Dr. Maher Harb will join the department in September 2015 as Assistant Professor under a joint appointment to the Drexel Physics and Materials departments.
Currently a post-doctoral fellow at Max-lab and the Department of Physics at Lund University in Lund, Sweden, Dr. Harb is developing techniques for resolving ultrafast structural dynamics in matter at timescales that are fundamental to materials science and condensed matter physics. While receiving a PhD in 2009 in Physics from the University of Toronto, Dr. Harb resolved dynamics of laser-matter interaction at strong excitation conditions. His investigations demonstrated the possibility of driving the silicon lattice into disorder by exciting the electronic anti-bonding orbitals; hence, the phase transition in silicon is described as being non-thermal in nature. Dr. Harb received a BS in Electrical Engineering from the American University of Beirut, and an MS in Electrical Engineering from North Carolina A&T State University.
Dr. Harb’s research group at Drexel University will be focused on applying time resolved techniques to study phase transformations in strongly correlated systems, generation and detection of coherent lattice vibrations, and characterization of materials properties of graphene, few-layer-graphene, ultra-thin graphite & nanocrystalline diamond.