Spectrum - Volume 17 Issue 14 December 1, 1994 - Chang will chair physics dept.

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Chang will chair physics dept.

Spectrum Volume 17 Issue 14 - December 1, 1994

Lay Nam Chang has accepted the invitation of Dean Robert Bates of the College of Arts and Sciences to chair the physics department at Virginia Tech effective Jan. 1, 1995.

Chang is the first appointment to the newly established rotating chair system in physics. "We look forward to his active and dedicated leadership of the department," Bates said.

Chang has held research positions at several institutions, among them the Center for Theoretical Physics at MIT; the Enrico Fermi Institute at the University of Chicago; the Institute for Theoretical Physics at SUNY, Stony Brook; the Institute for Theoretical Physics at the University of California, Santa Barbara; and the Niels Bohr Institute in Denmark.

Chang was a faculty member at the University of Pennsylvania from 1971-78. He served in the Physics Division of the National Science Foundation from 1993-94.

Chang's research interests are primarily in the theoretical aspects of particle physics and other related areas involving quantum phenomena. His research has been supported by the Department of Energy and the National Science Foundation.

At Virginia Tech since 1978, Chang received an A.B. from Columbia College, Columbia University, in 1964 and his Ph.D. from the University of California, Berkeley, in 1967.

Chang succeeds David Roper, who served as head of the physics department for five years and "ably and effectively led the department through many cycles of budget reductions and has positioned the department for the next phase of development that will carry it into the 21st century," Bates said. Roper begins a research leave in January.