Alumni Spotlight
Dr. Peter Thejll
Dr. Peter Thejll received his Ph.D. in astrophysics in 1989 under the supervision of Prof. H. L. Shipman. His thesis research was focused on white dwarfs. He was a Carlsberg Fellow at the Niels Bohr Institute and worked at the Nordic Institute for Theoretical Physics. Dr. Thejll currently is a senior scientist at the Danish Meteorological Institute in Copenhagen. He is currently involved in the creation of a global automatic system to observe the Earth's reflectivity - albedo - using observations of the earthshine on the Moon. Dr. Thejll research in solar variation helped provide conclusive evidence of the greenhouse effect on the Earth's climate in the late 20th century. In particular, his landmark study with Knud Lassen on Northern Hemisphere land air temperature showed that the rise of 0.4 degrees Celsius since 1980 could not be accounted for by the solar cycle. Climatologists have pointed to this finding as an "actual piece of evidence for greenhouse warming."
Prof. Wei-Gang Wang
Dr. Wang received his Ph.D. in 2008 for the studies of magnetic tunnel junctions (MTJs) under the supervision of Prof. Xiao within the Center for Spintronics and Biodetection. During his subsequent postdoctoral research at the Johns Hopkins University, he published several high profile articles, including Nature Materials on spin-transfer torque in MTJs assisted by electric field to reach the limit of ultralow energy consumption. Dr. Wang has started as an Assistant Professor of Physics at the University of Arizona Tucson in 2012.
Prof. Takahiro Moriyama
While working on his Ph.D. thesis at UD Center for Spintronics and Biodetection, Prof. Moriyama set up seminal experiments that have ignited the field of spin pumping in magnetic tunnel junctions. Takahiro is currently an Assistant Professor in the Nano Spintronics Lab at Kyoto University, one of the most prestigious universities in Japan. After graduating in 2008, his career path included a postdoctoral position in nanoscale physics research conducted by Ralph Group at Cornell University and as industrial physicist position at Headway/MagIC/TDK.
Prof. Bindiya Arora
Prof. Bindiya Arora completed her Ph.D. degree in 2008 with Dr. Marianna Safronova. During her Ph.D. she worked on the modeling of atomic systems for atomic clocks and quantum computation. After completion of her Ph.D. she worked at Guru Nanak Dev University (GNDU), Punjab, India as a guest researcher for two years, and then at the Indian Institute of Science Education and Research (IISER), Mohali, India as a scientist. Thereafter she joined the Department of Physics, GNDU as Assistant Professor.
Prof. Bindiya was recently awarded the Young Scientist Award by the Punjab Science Congress for her outstanding work in the field of Blackbody radiation shift calculations for optical clocks. She has also been awarded a three year funding from the Government of India to work on a project based on Quantum Information. She is working in collaboration with the National Physical Lab, New Delhi on the development of atomic and optical clocks, which serve as India’s primary time ad frequency standard. At present, she is mentoring a Ph.D. student and is actively involved in building a strong Atomic Physics group at Guru Nanak Dev University.
Dr. Alston J. Misquitta
Dr. Misquitta received his Ph.D. in 2004 while working on the subject of intermolecular perturbation theory under the supervision of Prof. Szalewicz. He currently works in the Cavendish Laboratory at the University of Cambridge in UK, and has been a College Lecturer at Murray Edwards College since 2009. His main research focus is concerned with understanding molecular aggregation from first principles, which he addresses through theoretical approaches. Dr. Misquitta has developed an electronic structure method called SAPT(DFT) and has written computer programs which implement this and other theoretical methods which are used by over 300 research groups worldwide. Practical outcomes include applications in the fields of organic crystals, soot formation in combustion engines, surface science and nano-materials.
Dr. Jonathan DuBois
Dr. DuBois received his Ph.D. in 2003 while working on Quantum Monte Carlo many-body simulations of mesoscopic Bose and fermionic systems under the supervision of Prof. Glyde. After a postdoctoral fellowship at the University of California Berkeley, he became a research scientist at the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory.
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.
Dr. Liviu Zarbo
Dr. Liviu Zarbo, who graduated from the Department in 2007, is in the news in the field of semiconductor spintronics. His recent research within a joint experimental and theoretical team, which has fabricated and modeled the spin Hall effect transitor for the first time, has been published in the prestigious journal Science. The device uses diffusive transport and operates without electrical current in the active part of the transistor.
Dr. Zarbo is currently doing research at the Institute of Physics of Academy of Sciences of the Czech Republic, following on a two year post doctoral research position at the Texas A & M University. He obtained his Ph.D. in theoretical condensed matter physics under the supervision of Prof. Branislav K. Nikolic. Dr. Zarbo's thesis was focused on the mesoscopic version of the recently discovered spin Hall effect. The so-called mesoscopic spin Hall effect in ballistic low-dimensional nanostructures with spin-orbit coupling was introduced by UD researchers in 2004 (in a series of two often cited Phys. Rev. B and Phys. Rev. Lett. articles) and later observed experimentally.
Dr. Souleymane Omar Diallo
Dr. Souleymane Omar Diallo (Souley), who graduated from the Department in 2007, is in the news in the field of Neutron Scattering and Condensed Matter Physics. Souley has just been appointed to a prestigious Department of Energy Post Doctoral Research position at the new Spallation Neutron Source (SNS), Oak Ridge National Laboratory.
This follows a two year post doctoral research position at the DOE Ames Laboratory, Ames, Iowa. His recent Phys. Rev Lett. 102, 187206 (2009) based on work at Ames, entitled "Itinerant Magnetic Excitations in Antiferromagnetic CaFe2As2", appeared under the "most cited list" in the Harvard abstract service dated January 1, 2010. Among other first author papers in 2009, Souley published a Europhys. Lett. 88, 56005 (2009) entitled "Dynamics of one dimensional and two dimensional helium adsorbed on carbon nanotubes" with his former research advisor at Delaware, Prof. Henry Glyde.
Prof. Sean Oughton
Dr. Sean Oughton obtained his Ph.D. degree in 1993 in space and plasma physics under the supervision of Prof. William H. Matthaeus. The topic of his Ph.D. thesis was Transport of Solar Wind Fluctuations: A Turbulence Approach. He is currently Associate Professor of Applied Mathematics at the University of Waikato in New Zealand. He is the author of more than 70 publications focused on hydrodynamic and magnetohydrodynamic (MHD) turbulence, especially in connection with space physics applications.