Education:

• BA, Physics, DePauw University, 1996
• MS, Physics, Arizona State University, 1999
• PhD, Curriculum and Instruction, Spec. Physics Education Research, Arizona State University, 2002

Research Interests:

• Physics Education Research
• Introductory course reform
• Network analysis in learning
• Neuromechanisms of learning
  
  

Bio:

Eric Brewe, PhD, is an associate professor in physics and science education at Drexel University. His research into the teaching and learning of physics at the university level includes developing curriculum for the Modeling Instruction course, leading inquiries into the role of Modeling Instruction in promoting student learning, participation, retention and persistence, and enhanced attitudes toward science and equity. This research has led to describing the role of participation in learning using primarily quantitative measures including the use of Network Analyses, and recently Functional Magnetic Resonance Imaging. In addition to research on post-secondary physics, Brewe has been involved in preparing future physics teachers through Modeling Workshops, and as co-editor of the PhysTEC sponsored book, "Recruiting and Educating Future Physics Teachers: Case Studies and Effective Practices". He helped to found the American Physical Society’s Topical Group on Physics Education Research (GPER) and served as the founding chair. Brewe currently serves as chair of the American Physical Society Education Policy Committee and is a member of the Editorial Board of Physical Review - Physics Education Research.

Specialization:

Education:

• BS, Physics, University of Puerto Rico, 1985
• BM, Piano, Conservatory of Music of Puerto Rico, 1989
• MS, Physics, University of Puerto Rico, 1989
• PhD, Physics, MIT, 1994

Research Interests:

• Computational studies of confinement effects on the folding of amyloidogenic proteins
• Spatial correlations of neurons in the brain
• Firing dynamics of neuronal networks
• Fluid flow through porous media
  
  

Bio:

Luis Cruz Cruz, who joined the College of Arts and Sciences in the Fall of 2008 as Associate Professor of Physics, completed his PhD in physics at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, focusing on electrical and magnetic properties of conducting polymers. He then went as post-doctoral fellow to Boston University where he applied methods of statistical physics to neurological conditions and disease. His current research focuses on computer simulations of the dynamics of protein folding and applications of statistical methods to understand possible relationships between neuronal organization in the brain and cognition.

Specialization:

Education:

• BS, Physics, Drexel University, 1975
• PhD, Physics, University of Pennsylvania, 1982

Research Interests:

Education:

• AB-AM, Physics, Harvard University 2003
• PhD, Physics, University of California, Berkeley 2008

Bio:

Michelle Dolinski, PhD, has a background in nuclear and particle physics. She has worked in the field of neutrinoless double beta decay for a decade, including graduate work on the CUORE experiment and postdoctoral research as part of the EXO group at Stanford. She joined the Drexel University Department of Physics in 2012, where she continues to pursue experimental neutrino physics. In addition, she is interested in physics education and outreach, specifically improving the accessibility and quality of physics education at the high school level.

Current Research

Dolinski is interested in designing and building novel detectors for the next generation of neutrino experiments. Neutrinos, while difficult to study in the laboratory, may be the key to understanding what lies beyond the Standard Model of Particle Physics.

EXO-200 and nEXO are experiments searching for neutrinoless double beta decay of xenon-136. Neutrinoless double beta decay experiments probe physics beyond the Standard Model by accessing extremely high energy scales via this rare nuclear decay. The observation of neutrinoless double beta decay would prove that neutrinos are a new kind of fundamental particle called a Majorana fermion.

The PROSPECT experiment searches for neutrino oscillations to invisible "sterile" neutrinos at the High Flux Isotope Reactor at Oak Ridge National Laboratory. Sterile neutrinos could help to explain anomalous results from previous neutrino experiments.

Specialization:

Education:

• BS, Physics, Manhattan College, 1969
• MA, Physics, Princeton University, 1971
• PhD, Physics, Princeton University, 1974

Research Interests:

• Experimental and theoretical protein dynamics
• Kinetics of biological self-assembly, including sickle cell and Alzheimer's disease, sickle cell testing and diagnostic devices
  
  

Bio:

Professor Ferrone has employed novel optical methods for the study of protein behavior. As a graduate student at Princeton studying under Prof. John Hopfield, he developed the first kinetic CD instrument, based on flash photolysis; as a Postdoctoral Fellow at Princeton he developed a method for studying kinetics in the frequency domain, modulated excitation. Both methods were designed to study conformational changes of normal hemoglobin. As a Staff Fellow at the NIH (1976-1980) working with Bill Eaton & Jim Hofrichter, he developed a steady-state microphotolysis method for the study of sickle hemoglobin polymerization, which provided the first subsecond kinetic measurements of that system, as well as the first study of rapid sickling in red cells. It was there that the double nucleation model for polymerization was developed, which has become the accepted paradigm for this assembly process. He moved to Drexel as an Assistant Professor in 1980, and developed a laboratory which continues to employ novel methods, which have included stochastic methods for measuring nucleation kinetics, modulation methods for measuring microsolubility, as well as novel microrheological methods for studying polymers and associated domains. This work has been continuously funded by the NIH since 1982; in the process, Professor Ferrone has supervised 10 PhD students to completion as of 2009. He received the Drexel Research Achievement award in 1991, and was named a Fellow of the American Physical Society in 1997. He was made full Professor in 1990, and currently also serves as Associate Vice Provost for Research, a half-time appointment.

Specialization:

Education:

• BA, Astronomy and Physics, Boston University, 1996
• MA, Astrophysics, Princeton University, 1998
• PhD, Astrophysics, Princeton University, 2000

Research Interests:

• Theoretical and computational cosmology
• Extragalactic astrophysics
• Gravitational lensing
• Popular science writing
  
  

Specialization:

Education:

• BS/MS, Physics, Moscow State University, Moscow, Russia, 1991
• PhD, Physics, Oregon State University, 1996

Research Interests:

• Experimental Solid State Physics
• Scanning Probe Microscopy
• Nanoscale Catalysis
• Mesoscopic Superconductivity

Specialization:

Education:

• BA, Astronomy, Cornell University, 2007
• MS, Physics, Drexel University, 2009
• PhD, Physics, Drexel University, 2014

Research Interests:

• Quasars
• Active Galactic Nuclei
• Radio Astronomy
• Active Learning Techniques

Bio:

After graduating from Cornell University with a BA in Astronomy, Professor Kratzer moved to Philadelphia to pursue her graduate work, which focused on the radio properties of quasars, at Drexel University. After earning her PhD in 2014, she spent a year and a half as a 3/4-time instructor at Rowan University teaching undergraduate physics and advising the Astronomy Club. In the Winter of 2016, she returned to Drexel’s physics department as an Assistant Teaching Professor. In addition to her teaching responsibilities, she is particularly interested in astronomy outreach as well as improving the learning outcomes in all undergraduate courses (particularly non-major courses).

Specialization:

Education:

• BA physics University of California, Berkeley 2002
• PhD Physics/Applied Physics Stanford University 2010

Bio:

Specialization:

Education:

• BS, Physics, Indiana University, 1981
• PhD, Physics, Caltech, 1987

Specialization:

Education:

• BS, Physics Education, West Chester University, 2006
• MA, Physics, Temple University, 2010
• PhD, Physics, Temple University, 2013

Research Interests:

Bio:

Professor Christina Love's PhD work focused on the direct detection of dark matter with the DarkSide Collaboration. She completed her postdoctoral work at the Transportation Security Laboratory working on the detection of explosives with X-ray scanners.

Professor Love is an active member of the Association of Women in Science and she is the Director and Founder of Start Talking Science, an annual event where researchers present nontechnical posters to the general public: starttalkingscience.com and facebook.com/starttalkingscience. She is also on the Board of Directors for the Challenger Learning Center of Philadelphia: clcphiladelphia.org/.

Professor Love has earned numerous awards such as the Evidence-Based Teaching Award in Undergraduate STEM Education and the Award for Outstanding Faculty Mentor by the Graduate Student Association. She has performed research at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center, Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory and Gran Sasso National Laboratory in Italy.

Current Research

Professor Love is currently working on the formal assessment of Start Talking Science.

Specialization:

Education:

• BA, Mathematics, Cambridge University, 1977
• PhD, Astronomy, Harvard University, 1983

Specialization:

Education:

• BS, Physics and Mathematics, University of Auckland 2000
• MS, Physics, University of Auckland 2002
• PhD, Physics, Stanford University 2012

Bio:

Russell Neilson, PhD, has a background in particle and nuclear physics. He completed his graduate work as a member of the EXO collaboration searching for the rare nuclear process known as neutrinoless double beta decay. Neilson is currently a member of the PICO collaboration, attempting to directly observe dark matter particles for the first time.

Specialization:

Education:

• AB, Astrophysical Sciences, Princeton University 1994
• SM, Astronomy and Astrophysics, University of Chicago 1995
• PhD, Astronomy and Astrophysics, University of Chicago 2000

Bio:

Professor Richards is an expert in the identification of quasars and active galactic nuclei (AGNs) through modern statistical methods using imaging data (pictures) from large astronomical sky surveys, particularly the Sloan Digital Sky Survey. Quasars and AGNs are galaxies in which new material is currently falling into supermassive black holes at their centers. He is particularly interested in understanding the accretion disks that feed these massive black holes, how mass and energy ejected from these black holes influences the evolution of galaxies over time, and how large quasar samples can be used as statistical probes of the structure of the Universe.

Richards frequently uses both space-based observatories such as the Hubble Space Telescope, Spitzer Space Telescope, and Chandra X-ray Observatory in addition to ground-based observatories such as the 4-m Mayall Telescope at Kitt Peak National Observatory and the Very Large Array radio telescope. He is a member of the AGN science collaboration for the upcoming LSST project (of which Drexel is a member) and is the co-chair of the extra-galactic working group that is planning a new sky survey using the Very Large Array. He is co-author of 192 articles in refereed journal and is funded by both NSF and NASA. Prof. Richards was one of 23 physicists (3 in astrophysics) selected for the prestigious Alfred P. Sloan research fellowships in 2007 and earned an Alexander von Humboldt Research Fellowship in 2013 to support sabbatical work at the Max Planck Institut für Astronomie in Heidelberg, Germany where he is a frequent visitor.

Specialization:

Education:

• AB, Physics & Music, Drew University 1990
• MS, Electrical Engineering (Acoustics), The Catholic Univ. of America, 1994
• PhD, Applied Physics, Columbia University 2001

Bio:

After completing his PhD, Spanier completed a two-year postdoctoral fellowship in physical chemistry at Harvard University with Hongkun Park prior to joining the Drexel faculty in 2003. He is presently Professor of Materials Science & Engineering and holds an affiliated appointments in the Department of Physics and in the Department of Electrical & Computer Engineering.

Spanier currently investigates light-matter interactions in polar materials, focusing on the bulk photovoltaic effect and properties of new polar oxides and other perovskites. He is a co-inventor of the first semiconducting absorber that possesses a compositionally-tunable band gap spanning the visible spectrum and is simultaneously polar for promoting carrier separation without a junction.

Spanier was awarded the Presidential Early Career Award for Scientists and Engineers in 2007, he was an Office of Naval Research Summer Faculty Fellow in 2010, and received the Distinguished Service Award from the Louis R Stokes Alliance for Minority Participation in 2013, and he was named a Louis and Bessie Stein Family Fellow in 2013. In 2014 he was awarded a Japan Trust International Research Cooperation Fellowship from the National Institute of Information and Communications Technology to work as a visiting scientist at Fujitsu Laboratories, Ltd. Professor Spanier participated, by invitation, in the National Academy of Engineering Frontiers of Engineering, at UC Riverside in 2014.

Since 2011 he is Director of the University’s Centralized Research Facilities. He served as associate dean for the College of Engineering, leading development of the College’s 2013-18 Strategic Plan. He also served as Interim Associate Department Head for MSE from 2006-08 and as the University Provost Fellow in 2009. Prior to completing the PhD, Spanier held research and technical staff positions at the US Naval Research Laboratory in physical acoustics and in the semiconductor industry, and he was a visiting lecturer at the Technion, the Israel Institute of Technology, in 2001.

Specialization:

Academic Details:

Education:

• BS, Physics, University of Delhi, 1967
• MS, Physics, University of Massachusetts, 1972
• PhD, Physics, Brigham Young University, 1976

Specialization:

Education:

• BS, Physics, University of Ljubljana, Slovenia, 1987
• MS, Physics, University of Ljubljana, Slovenia, 1990
• PhD, Physics, University of Ljubljana, Slovenia, 1994

Bio:

After completing her PhD research on ferroelectric liquid crystals at Jozef Stefan Institute in Ljubljana (Slovenia), Brigita Urbanc, PhD, joined the Center for Polymer Studies in Physics Department at Boston University where she began applying statistical physics methods and simulation techniques to Alzheimer's disease research. She participated in development of a cellular automaton model of senile plaque growth that elucidated the origins of the porous structure of plaques which lead to prediction of senile plaque clearance.

Urbanc adapted the discrete molecular dynamics method combined with a four-bead and united-atom protein models to study folding and early assembly of natively disordered proteins, such as amyloid beta-protein and alpha-synuclein. She coauthored over 40 publications with 10 of them published in the Proceedings of National Academy of Science.

Urbanc has also been actively involved in education research. She contributed to the development of two educational projects with the aim to bridge the gap between the active research in physics of complex systems and high-school and/or college curricula in chemistry, physics and biology. The first project involved the development of simple hands-on wet-lab demonstrations of phenomena such as percolation and granular matter. The second project was geared towards using of computers and involved development of molecular dynamics software to visualize random motion and develop understanding of concepts, such as temperature, entropy and phase transitions.

During her career, Urbanc received a postdoctoral fellowship award from the Slovenian Ministry of Science, was supported by the Adler Foundation and Stephen Bechtel, Jr. fellowship. She has been an active investigator in several NIH-funded grants. She has served as a reviewer of newly submitted manuscripts to Physical Review Letters, Journal of American Chemical Society, Journal of Molecular Biology, Proteins: Structure, Function, and Bioinformatics, and others. In 2007, she became an editorial board member of The Open Biochemistry Journal. In 2008/2009, she was elected as a member of the scientific advisory board of Alzheimer Research Forum to which she regularly contributes commentaries on the new published work in the field of Alzheimer's and Parkinson's diseases.

Specialization:

Education:

• PhD, Theoretical Condensed Matter Physics, Leiden University (Netherlands), 2014
• MSc, Physics, Leiden University (Netherlands), 2009
• BSc, Physics, Leiden University (Netherlands), 2006

Research Interests:

• Theory of quantum materials: topological Insulators, topological semimetals, materials prediction and design, strongly correlated electron materials, complex electronic ordering phenomena, unconventional superconductors

Bio:

Jörn Venderbos, PhD, heads the Quantum Condensed Matter Theory group focused on the study of quantum materials, with an emphasis on topological materials and unconventional ordering phenomena. His research is aimed at understanding the fundamental properties of novel quantum materials, predicting and designing new materials for applications in quantum information science, and developing tools to describe the collective behavior of correlated electron systems. His research is motivated by the goal of using the central pillars of quantum physics as a resource for materials science and engineering. To this end, the Quantum Condensed Matter Theory group maintains close connections with experimental groups, both in solid state physics and materials science.

Venderbos joined the Drexel faculty in 2019 and holds a joint appointment in the Department of Physics (CoAS) and the Department of Materials Science and Engineering (CoE). Prior to joining Drexel he was a postdoctoral research associate, first at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), where he was partially supported by a Rubicon Fellowship, and subsequently at the University of Pennsylvania.

Specialization:

Theory of quantum materials: topological Insulators, topological semimetals, materials prediction and design, strongly correlated electron materials, complex electronic ordering phenomena, unconventional superconductors

Selected Publications:

• H. Gao, J. W. F. Venderbos, Y. Kim, and A. M. Rappe, “Topological semimetals from firstprinciples”, Annual Reviews of Materials Research Vol. 49, 153 (2019)
• J. W. F. Venderbos, Y. Hu, and C. L. Kane, “Higher angular momentum band inversions in two dimensions”, Physical Review B (Editors’ Suggestion) 98, 235160 (2018)
• Y. Hu, J. W. F. Venderbos, and C. L. Kane, “Fractional excitonic insulator”, Physical Review Letters (Editors’ Suggestion) 121, 126601 (2018)
• J. W. F. Venderbos, L. Savary, R. Ruhman, P. A. Lee, and L. Fu, “Pairing states of spin-3/2 fermions: Symmetry-enforced topological gap functions”, Physical Review X 8, 011029 (2017)
• V. Kozii, J. W. F. Venderbos, and L. Fu, “Three-dimensional Majorana fermions in Chiral Superconductors”, Science Advances 2(12), e1601835 (2016)
• A. G. Grushin, J. W. F. Venderbos, A. Vishwanath, and R. Ilan, “Inhomogeneous Weyl and Dirac semimetals: Transport in axial magnetic fields and Fermi arc surface states from pseudo- Landau levels'', Physical Review X 6, 041046 (2016)
• J. W. F. Venderbos, V. Kozii, and L. Fu, “Odd-parity superconductors with two-component order parameters: nematic and chiral, full gap and Majorana node”, Physical Review B (Rapid Communication, Editors’ Suggestion) 94, 180504 (2016)

Education:

• AB, Astrophysical Sciences, Princeton University, 1987
• AM, Astronomy, Harvard University, 1988
• PhD, Astronomy, Harvard University, 1993

Bio:

Professor Vogeley earned his undergraduate degree in Astrophysical Sciences from Princeton University in 1987 and a doctorate in Astronomy from Harvard University in 1993, followed by postdoctoral positions at the Johns Hopkins University and the Space Telescope Science Institute (as a Hubble Fellow), and a Research Staff appointment at Princeton University. He joined the Drexel faculty in 1999. Professor Vogeley leads a research group focused on analysis of the Sloan Digital Sky Survey, funded by grants from NASA and NSF. Professor Vogeley teaches Electromagnetism, Special Relativity, Quantum Mechanics, and Cosmology. He currently serves as Director of Graduate Studies for the Department of Physics.

Specialization: