MKL People

Faculty

Gerald Seidler(assistant professor): Jerry joined the physics department in late 1996, after receiving a Ph. D. from the University of Chicago and completing a postdoctoral appointment at NEC Research Institute.

Students and Projects

Brandon Chapman (graduate student): Brandon is studying a range of questions related to structural disorder and phase transitions. His experimental work includes both x-ray studies at the PNC-CAT beamline at the Advanced Photon Source and also laser-light scattering studies in the MKL.

Yejun Feng (graduate student): Yejun is studying several applications of inelastic x-ray scattering, including local structure in boron-rich icosahedral compounds, the multipole-effects in scattering, and the VUV dielectric constant of volatile liquids. He has also been involved in several other projects in the group, including work on 1/f noise.

Erin Behne (graduate student): Erin is studying the 3-d structure and micromechanics of disordered materials, such as granular materials and foams. She has also been involved in our group's first ventures into inelastic x-ray scattering.

David Wells (undergraduate student): David is working on software to interpret the 3-d structure of reticulated foams. This software will become a key part of the group's goal to understand the spatial distribution of elastic energy in a compressed elastomeric foam.

Past Personnel and Alumni

Lane Seeley (graduate student 9/97-6/01): Beginning in the Fall of 1997, Lane studied the homogeneous and heterogeneous nucleation of ice from supercooled water. He completed his Ph.D. in the Spring quarter of 2001, and is now an Assistant Professor in the Physics department at Seattle Pacific University.

Timothy Ziemba (graduate student): For his master's thesis, Tim studied cryogenic refrigeration and designed a charcoal-pumped helium-3 refrigerator. After construction, this refrigerator will reach temperatures as low as 0.3 Kelvin. Tim is now employed by Tencor in the San Francisco Bay area.

Gilbert Martinez (undergraduate student): Gilbert worked on data analysis for 3-d x-ray microtomography. His software is a key part of the group's work on granular materials. He started Ph.D. studies in Biophysics at Stanford University in the Autumn of 2001.
Matthew Beerman (undergraduate student): Matt studied the properties of complex materials (i.e. colloids and emulsions) when the solvent is near or beyond a critical point. His work included both laser-light scattering and x-ray studies. He is now employed by Advanced Materials, in Boise Idaho.

Sarah Zaranek (visiting undergraduate student): Sarah was a participant in the department's Research Experience for Undergraduates program in the summer of 1998. She played an important role in our first x-ray microtomography measurments of granular materials. She is now a graduate student in Geophysics at Brown University.

Soren Flexner (undergraduate, 2/97-6/98): Soren designed and constructed capacitance dilatometers as part of an independent study project. Soren started as a graduate student in the physics department at the University of Illinois in Urbana in the Summer of 1998.

Chris Langer (visiting undergraduate): Chris was an undergraduate student visiting the UW for the summer of 1997 through the Physics department's Research Experience for Undergraduates (REU) program . Chris studied the kinetics of pattern formation by chemical reactions in gels, with a particular focus on a simple reaction which leads to fractal agglomerations of precipitate in the gel. His measurements were the first step in a longer term project to use such pattern formation experiments to test the limitations of mean-field theory in undertstanding pattern forming chemical reactions. He expects to finish his undergraduate degree at Seattle Pacific University in the Spring of 1999.

Kevin Yu and Leo Lai (undergraduates): Kevin and Leo (Summer 1997) are wrote image procesing software. Their software was used in analysis of Chris Langer's data; they are computer science majors at the UW.