Previous Colloquia
Spring 2021
No Physics Colloquium
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Georgia Institute of Technology, School of Physics MD SIMULATIONS, FREE-ENERGY CALCULATIONS, AND MACHINE LEARNING APPLIED TO SARS-COV-2 PROTEINS![]() ![]() Bio: Dr. James C. (JC) Gumbart is an Associate Professor of Physics at the Georgia Institute of Technology in Atlanta, GA. He obtained his BS from Western Illinois University in 2003 and his PhD in Physics from the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign in 2009 under the mentorship of Klaus Schulten, focusing on the area of computational biophysics. After two years as a postdoctoral fellow at Argonne National Lab working with Benoit Roux, he started his lab at Georgia Tech in early 2013. His lab carries out molecular dynamics simulations aimed primarily at understanding the composition, construction, and function of the Gram-negative bacterial cell envelope and the proteins embedded within. |
No Physics Colloquium
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Colorado School of Mines, Department of Physics
TEACHING: THE BEST KEPT SECRET!
My research focuses on formative assessment and curriculum design. I developed the widely used CLASS, which measures students’ perceptions of physics and how to learn physics; have done extensive work on problem solving evaluation; developed the interface design guidelines for the PhET Interactive Simulations; and most recently developed the PTaP (Perceptions of Teaching as a Profession) instrument. I have also designed and developed several curricula including the Explore Sound project – K-14 materials for acoustics. Over the years I have also juggled a few other roles, including co-Director of the PhET Interactive Simulations Project, Director of Research for the Science Education Initiative at CU, Boulder, Research Consultant with the Carl Wieman Science Education Initiative at UBC, Education Coordinator for the Acoustical Society of America , and Director of Science Teacher Education Programs at the University of Northern Colorado. Currently I am working with several national societies to build a campaign aimed at recruiting secondary math and science teachers. |
Presidents’ Day Break
No Physics Colloquium
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No Physics Colloquium
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University of Colorado @ Boulder, JILA
METROLOGY WITH OPTICAL TWEEZER ARRAYS OF NEUTRAL ATOMS
Bio: Dr. Adam Kaufman is an associate JILA fellow and assistant professor adjoint at CU Boulder. He did his PhD at JILA, studying few-body quantum mechanics of atoms in optical tweezers. Afterwards, as a postdoctoral fellow at Harvard, he investigated the dynamics of entanglement in thermalizing many-body systems and other Bose-Hubbard phenomena. In 2017, he moved back to JILA where he has continued working in the field of quantum science with neutral atoms. He is a winner of the prestigious APS DAMOP thesis prize in 2016, and he pioneered the research on atomic clocks based on optical tweezers. |
Texas State University, Department of Physics
INSTRUCTIONAL CHANGE EFFORTS IN UNDERGRADUATE STEM
Bio: Dr. Alice Olmstead (she/her) is an Assistant Professor of Physics and the Co-director of the Physics Learning Assistant Program at Texas State University. She is also a co-PI and programmatic co-lead on the $2.5 million, 5-year NSF-IUSE-HSI award “Creating Faculty-Student Communities for Culturally Relevant Institutional Change” at her home institution. Her primary research expertise is on strategies that can help STEM faculty to improve their instruction and lead to long-term change. She has also recently been pursuing research related her own teaching, specifically focusing on how to support students’ reasoning about connections between physics/STEM, ethics, and society. She received her PhD in Astronomy at the University of Maryland in 2016 and held a postdoctoral research appointment at the Center for Research on Instructional Change in Postsecondary Education (CRICPE) at Western Michigan University from 2016-2018. She has been at Texas State since 2018. |
No Physics Colloquium
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University at Buffalo, Department of Physics
SPIN QUBITS IN SI: COHERENCE AND CONTROL
Short Bio: Xuedong Hu is a physics professor at the University at Buffalo, the State University of New York. He received his PhD degree in condensed matter theory from University of Michigan in 1996, supervised by Franco Nori. He was introduced to the field of solid state quantum information processing in 1998 as a postdoc in Sankar Das Sarma’s group at the University of Maryland. His recent research focus is on spin qubits in silicon. |
Spring Break
No Physics Colloquium
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American Physical Society
BECOMING AN AGENT OF CHANGE IN PHYSICS
Bio: Dr. Simone Hyater-Adams is a physicist, artist, educator, and researcher with a passion for creating more opportunities for Black STEM students. After receiving her B.S. in Physics from Hampton University, she pursued graduate studies at the ATLAS Institute at the University of Colorado Boulder (CU Boulder) where she was a National Science Foundation Graduate Research Fellow. In her graduate research, she used her personal experiences from pursuing physics to guide her interdisciplinary research examining the connections between performance art and identity for Black Physicists. This work was awarded the Harry Lustig Award from the American Physical Society’s Four Corners Section. Currently, Simone manages the American Physical Society’s National Mentoring Community. Concurrently she continues to develop her Performing Physics program, an outreach program that incorporates physics with performance art. In addition to this work, Simone also develops and facilitates equity workshops with goals to cultivate more inclusive and equitable STEM learning and working environments. |
University of Wisconsin, Madison, Department of Physics
QUANTUM CONTROL OF SPINS IN SILICON
Bio: Mark A. Eriksson is the John Bardeen Professor of Physics at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. He received a B.S. with honors in physics and mathematics in 1992 from the University of Wisconsin-Madison and an A.M. (1994) and Ph.D. (1997) in physics from Harvard University. His Ph.D. thesis demonstrated the first cryogenic scanned-gate measurements of a semiconductor nanostructure. He was a postdoctoral member of technical staff at Bell Laboratories from 1997-1999, where he studied ultra-low-density electron systems. Eriksson joined the faculty of the Department of Physics at UW-Madison in 1999. His research has focused on quantum computing, semiconductor quantum dots, and nanoscience. With collaborators he demonstrated the first quantum dot in silicon/silicon-germanium occupied by an individual electron and performed the first experiments to demonstrate the quantum dot hybrid qubit. Eriksson currently leads a multi-university team focused on the development of spin qubits in gate-defined silicon quantum dots. A goal of this work is to enable quantum computers, which manipulate information coherently, to be built using many of the materials and fabrication methods that are the foundation of modern, classical integrated circuits. Eriksson was elected fellow of the American Physical Society in 2012 and of the American Association for the Advancement of Science in 2015. |
Colorado State University, Department of Physics
PRECISION LASER SPECTROSCOPY OF HYDROGEN
Bio: Dylan Yost grew up in Colorado and obtained his BS in Engineering Physics from the Colorado School of Mines in 2005. While at Mines, he performed undergraduate research with Prof. Durfee and Prof. Ohno. He received his PhD on work with vacuum-ultraviolet frequency combs from the University of Colorado in 2011. In 2012, he was a Humboldt Fellow at the Max Planck Institute for Quantum Optics and worked on precision hydrogen spectroscopy. He is currently an associate professor at Colorado State University. He has received an NSF CAREER award and the NIST Precision Measurement Grant for his hydrogen spectroscopy experiments. |
Colorado State University, Electrical & Computer Engineering
TRANSIENT ABSORPTION SPECTROSCOPY & IMAGING WITH HEME PROTEINS: ENDOGENOUS CONTRAST FOR REDOX, OXYGENATION, & MORE
Bio: Jesse Wilson is a Boettcher Young Investigator, Rhoden Professor, and Assistant Professor of Electrical & Computer Engineering at Colorado State University. Prior to joining CSU’s faculty, Jesse trained as a postdoc in Warren Warren’s lab at Duke University, working on in-vivo transient absorption microscopy of melanoma. He earned his PhD in Randy Bartels’ lab at Colorado State University, developing techniques in ultrafast pulse shaping and impulsive Raman spectroscopy. |
Fall 2020
Tim Sweitzer
Colorado School of Mines, Environmental Health & Safety SAFETY AND HAZARDOUS WASTE GENERATOR TRAININGMANDATORY safety training for faculty, staff, postdocs, grad students, and undergraduates working in laboratories.
Recorded Video Link |
University of Delaware
Dept. of Materials Science & Engineering
PHOTONS, PLASMONS, & POLARITONS: OPTICAL PHENOMENA IN COMPLEX MATERIALS
Bio: Prof. Stephanie Law received her B.S. in Physics from Iowa State University and her Ph.D. in Physics from the University of Illinois Urbana Champaign. She then held a postdoctoral position in the Electrical Engineering department at UIUC before moving to the University of Delaware as the Clare Boothe Luce Assistant Professor in Materials Science and Engineering. She is now an Associate Professor in Materials Science and Engineering and holds an affiliate appointment in the Department of Physics and Astronomy. She is also the co-director of the UD Materials Growth Facility and an Associate Editor for the Journal of Vacuum Science and Technology. Prof. Law has won the North American Molecular Beam Epitaxy Young Investigator award, the Department of Energy Early Career award, the AVS Peter Mark Memorial Award, and the Presidential Early Career Award for Scientists and Engineers (PECASE). |
No Physics Colloquium
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University of Tennessee, Knoxville
THE LIFE AND DEATH OF THE FREE NEUTRON![]() Recorded Video Link |
Colorado School of Mines
Mines Physics and the Solar Decathlon
Bio: Prof. Ohno graduated from the University of Maryland in experimental surface science in 1993, under the direction of Prof. Ellen Williams, who served as director of ARPA-E. His work at the University of Minnesota strengthened his interest in materials science before coming to Mines in 1992. As the oldest member of the department, he has seen the growth of the department beyond its original research focus at that time, which included photovoltaics. Leading that program led to service as the director of the campus Energy Minor, and ultimately support for student organizations involved in energy topics. |
University of Colorado Anschutz Medical Campus
UNDERSTANDING THE BRAIN WITH ADAPTIVE OPTICS
Bio: Dr. Gibson is an associate professor in the department of Bioengineering at the University of Colorado Anschutz Medical Campus with a joint appointment in the Neuroscience program. She earned her PhD in Physics from the University of Colorado at Boulder with a specialization in nonlinear optics. She was subsequently a National Research Council/National Academy of Sciences postdoctoral fellow in biophysics, studying protein dynamics with nonlinear optical spectroscopy. Since becoming a faculty member, she has focused on development of optical technologies for clinical applications and biomedical research. |
University of California Berkeley
COMPUTATIONAL 3D FLUORESCENCE MICROSCOPY![]() Recorded Video Link |
Fall Break
No Physics Colloquium
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Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute
DATA-DRIVEN STUDIES OF MAGNETIC TWO-DIMENSIONAL MATERIALS
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Susan Coppersmith
University of New South Wales
QUANTUM-COHERENT SILICON ELECTRONICS![]() Recorded Video Link |
Western Washington University
QUALITATIVE INVESTIGATION OF PROJECT OWNERSHIP IN LABORATORY COURSES: IMPLICATIONS FOR INSTRUCTION
Bio: Dr. Dimitri Dounas-Frazer is an Assistant Professor of Physics and Astronomy and of Science, Mathematics, and Technology Education at Western Washington University. He has interdisciplinary expertise in experimental atomic physics and education research. He primarily studies three aspects of physics laboratory coursework: students’ use of model-based reasoning in experimental physics contexts, instructors’ beliefs and practices regarding teaching and learning laboratory skills, and classroom factors that cultivate student ownership of research projects. Additionally, Dr. Dounas-Frazer is an active member of local and national physics diversity initiatives. He is a Mines alum (classes of ’06 and ’07). He completed his Ph.D. in 2012 at the University of California Berkeley, where he performed high-precision measurements of weak nuclear effects in atomic systems. His postdoctoral experience includes teacher preparation at the California Polytechnic State University San Luis Obispo and education research at the University of Colorado Boulder. Bio: Ira Ché Lassen is an undergraduate student at Western Washington University (WWU) and Fairhaven College. He expects to complete a BS in Physics and a BA in Interdisciplinary Studies by June 2022. Lassen’s interests include acoustics, rhetoric, and physics education research (PER), and he has professional experience with 3D sign manufacturing, CNC laser operation, and IT support. In his roles as a Teaching Assistant in the WWU Physics & Astronomy Department and Research Assistant in the WWU PER Group, Lassen is building expertise in both teaching and studying physics laboratory courses. |
National Renewable Energy Laboratory
MAKING METAL HALIDE PEROVSKITE PHOTOVOLTAICS A REALITY: AN UPDATE ON STATE-OF-THE-ART
Bio: Joseph Berry is a senior scientist at the National Renewable Energy Laboratory working on halide perovskite solar cells. His PhD for work was on spin transport and physics in semiconductor heterostructures from Penn State University. His efforts at NREL emphasize relating basic interfacial properties to technologically relevant device level behaviors in traditional and novel semiconductor heterostructures including oxides, organics and most recently hybrid semiconducting materials. He leads the US Department of Energy (DOE) Solar Energy Technology Office’s SETO core technology program, “De-risking Halide Perovskite Solar Cells” at NREL. He is a principle investigator on the NREL lead Department of Energy, Center for Hybrid Organic Inorganic Semiconductors for Energy (CHOISE) Energy Frontier Research Center, exploring basic aspect of hybrid materials and is the director of the newly formed U.S. Manufacturing of Advanced Perovskites (U.S. MAP) consortium a collaboration between industry academia and the national labs to bring perovskite technologies to market. Web: |
Thanksgiving
No Physics Colloquium
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Colorado School of Mines
Denver University
AN INTRODUCTION TO OPTICAL VORTICES AND TOPOLOGICAL FLUIDS OF LIGHT![]() ![]() Recorded Video Link |
December 8, 2020 Review Week
No Physics Colloquium
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