The primary focus of this department is to provide a high standard of Undergraduate and Postgraduate education via lectures, tests and exams, tutorials, labs and projects.
You may be present, you may learn but it is with diligence and dedication that brilliance surfaces. Be passionate and work hard.
- Dr. Venkateswara Penugonda (MSc, MPhil, PhD)
Head of Department
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
The department of Physics was founded in 1948 when the University was then University College still associated with the University of London.
The department is one of the largest and oldest in the University. In 1969, it primarily catered to the first year Medical students offering preliminary science and premedical courses at the GCE Advanced level. Workshop facilities were limited and separated in single-storey buildings. Only two undergraduate programmes were offered which are the General degree and Special degree programmes. The General degree programme was offered as evening classes and spanned six (6) years. The graduate research programmes were also quite limited and included Physics of the Upper Atmosphere, Seismology, Biophysics and Computing techniques.
Check our Alumni page to see some of our notable graduates as well as pictures of the old Department and its past activities.
The Department of Physics now has many facilities and offers a wide range of majors. Its facilities include a computer laboratory established in 2006 formally called the "Virtual lab", two electronics laboratories, a medical physics lab, a materials science lab, an optics lab and a nuclear lab. See the Facilities page for a description of each.
Majors now offered are General Physics, Electronics, Energy and Environmental Physics, Materials Science and Medical Physics.
Research now spans Climate Studies, Renewable Energy, Material Sciences, Medical Physics, Digital Signals Processing and Circuits & Instrumentation.
Our 7 faculties and 12 professional schools offer more than 200 programmes to some 18,000 graduate, undergraduate and continuing studies students.
The UWI, Mona ranks first in Jamaica among accredited tertiary-level programmes. In 2012, the University was again one of Jamaica’s Top 100 Employers.
