Mariah Goeks of Lake Forest, Ill., has been named the Northern Michigan University Physics Department 2020-21 outstanding graduating senior. She will earn her bachelor's degree May 1. Goeks began working with the NMU solid-state physics research group as a Freshman Fellow. Through that experience, she was able to travel to a national laboratory in England.
Her foci have been understanding the behavior of hydrogen impurities in semiconductors and contributing to developing an experimental technique to study these systems. She has co-authored two publications in high-impact journals, has another under review and presented a variety of her work at conferences, including the International Conference on Defects in Semiconductors.
Goeks plans to attend graduate school at Simon Fraser University (SFU) where she will be a research assistant in the Department of Physics working at SFU and TRIUMF, a national lab, on superconducting and magnetic systems.
NMU's virtual commencement will be held at 10 a.m. EST Saturday, May 1. Bryan Terrell Clark, a Broadway performer who played George Washington in Hamilton, will be the keynote speaker. Learn more about commencement and access a link to watch it live at www.nmu.edu/commencement.