Associate Teaching Professor of Physics Christina Love, PhD, is one of only 15 scholars across the country featured in Diverse: Issues In Higher Education’s 2025 class of Emerging Scholars.  

For more than 40 years, Diverse has been a leading source of news, information and commentary on issues concerning diversity in American higher education. Each year, the magazine profiles several early-career scholars who are making their mark through teaching, research and service.  

“These outstanding scholars represent the future of academia and serve as inspirations to students and faculty members,” according to the publication.   

Each scholar is selected based on their research, educational background, publishing record, teaching record, competitiveness in field of study, uniqueness of field of study and the impact they have made on the academy. 

Love earned her PhD from Temple University, focusing on the detection of dark matter with the DarkSide Collaboration. She completed her postdoctoral work at the Transportation Security Laboratory, working on explosives detection with X-ray scanners. 

Love works on the IceCube Neutrino Observatory, a detector located at the South Pole. She leads Name that Neutrino, a citizen science program that allows students and members of the public to analyze signals from outer space.  

“Regardless of their background, volunteers are asked to be a part of STEM research by classifying data for the IceCube Neutrino Observatory at the South Pole,” Love told Diverse.   

Love is also the founder and director of Start Talking Science, a free annual event at the Science History Institute in Philadelphia where STEM scholars present posters detailing their research to the general public. She was inspired to start the program after realizing how difficult it was to explain her research on dark matter, even to other scientists.  

The goal of Start Talking Science is “improving the communication skills of STEM researchers while also allowing the public to discuss current research with the actual researchers,” Love said.   

In her 10 years at Drexel, Love’s impact has been “transformative in almost every aspect of our educational, outreach and scholarly mission,” according to Professor and Department Head of Physics David Goldberg, PhD.  

She has designed eight new courses at Drexel, including introduction to experimental physics for physics majors and computational labs for media art majors. Love also participates in STEM mentoring and enrichment programs for local high school students.  

Through her citizen science initiatives, Love’s goal is to share scientific research and knowledge with those outside of STEM fields. As she told Diverse, “A lot of times people don’t necessarily know that they can make a difference regardless of what their background is or what they think they’re capable of doing.”