Rate My Professor Chad Sosolik

Chad Sosolik is Professor of Physics and, since April 1, 2024, Chair of the Department of Physics and Astronomy at Clemson University, where he also holds a joint appointment as Professor of Electrical and Computer Engineering. He earned a B.S. in Physics from Texas A&M University in 1995 (magna cum laude), an M.S. in Physics from Cornell University in 1998, and a Ph.D. in Physics from Cornell University in 2001. From 2001 to 2003, he was a National Research Council Postdoctoral Research Associate at the National Institute of Standards and Technology. Sosolik joined Clemson in 2003 as Assistant Professor of Physics, was promoted to Associate Professor in 2009 and Professor in 2015, served as Undergraduate Program Coordinator from 2015 to 2023, and acted as Interim Department Chair from July 2018 to January 2019 and again from August 2023 until his permanent appointment.

An experimental condensed matter physicist, Sosolik leads research probing gas-solid and solid-solid interactions at atomic and nanometer length scales using scanning tunneling microscopy, hyperthermal energy beamlines, and the Clemson University Electron Beam Ion Trap (CUEBIT) facility, which he established through an NSF Major Research Instrumentation grant. His investigations cover surface vibrational and electronic excitations, charge exchange processes, ion irradiation effects on electronic devices, biomaterials, and metal-oxide-semiconductor structures, with applications to laboratory astrophysics and radiation effects testing. Funding includes an NSF CAREER Award in 2006, NASA grants, U.S. Department of Energy, U.S. Air Force, and DARPA projects. Key publications include "Charge State Dependent Energy Deposition by Ion Impact" in Physical Review Letters (2011), "Thermally Enhanced Neutralization in Hyperthermal Energy Ion Scattering" in Physical Review Letters (2003), and "Symmetric charge exchange for intermediate velocity noble gas projectiles" in Journal of Physics B: Atomic, Molecular and Optical Physics (2019). Sosolik has earned the American Physical Society George B. Pegram Award for Excellence in the Teaching of Physics in the Southeast (2019), PhysTEC Fellowship (2019-2021), Clemson University Research, Scholarship and Artistic Achievement Award (2018), and Ralph E. Powe Junior Faculty Enhancement Award (2004). He has served as President of the Southern Atlantic Coast Section of the American Association of Physics Teachers and on the international scientific committee for the International Workshop on Inelastic Ion Surface Collisions.