Physics majors Brooke Ramey ’27 and Dominic Mashak ’27, along with Professor of Physics Steven Alexander, had their research, “Late Acceptance Hill Climbing for the Discovery of Stable Two-Dimensional Transition-Metal Dichalcogenides,” accepted to the 2026 Genetic and Evolutionary Computation Conference (GECCO), taking place July 13–17 in San José, Costa Rica. The peer-reviewed research will be presented as a poster at the conference, and a four-page extended abstract will be published in the companion to the proceedings.

Physics major Dominic Mashak ’27, along with Associate Professor of Computer Science Jacob Schrum and Professor of Physics Steven Alexander, had their research, “Multi-Objective Evolutionary Design of Molecules with Enhanced Nonlinear Optical Properties,” accepted to the 2026 Genetic and Evolutionary Computation Conference (GECCO), taking place July 13–17 in San José, Costa Rica. The peer-reviewed research will be presented as a poster at the conference, and a four-page extended abstract will be published in the companion to the proceedings.

Professor of Physics Steven Alexander and four of his research students — Heidi Jackson ’26, Casandra Nunez ’26, Anshika Katrodia ’26, and Brooke Ramey ’27 — attended the Fall 2025 meeting of the Texas Section of the American Physical Society, held October 10-11 in Fort Worth. Dr. Alexander presented a poster titled “Using Molecular Annealing to Find Molecules with Specific Absorbance Peaks” and Brooke Ramey presented a poster titled “Verifying the Experimental Hyperpolarizabilities of Organic Molecules Using Density Functional Theory.” Heidi Jackson, Casandra Nunez, and Anshika Katrodia presented a poster titled “Analyzing Emission Spectra to Determine the Mass of a Black Hole.” All of the posters generated considerable interest and some insightful discussions.

Dante Medina ’26 presented a poster titled “Using Molecules to Store Energy” at the Southwest Regional Meeting of the American Chemical Society in Waco, TX. This presentation resulted from research done with Professor of Physics Steve Alexander.

Dominic Mashak ’26 presented a poster titled “Finding Molecules with Large Hyperpolarizabilities” at the Southwest Regional Meeting of the American Chemical Society in Waco, TX. This presentation resulted from research done with Professor of Physics Steve Alexander during the summer of 2024.