On May 30, 2020, WashU alumnus Bob Behnken and Doug Hurley became the first astronauts in NASA’s history to launch from a commercially built and operated spacecraft, the SpaceX Crew Dragon. For the Demo-2 mission, the two are testing the spacecraft’s transportation system for future missions.
On May 30, 2020, WashU alumnus Bob Behnken and Doug Hurley became the first astronauts in NASA’s history to launch from a commercially built and operated spacecraft, the SpaceX Crew Dragon. For the Demo-2 mission, the two are testing the spacecraft’s transportation system for future missions.
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SpaceX is scheduled for lift off on May 27. Washington University physics alum Robert Behnken, BS 1992, is one of the two astronauts on this mission.
Alumni of the Physics Department have a LinkedIn group, “Washington University in Saint Louis, Physics Department Alumni”. All current and former physics majors, minors, graduate students, and faculty can create a free account and take advantage of the group resources. Members are encouraged to invite connections to join and increase the representation of mid-career members. The group is an information source on career path types (industry, government, and academic) for physics students and a networking tool for established alumni. While physicists can use their skills in many job areas, the group provides a contextual dataset of specific careers achieved by those with a WashU education and credentials. Helpful information for students and soon-to-be graduates includes field-specific job titles, an inventory of skills necessary for success in various job types, as well as networking and contact information.
Join Alumni LinkedIn GroupNoah Berkowitz
Natalia Boettcher
Blake Bordelon
Michael Carovillano
Ryan Chang
Josh Cohen
Julia Cohen
Salena Fessehaye
Matthew Galik
Patrick Gardner
Ben Grobstein
Diane Huxley
Heather Lee
Bohan Lu
Elizabeth Montesano
Taylor Morrison
Coen Needell
Tyler Orden
Jordan Pack
Daniel Pannock
Izabella Pastrana
Abheek Raviprasad
Jacqueline Reu
Jay Schroeder
Jeremy Shapiro
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Jacob Sprague
Ben Strozewski
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Ryan Wahidi
Diego Wahl
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Brendan Haas
Yuhang Deng
Augusto Medeiros Da Rosa
Zhengyu Ma
Sumanta Bandyopadhyay
Mackenzie Atkinson
Maneesh Jeyakumar
Boyi Zhou
Bowen Zhou
Jamie Elias
Seyed Fowad Motahari
Wenshen Song
Mahdi Naghiloo
Shiyuan Gao
Robert Ashcraft
Since receiving my PhD from the Department of Physics at WashU, I have been a postdoctoral research fellow in the Center for Pulmonary Imaging Research at Cincinnati Children’s Hospital. In this role, I’ve harnessed the experience gained during my graduate work to explore novel MRI acquisition and image analysis methods in neonatal patients with prematurity-related or congenital abnormalities of the cardiorespiratory system. Integrated collaboration between biomedical researchers with diverse backgrounds, such as those with a degree in physics, has been crucial in developing cutting-edge imaging techniques to address gaps in knowledge and improve clinical care for these young and complicated patients.
Since graduating from WUPHYS, I have been investigating cortical sensory processing in the mouse whisker system as a postdoctoral researcher at the Georgia Institute of Technology. While my area of research has changed somewhat since graduating (as is the case for most scientists), the skills I acquired at WUPHYS prepared me for success in this new phase of my career and beyond. I learned the fundamental experimental and analytical skills required to design, execute, and interpret the results of experiments aimed at well-defined scientific questions. Further, my advisor focused on developing my scientific writing and presentation skills, which have been crucial for communicating the significance of my work to both the neuroscience community and the public.
After graduating with my PhD in 2016, I accepted a job offer as a postdoctoral research fellow at the University of Queensland and moved to Brisbane, Australia. For the past several years I have worked as an astrophysicist using both numerical simulations and observational data to understand how gravity behaves in the extreme environments found around black holes. I am looking to utilize my skills at taking messy data sets and extracting truths about the universe to more local problems as I begin a position back in St. Louis as a data scientist for Bayer.
After graduating with both my PhD (2015) and Bachelors (2009) in Physics from WashU, I accepted a postdoc at the U.S. Naval Research Laboratory (NRL) in Washington, DC, and became a federal civil servant at NRL shortly thereafter. My training in cosmochemistry and mass spectrometry on the 4th floor, the Laboratory for Space Sciences, has been integral to my success at NRL, where I have developed and built a novel combination secondary ion accelerator mass spectrometer (NAUTILUS). Using the NAUTILUS and correlated microanalytical techniques, I study nuclear, extraterrestrial, and electronic materials, and maintain collaborations with current and former 4th floor scientists.
After graduating from WUPHYS in 2015, I worked as a postdoc associate at the University of Tennessee Knoxville and a guest visitor at Oak Ridge National Laboratory. Since September 2018, I have been a postdoc fellow of the N3AS (Network for Neutrinos, Nuclear Astrophysics, and Symmetries) Collaboration led by UC Berkeley, continuing research on neutron star physics and astrophysics. The PhD training at WUPHYS where I acquired theoretical background knowledge and mathematical modeling skills was vital to my career path, and laid the foundation for many opportunities of my collaboration with other fellow scientists nowadays.
After graduating from WUPHYS, I moved to the University of Maryland doing postdoctoral research in neuroscience. I am currently a senior data scientist, developing machine learning and artificial intelligence applications for insurance. I am also serving as an adjunct instructor at the Henry Edwin Sever Institute within the McKelvey School of Engineering teaching foundations of analytics. WUPHYS was integral in my path because of the solid physics training it provides. I also learned how to apply physics method in areas like neuroscience. The opportunity to work with a group of smart and open-minded people is extremely inspiring.
Since graduating from WUPHYS, I completed a post-doc at the University of California in San Diego where I identified specific neural circuits in the cortex that bind visual information into perceptions. In 2017, I joined the faculty of the Jan and Dan Duncan Neurological Research Institute at Baylor College of Medicine as an Assistant Professor. Here, I apply and develop open-source machine learning algorithms to understand the genetic and circuit dysfunctions that underpin devastating brain disorders like Rett's syndrome and epilepsy. My experimental and theoretical training at WUPHYS provided me with an analytical toolkit and importantly a hypothesis driven methodology which continue to serve me incredibly well.
After graduating in 2010 I continued at WashU as a post doctoral researcher searching for violations of the Equivalence Principle. In 2012 I shifted my focus to teaching, with a particular interest in lab curriculum. Currently I am a Lecturer at Princeton University where I work to create interesting, instructive experiments and improve lab instruction. Additionally, I have started to work with the Atacama Cosmology Telescope and Simons Observatory collaborations to study the Cosmic Microwave Background radiation.
After graduating from WUPHYS in 2009, I moved across Forest Park to the School of Medicine at Washington University to start a postdoc position where I worked on developing diffuse optical imaging technology for noninvasive high fidelity mapping of human brain function. Currently, I am a tenure track Assistant Professor of Radiology investigating new techniques for further advancing optical functional human neuroimaging methods and applying them to studies on early childhood development. WUPHYS was integral in my path because of the unique interdisciplinary opportunities for course work and training that included both theoretical and experimental approaches and spanned mathematical methods of theoretical physics to physics of the eye and physics of the brain. Additionally, weekly barbeques, soccer matches, game nights, and graduate seminars fostered conversations with people at all levels of experience and expertise across disciplines within the department.
Since graduation, I have become a faculty member researching the biophysics of cardiac and skeletal muscles. WUPhys was integral in my path because it offered courses and research options outside the traditional Physics disciplines, but provided me with essential training in quantitative and predictive research skills.
After graduating from WUPHYS in 2006, I moved to Germany to work on models of visual motion processing and computer vision as a Postdoctoral Researcher and Bernstein-Fellow at the Bernstein Center for Computational Neuroscience in Göttingen. In 2009 I received a Ramon y Cajal Fellowship from the Spanish Ministry for Science and Innovation in 2009 and joined the Institut de Robòtica i Informàtica Industrial in Barcelona, Spain, working on computer-vision methods for robotic applications. Since April 2014 I am a Professor for Mathematics in the Life Sciences at the University of Applied Sciences, Koblenz. WUPHYS was integral to my path because it taught me an interdisciplinary approach to research ranging from mathematical methods in theoretical physics to models of complex biological systems.
I graduated from the Washington University Physics Department in 2006 with a thesis on "High-Energy X-Ray and Gamma-Ray Observations of Galaxy Clusters" (advisor: H. Krawczynski). After a post-doctoral position with the Smithsonian Astrophysical Observatory/Fred Lawrence Whipple Observatory in Tucson, AZ, I worked in the Fermi Science Support Center at NASA/GSFC. In 2016 I was hired as a civil servant Research Astrophysicist at the NASA Goddard Space Flight Center where I am now developing gamma-ray instrumentation for future NASA missions. At Washington University, I learned the technical skills needed to develop instrumentation and the understanding that the science leads the development. I am now the Principal Investigator of the Burst Cube mission, a CubeSAT (https://www.cubesat.org) NASA mission which will detect gamma-ray counterparts of Gravitational Wave events (https://arxiv.org/abs/1708.09292).
Since graduating from WUPHYS, I have followed a multidisciplinary and stimulating career trajectory, starting as an associate at McKinsey & Co, one of the top management consulting firms, followed by a stint at fixed-income trading. I spent several years at a technology startup in Washington, DC, developing statistical, machine learning, and high-performance computing models and software. I recently moved to NYC to work as a senior ML scientist at Amazon, and currently lead the Quantitative Research team at Davidson Kempner, a large multi-strategy hedge fund. During my post-academic career, I have managed to stay closely connected to academic research, resulting in many peer-reviewed publications and open-source software packages. My excellent education
at WUPHYS was instrumental in forming my disciplined, pragmatic and independent-minded approach to research and development that has served me very well throughout the years.
Since graduating from Wash U in 2004, I have held two different post-doctoral positions, one at Columbia University and a second at the College of William & Mary. In 2010 I received a tenure-track faculty position at Fordham University in New York City, where I was granted tenure in 2016 and am now an associate professor. In addition to my teaching, I am active in the field of lattice gauge theory, continuing to study Quantum Chromodynamics using numerical techniques.
Since graduating from WASHU in 2004, working on superconductivity under pressure, I have held a postdoctoral position at Harvard University where I studied the phase diagram of hydrogen. In 2010 I received a tenure-track faculty position at University of Utah, where I am currently a tenured associate-professor of Physics and head of the laboratory of high pressure research. I’m very active in the high pressure community and am treasurer of AIRAPT and a co-founder of “Women under pressure” group. WUPHYS was integral in my path, because it provided an excellent educational opportunity and allowed me to become a physicist in a supporting, fun and healthy environment from classroom to laboratory. WASHU provided continuous support for my scientific career and I’m proud of being a WUPHYS graduate!
After earning my Ph.D. in 1997, I took a one-year position at Simmons College (Boston, MA), before moving to Merrimack College (North Andover, MA) in 1998, where I am currently a tenured Associate Professor. I have served as physics department Chair (ongoing since 2010) and as Faculty Senate President (2018-2019, 2019-2020). I will always appreciate WUHPYS and Wash U for providing not only an outstanding academic and cultural environment, but also for the excellent support and reasonable TA
expectations that allowed us to focus on our coursework, research, and dissertations while maintaining some semblance of a balanced life. For me – and I expect, for many others – this made a decisive difference.
I joined the National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL) in 2012 as director of the Hydrogen Technologies and Systems Center. In 2013, I was appointed to my current position as director of NREL’s Center for Integrated Mobility Sciences (formerly known as the Transportation and Hydrogen Systems Center), where I lead a staff of over 150 scientists and engineers developing advanced transportation technologies.
Before my NREL career, I worked at Ford Motor Company, were I held various leadership positions focusing on alternative energy vehicles. At various times, I also worked in product development, safety research, and quality assurance. On the academic front, I held various adjunct faculty and lectureship postitions at Michigan State University and the School for Renewable Energy Science in Iceland.
During my time at WUPHYS I was a teaching assistant for a course on science in society. This was when I first became interested in the environmental implications of energy policy and technology. I consider this to be the start of the path that eventually lead me to my position at the National Renewable Energy Laboratory. My education at WUPHYS gave me a broad and creative approach to problem solving that has allowed me to follow that path successfully.
I live with my wife Trish and daughter Rory on a small horse farm in the foothills outside of Denver.
In 1989, alumnus W. E. Moerner, AB ’75, BS ’75, BS ’75, became the first scientist in the world to measure the light absorption of a single molecule, a task long thought to be impossible. Twenty-five years later in October 2014, Moerner won the Nobel Prize for chemistry for his breakthrough. See the article in The Source.
Dr. Walter Massey (PhD ‘66) received the Vannevar Bush Award from the National Science Foundation. The award honors science and technology leaders who have made substantial contributions to the welfare of the nation through public service in science, technology, and public policy. Massey, chairman of Giant Magellan Telescope Organization and president emeritus of the School of the Art Institute of Chicago and of Morehouse College, was recognized for his truly exceptional lifelong leadership in science and technology. The range of institutions he has led with distinction is astonishing -- from physics, to public policy, to public and private boards, to college president. Massey was a doctoral student at Washington University under Eugene Feenberg.
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