Idris Malik Physics

Hobbies

Idris Malik's Professional Headshot 2025

Idris Malik Physics

I am a current Graduate Student in the North Dakota State University Physics and Discipline Based Education Research Ph.D. Program.

I am pursuing a career as a Physics Professor, Scientific Researcher, or Data Analyst. I am currently working on Physics Education Research projects with Dr. Andrew Heckler and Dr. Warren Christensen.

I also have experience in Physics and Math tutoring for various courses at the undergraduate level

BUT I Do other stuff too!!

Band

I have played the B-flat Clarinet since the 6th grade, and have been involved in concert band and marching band at Lakota East High School. I am currently a member of the Ohio State Athletic Band, which plays at Men’s and Women’s Basketball, Hockey, and Volleyball games. I have been a member of the Clarinet section January 2020 until my graduation in May 2023. I served as a Section Leader, as member of the 2022-2023 Athletic Band Advisory Council Life Skills Committee. If you want to see more about my experiences as a Clarinet Player (and potential lesson teacher), check out the “Clarinet” page.

Here’s a picture of the Spring 2022 Clarinet Section before our annual halftime performance at the Ohio State Football Spring Game

Here’s the Spring 2023 Athletic Band performing “Script On Ice” at the Men’s Hockey Face Off on the Lake. It was super fun to prepare for and then perform in front of 45,000 people at the Cleveland Browns Stadium

Live Music

I Love going to live concerts to see my favorite artists or introduce myself to new ones. This started from going to see a high school friend’s band (Red Metafor) at The Underground in Cincinnati. I love experiencing music with fellow fans. Some Artists that I enjoy and have seen/will see live are:

Me and my brothers seeing Kendrick Lamar and Baby Keem at The Schottenstein Center
  • Weezer / Fall Out Boy / Green Day
  • Tyler, The Creator (Teezo Touchdown, Vince Staples, Kali Uchis)
  • DJ Pauly D at the Flamin Hot Mountain Dew Festival in Hell, Michigan
  • Baby Keem
  • The Beths, Rosie Tucker
  • Twenty One Pilots
  • Avril Lavine, Machine Gun Kelly, Willow Smith .
  • Kendrick Lamar, Baby Keem, Tanna Leone
  • Steve Lacy
  • Boygenius (I love Phoebe Bridgers)
  • Mom Jeans, Motion City Soundtrack (Sad Summer Fest 2023)
  • Big Time Rush
  • Glass Beach
  • Vampire Weekend
  • Porter Robinson
  • Denzel Curry
  • Juilen Baker
  • Lucy Dacus
  • A bunch of awesome and high energy bands at Dirty Dungarees in Columbus, OH, (or Ace of Cups) Including:
    • POWRCOUPLE
    • Leisure Hour
    • Look Who’s Talking
    • girl songs
    • The Laughing Chimes
    • Cinema Stare
    • Goodnight Starling
    • 12th Avenue Shred Company
  • Some other awesome and high energy bands at The Aquarium and Parachigo in Fargo, ND. Including
    • The Sunflower Burial
    • Vanity Plate
    • Mechanical Canine
    • Artificial Dopamine
    • Big Hank
    • The Wicked Bees
    • Maul
    • Tailspin
    • Jeffery Lewis & The Voltage
    • Grasping Straws
    • Dialtone

Video Games

Me getting a (pretty low) high score on Galaga at an arcade

I’ve been a pretty avid gamer since I can remember. I started playing Tetris Attack, Zelda: A Link to the Past, Yoshi’s Island, and Super Bomberman on my Mom’s old SNES, and have loved playing games by myself, with my 3 brothers, and with my friends ever since. I made a PowerPoint night presentation to compare and contrast “Common Gamer Strategies: League of Legends, Marvel Rivals, and American Football” My favorite games include

  • RPGs
    • The Legend of Zelda (A Link to the Past, Ocarina of Time remastered, Breath of the Wild, Tears of the Kingdom)
    • Fallout (3, New Vegas, 4)
    • Undertale / Deltarune
    • Omori
    • I guess Minecraft and Terraria are also RPGs
  • Metroidvanias
    • Super Metroid
    • Metroid Prime
    • Hollow Knight (where Silksong??)
  • First Person Shooters and other Shooters
    • Marvel Rivals
    • Overwatch
    • Borderlands (all of them)
    • Battlefield
    • Fortnite
    • Apex Legends
  • Rougelikes:
    • Moonlighter
    • Dead Cells
    • Cult of the Lamb
    • Undermine
    • Hades 1 and 2
  • And League of Legends

League Of Legends

I play League of Legends all the time with my IRL friends. I really like the gameplay and the lore and music from my favorite characters and seasonal events.

I mostly play Adaptive Damage Carries (ADCs) in the Bot Lane. My favorites are:

  • Caitlyn
  • Tristana
  • Varus
  • Miss Fortune
  • Jhin
  • Kai’sa

I also ban Yasuo or Samira every game: they have too much mobility and engage (not to mention the windwalls). Or Katarina, its just never fun to play against a Katarina.

I went with some of my LoL friends to a Worlds Finals watch party in 2022, and it was super Fun. Also I really liked Arcane!

In my Big Data Analytics class, I chose to do my half-semester-long Final Project on predicting the outcome of League of Legends games based on data available at the 10-minute mark. I trained and tested a Random Forest, a Fully Connected Network, and a Logistic Regression model, and then compared and evaluated the performance of these models when reducing the amount of input parameters from the data set. Here’s the Poster that I used in my Final Project Presentation

The Sundial Humor Magazine

http://org.osu.edu/sundial/

I was a member of The Sundial Humor Magazine at Ohio State since Spring 2020. I served as the Social Media Officer 2020-2022, and then as an Editor-in-Chief 2022-2023. I wrote a a bunch satire articles, promoted our website, and helped other members workshop their pieces in general meetings and through our editorial process. I also helped (a little bit) with reviving our printed Zines of published articles.

Drums and Bass Guitar

I’ve wanted to learn drums for awhile, and I decided to finally start in the Summer of 2023. Its been fun to go through fundamental books, and start to play along to my favorite music (on Clone Hero). I have also began to learn the Bass Guitar, on its own, and with a Bass Drum Pedal and Hi-Hat Pedal (to play snare drum sounds) as part of a one-man-band project (Gently Used Stickers, coming soon to the Fargo-Moorhead area).

Trivia

I was in Academic Quiz Team in high school. I used to watch a lot of Jeopardy, but I don’t watch it as often anymore. I go to live trivia events with friends and try a little too hard. This includes winning (2nd and then 1st place) at the Rhombus Guys 5 week Trivia Tournament in 2024 and 2025, and keeping a spreadsheet of our group’s attendance, scores, and total gift-card winnings (hence our tournament name “Do It For The Spreadsheet!) . I also love doing Power Point nights with my friends, and I usually do my own form of Jeopardy with things I’m interested in (called “Jeopidris”)