SPS Outstanding Chapter Advisor Award - 2020

Dr. Robert McTaggart is an Associate Professor of Physics at South Dakota State University (SDSU), where he also serves as the Assistant Department Head for Physics.  As the Coordinator of Nuclear Education, he supports the Minor in Nuclear Engineering that requires experiential learning in health physics, medical physics, particle physics, nuclear energy, or the engineering needed for nuclear science or nuclear energy.  He was elected as the Zone 11 Councilor for the Society of Physics Students in 2018, and he has served as the SPS Chapter Advisor at SDSU since Fall 2014.  In 2017 he was recognized with the Outstanding Advisor Award in the Department of Physics.  He received his Ph.D. in Physics from Penn State University, and as an undergraduate at West Virginia University he served as President of the local SPS chapter.  In 2016 and 2017 he was awarded faculty fellowships to pursue research in particle astrophysics at the NASA Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, AL, and he continues to use the Geant4 Simulation Toolkit to model space-based searches for neutrinos and dark matter.  In addition, he has published several articles on the effects of neutron and gamma irradiation on materials and devices.