Alumni Spotlight
Prof. Bilal Tanatar
After graduating from the University of Delaware in 1987, Prof. Tanatar worked as a postdoctoral researcher at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign, and he is currently a faculty member at Bilkent University in Turkey. He is the author of more than 150 papers in theoretical condensed matter physics, as well as of the so-called Tanatar-Ceperley exchange-correlation functional, often used in density functional theory calculations.
Prof. Balasubramanian Ananthanarayan
Prof. Ananthanarayan received his Ph.D. degree in theoretical high energy physics from the University of Delaware in 1991. He is currently Full Professor & Chairman of the Centre for High Energy Physics, Indian Institute of Science in Bangalore where his research is focused on the chiral perturbation theory, colider physics, and grand unification and supersymmetry. Part of his thesis, supervised by Prof. Q. Shafi, has resulted in a publication which now has 230 citations in the SPIRES database.
Prof. Keivan Esfarjani
After graduating from the University of Delaware in 1991, Prof. Esfarjani worked as a condensed matter physics and nanoscience faculty member in Japan, Iran, and at the University of California. He is a co-author of a highly praised tutorial style book Computational Materials Science: From Ab initio to Monte Carlo Methods, often used in advanced condensed matter physics courses at UD.
Prof. Gang Qin
Prof. Qin obtained his Ph.D. from the University of Delaware in space and plasma physics in 2002 under the supervision of Prof. Matthaeus. His thesis was focused on plasma turbulence and its effect on charged particles. He is currently Professor at the State Key Laboratory of Space Weather, Center for Space Science and Applied Research, Chinese Academy of Sciences in Beijing.
Dr. Takahiro Moriyama
While working on his Ph.D. thesis at the UD Center for Spintronics and Biodetection, Dr. Moriyama set up seminal experiments that have ignited the field of spin pumping in magnetic tunnel junctions. After graduating in 2008, he moved to a postdoctoral position in nanoscale physics research conducted by Ralph Group at Cornell University.
Dr. Steven R. Cranmer
Dr. Cranmer received his Ph.D. in 1996, under the supervision of Prof. Owocki, while working on Dynamical Models of Winds from Rotating Hot Stars. He is currently an astrophysicist at the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics. The focus of his research is on the study of hot, expanding outer atmospheres of the Sun and other stars.
Dr. Cranmer received the 2006 Karen Harvey Prize from the Solar Physics Division of the American Astronomical Society for his major theoretical and observational contributions toward understanding the roles of waves and turbulence in heating and accelerating the solar wind.
Dr. Sunita Gangopadhyay
Dr. Sunita Gangopadhyay, an executive director at Seagate Technology, earned her doctorate in physics at UD in 1993 with a specialization in magnetism and magnetic materials. Gangopadhyay leads teams of up to 50 professional engineers at Seagate Technology, the world's largest manufacturer of hard disk drives.
"The research opportunities while a student instilled lasting confidence and passion for my work. My thanks goes out to the professors in the Department of Physics and Astronomy."
Prof. Karl Sohlberg
Prof. Sohlberg received his Ph.D. in 1992 while working on diatom molecular collisions under the supervision of Prof. Szalewicz. He is the author of more than 70 journal articles and recepient of a prestigious NSF CAREER Award in 2005. He is currently Associate Professor of theoretical and computational chemistry at Drexel University.