Florida Tech Student Earns Excellence in Physics Award

  Teresa Esposito has earned Florida Institute of Technology’s James G. Potter Award for Excellence in Physics. She qualified for the award based on her all-around academic excellence and her top score in a physics question and calculation competition.

A junior majoring in physics with a minor in biology, Esposito has already conducted undergraduate research, under Joel Olson in the Department of Chemistry. Her work has involved scanning tunneling microscopy on tryptanthrins, a compound from a medicinal plant.

She is a member of the Phi Kappa Phi honor society and the Phi Eta Sigma honor society, both at Florida Tech. She was also a member of the National Honor Society at her high school.

Esposito graduated from the Academy of Allied Health and Science, a biology-oriented vocational high school, in Neptune, N.J., in 2009.

Potter, the award’s namesake, retired as head of the physics department at Texas A&M University and became head of the physics department at Florida

Tech in 1968. In the 1980s, he retired as department head, but continued operating the physics laboratories and training graduate student assistants as instructors.

The Potter Award has been given in his memory since his death in 1992.