This fall, the first Walter Massey Fellow will walk through Argonne National Laboratory doors. The fellowship’s namesake, Dr. Walter E. Massey, became the lab’s first African American director in the early 1980s.
Dante Lauretta, PhD ’97, principal investigator of NASA's OSIRIS-REx mission, returned to WashU last month to deliver the McDonnell Center for the Space Sciences’ 2022 Robert M. Walker Distinguished Lectures.
Kevin McKeegan, PhD ’87, has had a notable, storied career measuring the tiniest particles of the solar system.
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.
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During my time as a PhD student in the Wash U physics department, under the supervision of Professor Mark Alford, I studied weak interactions and viscosity in the extreme environment created when two neutron stars merge. After graduation, I moved on to a postdoctoral position at the Institute for Nuclear Theory (INT) at the University of Washington. At the INT, I have continued studying bulk viscosity, but am also investigating novel nuclear pasta phases as well as how to use neutron star mergers to constrain physics beyond the standard model. At Wash U, I enjoyed co-hosting "grad sem" for a year, and now I run two internal seminar series at the INT.
After graduating with my Ph.D. in high energy astrophysics in 2018 under the supervision of Prof. Krawczynski, I accepted a postdoctoral offer at Max-Planck Institute for Gravitational Physics in Germany and worked there for four years. In the past few years, I have worked on computation, data analysis, and simulation in astrophysics together with experimental astrophysics. As I enjoyed my time at Washington University, I came back there for my second postdoc to work on improving X-ray mirrors for future astrophysics missions.
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 (advisor H. Krawczynski), 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 and a guest visitor at Oak Ridge National Laboratory. In 2018, I joined the multi-institutional N3AS (Network for Neutrinos, Nuclear Astrophysics, and Symmetries) Collaboration led by UC Berkeley. During my time as an N3AS fellow, I spent the initial two years at Ohio University and later at the Institute for Nuclear Theory, University of Washington. In 2022, I moved to Shanghai and started a tenure-track faculty position at the T.D. Lee Institute, Particle and Nuclear Physics Division. Here, my research interests revolve around interdisciplinary studies in nuclear astrophysics and multi-messenger astronomy. 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 exciting opportunities of collaboration that I have had with researchers worldwide.
After graduating from WashU physics in 2014 (undergrad advisor H. Krawczynski), I continued to study astroparticle physics in graduate school at The Ohio State University. At OSU, as an NSF Graduate Research Fellow, I studied ultra-high energy neutrinos with the radio detection technique, specifically the Askaryan Radio Array experiment. This included a month-long deployment to the South Pole in Antarctica to commission new detector technology. After defending my PhD in 2019, I started an NSF Astronomy and Astrophysics Postdoctoral Fellowship at Michigan State University. At MSU, I continued my work on ARA, and started work on the IceCube experiment; I also spend time designing future experiments like IceCube-Gen2. In 2023, I will start as an Assistant Professor at the University of Maryland, College Park. My work lives at the intersection of analysis, simulation, and hardware, and I enjoy understanding an experiment end-to-end, and studying the large and complicated big data created by neutrino telescopes.
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.
Timothy Mitchell is an Assistant Professor of Radiation Therapy Physics in the Radiation Oncology department at Wash U. He earned a PhD in Physics in 2011 from Washington University and a MS in medical physics from the University of Missouri in 2014. After completing his medical physics residency at Stanford School of Medicine, he joined the faculty at WashU in 2016. His academic and research interests include using fMRI to study cortical networks in the presence of tumors and using image analysis to determine cutout factors for electron cutouts.
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.
Four of five of Brian's degrees were earned at Washington University in St. Louis (BS Physics/BA Mathematics 1996, AM Physics 2001, and PhD Physics 2008), with an outlier (MS in Nuclear Engineering 2000) from the University of Maryland - College Park. Apart from graduate studies at Maryland and a couple of years in an industry job in California, Brian's academic and professional career has been dominated by his work at Washington University, and in particular by the Trans-Iron Galactic Element Recorder family of instruments and ultra-heavy Galactic cosmic rays. Brian worked on the original TIGER instrument as an undergraduate research assistant for nearly three years and supported the first stratospheric-balloon flight from Lynn Lake, Manitoba, Canada in 1995. As a graduate student, his dissertation project involved analysis of the combined data from 2001-2002 and 2003-2004 Antarctic flights of the long-duration balloon version of TIGER. Returning to Washington University as a postdoc, Brian supported the successor SuperTIGER instrument while working on the Calorimetric Electron Telescope (CALET) experiment on the International Space Station (ISS) since 2015 and the Antarctic Impulsive Transient Antenna (ANITA) flown from Antarctica in 2013-2014 and 2016-2017. Brian helped lead the SuperTIGER-2 Antarctic campaigns in 2017-2018, 2018-2019, and 2019-2020 and took over as Principal Investigator in late 2018. He was promoted to Research Associate Professor of Physics in 2022 and is the principal investigator of the just selected Trans-Iron Galactic Element Recorder for the International Space Station (TIGERISS) NASA Astrophysics Pioneers experiment, with an anticipated launch in 2026. Brian is also institutional PI for the ANITA successor Payload for Ultrahigh Energy Observations (PUEO) that was selected in the first Pioneers round with a planned Antarctic flight in 2024-2025.
After receiving my Ph.D. in computational astrophysics under the supervision of Dr. Wai-Mo Suen in 2008, I joined the Center for Computation & Technology at Louisiana State University as a postdoctoral associate and later as a research scientist. During my time there, I continued my research on a computational framework for numerical relativity, which eventually evolved into the Einstein Toolkit - a community software platform for relativistic astrophysics and gravitational physics. In 2016, I moved to Texas A&M University where I became a tenure-track assistant professor in the Department of Visualization in 2021. Since then, I have focused on developing numerical algorithms, data-driven models, scientific machine learning methods, and digital twins. Thanks to the rigorous training I received in theoretical astrophysics and scientific computing at WUPHYS/WUGRAV, I have been able to stay at the forefront of emerging fields and develop new methods for solving complex scientific and engineering problems.
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.
James J. Hamlin received his PhD in 2007. The title of his dissertation was “Superconductivity Studies at Extreme Pressure.” From his research in Dr. Schilling's research group at WashU, 17 scientific publications emerged. In 2008 he joined the famous group of M. B. Maple at the University of California, San Diego as a Postdoctoral Researcher. His work in this group was so successful that he was awarded an Assistant Professorship in 2012 in the Department of Physics at the University of Florida where he was granted tenure in 2018. His expertise in the area of superconductivity has gained him worldwide respect. His group's research is directed towards utilizing a combination of materials synthesis, ambient pressure characterization, and high pressure and high magnetic field measurements to advance understanding of novel and potentially useful electronic and magnetic materials.
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
See also: https://youtu.be/KNfiZDke8OQ
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.
Andrew L. Cornelius received his Ph.D. degree in James Schilling's group in 1996 with his dissertation titled “Investigations of Anomalous Ferromagnetism under High Hydrostatic Pressure in a Diamond-Anvil Cell”. After a year at the University of California, Irvine, he continued as a Postdoctoral Research Assistant until 1999 at the Los Alamos National Laboratory. He then joined the faculty of the Physics Department of the University of Nevada, Las Vegas as Assistant Professor of Physics where his tenure was approved in 2004. Since 2010 he has been a Professor of Physics & Astronomy at this university. In 2016 he was appointed Director of the High Pressure Science and Engineering Center (HiPSEC).
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 positions 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.
Much of what scientists now know about the composition of the early solar system is thanks to Kevin McKeegan, PhD ’87, who, over nearly four decades of research, has analyzed everything that he could get his hands on, from microscopic cometary dust, to asteroids, lunar rocks, and even samples of the sun. McKeegan is a professor at UCLA, a member of the NAS, and the 2018 recipient of the J. Lawrence Smith Medal of the NAS. Read more about McKeegan.
After receiving his PhD in 1990, Gabe worked as a postdoc at University of Minnesota, then as a visiting professor at the University of St. Andrews (Scotland), before becoming the Ames Professor of Physics at Illinois Wesleyan University. He is currently in the first of his four years in the "presidential chain" of the American Association of Physics Teachers (AAPT), which supports teaching at all levels (including grad school). He was elected Director at Large of the AAPT in 2022.
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.
I attended WU from 1951-54 and obtained an AB in physics and mathematics at WU in 1954. I obtained my Ph.D. from Cornell in 1959, and was a member of the Physics Department at the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor from January 1959 until my retirement in June 2006. I am still a member of the MiniBooNE neutrino experiment which started in 2000. I was very active in the experiment in its early years and I still take part in the biweekly meetings for some final publications from the experiment. The experiment is led by a former student of mine William Louis, now at Los Alamos. An article written by the MiniBooNE collaboration was recently accepted for publication in Physical Review Letters, "MiniBooNE and MicroBooNE combined fit to a 3+1 sterile neutrino."
My book, "Probability and Statistics in the Physical Sciences," published by Springer-Verlag is now in its third edition and may be of some interest to the people involved in your initiative aimed at bolstering capabilities in data analysis and digital technologies.
I now live in Union City California in an active retirement center.
"College was my chance to eagerly explore my interest in science. The physics department reinforced my passion for physics, allowing for a broad survey of its many subfields, most of which were previously completely foreign to me."
―Julia CohenB.A., 2019Did you miss the reunion? You can still catch up with former classmates and professors
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