Make-up midterm examinations are available only to students whose university-recognized excused absence has been approved. Each make-up examination will be held on the Monday following the regularly scheduled midterm between noon and 6: p.m. in JSB 203.

After an excused absence is approved, the student will receive a private make-up registration form and must select one of the following 75-minute start times: noon, 1:30  p.m., 3 p.m. or 4:30 p.m. Registration closes at 5 p.m. on the Friday before the make-

By Lindsey Piercy and Christian Honce 

LEXINGTON, Ky. (July 22, 2026) — As the United States pushes to accelerate innovation, researchers from the University of Kentucky will play a leading role in the U.S. Department of Energy’s Genesis Mission.

Principal investigators are:

By Jenny Wells-Hosley

LEXINGTON, Ky. (July 14, 2026) — A decades-old mystery about supermassive black holes may finally have an answer. 

University of Kentucky astronomer Gary Ferland, Ph.D., is part of an international team that uncovered new evidence explaining how supermassive black holes continue to grow despite releasing enormous amounts of energy. 

Using observations from NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope, Ferland and his team, led by the Université de Montréal, have captured one of the clearest views of a self-

By Jenny Wells-Hosley 

PASADENA, Calif. (June 17, 2026) — A University of Kentucky researcher is helping uncover how stars are born and evolve deep inside galaxies by revealing dozens of previously hidden star clusters buried in cosmic dust. 

Using a combination of NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope and radio observatories including the Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array and the Karl G. Jansky Very Large Array, the study provides new insight into how galaxies build their stellar populations over time.

The findings from “Hidden Gems in

By Jenny Wells-Hosley 

LEXINGTON, Ky. (June 2, 2026) — University of Kentucky physicists are among an international team recognized with one of the world’s most prestigious scientific honors: the 2026 Breakthrough Prize in Fundamental Physics. 

Often referred to as the “Oscars of Science,” the award recognizes the global collaboration behind the muon g-2 experiment, a decades-long effort to better understand the fundamental properties of matter. 

UK Department of Physics and Astronomy faculty members Renee Fatemi, Ph.D.; Tim Gorringe, Ph.D.; and Brad Plaster, Ph.D.; along with five UK

By Jenny Wells-Hosley 

LEXINGTON, Ky. (April 1, 2026 ) — Brad Plaster, Ph.D., professor of physics and associate dean for research in the University of Kentucky College of Arts and Sciences, has been named the College of Arts and Sciences Distinguished Professor for the 2025-26 academic year, an honor that recognizes excellence in research, teaching, service and leadership. 

As part of the honor, Plaster will present the annual Arts and Sciences Distinguished Professor Lecture, titled “The Quantum Nature of the Neutron as a Portal to the Cosmos,” 11:30 a.m.-1:30 p.m.

By Isabella Lindsey, 

LEXINGTON, Ky. (Nov. 15, 2025) - Kentucky SkyTalk hosted “Our Universe and Life” as part of their monthly series, questioning the origins of life in the universe and the likelihood that it exists elsewhere.

Beginning in the Chemistry-Physics Building with a lecture and concluding in the observatory, the University of Kentucky’s College of Arts and Sciences and the MacAdam Student Observatory held the event on Thursday, Nov. 13.

The monthly event covers a different topic each time, aiming to bring people together for discussions on astronomy and current research, according to Kentucky SkyTalk’s website.

This month’s SkyTalk was led by Gary Ferland

By Jenny Wells-Hosley 

LEXINGTON, Ky. (Oct. 9, 2025) — Filled with natural light, open gathering areas and state-of-the-art research labs, the newly renovated Chemistry-Physics Building at the University of Kentucky has become a vibrant center for learning and discovery — a transformation now celebrated by the American Institute of Architects Kentucky.

The project’s $60.9 million first phase, led by Omni Architects, has received the AIA’s only Honor Award for 2025 — the highest professional recognition presented by the organization that commemorates architectural excellence in Kentucky.

The teaching,

By Jenny Wells-Hosley 

LEXINGTON, Ky. (Oct. 7, 2025) — When the sun dips below the horizon and the stars emerge over Lexington, the University of Kentucky College of Arts and Sciences’ SkyTalk program invites the community to gather, look up and wonder — together.

For nearly two decades, the monthly talks have drawn people of all ages — from middle school students to retirees — to UK’s MacAdam Student Observatory to explore the mysteries of the cosmos

By Jenny Wells-Hosley 

LEXINGTON, Ky. (Sept. 19, 2025) — University of Kentucky physics and astronomy professor Gary J. Ferland, Ph.D., has been named the 2025 recipient of the Catherine Wolfe Bruce Gold Medal, the highest honor awarded by the Astronomical Society of the Pacific.

The Bruce Medal, first awarded in 1898, recognizes a lifetime of achievement and contributions to astrophysics research. Past recipients include such influential scientists in astronomy as Edwin Hubble, Vera Rubin and Nobel laureates Hans Bethe and Willy Fowler.

Ferland, who has taught at UK’s Department of Physics and Astronomy in the College of Arts and Sciences for more than four decades, is best known for

By Jenny Wells-Hosley and Tracy Marc 

LEXINGTON, Ky. (June 3, 2025) — A team of faculty, postdoctoral scholars and students from the University of Kentucky Department of Physics and Astronomy in the College of Arts and Sciences has contributed to the groundbreaking final result in the ongoing Muon g-2 experiment at

LEXINGTON, Ky. (May 15, 2025) — In celebration of University of Kentucky alumnus Bill Roark’s retirement, Starfish Holdings is providing $50,000 gift to establish an endowed scholarship in his name.

The Bill Roark Endowed Science Scholarship will support students pursuing degrees in scientific disciplines — students, like Roark, who are driven by curiosity, perseverance and purpose. The endowment will be housed in 

At the start of ’01 I was a full-time database administrator at Yorkshire Global Restaurants and a part-time engineering student at the University of Kentucky. I had my whole life planned: finish my degree to make myself more marketable, keep working in IT where I was making a good salary, and retire early. It was a good plan. But then I took two physics courses in Winter ‘01 – and my life was upended. I thought those courses, Modern Physics and Condensed Matter Physics, were painful but beautiful, and fascinating, and … well I guess I was falling in love with physics. Even better than the coursework, the instructor for Condensed Matter Physics, Prof. Yuri Sushko, invited me to do research with him and I found myself spending several hours a week in his lab. By the end of that semester I decided to become a physicist. A little over a year later I had quit my job and become a physics

Born and raised in Louisville, Kentucky, I went to college on a music scholarship. After one semester I left college and joined a rock and roll band. Eventually, I realized my musical capabilities were limited, so I returned to school. I received a Scholarship from Westinghouse to Marshall University and received my BS in Physics in 1981. Enrolling at the University of Kentucky, I was able to apply for and receive a research assistantship in Professor Peter Eklund’s laboratories where I began conducting research involving the optical and structural properties of materials. In addition to my dissertation research topic on graphite intercalation compounds, I was fortunate to collaborate on other materials such as the search for charge density waves in potassium with Prof. Albert W. Oberhauser (Purdue University), metal insulator phase transitions in vanadium

Before coming to the University of Kentucky, I studied physics at the University of Geneseo in Upstate New York. I started college as an engineering major but was sufficiently intrigued by physics and I changed my major. The chair of our department, Dr Jerry Reber, received his PhD in nuclear physics running experiments on the Van de Graaff Accelerator in the 1960s at the University of Kentucky. Due to Dr Reber’s recommendation, I applied to the University of Kentucky in 1992. In the summer of 1993, I entered the state of Kentucky for the very first time with everything I owned packed into my pickup truck having selected Kentucky to pursue a PhD in Physics.

My original plan was to pursue a nuclear physics degree. Sean Cornett, Crystal Brogan, Tim Simmons, I, and others spent countless hours reading our textbooks by Jackson and Goldstein for instance and

My visit to the University of Kentucky in the spring of 2012 was timed perfectly: I was in town for the decisive Sweet Sixteen victory over Indiana, Paul Steinhardt delivered the van Winter Lecture detailing his adventures searching for natural quasicrystals, and the burst of spring throughout the campus and downtown triggered hometown nostalgia that I hadn’t realized I had been missing in Buffalo. Lexington was alight with the fire of life (and couches), and as I headed back to the airport, I knew I’d return in the fall to pursue my graduate studies. Unbeknownst to me, however, I would depart from the experimental condensed matter physics work I’d started with my advisor at SUNY Buffalo State, Prof. Ram Rai (UK Ph.D. ’04). Instead, I began working with Prof. Christopher Crawford in experimental nuclear physics, a

By Jenny Wells-Hosley 

LEXINGTON, Ky. (May 15, 2025) — A new study by University of Kentucky researchers is helping change how scientists understand and control magnetic energy and could lead to faster, more efficient electronic devices.

Led by Ambrose Seo, Ph.D., a professor in the University of Kentucky Department of Physics and Astronomy in the College of Arts and Sciences, the study recently was published in Nature Communications. Seo is also the principal investigator

By Ben Branscum, Tom Musgrave and Jenny Wells-Hosley 

LEXINGTON, Ky. (May 6, 2025) — When Asa O’Neal arrived at the University of Kentucky in 2021, he didn’t have a clear plan, but he knew he was in the right place to figure it out.

“My mother and grandmother went here, so UK felt a little like home,” said O'Neal, a West Liberty native. “But at the end of the day, it was about what [UK] had to offer. It was a huge university where I could do anything I wanted.”

Originally a chemical engineering major, O’Neal, also a member of the

By Richard LeComte 

LEXINGTON, Ky, -- The University of Kentucky’s College of Arts and Sciences is presenting three SkyTalks in the upcoming weeks courtesy of the Department of Physics and Astronomy and the MacAdam Student Observatory.

SkyTalks feature UK faculty members delivering a 40-minute presentation followed by a chance to visit the MacAdam observatory, depending on the weather.

Here are three upcoming events: 

7 p.m. Thursday, March 13, Chem-Phys Room 287: “Wham, Bamb, Earth in a Jam? Near Earth Asteroids and a Close Shave for 2032," presented by Tom Troland, Ph.D., professor in the Department of Physics and Astronomy. 

A recently discovered asteroid will make a close passage by Earth on December 22, 2032. Will it hit Earth? Very likely not, but it will be a close shave. This chunk of solar system debris,

After my baseball career down the road at the road at Georgetown College fizzled out, I transferred to UK in the fall of 2009. This change brought me to the UK’s Physics and Astronomy department and changed the trajectory of my career. I participated in some exciting astronomy research with Dr. Wilhelm at the McDonald Observatory in Texas, I struggled through Dr. Gardner’s quantum class , presented research at a conference in Hawaii, and received funding to attend the International Space University through UK’s Huffaker Scholarship and the American Astronautical Society Scholarship. 

After graduating in 2011, I had a brief internship working on Space Policy at the Commercial Spaceflight Federation in Washington, DC. Once that was completed, I packed my bags and spent the summer at the International Space University (ISU) in Graz, Austria.