APS CUWiP Northwestern 2019 Local Organizing Committee

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Faculty Co-Chairs

Wen-fai Fong, Assistant Professor

Wen-fai Fong is an Assistant Professor at Northwestern, and her research group unravels the mysteries enshrouding cosmic explosions, including gamma-ray bursts and gravitational wave sources. Wen-fai Fong uses a large variety of telescopes spanning radio, optical, near-infrared, and X-ray wavelengths on the ground and in space to study these explosions and their host galaxy environments. These facilities include the Very Large Array, Magellan, Gemini, MMT and Keck located in New Mexico, Chile, Hawaii and Arizona, and NASA’s Neil Gehrels Swift Observatory and the Hubble Space Telescope in space.

Zosia Krusberg, Associate Professor of Instruction

Zosia Krusberg is an Associate Professor at Northwestern University, and is committed to designing and integrating specific, research-based teaching pedagogical practices into the university physics curriculum. Her research explores the role of knowledge structures, metacognition, and insight in physics problem solving, as well as how to most effectively structure problem solving instruction in introductory physics courses.

 

Subcommittee Chairs

Deanne Coppejans, Programming Subcommittee Co-Chair

Deanne is a postdoctoral associate in the Center for Interdisciplinary Exploration and Research in Astrophysics (CIERA). She uses multi-wavelength data from a range of telescopes to investigate the physics of stellar explosions, jets, and the accretion of material in binary star systems.

 

Michelle Driscoll, Fundraising Subcommittee Co-Chair

Michelle Driscoll is an Assistant Professor at Northwestern University.  She is a soft condensed matter experimentalist, and her research lies at the interface between soft matter physics and fluid dynamics. Her lab focuses on understanding how structure and patterns emerge in driven systems, and to how to use this structure formation as a new way to probe nonequillibrium systems.   By developing a deeper understanding of patterns and structures which emerge dynamically in a driven material, we can learn not only how these structures can be controlled, but also how to use them to connect macroscopic behavior to microscopic properties.

Kari Frank, Programming Subcommittee Co-Chair

Kari is an Assistant Research Professor and Director of Operations for the Center for Interdisciplinary Exploration and Research in Astrophysics (CIERA). In her research role, she uses X-ray telescopes to study hot, messy objects like supernova remnants and galaxy clusters. In her administrative role, she manages the daily operations of CIERA, working with graduate students, postdocs, and faculty researchers

Erin Cox, Programming Subcommittee Co-Chair

Erin is postdoctoral associate at the Center for Interdisciplinary Exploration and Research in Astrophysics (CIERA). She is an observational astronomer that studies star and planet formation. Her work focuses on how magnetic fields influence the earliest stages of protostellar collapse (~10-20 kyr), and how this affects disk formation. 

 

Renée Manzagol, Fundraising Subcommittee Co-Chair

Renee Manzagol is a Physics PhD Student in the Figueroa Group. She is working on Micro-X, a high resolution Microcalorimeter x-ray imaging rocket, that just had its first flight July 22. Renee is interested in keV dark matter and designing new detectors for future Micro-X flights.

Gretchen L. Oehlschlager, Publicity Subcommittee Chair

Gretchen is the Communications & Events Coordinator for Northwestern’s Center for Interdisciplinary Exploration & Research in Astrophysics (CIERA). Gretchen develops and designs CIERA’s marketing communications materials and organizes seminars, public events, and conferences. She is the primary staff contact for fundraising development and assists with CIERA’s faculty and postdoctoral hiring processes.

Yassaman Shemirani, Logistics Subcommittee Co-Chair

Yassaman supports all aspects of the Physics & Astronomy undergraduate program including advising students on major/minor requirements, administrative support to the Director of Undergraduate Studies and planning undergraduate events. Yassaman also manages schedules, reservations and advertisement for Dearborn Observatory.

Ingrid Stolt, Research Safari Subcommittee Chair

Ingrid Stolt has been a PhD student in the Northwestern University Physics department since September 2015. Her research area is experimental condensed matter physics. Her focus is on nuclear magnetic resonance (NMR) studies of a group of high-temperature superconductors known as “cuprates.”

Pam Villalovoz, Logistics Subcommittee Co-Chair

Pam is a faculty support assistant in the Physics & Astronomy department, supporting the High Energy and Astro physics groups. In addition to her daily support of faculty, she over sees many of the department events and conferences.

 

Sarah Wellons, Adler Subcommittee Chair

Dr. Sarah Wellons is a CIERA postdoctoral fellow at Northwestern. She uses computer simulations to study how galaxies form and evolve. Her research focuses on extreme galaxies which formed very early in the Universe’s history shortly after the Big Bang.

Committee Members

Eve Chase

Eve is an Astronomy Ph.D. student at Northwestern University who studies gravitational-wave astronomy. She previously attended three CUWiPs as an undergraduate at the College of William & Mary and is thrilled to help organize Northwestern’s CUWiP. Eve is an active member in the LIGO Scientific Collaboration and has contributed to data analysis for several past LIGO detections. In addition to data analysis, she is particularly interested in using LIGO detections to explore the nature of black holes, neutron stars, and the universe.

Rocco Coppejans

Dr. Rocco Coppejans is a postdoc in the Center for Interdisciplinary Exploration and Research in Astrophysics at Northwestern University. Rocco’s research is focused on developing technology to replace traditional (thick and solid) satellite mirrors with thin membrane mirrors. This would significantly increase the mirror size, and therefore the resolution and sensitivity of satellites.

André de Gouvêa

André de Gouvêa is a professor at Northwestern and concentrates his research on theoretical high-energy physics, more specifically on the phenomenology of the physics that lies beyond the standard model of particle physics. One his the main goals is to explore the new physics that has manifested itself in the leptonic sector.

Lindsay DeMarchi

Lindsay DeMarchi is a PhD student at Northwestern in the Department of Physics and Astronomy.

 

Pulak Dutta

Pulak Dutta is an experimentalist studying soft condensed matter. Many of his experiments are performed using synchrotron radiation at the Advanced Photon Source, Argonne, IL. He currently serves as the Director of Undergraduate Studies for the Department of Physics & Astronomy, Northwestern University.

Agnes Engstrom

Agnes Engstrom is a research administrator in the Department of Physics and Astronomy.

 

Carin Gavin

Carin graduated from the University of Kansas in the spring with a double major in physics and astronomy.  She is now in the first year of her Physics PhD at Northwestern and pursuing research in experimental condensed matter.

 

Andrew Geraci

Andrew Geraci is an associate professor and a member of the Center for Fundamental Physics at Low Energy at Northwestern. He is the principal investigator of an international collaboration involving several small-scale, tabletop low-energy experiments poised to discover a wide range of new physics beyond the Standard model, where feeble interactions require precision measurements rather than high energies. Geraci was recently elected to the executive committee of the Topical Group on Precision Measurements and Fundamental Constants within the American Physical Society.

Bennett Goldberg

Bennett Goldberg serves as the Director of the Searle Center for Advancing Learning and Teaching, Assistant Provost for Learning and Teaching, and as a Professor of Physics and Astronomy. He is a Fellow of the American Physical Society, and a United Methodist Teacher/Scholar of the Year. Goldberg’s research interests are in the areas of nano-optics and spectroscopy of two-dimensional crystals, exploring strain and friction in single-atom-thick layers. Goldberg has been active in building a network of universities preparing future faculty to be excellent researchers and excellent teachers, and is involved in bringing together cross-sector organizations to scale effective strategies for increasing access to higher education for underrepresented groups.

Aretaios Lalakos

Aretaios Lalakos is a PhD student in the Department of Physics and Astronomy within the Tchekovskoy Group.

 

Maura Lally

Maura is a sophomore Northwestern physics major with an astronomy concentration. She is working as an undergraduate research assistant with Professor Fong, studying short gamma ray burst afterglows.

Julie Malewicz

Julie is a fourth-year undergraduate in Physics and Astronomy with a concentration in the latter, as well as Legal Studies at Northwestern University. She currently serves as Treasurer for the Society of Physics Students (NU SPS) and works as telescope operator and host at our very own Dearborn Observatory. Therefore, she is most often found in the basement of the building either writing political arguments or equations on the boards.

Raffaella Margutti

Raffaella Margutti is an astrophysicist  and assistant professor at Northwestern who utilizes observations of transient astrophysical phenomena including stellar explosions and stellar tidal disruptions by supermassive black holes. Her research specifically focuses on the biggest explosions and disruptions that occur in our Universe, and investigates the physics of these events by combining broad-band observations across the electromagnetic spectrum, including X-ray, UV, optical, IR, and radio. The primary goal of her research is to understand the nature of the physical processes that regulate such dramatic displays.

Tasha Petrik

Tasha is a senior Physics and Astronomy major with minors in Italian and linguistics. She has a concentration in astronomy, and she was inspired to join the LOC when she attended a CUWiP at Iowa State in 2018. She is currently studying abroad at the University of Bologna and is looking forward to being back in time for CUWiP 2019!

Ava Polzin, Website

Ava Polzin (NU Physics & Astronomy ’18) currently works with Dr. Aaron Geller to determine the eclipsing binary yield of the Large Synoptic Survey Telescope. When she is not doing problem sets or research, Ava is a Northwestern Athletics and Searle Center tutor and Dearborn Observatory host. In the past, she has served as president of the Society of Physics Students and a Learning Assistant for the introductory physics classes.

Nancy Ruggeri

Nancy Ruggeri is the Director of Graduate and Postdoctoral programs at Northwestern. With research experience in primate behavioral ecology and college science education, Nancy’s current research interests include assessment of student learning, critical thinking in the STEM disciplines, and integrating the notion of scientific uncertainty into teaching about scientific data and models.

Tamar Seideman

Tamar Seideman is a professor at Northwestern and her main research interest is in the area of theoretical and computational molecular physics and chemistry. Her current research centers around: 1) molecular electronics, current-driven nanochemistry and new forms of molecular machines; 2) coherence phenomena in the gas phase and at interfaces; 3) the interaction of matter with intense fields; 4) photomanipulation of external and internal molecular modes; and 5) the development of new mathematical methods.

Phalguni Shah

Phalguni Shah is a PhD student in the Department of Physics and Astronomy within the Driscoll Group.

 

Nathaniel Stern

Nathaniel Stern is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Physics and Astronomy. His research is focused on understanding the fundamental interactions of light and matter and how related phenomena can be controlled in nanoscale materials. His group’s current work emphasizes nanofabrication, photonics, and low-dimensional materials, with transdisciplinary interactions across chemistry, materials science, and observational astronomy. He also is interested in instituting lasting improvements in undergraduate teaching and building a strong and vibrant physics community in the department.

Susana Torres-Londono

Susana Torres-Londono is a second-year at UC Berkeley studying physics with a minor in data science, and worked within the Fong Group.

 

Emily Updegraff

Emily Updegraff is the Director of Operations and Outreach and an Assistant Chair in the Department of Physics and Astronomy. She is also a lecturer within the School of Professional Studies at Northwestern.

 

Sruthi Venkataramanababu

Sruthi Venkataramanababu is a first year graduate student in the Applied Physics program. Her interests lie in understanding light-matter interactions at the level of a few atoms and molecules. Specifically, she works on laser cooling and quantum control of atomic and molecular ions.

Lauren Woods

Lauren Woods is Assistant Director of CIRTL at Northwestern. She helps develop, run, and evaluate CIRTL at Northwestern programming including the Searle Teaching-As-Research (STAR) program and Mentored Discussions of Teaching (MDT).

Ting Xiao

Ting Xiao is a postdoctoral researcher in particle physics at Northwestern University. She uses statistical and computational tools to extract meaningful signals from large data sets. She has been applying these skills on data collected from particle accelerators at Cornell and Jefferson National Lab, where she has improved the precision of various physical measures, allowing for the accurate detection of a variety of subatomic particles. She received her PhD from Northwestern University in 2016 and her undergraduate degree at Zhejiang University in China. Her research interests are in data science, with a focus on signal processing in a variety of domains; this includes multiple current projects with Loyola University Chicago students using probabilistic graphical models for statistical inference on auditory signals, video, and inertial sensor data.