Prof. Umesh Garg, Director of the Physics REU Program since 2000, has been elected to a 3-year term on the Executive Committee of the National Physics REU Leadership Group (NPRLG).
NPRLG is a group of individuals dedicated to fostering communication between Physics REU sites and to publicizing the general physics REU program to students and at various conferences.
The Physics Department REU program is now in its 25th year and is widely recognized as among the most effective and successful of such programs around the country. It now attracts more than 200 applications from all over the United States for about 15 available positions each Summer. The 2010 REU program was the largest ever, with 24 participants, including 10 women and 5 students from traditionally under-represented minority groups. They came from 14 different states, from a Community College in California (American River College) to big Universities on the East Coast (Stony Brook, and Rutgers) and worked with 22 members of the Physics faculty in areas of Astronomy and Astrophysics, Biophysics, Condensed Matter Physics, High Energy Physics, Nuclear Physics, and Physics Education.