Speakers

Keynote Speaker

Dr. Fabiola Gianotti
Dr. Fabiola Gianotti became the first woman to hold the position of director-general at CERN when she was appointed in 2016. Before this, Dr. Gianotti was elected as the project leader (“spokesperson”) of the ATLAS collaboration at CERN. More…

Plenary Speakers

Yari Golden-Castaño
Yari Golden-Castaño is a systems engineer at MIT Lincoln Laboratory working on development for optical communication systems. She is also one of 100 candidates from around the world for the Mars One Project – the first human settlement of Mars. Yari graduated from Smith College with a bachelor’s degree of science in engineering and a minor in physics.  More…

Moureen Kemei
Moureen Kemei, Ph.D.  is a Module Engineer at Intel Corporation. Moureen earned her bachelor’s degree in Physics at Mount Holyoke College and went on to a Ph.D. in material science at the University of California, Santa Barbara, where she was awarded the American Physical Society’s Richard L. Greene Dissertation Award in 2014.  More…

Nergis Mavalvala
Professor Nergis Mavalvala joined the Physics faculty at MIT in January 2002. Before that, she was a postdoctoral associate and then a research scientist at Caltech, working on the Laser Interferometric Gravitational Wave Observatory (LIGO). She has been involved with LIGO since her early years in graduate school at MIT.  More…

Kelsey Thiem
Kelsey Thiem earned her Ph.D. in Social Psychology from the University of Iowa and is currently a postdoctoral research scholar in Dr. Nilanjana Dasgupta’s Implicit Social Cognition Lab at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst. Kelsey’s research focuses on the ways in which stereotypes serve as identity threats. More…

Workshop Leaders and Panelists

Alicia Aarnio
Alicia Aarnio is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Physics and Astronomy at the University of North Carolina Greensboro (UNCG). Using observational and computational methods, she studies stellar magnetic fields, their role in star-disk systems, and on stellar evolution. She serves on the the University’s Chancellor’s Advisory Committee on Equity… More…

Katherine (Kathy) Aidala
Katherine Aidala is the chair of Physics and the chair of Engineering at Mount Holyoke College. She specializes in Condensed matter physics and nanoscience. She enjoys teaching at all levels of the curriculum, working to engage every student to promote fundamental understanding of the material and appreciation for the relevant applications. More…

Stevie Bergman
Stevie Bergman is an observational cosmologist and Ph.D. student in physics at Princeton University under Professor William Jones. More specifically, she works on the SPIDER-2 instrument which consists of six telescopes all aiming to measure the polarization in the Cosmic Microwave Background (CMB). More…

Elizabeth Boulton
Elizabeth Boulton recently graduated from Yale University with her PhD in physics. She was part of the Large Underground Xenon experiment, which seeks to directly detect dark matter using liquid xenon as the detector target material. She built and maintained critical systems for the LUX detector. More…

Laura Bradley
Laura Bradley completed a Ph.D. in Chemical Engineering at the University of Southern California working with Prof. Malancha Gupta. As a graduate student, she was supported by a National Science Foundation Graduate Research Fellowship and the Viterbi School of Engineering/Chevron Corporation University Partnership Program. More…

Eryn Cook
Eryn Cook’s research focuses on cold atoms and atomic spectroscopy. At Smith College, her research in the Williams lab centers on precision spectroscopy of atomic beryllium-9 to verify quantum-electrodynamic energy-level calculations. Eryn received her bachelor’s degree in physics at the University of Washington, where she worked… More…

Moumita Dasgupta
Moumita Dasgupta is a Lecturer at Department of Physics at Smith College. She was a teaching fellow at Amherst College prior to this appointment. Passionate about undergraduate teaching, she adapts a combination of traditional pedagogical styles and more modern active learning, project-based learning and design thinking methodologies. More…

Anthony (Tony) Dinsmore
Anthony Dinsmore is a Professor of Physics at the University of Massachusetts Amherst.  His group studies the statistical mechanics of soft matter: colloids, vesicles, emulsions, nanoparticle suspensions and other squishy things. Using this knowledge, his group applies this to develop materials with controlled structure at the nanometer scale.

Nalini Easwar
Nalini Easwar is a Professor at Smith College. Her research is in the field of complex fluids, specifically in the study of dry dense granular flows. In her lab, described by her students as an interesting beach, students work on exploring flows of grains from 2D and 3D hoppers, studying aspects of stress propagation and velocity. Techniques involve video imaging… More…

Taviare Hawkins
Prof. Taviare Hawkins is a native of Chicago and spent the first half of her life in the Midwest. She attended the University of Iowa in Iowa City, Iowa, where she received my BS in Physics and a minor in African American Studies. She left the world of academia for 3 years, moved out east to the island of Manhattan, where she became a Real Estate Asset Manager… More…

Kannan Jagannathan
Prof. Jagannathan had spent his entire professional career as an Amherst College physics professor, since 1981. Along the way, he had chaired the New England section of the American Physical Society and worked for six years as assistant editor of the American Journal of Physics. His research interests include theoretical particle physics, field theory… More…

Katharine (Kate) E. Jensen
Assistant Professor Katharine E. Jensen joined the faculty at Williams College in Fall 2017. She earned her A.B. in Physics at Princeton in 2004, then spent two years as a researcher at MIT Lincoln Laboratory before going on to a Ph.D. in Physics at Harvard in 2013 studying structures and defects in hard-sphere colloidal crystals and glasses. More…

Valerie Joseph
Valerie Joseph received her Ph.D. from the University of Massachusetts in cultural anthropology where she researched the enduring legacies of British colonialism and African heritage memory among the members of the African diaspora in Carriacou Grenada.  She mapped how Black girls’ musical play reflected both the detrimental internalization… More…

Courtney Lannert
Prof. Courtney Lannert’s research is in the field of theoretical condensed matter physics, and she studies collective quantum-mechanical phenomena using both numerical and analytical tools. Her recent research has included studies of high-temperature superconductivity, the quantum properties of ultra-cold atoms… More…

Wendy Laurin
Wendy Laurin graduated from Smith College with a double major in Astronomy and Physics. She spent 30 years in the photonics business at a publishing company that produced the leading industry publications. She worked with both companies and universities and participated in various industry organizations including; serving as the president … More…

Emily Maher
Dr. Emily Maher is the Chair and a Professor of Physics at MCLA in North Adams, where she has been for the past 12 years. She received her PhD from the University of Minnesota, Minneapolis. Her research focus is experimental particle physics with an emphasis on neutrinos. She is currently studying neutrino scattering at Fermilab. More…

Verena Martinez Outschoorn
Verena Martinez Outschoorn is an Assistant Professor in the Physics department at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst. Her research is in experimental high energy physics, focusing on the Large Hadron Collider at CERN. She is currently a member of the ATLAS Collaboration and has previously been a member of the CMS Collaboration. More…

Hadassah Mativetsky
Hadassah Mativetsky started as a Software Quality Engineer at Universal Instruments in September 2015. Prior to working as an Engineer, Hadassah was the Evolutionary Studies (EvoS) Coordinator at Binghamton University. Between her BA in Mathematics and her MS in Systems Science she worked many odd jobs, volunteered and traveled the world. More…

Jeffrey Mativetsky
Jeffrey Mativetsky is an Associate Professor of Physics and Materials Science at Binghamton University (State University of New York) where he leads the Organic Electronics and Solar Cell Laboratory and is the Director of the Research Experiences for Undergraduates Program in Renewable Energy Generation and Storage. More…

Genevieve de Mijolla
Genevieve (Genna) joined GE Energy Consulting in 2016 as an Application Engineer in the Power System Strategy group. In this role, she serves both internal and external clients, consulting on wholesale electric power market economics. Genna studied German energy laws and their impact on energy storage penetration in the German power grid. More…

Kerstin Nordstrom
Kerstin Nordstrom is a Clare Boothe Luce Assistant Professor of Physics at Mount Holyoke College. After majoring in physics and mathematics at Bryn Mawr College, she did her Ph.D. work at the University of Pennsylvania, followed by a postdoc at the University of Maryland. Her research is in soft matter physics. More…

Shana Passonno
Shana Passonno is the founding Director of the Graduate School Office of Professional Development. Previously, she served as the Managing Director of the UMass Amherst Institute for Cellular Engineering, where she designed and delivered programming for graduate (NSF IGERT) and undergraduate (NSF REU) training programs. More…

Jenny Podel
Jenny Podel is a Smith College graduate, Bachelors of Arts in Physics, Masters in Education. She has been the physics teacher for 5 years at Northampton High School teaching all of the available AP courses. For the past three years Jenny has worked to grade AP exams, and this year is working with CollegeBoard. More…

Michael Ramsey-Musolf
Michael Ramsey-Musolf is a Professor in the Physics Department at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst, and the Director of the Amherst Center for Fundamental Interactions. His research interests include theoretical physics at the interface of nuclear physics, high energy physics, and cosmology. More…

Jennifer Ross
Jennifer Ross is a Professor at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst. The Ross Lab is broadly interested in how cells autonomously sense, decide, and respond to produce motion, force, and work. The Ross Lab focuses on biological systems in order to learn fundamental physics principles of how they are able to act autonomously. More…

Jake Shechter
Jake Shechter is a fifth-year physics graduate student at the University of Massachusetts Amherst who has teaching experience as both an undergraduate and graduate student and aspires to teach physics after defending his dissertation.

 

Aimee Shore
Aimee Shore graduated in December 2018 with a PhD in physics from Michigan State University. Her PhD research was in the area of psychoacoustics, which combines acoustics and the psychology of hearing. The focus of her research was the human auditory system.  The focus of her research was on the human auditory system’s ability to squelch… More… 

Vesna Stantic
Vesna Stanic is a physicist with research experience in academia, government, and industry.
She applies a wide range of synchrotron X-ray and Neutron methods to study
biophysical and biochemical materials. Her recent research encompasses cosmetics, with a focus on the characterization of hair; in this process… More…

Vivian Stojanoff
Vivian Stojanoff is a physicist at the National Synchrotron Light Source II (NSLS II). The NSLS II is a large Facility that “generates” light that spans from infrared light to x-rays light. Working at a synchrotron facility she has the opportunity to study a wide range of materials, biological, chemical, physical, geological, etc using different methods. More…

Colleen Tartow
Dr. Colleen Tartow is an expert and leader in analytics, big data, and data engineering.  She has leveraged her extensive experience in designing data pipelines from intake and warehouses through end-state analytics environments in a variety of applications. Dr. Tartow holds a Ph.D. in Astrophysics from the University of California at Santa Barbara. More…

Lyubov Titova
Lyubov Titova is an Assistant Professor of Physics at Worcester Polytechnic Institute. She received her Physics Ph. D. in 2005 from the University of Notre Dame. She then went on to do a postdoc at the University of Cincinnati in 2005, working on spatially- and time-resolved photoluminescence imaging of semiconductor nanowires. More…

Maria Torres Arango
Maria Torres Arango is a post-doctoral researcher at Brookhaven National Laboratory. She seeks to understand the fundamental processing-properties relationships governing materials in 3D printing processes. Maria obtained her PhD in Materials Science and Engineering from West Virginia University in 2017.  More…

Jennie Traschen
Jennie Traschen is a Professor of Physics at UMass Amherst and a Fellow of the APS. Her research is in theoretical classical and quantum gravity, with an emphasis on black hole thermodynamics, cosmology, and most recently, cosmological black holes. She started at UMass in 1989, following postdoctoral research at UCSB and University of Chicago… More…

Lori Tuominen
Lori Tuominen is a coach and educator whose practice is steeped in positive ways of being. She teaches an online course at Champlain College called Foundations of Positive Organizational Change. She and her husband, Mark, have taught a First Year Seminar course together at UMass Amherst called Positive Psychology: the Science of Happiness... More…

Mark Tuominen
Mark Tuominen is a Professor of Physics and Associate Dean of Research and Innovation at UMass Amherst. He performs research in experimental condensed matter physics and nanotechnology. His research has helped advance the science and applications of nanoscale charge transport, magnetism, bioelectronics, superconductivity… More…

Ileana Vasu
Dr. Ileana Vasu is Professor of Mathematics at Holyoke Community College, where she also chairs the Mathematics Department. Her teaching duties include teaching Calculus, Linear Algebra, Differential Equations, and other undergraduate mathematics courses. She is Principal Investigator for the NSF grant funded S-STEM Scholars Program. More…

Doreen Weinberger
Doreen Weinberger’s field of interest is optical physics—in particular nonlinear optics and optical fibers. She arrived at Smith College in 1991 after seven years in the engineering and computer science department at the University of Michigan.  More…