People

Robert Merlino, Ph.D.
Title/Position
Professor Emeritus
Robert L. Merlino is an Emeritus Professor in the Physics and Astronomy Department at the University of Iowa. His research activities are in experimental plasma physics, where he has concentrated on performing experiments investigating processes of relevance to space plasma physics, and on the physics of dusty plasmas. His research has been funded by the Cottrell Research Corporation, the Office of Naval Research, NASA, NSF and DOE.

Alexi Mestvirishvil
Title/Position
Assistant Research Scientist/Engineer

Yannick Meurice, Ph.D.
Title/Position
Professor
Yannick Meurice is a Professor at the University of Iowa. He was a postdoc at CERN and Argonne National Laboratory and a visiting professor at CINVESTAV in Mexico City. His current work includes lattice gauge theory, tensor renormalization group methods, near conformal gauge theories, critical machine learning, quantum simulations with cold atoms and quantum computing. He is the PI of a multi-institutional DOE HEP QuantISED grant.

David M. Miles, Ph.D.
Title/Position
Associate Professor
David M. Miles is an experimental space physicist specializing in the development of next-generation spaceflight magnetic field instruments and particularly miniature instruments for nanosatellites and multi-point measurement constellations. His research interests include space weather, solar-terrestrial physics, and auroral dynamics including magnetosphere-ionosphere coupling.
He is the principal investigator for the magnetic field instrument (MGF) on the Cassiopie/e-POP spacecraft (now funded by European Space Agency as Swarm-Echo) and is the instrument PI for the miniature fluxgate magnetometer (DFGM) on the Ex-Alta-1 CubeSat. He has provided fluxgate magnetnometers for sub-orbital sounding rockets (ICI-4, ICI-5 and Maxidusty-1b) and on ACES-II in 2021.

Matthew Millard, Ph.D.
Title/Position
Postdoctoral Research Scholar
Matthew's research has focused on studying the 3D morphology and dust properties of the remnants of supernova explosions at X-ray and infrared wavelengths.

Michael Miller
Title/Position
Design Engineer

Anthony Moeller, Ph.D.
Title/Position
Laboratory Coordinator

John Momberg
Title/Position
Graduate Teaching Assistant

Jessica Mondoskin
Title/Position
Graduate Teaching Assistant

David Montealegre
Title/Position
Graduate Research Assistant
David Montealegre works in the field of solid-state physics. David's main research focus is in superlattice structures used in LEDs, lasers, and detectors. The goal for emitters in the mid-IR is to outcompete their blackbody counterparts for detector sources and thermal scene projectors. For Detectors in the far-IR, MCT detectors are the main competitor for light detection and ranging (LIDAR) and free space communication.

Aidan Moore
Title/Position
Graduate Teaching Assistant

Robert Mutel, Ph.D.
Title/Position
Professor Emeritus
Robert L. Mutel is a Professor Emeritus in the Physics and Astronomy Department at the University of Iowa.

Jane M. Nachtman, Ph.D.
Title/Position
Director of Undergraduate Studies
Professor
Jane Nachtman received her Ph.D. from the University of Wisconsin-Madison in 1997 followed by a postdoc at UCLA under Professor David Saltzberg. In 2002 she joined Fermilab as an associate scientist, ultimately becoming a Scientist I before joining the University of Iowa in 2007. Professor Nachtman's research involves CMS and DUNE R&D and commissioning, as well as CMS data analysis.

Raaman Nair
Title/Position
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.

Kristie Nault
Title/Position
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.

John Neff, Ph.D.
Title/Position
Professor Emeritus
John S. Neff is a Professor Emeritus in the Physics and Astronomy Department at the University of Iowa, where he did ground-based photometry and spectrophotometry and building instruments used by colleagues and students. He did research on stars, variable stars, planets, and comets.

Matthew Nelson
Title/Position
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.

Orgho Neogi
Title/Position
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).

Charles Newsom, Ph.D.
Title/Position
Associate Professor Emeritus
Charles R. Newsom is an Associate Professor Emeritus in the Physics and Astronomy Department at the University of Iowa.

Yasar Onel, Ph.D.
Title/Position
Professor
Yasar Onel received his Ph.D. from London University in 1975 followed by a postdoc at Queen Mary University-London and work at the Universities of Neuchatel and Geneva. Professor Onel then moved to the University of Texas Austin in 1986 where he was part of the Fermilab E683 experiment. He joined the University of Iowa in 1988, working on the E704/E781 experiments before joining the CMS Collaboration in 1993 where he has led University of Iowa's HEP group since.

Zane Ozzello
Title/Position
Graduate Teaching Assistant

Colin Packard
Title/Position
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
Title/Position
Graduate Teaching Assistant

Gerald Payne, Ph.D.
Title/Position
Professor Emeritus
Gerald L. Payne is a Professor Emeritus in the Physics and Astronomy Department at the University of Iowa.

Jacob Payne
Title/Position
Graduate Teaching Assistant

Aldo Penzo
Title/Position
Research Scientist/Engineer

Daniel Pette
Title/Position
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.

Jolene Pickett
Title/Position
Researcher
Jolene's research interests lie in the area of space physics, specifically Electrostatic Solitary Waves, Auroral Kilometric Radiation and Chorus Waves observed in space plasmas. She is the NASA Principal Investigator of the Wideband Data (WBD) plasma wave instrument flying onboard the European Space Agency four-spacecraft Cluster mission, which has been in orbit for over 20 years.
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