Physics Student Honored for Original Research

Vanderbilt University, located in Nashville, Tenn., offers the annual prize to any undergraduate student in the U.S. doing original research in physics or astronomy.

Ng is part of Wesleyan’s Complex Quantum Dynamics and Mesoscopic Phenomena Group, led by Tsampikos Kottos, assistant professor of physics. The group’s objective is to develop models and theories to understand the interplay between quantum mechanics, interactions, and disorder which dictate the dynamics on the mesoscopic – or between microscopic and macroscopic – scale.

“There is an excitement right now in my group for Gim’s achievement, as it reflects and singles out on a national level the high level of education, and undergraduate research that we are conducting here at the Physics Department at Wesleyan,” Kottos says. “We are all very proud of Gim.”

Ng completed his honor thesis, “Signatures of Phase Transition in Wave Dynamics of Complex Systems” under the guidance of Kottos. His paper was already published in two internationally recognized journals, Physical Review Letters and Physical Review B, a journal devoted to condensed matter and materials physics.

Ng, a native of Penang, Malaysia, majored in physics and mathematics. At Wesleyan, he received the Freeman Asian Scholarship, the Bertman Prize, which is awarded to a physics senior who displays a creative approach to research; and was elected to Phi Beta Kappa honor society.

As the prize recipient, Ng will receive a $1,000 cash award.