Two student assistants help Kunal Das (seated), Ph.D., set up Fordham’s Computational Physics Lab in Freeman Hall.
Photo by Bruce Gilbert
Kunal Das, Ph.D., assistant professor of physics, recently set up Fordham University’s first Computational Physics Lab in Room 107 at Freeman Hall on the Rose Hill campus. The facility will allow undergraduate students to gain hands-on experience with numerical computation software widely used in scientific and engineering applications.
The computers in the lab are equipped with Mathematica, Matlab and Fortran programs. Das has already incorporated the Mathematica program into his course, “Mathematical Methods in Physics,” and he hopes to eventually add a computer computation component to several of the University’s physics courses. The goal, Das said, is to make Fordham’s undergraduate science students more professionally competitive.
“Simply learning how to do calculations on paper is not enough,” Das said. “Students need to demonstrate proficiency and knowledge of current software and programming methods when they apply for technical positions or graduate programs in scientific disciplines.”
– Janet Sassi
