armstrong, cole

Cole Armstrong

Graduate Teaching Assistant
Bangari, Ramachandra

Ramachandra Bangari

Graduate Teaching Assistant

Ramachandra Bangari is interested in Condensed Matter Physics and Material Science. He is currently working with Dr. Thomas Folland on computational simulation and experimental characterization of optical constants in thin films, 2-D materials, and semiconductors. He obtained Bachelor's and Master's in Physics from the Indian Institute of Science.

Bellis

Zoe Bellis

Graduate Teaching Assistant

Before coming to the University of Iowa, Zoe received her BS in Physics at the University of Wisconsin - Eau Claire.  She is interested in stellar evolution and cosmology.

Blend

Dylan Blend

Graduate Student
Graduate College Lulu Merle Johnson Fellowship recipient

Dylan is a recent BS Physics graduate from Texas A&M University. Dylan is from Houston, TX and his current research advisors are Professors Jane Nachtman and Yasar Onel. He will be an experimental particle physicist and I am currently involved in the CMS Outer Tracker Phase II Upgrade and DUNE experiment, Liquid Argon TPC. 

Broadfoot, Robert

Robert Broadfoot

Graduate Research Assistant

Robert Broadfoot took a non-traditional path to the doctoral program in physics by first obtaining a master’s degree in music performance. He is now performing research in experimental space physics under the mentorship of Dr. David Miles. His research interests include space weather and auroral dynamics.

Brown

Collin Brown

Graduate Research Assistant
Graduate Student Mentor

Collin Brown’s research interests involve using high-performance computation and kinetic plasma theory to study the solar wind. He is working with Dr. Greg Howes, Dr. Jimmy Juno, and Dr. Steve Baek to develop a machine learning algorithm that detects key properties of shocks in simulated astrophysical plasmas.

Sanjay Chepuri

Sanjay Chepuri

Graduate Research Assistant
Graduate Student Mentor

Sanjay Chepuri is interested in studying space physics. He is currently working with Dr. Allison Jaynes examining the Earth's magnetosphere using data from MMS and other spacecraft.

Horvath

Sarah Conley

Graduate Research Assistant
Graduate Student Advisory Committee Member
Graduate Student Mentor

Sarah Conley does research in computational space plasma physics. This includes running high-resolution simulations of turbulent solar wind plasma in order to better understand the process of Landau damping by electrons: a mechanism that contributes to the heating of the solar wind as it expands outward from the Sun. Characterizing this mechanism within simulations can provide theoretical framework for interpreting data from current and future spacecraft missions.

Connolly

Michael Connolly

Graduate Teaching Assistant
Graduate College Recruitment Fellow
Graduate Student Advisory Committee Member

Michael Connelly is interested in the development of a harmonious understanding of nature between the very large and very small scale systems and the potential applications between. He currently works with Dr. Vincent G. J. Rodgers studying Standard Model fermions in Thomas-Whitehead Gravity.

corona

James Corona

Graduate Research & Teaching Assistant

James Corona is interested in conducting research in the areas of quantum computation and quantum information theory. He is currently working with Dr. Yannick Meurice to simulate quantum systems in various models such as the Abelian Higgs model. He plans to develop new methods for using quantum computers to study systems which are unfeasible for simulation on classical computers.

fasano

Cecilia Fasano

Graduate Research Assistant
Graduate Student Advisory Committee Member

Cecilia Fasano’s research interests lie at the intersection of nanofabrication, technology development, and astrophysics. She is currently working with Prof. Casey DeRoo and Prof. Keri Hoadley on a project designing and fabricating the next generation of x-ray and UV gratings for use in astronomical instrumentation.

Fehr

David Fehr

Graduate Research Assistant
Graduate Student Advisory Committee Member

David Fehr is interested in condensed matter theory research and currently works with Dr. Flatté, studying the theory of spin coherence of molecules with nanoscale confinement . Before coming to the University of Iowa, David double majored in music and physics as an undergraduate and earned a master's degree in physics at the University of North Dakota.

Felix, Alberto

Alberto Felix

Graduate Teaching Assistant
Feltman

Connor Feltman

Graduate Research Assistant

Connor Feltman works with Dr. Craig Kletzing and Dr. Scott Bounds researching Space Plasma as pertaining to auroral phenomena. He engages in testing hardware and processing data for rocket missions launched into the northern hemisphere to observe the connection between auroral events, their composite particles and Earth's magnetic field.

Fruchtman

Jacob Fruchtman

Graduate Research Assistant

Jacob Fruchtman is interested in studying the Martian Magentosphere. He is currently working with Professor Jasper Halekas on a project analyzing the MAVEN spacecraft's data to characterize the Martian Bow Shock to find how it varies by season.

Fuller

Chase Fuller

Graduate Research Assistant

Chase Fuller has research interests in high energy astrophysics and galactic structure, with current activities focused on X-ray emitting astrophysical plasmas. He is also interested in making science accessible to general audiences, using it to inform public policy, and its role as a mediator for discussions of national importance.

Garg

Diksha Garg

Graduate Research Assistant

Diksha Garg is interested in the field of particle physics. She is currently working with Dr. Mary Hall Reno on a project to determine tau particle's polarization which are produced from the high energy cosmic neutrinos skimming through the earth. She has also worked with Dr. Usha Mallik in hardware and software development for the upcoming high-luminosity upgrade of the inner tracker of the ATLAS experiment at CERN.

Greene

Kenton Greene

Graduate Research Assistant

Kenton Greene is involved in space physics experimentation and instrumentation research. His current work focuses on the optimization and characterization of a new high-stability fluxgate magnetometer design called the Tesseract Sensor which will fly on the upcoming ACES-II sounding rockets and TRACERS satellite missions to measure the field aligned currents in the magnetosphere.

griffin, philip

Philip Griffin

Graduate Teaching Assistant
Grover

Tyler Grover

Graduate Teaching Assistant

Tyler Grover has research interests in mathematical physics: string theory, gravitation, and quantum field theories. He currently works with Dr. Vincent G. J. Rodgers exploring features of Thomas-Whitehead Projective Gravity. Current projects include search for space-time solutions and predicted corrections for particle physics.

Gunderson

Sean Gunderson

Graduate Teaching Assistant
Graduate Student Mentor

Sean Gunderson’s interest is in the properties and evolution of hot stars. His research is primarily focused on the hypersonic stellar winds of these stars using theoretical models and high energy light spectra. The research is an intersection between high energy astrophysics and plasma physics; particularly the physics of plasma shocks that generate X-rays within the stellar winds.

Hall

Kevin Hall

Graduate Teaching Assistant

Kevin has interests in simulating how exoplanets would look within simulated data from future Direct Imaging missions and determine what characteristics can be extracted from the system.

Hang

Zheyue Hang

Graduate Student

Zheyue Hang is currently working with Professor Yannick Meurice on the field of quantum computing. She is also interested in mathematical physics and condensed matter.

Henderson

Sarah Henderson

Graduate Research Assistant
Graduate Student Advisory Committee Member

Sarah Henderson is interested in studying space plasma physics. She is working under the advisory of Professor Jasper Halekas analyzing various sets of MAVEN data to better understand the many ways in which the solar wind interacts with the Martian atmosphere.

Huang

Rui Huang

Graduate Research Assistant

Rui Huang is interested in theoretical and computational astrophysics. They are currently working with Professor Greg Howes on a project studying the plasma turbulence theory.

jaya

Jayasri Joseph

Graduate Research Assistant

Before returning to school to conduct research in Space physics, Jaya Joseph worked as a research engineer designing various wireless communication systems and receivers for use in radio astronomy at Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organization, Australia. She is currently working to better understand some of the anomalous behaviours of Van Allen belts with Prof. Allison Jaynes.

karaman

Gürkan Karaman

Graduate Teaching Assistant

Gurkan is originally from Turkey and has a BSc degree in Physics from Bogazici University. He is currently doing his research in Electron Irradiation on Particle Accelerator Components. He is also interested in history, anthropology, psychology, philosophy, and medicine. He enjoys outdoors and is actively involved in tennis, volleyball, basketball, soccer, swimming, and billiard.

koseyan

Ohannes Kamer Koseyan

Graduate Research Assistant

Ohannes Kamer Koseyan's research interests include experimental data analysis for the decay modes of the Higgs Boson and testing and development of hardware for high energy particle detectors. Before starting his Ph.D. program in the University of Iowa, he worked at the phase 1 upgrade of the CMS experiment at CERN during his MS studies.

Langer

Patrick Langer

Graduate Teaching Assistant

Patrick majored in Physics with a minor in Math during his undergraduate career. He currently is working with Dr. Skiff, researching kinetic wave scattering in plasmas. His aspirations are to contribute substantial research to the field of plasma physics, and to potentially consider teaching as well.

Yogendra_limbu

Yogendra Limbu

Graduate Research Assistant
Maleki Sanukesh

Mehdi (Kian) Maleki Sanukesh

Graduate Research Assistant

Kian Maleki is interested in theoretical condensed matter physics. He is working as a research assistant with Prof. Flatté. His current project is about defect-phonon interaction in hBN.

Martin

Brady Martin

Graduate Teaching Assistant

Brady Martin is currently conducting research for Dr. Wayne Polyzou in the field of theoretical nuclear physics. His research focuses on the study of many-body nuclear scattering events dominated by cluster reactions with particular interest in the effective interactions between clusters. Careful attention is given to the use of partition combinatorics in multi-channel scattering theory.

Masson

Ian Masson

Graduate Teaching Assistant
Maxton

Robert Maxton

Graduate Research Assistant

Robert Maxton is currently working with Prof. Yannick Meurice on efficient simulations of higher-dimensional Ising models, especially through tensor networks and including investigating the boundaries of near-term quantum supremacy. His interests for future work include (but are not limited to) quantum field theory, the mathematical foundation of the same, and quantum gravity.

McLaughlin

Jacob McLaughlin

Graduate Research Assistant
Graduate Student Mentor

Jacob McLaughlin performs research in experimental plasma sciences, specializing in nonperturbative, laser-based diagnostic techniques.  Working with Dr. Skiff, his current focus is wave-particle interactions and kinetic instabilities.

 

Jodie McLennan

Graduate Teaching Assistant
moore, aidan

Aidan Moore

Graduate Teaching Assistant
Nair

Raaman Nair

Graduate Research Assistant

Before joining the doctoral program at the University of Iowa, Raaman completed his BS in Physics & Astronomy, and MS in Applied Physics at Northern Arizona University. Later on, he was a Physics teacher at schools in Arizona.

Nault

Kristie Nault

Graduate Student

Kristie Nault is interested in high energy astrophysics and the spectroscopic study of stars.  She is currently working with Professor Casey DeRoo, studying the symbiotic star AG Dra and using spectra obtained with the Chandra LETG/HRC spectrometer in order to determine temperature, flux, and absorption of the dominant blackbody emission produced by the white dwarf component.

Nelson

Matthew Nelson

Graduate Teaching Assistant

As an undergraduate, Matthew earned a Bachelor of Science in Physics, Astronomy, and Mathematics at the University of Iowa. His current research interests are in the fields of condensed matter physics and mathematical physics.

Neogi

Orgho Neogi

Graduate Research Assistant

Orgho Neogi is an experimental particle physicist working on the DUNE experiment, focusing on liquid argon TPC event reconstruction and developing machine learning techniques for particle physics analysis. He also works on the CMS experiment, testing prototype detectors for the Barrel Timing Layer upgrade. Before starting the Ph.D. program at Iowa, he earned bachelor's degrees in Physics and Computer Science from Cornell College and worked on DUNE (Wire-Cell reconstruction) and CMS (jet triggers).

ozello, zane

Zane Ozello

Graduate Teaching Assistant
packard

Colin Packard

Graduate Research Assistant

Colin Packard’s research interests center primarily around instrumentation and hardware development, photometry, and observational astronomy. He is currently working with Dr. Philip Kaaret, Dr. Casey DeRoo, and Dr. Jun Wang on both X-ray detection with CMOS sensors, and the development and testing of sensor hardware for an air or space based platform for use in measuring atmospheric pollutants via Earth observing photometry.

Rachel Pauline

Rachel Pauline

Graduate Teaching Assistant
payne, jacob

Jacob Payne

Graduate Teaching Assistant
Pette

Daniel Pette

Graduate Student

Dan is currently employed as an aerospace engineer while he pursues a PhD here at Iowa, part-time. He has lived in four states and enjoys weightlifting, hiking, road trips, craft beer, and classic literature.

Posligua

Jonatan Posligua

Graduate Teaching Assistant

Jonatan is a first-year physics graduate student from Guayaquil, Ecuador. He came to the University of Iowa in 2017 to undertake his undergraduate studies and graduated with a Bachelor in Sciences in Astronomy and Physics in May, 2021. His research interests include gravitation, cosmology, mathematical physics, particle physics and quantum field theory. Outside of physics, his hobbies include sports, playing music, cooking and traveling.

pradhan, mohit

Mohit Pradhan

Graduate Teaching Assistant
Quaid, Salvatore

Salvatore Quaid

Graduate Teaching Assistant
saraswat

Himani Saraswat

Graduate Research Assistant
Graduate Student Advisory Committee Member

Himani Saraswat is interested in Condensed Matter and Material Physics. She will be working with Prof. Ravitej Uppu and Prof. Thomas Folland on the Quantum dots which involve characterization and fabrication of semiconductor materials.

Schrock

Katrina Schrock

Graduate Research and Teaching Assistant

Katrina Schrock’s research interests cover the vast field of optics, with a focus of LEDs and laser measurements.  She has worked with Dr. John Prineas on the improvement of infrared LEDs.

Sharma

Punit Sharma

Graduate Research Assistant

Punit is working on the High Luminosity upgrade of the Inner Tracker detector of the ATLAS experiment currently stationed at the Brookhaven National Lab. He also works on the exotic analysis based on the 2-Higgs doublet model where the pseudoscalar Higgs decays into the heavy CP even neutral Higgs and a Z boson using the run-2 data from the ATLAS experiment.  Punit got his bachelor's and master's degrees from IIT Kanpur. His master's project was on the quantum entanglement in the holographic conformal field theories.

Shi

Yueguang Shi

Graduate Research Assistant

Yueguang Shi is interested in studying computational methods, especially first principle approaches to solid state systems. He is working with Dr. Flatté studying magnetic materials like V(TCNE)2 using density functional theory (DFT) approaches.

simons

Daniel Simons

Graduate Research Assistant

Daniel Simons tests different models that describe the scattering or decay processes of particles and compares with experimental data to see which model looks most like the data. He was accepted into the Universities Research Association's Visiting Scholars Program to travel to the Fermi National Laboratory throughout the 2021-2022 school year to work with researchers there and to study the scattering of neutrinos off nucleons.

sink

Joe Sink, Ph.D.

Postdoctoral Research Scholar

Joe Sink is working with Dr. Craig Pryor and is interested in modeling the electronic properties of novel Solid-State devices using theoretical models such as Tight-Binding and DFT. His current research is directed towards understanding the unique properties of wurtzite and zinc blende nanowire heterostructures.

swarm

Dustin Swarm

Graduate Research Assistant
Graduate Student Mentor

Dustin Swarm is interested in high energy astrophysics and the application of machine learning in astronomy. He is currently working with Prof. Casey DeRoo studying X-ray sources in the Galactic center found using an outlier detection algorithm.

Termini

Jared Termini

Graduate Research Assistant

Jared Termini is interested in astronomical instrumentation and detector design. He is currently working with Professor Keri Hoadley on the Faint Intergalactic Medium Redshifted Emission Balloon (FIREBall) mission.

Riley Troyer

Riley Troyer

Graduate Research Assistant

Originally from Fairbanks, Alaska, Riley has been fascinated by the northern lights (aurora) for his entire life and is currently studying a dim but dynamic type called pulsating aurora. He is also interested in science policy and helped create Connecting Science to Society, a student science policy and communication organization. Riley works for Dr. Allison Jaynes and is funded under a NASA FINESST grant.

vaghefi-esfidani

Maryam Vaghefi Esfidani

Graduate Research Assistant

Maryam is interested in condensed matter and her area is understanding the optical properties of polar materials and semiconductor using a combination of experimental methods and numerical model.

 
Vidal

Keith Vidal

Graduate Teaching Assistant
Graduate Student Mentor

Keith Vidal is interested in space and plasma physics.  He has studied strongly coupled and magnetized plasmas and is currently studying wave-particle interactions in the Earth's magnetosphere with Prof. Jaynes.

zhuravlyov

Vitaliy Zhuravlyov

Graduate Research Assistant

I am interested in experimental plasma physics. In particular, I am studying dusty plasma, which is also considered to be a strongly coupled plasma. Because of strong coupling, dusty plasma can exist in a liquid or gas phases. My research focuses on structural properties of dusty plasma liquids.