Physics Department Alumni |
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The material presented is gleaned from a variety of sources, including e-mail messages to adams@uni.edu and faculty members, handwritten messages, visits to the department, etc. Information was condensed and edited to a somewhat consistent form. E-mail addresses only are given when known - if one is not available a phone No. and/or mailing address is given. Direct quotes are indicated by " " and omitted sections by . . . If you are interested in getting more complete information, please communicate with adams@uni.edu or roger.hanson@cfu.net. Please keep sending information and we will update the section regularly.
Mike Timmons (B.A. '73)[timmonsm@slb.com] In June 2007 Mike sent an email message briefly detailing his career since graduation from the University of Northern Iowa in physics and science. He taught high school in Iowa for seven years and and then joined an oilfield service company, Schlumberger. Mike spent serveral years 'logging' oil and gas wells to identify porosity. Mike now serves as a Senior Engineer and has completed 27 years with Schlumberger. He noted a special assignment Schlumberger sent him on during the 1983-84 academic year. He was a visiting professor at NCA & TSU in Greensboro, NC in mechanical engineering and really enjoyed it. For those of you interested in the significance of physics, electronics, mathematics, and computers in the oilfield industry you may visit Schlumberger at http://www.slb.com and click on the Oilfield Review articles.
Noah Podolefsky (B.S. '00)[noah.podolefsky@colorado.edu] "Glad to read the physics building got a much needed renovation." Noah's email message continues, "I just wanted to drop a line to let y'all know what I'm up to. I'm still in the graduate program at the University of Colorado at Boulder, specializing in physics education research (PER). I think your alumni info has that I'm in geophysics - this was true, but I switched to PER a couple years ago. I'm hoping to graduate with my Ph.D. next year." Noah's web page can be found at http://per.colorado.edu/podolefsky
Andrew Harken (B.S. '99)[adharken@gmail.com] stopped in the Physics Department temporary home, 113B Center for Energy and Environmental Education, during Homecoming weekend 2006. Andrew earned his M.A. in 2002 and completed his Ph.D. in Engineering with a chemical and materials background in August 2006 at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln. Since his Fall visit Andrew has started a Postdoc position with Columbia University working for the Center for Radiological Research with the Columbia/Presbyterian University Hospitals. He works at the Radiological Research Accelerator Facility (RARAF) in Irvington, NY. He and his wife Leigh Anna are living in Ossining, NY and getting settled in after the move in January 2007.
Andrew Christianson (B.S. '96)[achristianson@lanl.gov] received his Ph.D. in 2003 from Colorado State University and is currently completing postdoctoral work with Professor Jon Lawrence at the University of California at Irvine and as a guest scientist at Los Alamos National Laboratory. Andy is one of two recipients of the First Shull Fellowship at the Oak Ridge National Laboratory (ORNL). The Shull Fellowship was established to attract new scienctific talent to ORNL for the development of the neutron science program. He will be assigned to work at the High Flux Isotope Reactor (HFIR) Center for Neutron Scattering. Bill Rice ('84)[brice@cfu.net] has been employed by the Waterloo Post Office for over 18 years. After perusing the UNI Physics website Bill reflects, "I see there are some big changes going on...I remember working with Larry Dirkes cleaning everything up after the elevator was installed. I also remember that I didn't have to carry lead bricks up the stairs any more." He also comments, "I enjoyed the history of the department section. I remember listening to colloquia and talking with Dr. Poppy about it." He shares, "I might not be employed doing physics, but I enjoy thinking about the physics of everyday life."
Eric Potratz ('03)[eric.potratz@yahoo.com]
was a double major, computer science and physics. After working as
an Embedded Software Engineer, for The Boeing Company, St. Louis,
MO for three years he has changed jobs and is now working at Rockwell-Collins,
Cedar Rapids. Eric has been a sofware engineer at Rockwell-Collins
since December 2006.
Katya (Ekaterina) Denissova (M.A. Sci. Ed 2000) [katenok1975@yahoo.com]
was at UNI for the Spring 1996 semester as an undergraduate student
and then returned later to UNI for her M.A. program. Following that,
she received an EdD degree in Physics Education from Herzen State
Pedagogical University in St. Petersburg, Russia in 2002. Her dissertation
was "Methods of overcoming physics formalism and students' misconceptions
in high school physics class." Currently Katya is
Todd Swift (B.S. '92)[toswift@loras.edu] completed his M.S. degree in Mechanical Engineering at Colorado State University in 1996 and is currently an assistant professor of physics and engineering at Loras College in Dubuque, Iowa. Todd teaches in the new Electromechanical Engineering program at Loras and is currently doing some student-based research in renewable energy and robotics and is also rehabilitating and reinstrumenting a seismograph station at Loras College. His wife Tami (whom he met at UNI) is a nurse in the Loras College Health Center. Tami and Todd have a 4 year-old daughter, Sophie, and a 1 year-old son, Henry. Ron Newland (B.A. '68, M.A. '70)[rnewland@ccs.k12.ia.us] still lives in Monticello, Iowa and has completed 33 years of physics teaching, the eight most recent ones at Prairie High School in Cedar Rapids with College Community Schools as employer.. He and his wife Sandi have two children and four granddaughters. In the summer of 2001 he worked with Quarknet at the University of Iowa developing automated testing schemes for the 2400+ photomultipliers in a system on the LHC at CERN in Switzerla
David Hanson (M.A. '69)[sharouq@sunline.net] was a high school science teacher for four years in Minnesota before his academic year at UNI where he earned the M.A. After another 18 years of teaching in high school at a Minneapolis suburb, he moved to Jeddah, Saudi Arabia where he worked for the national airline as a flight crew instructor on 747's for 14 years. He holds a life teaching license from Minnesota, FAA Pilot License, and Extra Class Amateur Radio License. Active interests include astronomy and photography; he acted as the astronomy lecturer for the Saudi Arabian Natural History society for many years. Presently, David is a Professor in Astronomy and Mathematics at Edison Community College, Charlotte Campus in Florida. In 2001 he assumed the Charles O'Neill Endowed Chair in Astronomy. What an interesting and varied career!
Larry Black ('75)[lwblack@rockwellcollins.COM] works as an electronics technician at Rockwell Collins in Cedar Rapids. He has interests in amateur radio as well as astronomy, and has carried out several projects related to antenna design. In November 2001 Larry spoke to the UNI Electronics I class and consulted with them about their projects and about the nature of employment at Rockwell Collins.
Greg Paine ('75)[ghpaine@west.raytheon.com], after a number of years as a university professor, is now a Senior systems Engineer I in Operations Research and System Performance Department at Raytheon in Tucson, Arizona. Raytheon Missiles Systems desgins and manufactures missiles for the US military and the military of other countries. He is limited in what he can say about work but does state the following "...we are concerned with producing simulations, making computer models, and doing analysis associated with various military related problems... I have used hydrodynamic computer code to simulate warheads, helped developed neural networks for guidance control of air-to-air missiles, and I have worked on developing high-energy laser weapons. ...I am also trying to do physics during my free time. My primary interest is in nonlinear non-equilibrium thermodynamics and related problems." Greg and his wife, Diane, have a five-year-old daughter, Tavia.
Dick Kroeger ('77)[kroeger@gamma.nrl.navy.mil] continues to work at the Naval Research Lab in Maryland on the Advanced Compton Telescope. Use is made of thick silicon and/or germanium strip detectors to make accurate measurements of positions and energies of gamma rays.
John Cantalupo ('90)[cantlup@boulder.earthnet.net] reported in August 2001 that he and Leanne had been living in Denver for six years. He had been working as a software engineer at Sun Microsystems for the past year. "However, I miss physics quite a bit. In fact, I recently bought a 15 mW HeNe on eBay, and I'm clearing some space in our basement to build a small isolation table."
Kirk Ney ('90)completed his degree while employed at John Deere where he now investigates tractor accidents. He stopped in the Physics Building in June while his daughter, Jessica, was registering at UNI.
Mark Olsen ('93)[olsen@code916.gsfc.nasa.gov] Ph.D. Atmospheric Physics, Iowa State University, began a two-year stint in December 2000 as a National Research Council Post Doc Associate at the NASA Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland. He has been married for eight years.
Jack Dostal ('96)[jack.dostal@umontana.edu] is currently studying for a PhD in Physics at Montana State University. He is working with the Conceptual Astronomy and Physics Education Research (CAPER) Team there, and is beginning research into student concepts of sound. Jack is also currently working with the Alpha Phi Omega, national service fraternity, as a section chair, serving chapters in Montana, Idaho, and Washington.
Eric Shields ('97)[eshields200@comcast.net] was married September 1, 2001. He and Jenn spent their honeymoon in Cancun, Mexico where they were forced to stay an extra four days as a result of the September 11 tragedy. Eric is in the final stages of completing requirements for a Ph.D. degree in Electrical Engineering at the University of Minnesota. "While I'm waiting for the custom grey-scale photolithographic mask to be made I've been playing with a new e-beam lithography system ...It gives us the capability to direct-write blazed gratings, DOE's, and other interesting things. ... the company's retired founder (Hermann Raith) is coming to give a training course on using some special software they've written for doing grey-scale lithography. Among other things, this software will take a grey-scale TIFF computer image and generate the files necessary for creating a DOE that will give the TIFF image as the far-field intensity distribution."
Marc Pedersen ('98)[pedersenm@home.wdm.k12.ia.us] recently bought a house in Clive, IA. He teaches Chemistry and Physics at Valley High in West Des Moines. Marc now runs six websites, with one totally dedicated to his classroom, located at www.wackyscienceguy.com. He has joined the soccer coaching staff this year at Valley High and is enjoying their success in winning state. In his free time Marc decided to enroll in a master's program at Drake. He hopes to earn his MS in education with an emphasis in effective teaching, learning, and leadership. Jeff Teske ('98) has finished his third year of teaching junior high science as well as chemistry and physics at GMG Community School District at Green Mountain/Garwin in Iowa. He also coaches junior high boy's basketball and is an assistant for the high school baseball team.
Ben Buhrow ('00)[buhrow @landau.physics.uni.edu] says that life is "interesting" at Pemstar in Rochester, Minnesota because of drops in stock value, "consolidations" and "restructuring," but he continues his employment there. In summer of 2002 he wrote: "I've spent the last month in San Jose helping to bring up a manufacturing line of a high speed optical communication product: 10.7Gbps long haul transponders and Raman optical amplifiers ... I'm more excited about a new project which involves modeling in matlab. We're looking at an arrangement of UV light sources illuminating an array of implantable medical devices for the purpose of curing a lubricant that is added to them. The exciting part is I get to do matlab modeling!"
Matt Harding ('00)[HardingM@iowa-city.k12.ia.us] is teaching at Iowa City West High School (his antics were reported in the 2001 issue of CS.) His latest big news is getting married in May 2002.
Andrew Morrison ('00)[morrison@physics.niu.edu] continues his graduate studies in physics at Northern Illinois University in DeKalb with an emphasis in musical acoustics. He has recently been making intensity field measurements for Caribbean steel pans. Also, Andy does experiments and has reported at meetings on such exotic subjects as the acoustics of coffee mugs as modified by different liquids.
Ted Cauwels ('01)[cauwel64@hotmail.com or cauwels@engineering.uiowa.edu] is a graduate student at the University of Iowa in an MS program in Environmental Engineering.
Andrew "Drew" Jones ('01)[atjones@rockwellcollins.COM] was married to Renee in the summer of 2001. After working at Rockwell Collins in Cedar Rapids for a year, he has recently moved to Philadelphia where Renee has started a Physicians Assistant program. At the end of 2001 while at Rockwell Collins he wrote "Work is great. The problems I'm working on are very challenging, so therefore also very fun." While working there, he has also been enrolled in courses from ISU. "I took two Computer Engineering grad courses from Iowa State this semester (Fall 2001) and plan on applying to that program soon. The way I attend class is unusual. I don't. I have only been in a classroom three times this semester for tests. I watch the lectures on streaming video from the web and video tapes I check out from the Rockwell Learning Center and do all my homework alone and then mail or fax it." Now from Philadelphia he writes that he has not started looking for an engineering job yet but continues his work on a master's degree in Computer Engineering from Iowa State as an EDE (Engineering Distance Education) student. "This semester I have two classes...I find the EE class extremely difficult, but almost as fun as Physics."
Nora (Johnson) Taylor ('01)is teaching physics at Mason City High School.
Julia Moeller ('02)has a Graduate Fellowship at UNI in Science Education.
Cody Wilson ('02)is a graduate student in Physics at the University of Massachusetts at Lowell.
Robert Sheerer ('02)is currently enrolled in the National Outdoor Leadership School. He plans to start graduate school in Computer Science or Physics in the Fall of 2003.
The UNI Physics Nerds Reunion, August 17-19, 2001 was a great weekend for some UNI physics alumni from the 80's as they gathered from all over the U.S. at the home of Randy and Julie Holmes in Apple Valley, Minnesota, a Minneapolis suburb. The UNI Physics Nerds, a self-named group of UNI Physics Alumni from the mid-eighties, renewed friendships and relived experiences together as UNI physics students and in their professional and personal lives since that time. . It was attended by eight former students who graduated in 1984, 1985 and 1986 and some of their families. They came from their present locations in Minnesota, Alabama, Michigan, Texas, Florida, and California. Travel schedules differed, but some arrived on August 17 for the activities which continued through the 19th. On the 18th there was a barbecue, also attended by three UNI faculty members from that era, followed by lots of conversation and ending with some volleyball and basketball The good food and a lot of conversation was enjoyed by all. Later in the afternoon the faulty attendees decided to let the volleyball and basketball be carried on by the younger generation. The basketball game proved a bit strenuous for some of them as well - Brad Neagle suffered a broken foot! The enthusiasm of that group was a great tribute to the friendship and the common bond of their experiences together in the UNI Physics Department. Many thanks to Randy and Julie for organizing and hosting this event. Here is an update on the attendees.
Randy Holmes ('84)Ph. D. Physics, Iowa State University 1992, is employed at IBM in the Twin Cities area. His doctoral research was done at CERN in high energy physics while he was on "sabbatical" from IBM. "My work at IBM continues to revolve around performance optimization of large relational databases for commercial customers. (Try not to blame me for too many of your mail solicitations.) I did get opportunities for a little science fun by contributing opinions on how the database technology I work with can be applied to the Life Sciences (protein analysis), and even High Energy Physics where CERN is looking at how one might apply commercial databases to the problem of storing and analyzing the massive volumes of data expected from the LHC." He also writes that their son, Matt, finished a degree this year in Electrical Engineering "at the only real U of M (Minnesota)" -- note how many of the "Nerds" earned degrees at the U. of Michigan! Two daughters are in high school. He and Julie sometimes have a weekend getaway via the motorcycle.
Willard "Bill" Wood ('84)[26435 Eaton Ave., Faribault, MN 55021] was the "can do" student who applied his maturity and experience to be in charge of the construction by UNI Physics Club members of the anechoic chamber in the acoustics lab in Room 9 of the UNI Physics Building. This facility, built with the advice and encouragement from Professor Verner Jensen, has been used by many students and several faculty members in the years since its construction. Bill is in charge of quality assurance at Amertec in Faribault, Minnesota. This company does contract machining and fabrication, utilizing an industrial laser for some of the work. Now Bill is beginning the experience of the first of his three daughters reaching the teens…The persons at the reunion admired the beautiful canoe handcrafted by Bill.
Rodney Miller ('85)[rodtho@ev1.net], continues to work as an Engineer for United Space Alliance, a contractor to NASA. After working on software used to train astronauts and flight controllers, he is now involved in shuttle flight trajectory design. He has assisted in the development of a new shuttle descent simulator written in JAVA. His wife, Tho, works for Cyberonics which manufactures impantable devices for people with epilepsy. Cameron (3) attends pre-school. "I consider myself incredibly fortunate to have attended UNI and to have made some lifelong friendships. And UNI provided an opportunity that many other larger universities cannot, the opportunity to have a close relationship with the faculty. But this was not at the expense of receiving an outstanding education."
Gordon Munns ('85)[munns@netqwest.com] Ph.D. Electrical Engineering, University of Michigan 1997, after employment at Spectracom/ADC Telecommunications is now working for APA Optics, Inc. in Blaine, Minnesota (a Minneapolis suburb). He is Device R&D Manager with a small team to develop-wide-band-gap-semi-conductor power transisters. (A good review article is the cover story in IEEE Sprectrum May 2002.) "The reunion was great for me. It allowed my family (Lisa and two daughters) to meet people who were instrumental in shaping my life-both faculty and my classmates, people who are important to me...We challenged each other to be better students and better people. I have not found many comparable to the crew gathered at Randy's and none who I value more...My hope is that my girls-Anna (11) and Katie (9) find an equally nurturing and challenging environment during their education."
Brian Raue ('85)[baraue@fiu.edu] Ph.D. Physics, University of Indiana 1993, has been promoted to Associate Professor at Florida International University. He has been active in "big physics" with over two hundred collaborators from over 75 institutions carrying on their work at the Thomas Jefferson National Accelerator Facility in Newport News, Virginia. He has been working on experiments that study production of particles containing strange quarks. He was honored with the FIU Excellence in Teaching Award in 1999 and the FIU Excellence in Research Award in 2002. He credits excellent instruction and individual attention at UNI for good preparation for graduate study, research and teaching. His website is www.fiu.edu/-baraue.
Kevin Junck ('86)[kjunck@uab.edu] Ph. D. Nuclear Engineering, University of Michigan 1991, is Assistant Professor of Radiology in the Medical Physics section of the University of Alabama at Birmingham Health system. He works mainly with clinical information systems, digital images, and periodically teaches classes to radiology residents on the physics of diagnostic medical imaging systems (CT, MRI, Ultrasound, digital radiography). He and his wife Lori have two daughters, Anna and Emma.
Brad Neagle ('86)[neagle@essen-instruments.com] M.S. Electrical Engineering, University of Michigan, left Molecular Devices Corporation in Sunnyvale, California in 1999 and returned to Ann Arbor, Michigan to start a new company. This company, Essen Instruments, develops new technologies for researchers in the pharmaceutical industry. "The company is currently releasing a high throughput electrophysiology apparatus. The product that we are releasing is called Ionworks HT. It extends a technique used by electrophysiologists, which is called patch clamping, to a parallel architecture. It will allow a two-order-of-magnitude increase in the number of measurements that can be made by a researcher." Further details are available at www.essen-instruments.com (electrophysiology link). He and Marsha have two children, Samantha (8) and Ashley (6). Mathew Alan alias "Don" Ross ('86) [maross@llnl.gov] Ph.D. University of Indiana 1991, continues working at the Lawrence Livermore National Lab in California.
Professor Dale Olson, and Professors Emeriti Roger Hanson and H. Kent Macomber enjoyed being a part of this great reunion. |
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Physics Department Last Updated: April 11, 2008 |
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