Dr. Mike Larsen
Professor of Physics
Associate Department Chair
Office: RHSC 317
Lab: RHSC 392
Phone: (843) 953-2128
Email: LarsenML@cofc.edu
Fall 2026 Schedule: (PDF)
Full CV: (PDF)
Internal Lab Materials here
CofC has New Programs in Atmospheric Physics and Meteorology!!! Check them out here
Physics and Astronomy Department Handbook here
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- Current Courses (Fall 2026) -
Introduction to Meteorology (PHYS 105, Section I)Electromagnetism I (PHYS 409, Section I)
Research Seminar (PHYS 419, Section II)
(Electronic course content for these courses can be found on the associated links within Oaks)
-Research -
I do research in an area broadly defined as atmospheric microphysics. In short, I study stuff in the sky smaller than a deck of playing cards. For most of my career, this has focused on studying small particles in the sky where the particle-like nature is relevant to the processes the particles are involved with. (In other words, I study aerosol particles, cloud droplets, and raindrops in contexts where the fact that they are discrete entities matter).The processes that I study include radiative transfer (the transmission of light), aerosol activation, ice nucleation, cloud particle growth through mechanisms like condensation and collision/coalescence, and raindrop interactions.
Our lab's research program is somewhat unique insofar as that we bridge several different research communities. The aerosol and cloud physics research we do fits most comfortably in the cloud physics community; the rain physics and measurement work more naturally fits in the field of hydrology; our radiative transfer work and some of the remote sensing rain measurement work naturally lies in the fields of radar meteorology and applied optics; and some of our analysis techniques bring us into the fields of time series analysis, stochastic geometry, and monte-carlo simulation techniques. Even within, say, the cloud physics community we occupy an under-represented corner where we focus more on laboratory studies and/or analysis of field data than computational models.
Our lab involves experimental (lab and fieldwork), computational, and data-analytic methods -- with an occasional foray into theoretical work, especially within the realm of stochastic geometry. We work on a lot of different problems, and we're always looking to work on interesting things.
We have recently developed a lab web page highlighting our accomplishments and trying to keep track of the students who have worked in the lab over the years. If you are interested, it might be worth checking out.
- About Me -
The academic basics can be found if you check out one of my CVs to the left. A more comprehensive biography (you must be bored) can be found here.- Current other members of the Larsen Atmospheric Physics Lab -
Abram Coffee Retrieving reliable rainfall data from a vertically pointing Doppler RADAR system.Grant Keiser Investigating the impacts of detection inhomgeneity on calculating the radial distribution function for atmospheric applications.
Jackson Lee-Sosolik Characterizing South Carolina's first Differential Emissivity Imaging Disdrometer
Mary Love Comparing satellite and radar measurements to ground truth measurements of precipitation.
Ramsey Ohannessian Investigating heterogeneous freezing with a cold-stage.
Garrison Rickmon Experimental investigations into the relationship between particle clustering and light transmission in clouds.