chopper said:
I'm waiting on Caltech, RPI, Univ. of Rochester (Institute of Optics), SUNY Stony Brook and the School of Nanoscale Science and Engineering at Univ. at Albany.
I'm finishing up my Physics B.S. this semester. I'm done with requirements (# of credits and research) so I just need to fill my 4 semester residency since I transferred to RPI. I've been focusing on Optics and Quantum Mechanics courses. I'm currently taking Graduate Quantum Mechanics II, Light Emitting Diodes (another Grad course), Methods of Partial Differential Equations for Mathematical Physics and General Relativity. I'm also working as an undergrad 'researcher', more of a helper I guess, in the Nitirde LED lab here. WE have two MOVPE untis, but we're only using one for some reason. I'm currently assisting in the assembly of a cryostat in order to conduct photo luminescence measurements at <3K. Most of my free time in the lab I really spend observing and asking more questions than the Grads would probably like to hear. It's fun and interesting.
I'm psyched at the opportunity and really surprised at the decision so early. I got the email from professor Van de Walle earlier and had to quick go on the UCSB site to check that the email was legit. Looks like the recruiting weekend is March 5-7. I'm gonna start contacting professor's to try and get myself a place in an interesting group. I'd like to focus on Electro-optic and/or photonic materials such as III-V nitrides.
Awesome. I visited CalTech as well, and honestly, it wasn't for me. All theory, no applications. If you want to make devices (LEDs, LDs, solar cells, whatever), then it's not the place. And ESPECIALLY if you want III-nitrides, UCSB is a whole different level. Atwater at Caltech does electronic materials, but EVERYBODY wants to work for him it seems like. After visiting both, there was no question for me personally which I wanted. (And you'll probably get to visit both, CalTech did visits/interviews before making final decisions. They did an initial cut for people who clearly weren't good enough, and then brought everybody else in to visit before deciding. At least that's what they did last year, although they could change). I admittedly don't know much about the other schools (I wanted California for the weather, so I only applied to the good materials schools here: Caltech, UCSB, Berkeley, Stanford), but I know UCSB is just awesome. Don't decide til you visit though, you have to make sure it's a good fit for YOU, that's all that matters.
E-mail professors and all, but don't be surprised if they don't answer, they stay busy. You should get ample opportunity to meet them over the visit weekend, and they'll eventually answer, especially once people start committing to attending and are ready to pick advisers.
But if you want nitrides, SSLEC is the place to be, the Nakamura/Speck/DenBaars trio. Speck does MBE and more TEM, DenBaars and Nakamura do MOCVD/MOVPE/Whatever you want to call it. But they're all the same group really, you're likely to even have joint advisers between some combination of the 3 if you come into SSLEC.
Van de Walle, who is on the admission committee I assume, is also a nice guy, does all simulations. My officemate is a fellow 1st year that works for him, and I eat lunch with his whole group. Great bunch of guys, doing crazy theory stuff that I don't fully understand when they talk about it. But it's cool stuff.
That sounds like some great experience, you should be able to get into the flow of research well. MOCVD/crystal growth isn't something you generally get into immediately, it's always booked solid with so many people doing it and it takes so much training before they turn you loose on the reactors (as I'm sure you know), but there's plenty of opportunity for that. I think we have something on the order of 6 or 7 MOCVD reactors, on the order of 5 to 7 MBE systems, and when finished with the install (he just moved here from another university), Palmstrom's lab will have about 5 more MBE systems. So there's plenty of opportunity to work on some COOL stuff.
I should really stop rambling, YOU'RE supposed to be the excited one! I've already had my turn. ;D