Sally Seidel | Charge Collection Distance of Diamond Vertex Detectors | Rodrigo Osuna Orozco | Nathan Giannini Randy J. Lafler Roberto S. Rosales |
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| Rodrigo Osuna Orozco | Mousumi Roy | Generation of Melt Streamline Patterns from Lithosphere Thickness Irregularities | |||||
| Paige S. Romero | John McGraw | Optical Variability of the Young Stellar Object GM Aurigae | |||||
| 2010/2011 | May 14, 2011 | Chad A. McCoy | Gary Cooper | Cross Calibration for using Neutron Activation Analysis with Copper Samples to measure D-T Fusion Yields | Chad A. McCoy Bolestaw L. Osinski |
Thomas S. Mahony | |
| Bolestaw L. Osinski | Kevin Malloy | Thermal Characterization of MBBA, 5CB, and 8CB for Thermal Switches Using the 3ω Method | |||||
| 2009/2010 | May 15, 2010 | Kyle W. Martin | Carlton Caves | An Analysis of an Epistemic Toy Theory of Quantum Mechanics with Connections to the Stabilizer Formalism and Local Hidden Variable Tables | Kyle W. Martin | Paul V. Klimov | |
| 2008/2009 | May 16, 2009 | Nguyen S. Phan | Dinesh Loomba John Matthews Keith Rielage |
Acrylic Attenuation Measurements for the MiniCLEAN Dark Matter Detector |
Nguyen S. Phan | Matthew E. Gooden | |
| 2007/2008 | May 17, 2008 | Tiffany R. Hayes | Richard Rand | Aaron B. Zimmerman | Aaron B. Zimmerman | ||
| Thuso S. Simon | John McGraw | ||||||
| Aaron B. Zimmerman | Colston Chandler Douglas Fields |
Helicity Effects on Quantum Scattering | |||||
| 2006/2007 | May 12, 2007 | Paul Martin | J.M. Geremia | Quantum Optical Coherent State Discrimination | Paul Martin | Jean Kurtz | |
| Kathrin Spendier | James Thomas | Spatial Control of Spontaneous Fluorescence by Stimulated Emission | |||||
| 2005/2006 | May 13, 2006 | Lance E. Edens | Patricia Henning Richard Rand |
Analysis of the Hydrogen Gas Distribution in the Galaxy HIZSS 3 | David C. Hebert | Lukas M. Baumgartel | |
| 2004/2005 | May 14, 2005 | David L. Hayes | Ivan Deutsch | Quantum Logic with Spin 1/2 Neutral Atoms in Double Gaussian Wells | David L. Hayes | Adam K. Norman | |
| Adam K. Norman | David Dunlap | Damage Induced in α-Quartz by High-Energy Heavy Ions | |||||
| 2003/2004 | May 15, 2004 | Wayne M. Schlingman | Robert Duncan | Temperature-Entropy Wave in Self-Organized 4He | Wayne M. Schlingman | David L. Hayes | |
| 2002/2003 | May 17, 2003 | n/a | n/a | n/a | Ghazi Zouaoui | Gavin Mendel-Gleason | |
| 2001/2002 | May 11, 2002 | Nicolas Menicucci | Carlton Caves | Local Realistic Hidden-Variable Model for the States and Dynamics of Liquid-State NMR Information Processing | Veronica Mata-Bruni Nicolas Menicucci |
Maureen M. Ballard | |
| Katherine Smith | Dinesh Loomba | Weak Lensing Results for Galaxy Cluster Abell 781 | |||||
| 2000/2001 | Raquel Fraga Enciñas | Richard Rand | VLA Mapping of M83 at 6cm | ||||
| Cristina Murray | Patricia Henning | New Galaxies in the Southern Zone of Avoidance: an HI Survey |