The senior thesis program gives students an opportunity to do their own research on a topic of their choosing.

Some students use the thesis to do theoretical work beyond what is covered in normal courses, some participate in a faculty member’s laboratory research, and some devise experiments of their own. The college provides special grants to students who need specialized equipment or other resources not readily available.

Current thesis topics include:

• Image Quality Metrics for Adaptive Optics STED Nanoscopy
• STED Nanoscopy with Low-NA Objective Lenses
• Automated Reconstruction of Biological Structure From Fluorescence Images
• Frequency-doubling of a Ti:sapphire laser for use in ultracold atomic physics experiments
• Current stabilization of a magnetic trap used in Bose-Einstein condensation experiments
• Temperature stabilization of lab equipment using Arduino microcontrollers
• Treating Ocular Cancer with Proton Beams
• Chaos in Mechanical Systems
• Two-beam optical injection in multimode vertical-cavity surface-emitting
• Concealment of time-delay features in multimode vertical-cavity surface-emitting lasers by using polarization rotated optical feedback
• Guitar String Resonance and Decay