Physics Faculty
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Steven Feller Steve teaches most courses in the undergraduate physics curriculum. His research in physics centers on the atomic structure and physical properties of glass. In this area he has worked with well over a hundred students. With these student colleagues he has published over 130 papers int he refereed literature of the field. Also, he has edited a number of books on glass science. His students and he have given over 200 presentations at well over 100 national and international conferences. Funding of over $7,000,000 has been securred since 1983 from a large number of foundations including the National Science Foundation. He also has a research-level interest in numismatics, the study of the history of money. In this area he hads published over 50 articles, parts of several books, and in 2007 he coauthored (with his daughter) Silent Witnesses: Civilian Camp Money of World War II, now the standard in the field. He has been married more than 40 years to Barbara. They have two daughters Ray Feller and Heidi Berger and grandson Max. |
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Mario Affatigato, Chair Honestly, now: I like to blast glasses with lasers. To be more formal, my personal research interests lie in the area of the optical properties of glasses and the relationship between such properties and the structure of the glass. Glasses of interest to me include heavy metal vanadates, alkali bismuthates, heavy metal oxide glasses, and sol-gel glasses. In particular, my recent work has focused on vanadium-based glasses, that is, those that contain vanadium as a glass former (e.g., lead and bismuth vanadates, barium/calcium vanadates), and also the formation of glasses by unconventional means (e.g., laser aerolevitation). Other recent families we have investigated include calcium silicates (with very high melting points) and alkaline earth aluminates. Now, why do I shoot these glasses up? Because a study of what happens can lead to a better understanding of how they are made up and where their properties come from. The optical properties my students and I investigate include absorption, fluorescence, optical basicity, Raman spectroscopy, FTIR, as well as some interactions of light with matter such as laser-induced desorption and ionization and laser-induced crystallization. This last interest has led to a project involving the determination of the structure of glass using time of flight mass spectroscopy on the ions released by the sample when the laser light strikes it. This method is a different way to try to analyze the glass structure. My teaching interests are varied. I like to try new things out in the classroom, while keeping the heart of the curriculum intact. For instance, I developed and taught a new class title Computer Techniques in Physics, in which the students received a veritable smorgasbord of applications of computers to physics. With spreadsheets we carried out a variety of statistical analysis. We then moved to learning and applying IgorPro to many physical examples and problems. The last third of the course focused on data acquisition and control. The students learn to program and use a Parallax microcontroller hooked up to a stepping motor and a variety of sensors. I have also taught Physics with Legos, history of science courses, seminars in the Honors program, and a new introductory Physics of Natural Disasters first year class. |
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Ugur Akgun Ugur is the newest addition to our department. His research area expands from experimental high energy physics to computational biophysics. He is involved in Compact Muon Solenoid (CMS) experiment at the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) of CERN, in Geneva, Switzerland. The Large Hadron Collider (LHC) is the world's largest and highest-energy particle accelerator. It is expected to address some of the most fundamental questions of physics, advancing the understanding of the deepest laws of nature. Ugur is also member of SELEX and MIPP experiments at Fermi National Laboratory, in Batavia, Illinois. His main expertise is on radiation hard light and particle detectors. Ugur also performs computational biophysics research, via molecular dynamics simulations of membrane proteins and viruses. He is married to Firdevs, and they have a daughter, Duru. |
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| Firdevs Duru Instructor in Physics B.S., Bosphorous University M.S., Ph.D., University of Iowa |
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| James Cottingham Professor of Mathematics and Physics, Emeritus B.A., M.S., University of Chicago M.S., Ph.D., University of Iowa |
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