Spring Research Symposium - Update 4.9.9

Yesterday was the department's Spring Undergraduate Symposium. Thirteen Students that are engaged in research with our faculty presented their research. A good time was had by all.

Pictures are linked to a page on the department web site

It's been a busy recruiting year here in Physics and Astronomy!

I am pleased to announce that Dr. Anca Constantin has agreed to join our department in July this year.

Anca earned her B. S. degree from the University of Bucharest, Romania in 1995 and her Ph. D. from Ohio University in 2004. Since then she has held a postdoctoral position at Drexel University and a fellowship at the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics in Cambridge, MA. Her research studies the accretion processes in the centers of galaxies. This includes the exploration of black holes at the center of galaxies and the so-called Active Galactic Nuclei. This is an exciting field of research and good complement to existing research in our department. She has been well funded by NASA and the NSF.

We are looking forward to Anca being part of our department and bringing her exciting research program to our students.

The addition of Anca brings us to a total 16 tenured/tenure-track faculty and a total of 21 full-time faculty. We're growing our department and our research opportunities for our students.

Welcome Anca!

New Faculty Member: Giovanna Scarel

We are excited to announce that in July, Giovanna Scarel will join our department. 

Giovanna earned her Laurea in 1994 from the University of Treste, Italy. She earned her Ph.D. in materials engineering from the University of Wisconsin - Milwaukee in 2001 using infrared spectroscopy to study TiO2 films. From 2001-2007 she was a postdoc and research associate at the CNR-INFM-MDM National Laboratory in Milano, Italy. She comes to us from a postdoc position at North Carolina State University.

Her research is focused on the study of the thin films produced using atomic layer deposition techniques using IR spectroscopy, Raman spectroscopy and ellipsometry. Of particular interest is the effect that sample geometry has on the optical properties at infrared wavelengths.

Giovanna has published 64 refereed papers and book chapters and been a Co-PI on 8 funded proposals (on 3 of these she took the lead). 

We are delighted to have such an accomplished and capable scientist join our department. We anticipate many exciting new opportunities for our students and new collaborations and directions for the materials science group.

Welcome Giovanna!