Kristopher Valdez Wins Award

2015 Nov 17

McMurry physics and math senior honors student Kristopher Valdez of Abilene attended the 2015 West Texas Undergraduate STEM conference in Midland College on Saturday, Nov. 7.

He presented a poster entitled "Using a Computational Approach for Efficient Calculations of Electrostatic Fields in Two Dimensions". This poster is based on the project he completed as part of the "Electricity and Magnetism II" class he took with Dr. Tikhon Bykov last spring

. The project was focused on finding the most efficient numeric method to solve Laplace equation for electrostatic potential in a two dimensional boundary problem with cylindrical symmetry.

After defending the poster in front of the panel of judges, Valdez was awarded the first prize and $200 cash award in the "Engineering, Math and Computer Science" category.The poster is currently displayed in the southeast hallway of the Science Building.

This is the second time a McMurry physics student received an award at the West Texas Undergraduate STEM conference. Previously, physics senior major Benjamin Sherwood '13 won the second prize in the same category in 2012.