CyberSec Research

As fusion energy technologies approach demonstration and commercial deployment, understanding public perspectives on future fusion facilities will be critical for achieving social license, especially because fusion energy facilities, unlike large fission reactors, may be sited in closer proximity to people and communities, due to distinct regulatory frameworks. In a departure from the 'decide-announce-defend' approach typically used to site energy infrastructure, we develop a participatory design methodology for collaboratively designing fusion energy facilities with prospective host communities. We present here our findings from a participatory design workshop that brought together 22 community participants and 34 engineering students. Our analysis of the textual and visual data from this workshop shows a range of design values and decision-making criteria with 'integrity' and 'respect' ranking highest among values and 'economic benefits' and 'environmental protection/safety' ranking highest among decision-making criteria. Salient design themes that emerge across facility concepts include connecting the history and legacy of the community to the design of the facility, care for workers, transparency and access to the facility, and health and safety of the host community. Participants reported predominantly positive sentiments, expressing joy and surprise as the workshop progressed from learning about fusion to designing the hypothetical facility. Our findings suggest that carrying out participatory design in the early stages of technology development can invite and make concrete public hopes and concerns, improve understanding of, and curiosity about, an emerging technology, build toward social license, and inform context-specific development of fusion energy facilities.

As astronomy enters an era defined by global telescope networks, petabyte-scale surveys, and powerful computational tools, the longstanding goals of astronomy education, particularly introductory ``ASTRO101'', but equally encompassing both higher and lower level courses, warrant fresh examination. In June 2024, the AstroEdUNC meeting at UNC--Chapel Hill convened 100 astronomers, education researchers, and practitioners to synthesise community perspectives on the purpose, content, and delivery of astronomy education. Beginning with historical vignettes, the meeting's deliberations were organised into six interrelated themes: (1) Context, highlighting astronomy's evolution from classical charting to multi-messenger discovery and its role as a connective thread across STEM and the humanities; (2) Content, exploring how curricula can balance essential concepts with authentic investigations and leverage open-source and AI-augmented resources; (3) Skills, arguing that astronomy should foreground scientific literacy, computational fluency, and communication through genuine data-driven inquiry; (4) Engagement, advocating for active-learning strategies, formative assessment, and culturally inclusive narratives; (5) Beyond the Classroom, emphasising scaffolding, universal-design practices, and K--12/community partnerships; and (6) Astronomy Education Research, outlining priority areas for assessing knowledge, attitudes, and long-term outcomes. We provide concrete recommendations for future astronomy education research development, underscoring the need for approaches to education that are authentic while meeting the learning and life goal needs of the students, a vibrant community of practice and robust researcher-practitioner partnerships to ensure that introductory astronomy is pertinent, applicable and inspiring to a broad student population.

As the need for a quantum-ready workforce grows, educators in Quantum Information Science and Engineering (QISE) face the challenge of aligning their programs and courses with industry needs. Through a series of interviews with program directors and faculty across 15 different institutions, we identified the considerations that educators are currently addressing as they develop their various courses and programs. Grounded in a curriculum framework, we conducted a Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities and Threats (SWOT) analysis, which revealed shared challenges and opportunities about program context, curriculum development, collaboration, program data collection and evaluation, and connections across stakeholders in the quantum ecosystem that educators should consider when developing their QISE efforts. Our findings highlight five overreaching themes: (1) the strategic ways educators navigate institutional structures to support QISE initiatives, (2) the ongoing challenge of aligning QISE curricula with industry and institutional needs, (3) the importance of fostering interdisciplinary collaboration across departments and institutions in QISE, (4) the need for robust data collection and evaluation to inform QISE course and program development, and (5) the importance of strengthening industry-academia connections to prepare students for the quantum workforce. The details and interconnections in our findings illustrate the value of applying a structured approach to QISE course and program development with the goal of creating a more cohesive QISE education ecosystem.

This study presents a systematic approach for converting qualitative data into quantitative parameters within a system dynamics (SD) framework, focusing on modeling engineering student engagement. Although SD typically relies on numerical inputs, important "soft" factors such as motivation, confidence, and a sense of belonging have often been neglected due to the challenge of measurement. Semi-structured interviews were conducted with mechanical engineering students in a Learning Studio environment, capturing stories about hands-on coursework, peer support, and personal growth. Using inductive thematic analysis, frequent mentions of relevant factors were coded and converted into weighted parameters for a Vensim model. The resulting structure includes interconnected submodels illustrating how community cohesion influences motivation, which then affects learning outcomes and career goals. Simulation results show exponential growth in motivation, confidence, and sense of belonging over a sixteen-week period, alongside declines in negative factors like dissatisfaction. Introducing a logistic limit on belonging confirmed that, after social needs plateau, other positive aspects continue to improve. A scenario with a one-week delay in feedback loops reduced the rate of change but maintained the model's overall behavior. These findings align with educational theory, suggesting that community-driven interventions can enhance student engagement. This approach highlights the importance of capturing intangible, evolving student experiences in SD models. While additional validation with larger samples is necessary, the framework shows how incorporating qualitative insights into simulations can yield more actionable findings for educators and researchers.

As a famous landmark and feat of engineering, the Gateway Arch was a popular destination at the 2025 AAPT Winter Meeting in St. Louis. The visit to the observation deck of the Gateway Arch is unique, climbing the steps after exiting the small tram capsules and seeing a floor that continues to slope upward assures that you are in fact at the very top. Everyone in our group excitedly took pictures, pointing out local features like the Dred Scott Courthouse. There were many selfies at the pinnacle, and we discussed how to work them into future questions for our students. During our tram ride to the top observation deck of the arch, we lamented that we should have brought pendula to measure the acceleration due to gravity. You can take physics teachers out of the physics conference, but you apparently can't get us to stop talking about physics teaching. Recognizing that we had accelerometers on our phones we collected data on the descent. The authors wanted to collect more complete measurements and returned two days later to repeat the journey, the results of which we present here. For readers wishing to repeat with their students, or who want to apply more advanced data analysis techniques, the authors have made the raw data, our spreadsheets, and a teacher's guide available.

The role of student experiences in physics beyond the classroom which support their development has been the subject of exciting research in recent years. Results, typically from small studies at single institutions, have illustrated that facilitating informal physics experiences for non-scientists can enhance student disciplinary identity, learning, sense of belonging, and more. However, it is essential to examine whether these impacts are the sole provenance of institutions with well-developed outreach programs or if they may be shared by institutions anywhere. This work reports on the analysis and findings of responses to three open-ended questions presented to students who indicated they had engaged in facilitating outreach programs as part of a national survey distributed through the Society of Physics Students network in spring 2023. Employing a network analysis with Girvan-Newman clusters revealed six core themes of student experiences: community participation, resilience, transformation, audience dialog, disciplinary development, and disciplinary connectedness. The first four of these clusters were observed to be highly interconnected, providing evidence that the impacts and experiences within them are interrelated with other clusters, particularly interactions with the audience, which is a central feature of informal physics programs. In particular, student experiences highlighted that facilitating informal physics programs enhanced their resilience and belonging, grew their physics identity, provided opportunities to develop essential career skills, and cultivated a growth mindset.

Quantum computing is gaining strategic relevance beyond research-driven industries. However, many companies lack the expertise to evaluate its potential for real-world applications. Traditional training formats often focus on physical principles without demonstrating practical relevance, which limits success. This paper presents a user-centered workshop concept tailored to IT professionals without prior quantum knowledge. Using a business game set in a fictitious company, participants explore quantum technologies through relatable, application-driven scenarios. The flexible design allows customization for different organizational contexts. Evaluation results from a one-day implementation at the IT-Tage 2024 indicate clear learning progress and increased awareness of practical use cases. The approach effectively bridges the gap between complex quantum concepts and industry-specific application needs.

Multimodal large language models (MLLMs) capable of processing both text and visual inputs are increasingly being explored for uses in physics education, such as tutoring, formative assessment, and grading. This study evaluates a range of publicly available MLLMs on a set of standardized, image-based physics research-based conceptual assessments (concept inventories). We benchmark 15 models from three major providers (Anthropic, Google, and OpenAI) across 102 physics items, focusing on two main questions: (1) How well do these models perform on conceptual physics tasks involving visual representations? and (2) What are the financial costs associated with their use? The results show high variability in both performance and cost. The performance of the tested models ranges from around 76\% to as low as 21\%. We also found that expensive models do not always outperform cheaper ones and that, depending on the demands of the context, cheaper models may be sufficiently capable for some tasks. This is especially relevant in contexts where financial resources are limited or for large-scale educational implementation of MLLMs. By providing these analyses, our aim is to inform teachers, institutions, and other educational stakeholders so that they can make evidence-based decisions about the selection of models for use in AI-supported physics education.

Introductory physics instruction emphasizes fluency with routine problem-solving procedures. However, even when applying these procedures, students frequently encounter challenges. This paper investigates how students navigate such moments when answering qualitative E&M problems in interviews. Students frequently noted they had partially forgotten a key equation on a problem involving RC circuits. We present focal cases that show how coherence-seeking approaches were employed to overcome this problem-solving challenge. In attempts to reconstruct these equations, participants were guided by identifying and chaining qualitative dependencies and seeking coherence between qualitative and mathematical understanding of the physical system. These moments of forgetting and reconstructing equations are a useful site for studying broader physics learning goals. While prior work investigates the use of mathematical sensemaking by examining how students respond to explicit prompts, our cases illustrate how students can spontaneously use mathematical sensemaking strategies. We reflect on these cases to consider how such adaptive reasoning can be a target for instruction and assessment.

Gender imbalance among German physicists persists, with fewer women in advanced degrees and research leadership roles. Although female enrollment in Physics programs increased slightly until 2022, potentially influenced by COVID-19 the long-term trend remains uncertain. Despite the rise in female Ph.D. students and foreign representation, female professors in Physics and Astronomy stagnated below 14 %, indicating significant underrepresentation. Anticipated revisions to the WissZeitVG law may impact female mainstreaming efforts, potentially leading to greater precarization of research staff. Women make up only around 20 % of employed physicists, with low visibility in the community, as seen in the representation of female physicists in prestigious awards. Addressing this imbalance requires structural interventions beyond mere encouragement and empowerment.

Quantum information science (QIS) is a critical interdisciplinary field that requires a well-educated workforce in the near future. Numerous researchers and educators have been actively investigating how to best educate and prepare such a workforce. An open issue has been the lack of a validated tool to asses QIS understanding without requiring college-level math. In this paper, we present the systematic development and content validation of a new assessment instrument called the Quantum Information Science Concept Introductory Test (QISCIT). With feedback from 11 QIS experts, we have developed and validated a 31-item version of QISCIT that covers concepts like quantum states, quantum measurement, qubits, entanglement, coherence and decoherence, quantum gates and computing, and quantum communication. In addition to openly sharing our new concept inventory, we discuss how introductory QIS instructors can use it in their courses.

Understanding the magnetic properties of matter plays a key role in materials physics. However, university education on fundamental magnetism is limited to a theoretical survey because of the lack of appropriate apparatus that can be applied for laboratory courses at the undergraduate level. In this work, we introduce an AC magnetometer based on the Colpitts self-oscillator with an inductor coil as a probe. We show that this type of self-oscillator can be adopted in a typical university laboratory course to learn the principles of magnetic measurement and to understand the fundamental magnetism of matter. We demonstrate the exceptional stability of the circuit with a working frequency range of ~10 kHz to 10 MHz and excellent performance to detect the diamagnetic signal from a superconductor at cryogenic temperature.

The increasing availability of digital tools for education offers significant opportunities to enhance teaching practices and student engagement. This study presents a structured categorization of online educational tools based on their core functionalities, including content creation, assessment, classroom management, and collaboration. A pilot implementation of selected tools was conducted in secondary-level science education, followed by a refinement phase to address usability and integration challenges. Feedback from participating teachers and workshop attendees highlighted the importance of accessibility, intuitive interfaces, and support materials. Observations revealed that while multiple tools offer broad functionality, unified platforms may better support effective instruction. The resulting categories and experiences provide practical guidance for educators seeking to integrate digital tools into their teaching in a purposeful and inclusive way.

Wave optics is a prominent part of the undergraduate physics curriculum, and many undergraduate labs contain experiments on wave optics. In our 3rd-year undergraduate lab, we run numerical simulations alongside the experiments (and when pandemic restrictions did not allow students into the lab, those simulations replaced some experiments). We use Young TIM, an interactive wave-optics simulator designed to be a research tool that can also be used for the dissemination of our research and for education. It has novel and unique features, including the ability to create an anaglyph of the beam as it would be seen in 3D by a binocular, probably misguided, observer staring into the beam. Here we describe how to use Young TIM, and we describe several possible numerical experiments suitable for undergraduate teaching.

This paper presents a social network analysis of the professional support networks of 100 LGBTQ+ and/or women PhD physicists, comparing the networks based on the career sectors of academia, industry, and government/nonprofit. The methods for constructing and analyzing the ego networks, which are novel in many ways, are explained in greater detail in an earlier publication (Hatcher et. al., 2025). We use statistical tests of independence to explore differences between sectors in terms of whole network metrics, network composition based on alter characteristics, and support types. We find that alters associated with groups (like affinity groups and personal and professional interest groups) are more likely to provide identity-based and community building support, participants in Academia have fewer personal friends in their networks while those in Industry have more, participants in Government report less instrumental support, and those in Academia report less material support. These results and others lead to suggestions for employers in these sectors on how to better support these physicists, including continuing to promote participation in affinity and interest groups, providing more material support and/or personal time in the academic sector, and more instrumental support in the form of professional development or training in the government sector.

This study investigates the educational potential of Flappy, a low-cost, bioinspired robotic blimp platform modeled after the motion of manta rays, as a hands-on STEM learning tool for middle school students. Building on prior research emphasizing the role of social and bioinspired robotics in education, a one-day workshop was developed to introduce ten students to fundamental concepts in physics, engineering, and computer science. Participants constructed and programmed their own robotic blimps while engaging with a custom curriculum that incorporated visuals and collaborative activities. Quantitative analysis using pre- and post-assessments revealed significant learning gains, supported by a Wilcoxon Signed-Rank Test (p = 0.00195). Qualitative observations showed high levels of engagement, teamwork, and increased confidence with technical vocabulary and tools. The results suggest that affordable, bioinspired robotics platforms like Flappy can effectively enhance STEM comprehension and enthusiasm among younger learners, particularly when paired with structured, interactive instruction.

Limited infrastructure, scarce educational resources, and unreliable internet access often hinder physics and photonics education in underdeveloped regions. These barriers create deep inequities in Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics (STEM) education. This article explores how Small Language Models (SLMs)-compact, AI-powered tools that can run offline on low-power devices, offering a scalable solution. By acting as virtual tutors, enabling native-language instruction, and supporting interactive learning, SLMs can help address the shortage of trained educators and laboratory access. By narrowing the digital divide through targeted investment in AI technologies, SLMs present a scalable and inclusive solution to advance STEM education and foster scientific empowerment in marginalized communities.

We present an educational approach aimed at introducing the fundamental concepts of quantum mechanics (QM). By exploiting the formal analogy between sound wave behavior in an acoustic pipe (a drinking straw) and the quantum infinite square potential well, we provide an intuitive framework that explains the origin of energy quantization in bound quantum systems (such as atoms), introduces the concept of wave function (WF), and lays the groundwork for discussing the Heisenberg uncertainty relations. The proposed method enables low-cost experimental activities that actively involve students, facilitating a meaningful connection between theoretical principles and empirical observations. Moreover, it encourages critical reflection on the Copenhagen interpretation of the WF, promoting a deeper conceptual understanding.