Physics Spring 19 Newsletter

Nandi prides himself as the leader of the Oklaho- ma State University High Energy Physics Group. He was the first one to establish connection with Fermilab though his invitation to the Theory Group there, and vis- iting them for 18 Summers dur- ing the period 1987 – 2009, and also taking a sabbatical there. He established the connection with many countries in Europe and Asia, especially with CERN Theory division being an invited visitor for several summers, and a taking sabbatical there in 2007. But his biggest achieve- ment is perhaps the establish- ment of the Oklahoma Center of High Energy Physics (OCHEP) (together with the help of his distinguished colleague, Dr. K. S. Babu) by obtaining a major implementation grant from the US Department of Energy. Nandi was the PI of the grant, and the pioneering director of the Center (which combined the High Ener- gy Physics effort of OSU, OU and Langston University). This grant made possible to establish a High Energy Experimental Group (at OSU) which now boasts three outstanding faculty and is now a prominent member of the ATLAS Experiment at CERN, in addition to the High Energy The- ory Group, Nandi and Babu. When Nandi joined OSU back in 1986, there was not a single student working on High Energy Physics Research, whereas now the OSU High Energy Physics Group has over 12 students and several postdocs. Best known for his pioneering contributions to the theories of grand unification, Supersym- metry, neutrino properties, extra -dimensions and collider physics, Nandi was elected a FELLOW of the American Physical Society (2005). Within the university, Nandi was awarded the Arts and Sciences Scholarly Excellence Award (1991), recipient of the Regents Distinguished Research Award in 2003 (the very first year the award was initiated), and became Regents Professor in 2004. Nandi has published over 190 peer reviewed journal articles, and presented several hundred invited talks in major international conferences. Many of the students, and postdocs supervised by Dr. Nandi are now faculty members at several insti- tutions in USA and around the world. Dr. Nandi has great pas- sion for teaching, and is loved by his students. Dr. Nandi is still funded through a major ($1.266 million) DOE grant for the OSU High Energy Physics Group till March, 2020. Though retired, he will continue his research at OSU, help stu- dents, and serve the physics de- partment as emeritus regents Professor. In the summer of 1987, at the start of my sabbatical year, my fac- ulty position in Stony Brook got eliminated following a one billion dol- lar cut of the budget of the State University of New York. Visiting Professor Rodney Baxter in Canberra, Australia, and Pro- fessor Paul Pearce in Melbourne, I was told to apply to Stillwater, as they really liked Professor Larry Scott who was then De- partment Head. This is how I came to serve the next 31 years at OSU. During the first semester at OSU, I had to submit a con- ference paper in AMSTeX to Kyoto, Japan, but we only had one Mi- croVAX in the department, so I typed the code for the whole paper with the vi editor, without being able to see what it looked like. How- ever, it could not be sent by email, until after a third visit at the UCC (now IT), where one staff member told, "Oh, there is a file with a list of numbers and two letter codes; that must be the country codes!" After my AUX-Unix Mac arrived, Larry Scott's Monte Carlo code ran faster on it than on the IBM and VAX supercomputers at the UCC. Cont. on page 6 Professor Satya Nandi, Regents Professor of Physics, retired February 28, 2019 after a long and distin- guished career of 32 years at Oklahoma State University. Dr. Nandi with co-recipients of $1.266 million grant from Department of Energy - Alexander Khanov, Joe Haley, Flera Ri- zatdinova and Kaladi Babu. Spring 2019 │ 5 OSU Physics Newsletter After 31 years, Dr. Jacques Perk retires from the Physics Department. FACULTY RETIRING