Faculty Interests

Prospective undergraduate research assistants should contact faculty in the research area in which they are interested.

Kevin Lee
Instructional Technology in Astronomy Education, Computer Simulations

Evan Rich
Planet Formation, Young Stellar Objects, Multi-wavelength Astronomy

Ilya Kravchenko
Ultra High Energy cosmic neutrino detection experiments in Antarctica and Greenland

Kam-Ching Leung (emeritus) 
Very close binary systems; contact and near contact systems.

Herman Batelaan
Quantum optics; vacuum field interaction with atoms and electrons; decoherence in matter interferometry; field emission of electrons; storage and slowing of light; slow sound and phononic band gaps; relativistic dynamics of a charged sphere.

Paul Burrow (emeritus)
Low-energy electron scattering processes in gases, in particular, temporary negative ion formation and dissociative attachment.

Martin Centurion
Ultrafast science: diffractive imaging of isolated molecules with atomic resolution, ultrafast photo-induced chemical reactions, controlling molecules with laser pulses, atoms and molecules in intense laser fields; experimental methods: time-resolved electron diffraction, electron deflectometry, femtosecond optical measurements.

Ilya Fabrikant
Theory of electron-atom and electron-molecule collisions; electron attachment to molecules and clusters; Rydberg atom collisions; photodetachment of negative ions in external fields.

Keith Foreman
High accuracy optical polarimetry; reflective polarimetry; optical ellipsometry.

Tim Gay
Polarized electron collisions with atoms and molecules; development of polarized electron sources and electron polarimeters; neutrino mass measurements; polarized photoionization of molecules.

Duane H. Jaecks (emeritus)
Experimental measurement of electron motion and distributions in atoms formed in ion collisions and photoionization; study of correlated motion of massive particles.

Jean Marcel Ngoko Djiokap
Strong-field and Attosecond Science: controlling ultrafast correlated atomic and molecular processes with ultrashort laser pulses, atoms and molecules in intense laser pulses with arbitrarily polarization, photodetachment of negative ions in external fields, theory of electron-atom collisions; theoretical quantum and classical methods: TDSE and TD-DFT toolboxes, J-matrix method, R-matrix method, perturbation theory analysis, time-frequency analysis.

Bradley Shadwick
Theory of intense laser-plasma interactions with applications to plasma based particle accelerators; plasma kinetic theory; reduced plasma models; Hamiltonian structure; large-scale computation; and advanced numerical algorithms.

Cornelis (Kees) Uiterwaal
Femtosecond laser processes; optical vortices; photoionization in ultrashort and intense laser pulses; ion mass spectrometry; electron spectroscopy.

Donald Umstadter
Nonlinear optics of high-intensity laser light in relativistic plasmas, with applications to compact particle accelerators and ultra-short duration x-ray sources; high energy density physics and extreme states of matter.

Shireen Adenwalla
Novel interactions in Thin film magnetic systems; interactions at ferroelectric/ferromagnetic interfaces; Boron based semiconductors and neutron detection applications; using biological templates for patterned media.

Kirill Belashchenko
Computational magnetism, quantum spin transport and spin torques from first principles, electronic properties of magnetic materials, alloy theory.

Christian Binek
Magnetic heterostructures; molecular beam epitaxy; extrinsically controlled exchange bias & spintronic applications; fundamental aspects of thermodynamics studied with magnetic model systems.

Peter Dowben
Electronic (band) structure across electronic phase transitions in reduced dimensionality.

Stephen Ducharme
Fundamental and applied studies of organic ferroelectrics; nanoscale ferroelectricity; thin film ellipsometry; pyroelectric and piezoelectric properties of materials; nanoscience education and outreach; introductory physics for life sciences (IPLS); student-centered physics instruction based on sound research.

Alexei Gruverman
Fundamental studies of nanoscale physical phenomena in electronic and polar materials by means of scanning probe microscopy (SPM) techniques; research involves application of SPM for nanoscale studies of static and dynamic properties of ferroic domains, scaling behavior of ferroelectric-based devices, electronic properties of polar surfaces, SPM-assisted methods for fabrication of nanostructures and SPM studies of electromechanical and mechanical properties of biocompatible materials and biological systems.

Xia Hong
Epitaxial growth and nanofabrication of complex oxide heterostructures; transport studies of nanoscale and low dimensional electron systems.

Sitaram Jaswal (emeritus)
Atomic and electrical structure of metallic compounds and glasses; magnetic properties of solids; surfaces; interfaces; nanostructures.

Alexey Kovalev
Theoretical condensed-matter physics; spintronics; spin-dependent transport; quantum information processing.

Sy-Hwang Liou
Magnetic domain imaging; magnetic nanostructured materials and complex oxides.

Evgeny Tsymbal
Computational studies of magnetic, ferroelectric and transport properties of nanoscale materials and structures: magnetoelectric interfaces, magnetic and ferroelectric tunnel junctions, complex oxide materials.

Xiaoshan Xu
Experimental condensed matter physics.

Zuocheng Zhang
Quantum phenomena in low-dimensional materials; engineering van der Waals heterostructures through advanced nanofabrication techniques; investigating the origins of electron behaviors using electrical transport and optical spectroscopy. 

Ken Bloom
Proton collisions with the compact muon solenoid (CMS) experiment at the Large Hadron Collider; computing and software for particle physics experiments.

Dan Claes
Compact muon solenoid (CMS) experiment at CERN.

Peisi Huang
Theoretical particle physics, including new physics beyond the Standard Model, Higgs physics, collider physics and particle cosmology.

Ilya Kravchenko
Experimental particle physics: compact muon solenoid (CMS) experiment at the Large Hadron Collider.
Astrophysics: Ultra high energy neutrino experiments in Antarctica.

William B. Campbell (emeritus)
Theoretical physics