Our Alumni

Physics & Astronomy

Alumni Stories

Launching research careers

July 15, 2026 | Written by Jamie Washington

Six CAS graduate students and alumni earn prestigious National Science Foundation Graduate Research Fellowships
World-class scholars

July 14, 2026 | Written by Jamie Washington

Four CAS graduate students and alumni are among UD's 2026 -2027 Fulbright Scholars
Laura Carlson inaugurated as UD’s 29th president

April 18, 2026 | Written by Amy Wolf

Campus-wide celebration highlighted University’s forward-focused chapter driven by shared purpose and community.

Our Alumni

The Department of Physics and Astronomy (DPA) has about 330 undergraduate (B.S.) and 310 graduate (Ph.D. and M.S.) alumni. In the U.S., doctoral alumni are employed as faculty, research scientists and postdocs at major universities and national labs, including Cornell, University of California, Boston University, Michigan State and Texas A&M, among others. Doctoral graduates can also be found around the world in countries such as Turkey, Iran, China and Japan. A sizable fraction of our doctoral alumni continue their careers as industrial researchers or executives in major companies, for instance Seagate, Western Digital and DuPont. Explore the profiles below to learn more about the work alumni are doing in the fields of physics and astronomy.

Xing Chen
Bio

Xing Chen

Degree: 2012, Ph.D., Nanomagnetism

Job Title: Principal Investigator and Group Leader of Nanostructured Materials Group at Argonne National Lab

Dr. Xing Chen received his Ph.D. in 2012 in nanomagnetism under the supervision of Dr. John Xiao. He is currently Principal Investigator and Group Leader of Nanostructured Materials Group at Argonne National Lab. Dr. Chen worked as a postdoc at Argonne before being promoted as a staff scientist. He is recently in the News for being awarded an Excellence in Technology Transfer Award from the Federal Laboratory Consortium's (FLC's) Midwest Region for his efforts with Qorvo in utilization of magnetc nanomaterials in microwave devices.

Xing Chen

Bindiya Arora

Degree: 2008, Ph.D.

Job Title: Assistant Professor, Department of Physics, Guru Nanak Dev University

Prof. Bindiya Arora completed her Ph.D. degree in 2008 with Dr. Marianna Safronova. During her Ph.D. she worked on the modeling of atomic systems for atomic clocks and quantum computation. After completion of her Ph.D. she worked at Guru Nanak Dev University (GNDU), Punjab, India as a guest researcher for two years, and then at the Indian Institute of Science Education and Research (IISER), Mohali, India as a scientist. Thereafter she joined the Department of Physics, GNDU as Assistant Professor.

Prof. Bindiya was recently awarded the Young Scientist Award by the Punjab Science Congress for her outstanding work in the field of Blackbody radiation shift calculations for optical clocks. She has also been awarded a three year funding from the Government of India to work on a project based on Quantum Information. She is working in collaboration with the National Physical Lab, New Delhi on the development of atomic and optical clocks, which serve as India's primary time ad frequency standard. At present, she is mentoring a Ph.D. student and is actively involved in building a strong Atomic Physics group at Guru Nanak Dev University.