2016 Dean's Honored Graduate, Nikita Klimovich
Nikita Klimovich is a Dean’s Honored Graduate in Physics. He is graduating with an Honors Degree in Physics under the Dean’s Scholars program as well as an Honors Degree in Electrical Engineering. He is being recognized for his research in experimental physics with Dr. Elaine Li's culminating in an honors thesis, Temperature Dependence of Brillouin Light Scattering Spectra of Acoustic and Optical Phonons in Silicon.
Nikita starting working in Dr. Li’s lab during his first semester at UT. He has worked on light-matter interactions, specifically on the development of Brillouin light scattering as a temperature sensing technique for acoustic phonons in semiconductors. Brillouin scattering is an optical technique where a minute frequency change in the light scattered from a sample is used to probe the low-energy excitations within it. It has been shown that this technique can be applied as an effective probe for the temperature of acoustic phonons, one of the primary mechanisms of heat transport in solids. This work has contributed to two peer-reviewed publications.
Nikita has been very active in the Dean’s Scholars program and served as the chair of the Dean’s Scholars Distinguished Lecture Series. He has also been active with a team that participates in engineering design contests. Nikita’s team won first place in the UT Embedded Systems Design and the UT Biomedical Engineering Case Competitions. Besides Physics and Engineering, Nikita enjoyed a number of interesting courses at UT and fell in love with the study of Egyptian hieroglyphics after one course and has continued studies in this area as a personal hobby.
Nikita has received numerous scholarships and was a finalist for the George H. Mitchell Undergraduate Student Award. Next year he will start a Ph.D. program in Physics at the California Institute of Technology.
2016 Dean's Honored Graduate, Nikita Klimovich
Nikita Klimovich is a Dean’s Honored Graduate in Physics. He is graduating with an Honors Degree in Physics under the Dean’s Scholars program as well as an Honors Degree in Electrical Engineering. He is being recognized for his research in experimental physics with Dr. Elaine Li's culminating in an honors thesis, Temperature Dependence of Brillouin Light Scattering Spectra of Acoustic and Optical Phonons in Silicon.
Nikita starting working in Dr. Li’s lab during his first semester at UT. He has worked on light-matter interactions, specifically on the development of Brillouin light scattering as a temperature sensing technique for acoustic phonons in semiconductors. Brillouin scattering is an optical technique where a minute frequency change in the light scattered from a sample is used to probe the low-energy excitations within it. It has been shown that this technique can be applied as an effective probe for the temperature of acoustic phonons, one of the primary mechanisms of heat transport in solids. This work has contributed to two peer-reviewed publications.
Nikita has been very active in the Dean’s Scholars program and served as the chair of the Dean’s Scholars Distinguished Lecture Series. He has also been active with a team that participates in engineering design contests. Nikita’s team won first place in the UT Embedded Systems Design and the UT Biomedical Engineering Case Competitions. Besides Physics and Engineering, Nikita enjoyed a number of interesting courses at UT and fell in love with the study of Egyptian hieroglyphics after one course and has continued studies in this area as a personal hobby.
Nikita has received numerous scholarships and was a finalist for the George H. Mitchell Undergraduate Student Award. Next year he will start a Ph.D. program in Physics at the California Institute of Technology.