People

Chris Piker
Title/Position
Senior Database Administrator
Chris is primarily a server software developer, though he attends to public data archiving, relational database development, system administration, and adjacent areas as needed to assist space physics researchers. His software has provided science data products for many missions including Voyager and Juno and he is currently involved with TRACERS mission integration and test. Though his formal instruction is in physics and mathematics, Piker has been a programmer by trade since 1996. He has a keen interest in software performance and assisting others with their programs.

Wayne N. Polyzou, Ph.D.
Title/Position
Professor
Wayne N. Polyzou is a Professor in the Physics and Astronomy Department at the University of Iowa. His research interests include theoretical nuclear physics and mathematical physics.

Jonatan Posligua
Title/Position
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.

Brendan Powers
Title/Position
Graduate Teaching Assistant

Mohit Pradhan
Title/Position
Graduate Teaching Assistant

Carol A. Preston
Title/Position
Senior Accountant
Carol has been in the Department of Physics and Astronomy for the past 15 years, working primarily with the Craig Kletzing and David Miles research groups. Her work includes contract budget proposal preparation, monthly financial reporting, and financial projections and analysis. She has worked on the NASA sponsored Van Allen Probes (RBSP-EMFISIS), MMS, TRICE II, TRACERS, and MAGIC projects.

John P. Prineas, Ph.D.
Title/Position
Director of Research Operations
Professor
John’s research has a compound semiconductor materials and device focus. As an experimentalist, he does materials growth and fabrication, and studies properties such as carrier dynamics using ultrafast optical techniques. He is the departmental Director of Research Operations, associate editor at Optical Materials Express, and received the 2019 Research and Innovation Excellence Faculty/Staff Startup of the Year Award in 2019. He is developing new graduate courses in thin films and microfabrication science, and quantum optics.

Craig E. Pryor, Ph.D.
Title/Position
Associate Professor
Craig Pryor is an Associate Professor in the Physics and Astronomy Department at the University of Iowa. His research interests include theoretical condensed matter.

Tharnier Puel De Oliveira, Ph.D.
Title/Position
Postdoctoral Research Fellow/Scholar
Dr. Tharnier O. Puel's interests are in Theoretical Solid State Physics. He studied low-temperature physics in the subject of topological properties of matter. In the last years, he contributed to advances in non-equilibrium spin systems at zero temperature. Currently, he started his studies in optical transduction using cavities QED, at the University of Iowa.

Salvatore Quaid
Title/Position
Graduate Teaching Assistant

Caroline Anna Roberts, Ph.D.
Title/Position
Graduate Mentor Program (GradMAP) Coordinator
Instructional Services Specialist
Caroline received her BS in Physics from Sewanee: The University of the South and her MS in Physics and PhD in Astronomy from Georgia State University. In the University of Iowa Department of Physics and Astronomy she is the Astronomy Laboratory Coordinator and Van Allen Observatories Manager, supervising the experience of undergraduate students taking Astronomy lab classes in the department and overseeing the operation of the department’s 17- and 20-inch telescopes used for labs, research, and outreach. She is also a co-coordinator of the department’s “Hawkeyes in Space” outreach program and the program advisor for GradMAP, the department graduate student peer-mentoring group.

Vincent G.J. Rodgers, Ph.D.
Title/Position
Director of Graduate Studies
Professor
Vincent G. J. Rodgers is Director of Graduate Studies and a Professor in the Physics and Astronomy Department at the University of Iowa. His research interests include theoretical particle physics and string theory.

Marcia Rogers
Title/Position
Research Support Manager
Suranga Ruhunusiri, Ph.D.
Title/Position
Associate Research Scientist/Engineer
Suranga’s research interests include building detectors to characterize charged particles in planetary plasma environments, applying machine learning methods for characterization of planetary plasma environments, and investigating plasma turbulence in planetary and cometary environments.
Rhyan Sawyer, Ph.D.
Title/Position
Postdoctoral Research Scholar

Ianos Schmidt
Title/Position
Senior Engineering Associate

John Schweitzer, Ph.D.
Title/Position
Professor Emeritus
John W. Schweitzer is a Professor Emeritus in the Physics and Astronomy Department at the University of Iowa.

Jack Scudder, Ph.D.
Title/Position
Professor Emeritus
Jack D. Scudder is a Professor in the Physics and Astronomy Department at the University of Iowa. His research interests include space plasma physics.

Sercan Sen
Title/Position
Research Scientist/Engineer

Blake Senseman
Title/Position
Graduate Teaching Assistant

Andrea Shaevitz
Title/Position
Senior Financial Analyst
Punit Sharma
Title/Position
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.

David Sheets
Title/Position
Principal Engineer
David is an engineer with both electrical / software design and systems engineering experience. He is currently working as the systems engineer for the TRACERS ACE instrument and cognizant for several of the subsystems thereof.


Han-Wen Shen, Ph.D.
Title/Position
Postdoctoral Research Scholar
Han-Wen is interested in conducting space physics research with satellite and ground-based observations. His current research focuses on exploring the plasma dynamics around the Lunar environment.

Kristine Sigsbee, Ph.D.
Title/Position
Associate Research Scientist/Engineer
Kristine investigates challenging questions in heliophysics about Earth’s magnetosphere, space weather, geomagnetic storms, and the Van Allen radiation belts.

Joe Sink, Ph.D.
Title/Position
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.

Frederick N. Skiff, Ph.D.
Title/Position
Professor
Frederick N. Skiff is a Professor in the Physics and Astronomy Department at the University of Iowa. His research interests include laser spectroscopy and plasma physics.
Steven Spangler, Ph.D.
Title/Position
Professor Emeritus
Steven R. Spangler's research interests include radio astronomy, plasma astrophysics, galactic interstellar medium, solar corona and solar wind, and basic plasma physics.

Kevin Steele
Title/Position
Application Programmer/Analyst
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