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UI Physics & Astronomy
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Alumni News
2000sJoseph Evans (BS 2001) is currently a MSTP student at Northwestern University. This fall Ryan Kadow (MS 2001) will be teaching physics in Tanzania with the Peace Corps. He will be training in Arusha (near Kilimanjaro and the Kenyan border) from 11 September - 30 November. The training will mostly be language training in Swahili.
Christina Othon (BS 2000) is a graduate student at the University of Nebraska. She was co-winner of the 2002 Nebraska Sigma Xi Graduate Student Paper Competition. Her research is on the switching dynamics of Langmuir-Blodgett films of the ferroelectric copolymer Poly (Vinylidene Fluoride-Trifluoroethylene). Christina says her research group is looking to control the switching speed, coercive voltage, and domain size of their polymer using radiation, doping or patterning of their copolymer films. Carlton Watson (PhD 2001) is a lecturer in the Department of Physics
at the College of the Bahamas. Under the British Commonwealth system,
a lecturer is equivalent to an assistant professor in the American sense.
1990sYunchia Cheng (PhD 1997) is Manager, Failure Analysis, at JDS Uniphase in San Jose, CA. After graduating from Iowa, Peter Colarco (BS 1993) went on to receive his MS degree in physics from Creighton University (1997) and a PhD in atmospheric sciences from the University of Colorado (2002). He is currently a scientist with the Goddard Earth Science and Technology Program at the University of Maryland Baltimore County in Greenbelt, MD. Jim Johnson (PhD 1990) was appointed chair of the physics department at Ohio Northern University (1995) and received tenure in 1996. He moved back to his home state of Kansas to be closer to family and is currently an associate professor of physics at Emporia State University in Emporia, KS, where he teaches orientation/introduction to engineering, engineering graphics, calculus-based introductory physics, electricity and magnetism (physics), and a variety of other courses. Bianca (Nelson) Keeler (BS 1996) received her PhD degree in applied physics from Stanford University. She and her husband Gordon have taken postdoc positions at Sandia National Laboratory in Albuquerque, NM. Bianca will be working primarily on optical MEMS/nanophotonics research, and Gordon will focus on VCSEL work. After receiving his PhD degree in astrophysics at the University of Minnesota (1997), Henry (Chip) Kobulnicky (BS 1991) has held positions as a Hubble postdoctoral fellow at the University of California Santa Cruz/Lick Observatory (1997-1999) and an associate scientist with the Astronomy Department at the University of Wisconsin (1999-2002). Currently he is an assistant professor in the Department of Physics and Astronomy at the University of Wyoming in Laramie. Joseph Modrick (MS 1994) completed his Ph.D. in medical physics at UW-Madison in 2000. After graduation he was employed by the University of Michigan as research/clinical medical physicist in the Department of Radiation Oncology at University Hospital. In August 2002, he joined the faculty in the Department of Radiation Oncology at the University of Iowa Hospital and Clinics. Jongho Seon (PhD 1996) is Director at SaTReCi in Dae-jon, Rep. of Korea. Nadia Sifri (BS 1997) works with licensing at the Wisconsin Alumni Research Foundation in Madison, WI. 1960sGranville Jesse Smith II (PhD 1969) is CEO of Al Tayyar Energy (ATE), a renewable energy development and finance company sponsored by Prince Moulay Hicham of Morocco. ATE has just constructed the largest Anaerobic Baffled Digester in Asia. Located in Khorat Thailand, the digester produces from cassava waste over 80,000 cubic meters of biogas (65% methane) daily and powers the largest starch factory in Thailand. Their next project is the construction of four 22 MW power plants that burn only rice hulls. |
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The last cosmic ray data from the Iowa instrument on the NASA/Ames Research Center spacecraft Pioneer 10 were received on 27 April 2002 from a heliocentric distance of 80.2 AU (12.0 billion km), following over 30 years of continuous operation since launch on 3 March 1972. This spacecraft was the first to go beyond Mars and the first to make in situ observations of the immense magnetosphere of Jupiter. The companion spacecraft Pioneer 11, launched on 6 April 1973, made the second encounter with Jupiter and the first encounter with Saturn, in 1979, thereby discovering the magnetosphere of that planet. These two spacecraft also yielded a unique body of data on solar energetic particles in the interplanetary medium and especially on the temporal and radial dependences of cosmic ray intensity during nearly three 11-year cycles of solar activity. The latest Pioneer 10 data show that the variable solar wind continues to modulate the intensity of galactic cosmic radiation to at least 80 AU. The location of the modulation boundary is one of the classical challenges of heliospheric physics.
The project manager and lead engineer for the Iowa instruments was Roger Randall.
The following Iowa students earned M.S. and/or Ph.D. degrees based on the Pioneer
10/Pioneer 11 program: Daniel Baker, Tsan-Fu Chen, Jerry Drake, Cynthia Grosskreutz,
Jeffrey Parish, Mark Pesses, Richard Rairden, Davis Sentman, and Michelle Thomsen.
Over 80 published research papers and book chapters have resulted from this
program. Bruce Randall and James Van Allen are continuing the analysis and interpretation
of several features of the Pioneer 10/Pioneer 11 data set.
| Last updated November 17, 2003. © The University of Iowa 2003. All rights reserved. Contact information. Send questions or comments to the webmaster. The Department of Physics and Astronomy is a part of the College of Liberal Arts & Sciences. |
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