Many of the faculty research activities demand the use of substantially more powerful instruments than can be maintained — or fully utilized — by any single department or university. These shared resources are nationally and internationally funded state-of-the art instruments and facilities to which members of the faculty have been awarded specific use allocations through competitive grants.
Additionally, the department maintains a wide array of on-site resources and advanced instrumentation for conducting research and for third-party use.
The UMKC Department of Physics and Astronomy fabrication shop provides custom machining and manufacturing services to researchers and students.
The astronomers in the Department of Physics and Astronomy conduct observational extragalactic astronomy research that focuses on the formation and evolution of structure on the largest scales. They and their students use the following data surveys, observational facilities and imaging tools to conduct their research.
Researchers in the Department of Physics and Astronomy often require computing power or specialized computer systems that exceed the capabilities of those that are available on the UMKC campus. This may include the need to make use of massively parallelized machines, machines with specialized visualization software, hybrid CPU/GPU type systems, machines with field programmable gate arrays, extra-large data sets or extreme memory requirements.
Many groups make use of the computers that are maintained as a part of the University of Missouri Research Computing Support Services (UM-RCSS), the Department of Energy’s National Energy Research Scientific Computing (NERSC) Center and various National Science Foundation resources through the XSEDE umbrella program — the National Institute for Computational Sciences (NICS) and the Pittsburgh Supercomputing Center (PSC).
Most of the machines require specific requests by faculty members to be able to make student accounts on them and thus the requests are typically tied to specific research projects. Additionally, the systems that are managed by DOE and NSF require annual allocation requests for time on specific machines. Undergraduate students that participate in research often have the opportunity to work on such machines.
Researchers in the Department of Physics and Astronomy often require the use of instrumentation beyond that which is available directly within the department or from our local collaborators — oral biology, chemistry and geosciences. This includes the need to make use of advanced electron microscopes and neutron or X-ray beam lines such as those maintained by the National Science Foundation and the Department of Energy’s Office of Science.
Our faculty maintains a diverse collection of on-site research equipment. These facilities, tool-sets and analyses capabilities are available for cost recharge or collaborative use with the faculty research labs.
| Type | Method | Tool(s) | Dependencies | Point of Contact |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Electronic Structure | DFT | OLCAO, VASP | - | Wai-Yim Ching Paul Rulis |
| Semiconductor Modeling | TCAD | FLOOXS | - | Paul Rulis |
| Physical Structure | MD-Monte Carlo | LAMMPS, HRMC | - | Wai-Yim Ching Paul Rulis |
| Nuclear Particle Transport | Monte Carlo | MCNP | - | Anthony Caruso |
| Type | Method | Tool(s) | Dependencies | Point of Contact |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Thin Film | RF/DC Magnetron Sputtering | Lesker xxx gun | T, Power Pressure | Anthony Caruso |
| Thin Film | PECVD | Homebuilt | T, Power Pressure | Anthony Caruso |
| Bulk | Laser Heated Diamond Cell | Homebuilt | - | Anthony Caruso |
