Fall 2022 Colloquia
Colloquia are at 3:30 - 4:45 Pacific time. This semester, most colloquia will be in-person, on-campus in Thornton Hall 411. Some colloquia will be online and streamed via Zoom. Note that in-person, on-campus colloquia will not be streamed online.
| Date | Speaker and Title |
|---|---|
| 08/29/2022 | Physics & Astronomy Meet-and-Greet Patio in front of Thornton Hall |
| 09/05/2022 | Labor Day (No colloquium) |
| 09/12/2022 | SF State Physics & Astronomy Faculty Mini-talks I AKM Newaz, W. Man, J. Greensite, C. Sakari, J. Brewer |
| 09/19/2022 | SF State Physics & Astronomy Faculty Mini-talks II J. Barranco, H. Xu, K. Coble, A. Cool |
| 09/26/2022 | Dr. Santosh KC (Asst. Prof., San José State U.) "Surface and Interface Properties of 2D Materials" |
| 10/03/2022 | Andy Mayo (Ph.D. candidate, U.C. Berkeley) "Detecting and Characterizing Small Exoplanets in Diverse Environments" |
| 10/10/2022 | Sarah Wagner (Ph.D. candidate, U. Würzburg) "The gravitationally lensed blazar PKS 1830-211" |
| 10/17/2022 | Dr. Phiala Shanahan (Assoc. Prof., MIT) “From quarks to nuclei: computing the Standard Model" |
| 10/24/2022 | Dr. Brianne Gutmann (Asst. Prof., San José State U.) “Reframing physics student preparation: supporting conversation about ethics, science, and society in the classroom" |
| 10/31/2022 | Dr. Eileen Gonzales (51 Pegasi b Fellow, Cornell U.) "Read Between the Spectral Lines: Characterizing Substellar Atmospheres" |
| 11/07/2022 | Dr. Matthew Lawlor (Software Engineer, Google) "Tech Careers and the Physical Sciences" |
| 11/14/2022 | Dr. Aaron Meyer (Postdoc, U.C. Berkeley/LBNL) "Informing Neutrino Oscillation Experiments with Lattice QCD" |
| 11/21/2022 | Thanksgiving Week (No colloquium) |
| 11/28/2022 | SF State REU Student Mini-talks Gabriel Zarazua Muñoz (B.S. Physics/Astrophysics) & Preet Agnihotri (M.S. Astronomy & Astrophysics) |
| 12/05/2022 | Dr. Nicole Adelstein (Assoc. Prof., SF State) "Simulating Li-diffusion in amorphous and polycrystalline LLZO" |
| 12/12/2022 | Finals Week (No colloquium) |
Fall 2021 Colloquia
Colloquia will be broadcast over Zoom from 3:30-4:45 PM Pacific Time. Prof. Charli Sakari is the Colloquium Organizer for Fall 2021. Zoom link will be emailed to the Dept. of Physics & Astronomy listserv. Others may contact the Dept. for the link.
| Date | Speaker and Title |
|---|---|
| 08/23/2021 | Welcome Meet-and-Greet |
| 08/30/2021 | SFSU Faculty Mini-Talks I |
| 09/06/2021 | Labor Day (No colloquium.) |
| 09/13/2021 | SFSU Faculty Mini-Talks II |
| 09/20/2021 | Dr. Garima Singh (Postdoc, Herzberg Astronomy & Astrophysics Research Centre) "How to Directly Image Exoplanets" |
| 09/27/2021 | Dr. Jennifer Lukes (Prof., U. Pennsylvania) "Atomistic Transport Processes in Energy Conversion and Thermal Management" |
| 10/04/2021 | Dr. Aaron Maxwell (Data Scientist, Paladin AI) "From the Stars Above to the People Below" |
| 10/11/2021 | Dr. Rekha Gautam (Senior Scientist, Tyndall National Institute) "Optical Assessment of Red Blood Cells Quality" |
| 10/18/2021 | Dr. Jorge Moreno (Asst. Prof., Pomona College) "Galaxies Lacking Dark Matter" |
| 10/25/2021 | Dr. Benjamin Hendricks (Software Engineer, SoundSpace Analytics) "From Sea to Sky: applying physics to discover the universe above and below" |
| 11/01/2021 | Dr. Robert Fisher (Prof., U. Massachusetts, Dartmouth) "The Thermonuclear Explosions of White Dwarfs and the Stars Which They Formed From" |
| 11/08/2021 | Dr. Robert Crockett (Software Engineer, Creare) “Exploring the Options: Scientific and Engineering Simulation Software Development in Industry, Academia, and In-Between” |
| 11/15/2021 | Dr. Kai Wang (Postdoc, Stanford U.) "Non-Hermitian topological photonics in synthetic dimension" |
| 11/22/2021 | Thanksgiving Week (No colloquium.) |
| 11/29/2021 | Dr. Camille Avestruz (Asst. Prof., U. Michigan) "Computational Models for Cluster-based Cosmology" |
| 12/06/2021 | Dr. Shu Jia (Asst. Prof., GA Tech & Emory U.) “Toward Systems Biophotonics: Imaging Biology across High Dimensions and Scales” |
| 12/13/2021 | Finals Week (No colloquium.) |
Fall 2020 Colloquia
Colloquia will be broadcast over Zoom from 4:00-5:15 PM Pacific Time. Prof. Charli Sakari is the Colloquium Organizer for Fall 2020. Zoom link will be emailed to the Dept. of Physics & Astronomy listserv. Others may contact the Dept. for the link.
| Date | Speaker and Title |
|---|---|
| 08/24/2020 | Welcome Meet-and-Greet |
| 08/31/2020 | Dr. Sylvester James "Jim" Gates (Prof., Brown University) "Two Einsteinian Paths & My Life" |
| 09/07/2020 | Labor Day (No colloquium.) |
| 09/14/2020 | SFSU Faculty Mini-Talks I |
| 09/21/2020 | SFSU Faculty Mini-Talks II |
| 09/28/2020 | Dr. Jonathan Hu (Assoc. Prof., Baylor University) "TERS imaging of single stranded DNA" |
| 10/05/2020 | SFSU Student REU Mini-Talks: Hector Ramirez-Serrano, Ami Dabokemp, and Imani Ware |
| 10/12/2020 | Dr. Joseph Barranco (Chair of PHYS/ASTR, SFSU) "Applying to Graduate School" |
| 10/19/2020 | Dr. Samantha Lawler (Asst. Prof., U. of Regina) "Planet 9 or Planet Nein Discoveries in the Outer Solar System" |
| 10/26/2020 | Ani Chiti (Ph.D. candidate, MIT) "Finding the most ancient, metal-poor stars in the Milky Way's satellite galaxies" |
| 11/02/2020 | Dr. Thomas Blum (Prof., U. Connecticut) "The muon anomalous magnetic moment and the hunt for new physics" |
| 11/09/2020 | Dr. Erika Holmbeck (Postdoc, Rochester Institute of Technology) "The Astrophysical Production of the Heaviest Elements" |
| 11/16/2020 | Dr. Gleb Finkelstein (Prof., Duke U.) "Superconducting devices in the quantum Hall regime in graphene" |
| 11/23/2020 | Thanksgiving Week (No colloquium.) |
| 11/30/2020 | Dr. Nathaniel Gabor (Assoc. Prof., U.C., Riverside) "Electronic Gases and Liquids in Atom-Thin Solids" |
| 12/07/2020 | Jamie Law-Smith (Ph.D. candidate, U.C. Santa Cruz) TBD |
| 12/14/2020 | Finals Week (No colloquium.) |
Fall 2019 Colloquia
Colloquia take place in Thornton Hall Room 411 (unless otherwise noted). Colloquia start at 4:05 PM with light refreshments being served at 4:00. Prof. John Brewer is the Colloquium Organizer for Fall 2019. Refreshments provided by the SFSU Physics & Astronomy Club. Pizza lunch with students and speakers takes place in Thornton 115 or 123, 12:30-1:30 PM.
| Date | Speaker and Title |
|---|---|
| 08/26/2019 | No colloquium (First Day of Classes!) |
| 09/02/2019 | No colloquium (Labor Day!) |
| 09/09/2019 (Blakeslee Room) | Faculty Research Introductions I followed by Dept. Meet & Greet with refreshments (5-7 PM)
|
| 09/16/2019 | Faculty Research Introductions II |
| 09/23/2019 | Dr. Rebecca Jensen-Clem (Miller Fellow, U.C. Berkeley) "Exoplanet Imaging with Extremely Large Telescopes: A New Era of Detailed Exoplanet Characterization" |
| 09/30/2019 | Undergrad presentations from summer REU internships |
| 10/07/2019 | Dr. Rachel Bezanson (Asst. Prof. U. Pittsburgh) "The Formation of Massive Galaxies: Deep, High-redshift Spectroscopy from the LEGA-C Survey and Beyond" |
| 10/14/2019 | Dr. Thomas Hartman (Asst. Prof. Cornell U.) "Black Holes, Causalities & Critical Phenomena" |
| 10/21/2019 | No colloquium. |
| 10/28/2019 | Dr. Gina Quan (Asst. Prof. SJSU) "Cultivating Institutional Change in University STEM Departments" |
| 11/04/2019 | Dr. Marta Bryan (51 Pegasi B Fellow, U.C. Berkeley) "Exploring the Formation and Evolution of Planetary Systems" |
| 11/11/2019 | No colloquium (Veterans' Day!) |
| 11/18/2019 | No colloquium |
| 11/25/2019 | No colloquium (Thanksgiving Week Break!) |
| 12/02/2019 | Dr. Alexandra Miller (Asst. Prof. Sonoma State U.) "Symmetry: From Noether to the Higgs" |
| 12/09/2019 | Dr. Ian Czekala (Sagan Fellow, U.C. Berkeley) "Disks & Dynamics of Protoplanetary Systems" |
| 12/10/2019, 4:30-6:30, Blakeslee Room | Rick Davis (Asst. Dir. Science & Exploration, NASA) "Looking Ahead to the Human Exploration of Mars" |
Fall 2018 Colloquia
Colloquia take place in Thornton Hall Room 411 (unless otherwise noted). Colloquia generally start at 4:10 PM with light refreshments being served at 4:00.
| Date | Speaker and Title |
|---|---|
| 08/27/2018 | No colloquium |
| 09/03/2018 | Labor Day (No colloquium) |
| 09/10/2018 | Dr. Cheng Gong (Postdoc, UC Berkeley Physics) "Magnetic 2D Materials: Discovery, Challenges and Opportunities" |
| 09/17/2018 | Faculty research introductions I (Coble, Jensen, Newaz, Xu) Followed by Physics & Astronomy Club Meet & Greet, 5-7 pm, food & drinks provided |
| 09/24/2018 | Faculty research introductions II (Cool, Greensite, Mahdavi, Man) |
| 10/01/2018 | Dr. Shambhu Ghimire (P.I., Pulse Institute at Stanford U) "Novel Ultrafast Probe for Materials" |
| 10/08/2018 | Dr. Cassandra Paul (Asst. Prof., San Jose State U Physics) "Grading Practices in Introductory Physics: Hidden Inequities" |
| 10/15/2018 | Dr. Aaron Roodman (Professor, Stanford U Physics) "The Fastest Eye on the Sky: The Large Synoptic Survey Telescope" |
| 10/22/2018 | Dr. Daniel Weisz (Asst. Prof., UC Berkeley Astronomy) "The Lowest-Mass Galaxies In the Early Universe: Insights from the Local Group" |
| 10/29/2018 | What are REU Programs? |
| 10/15/2018 | Dr. Yat Li (Professor, UC Santa Cruz Chemistry) "Hierarchical porous carbon structures for supercapacitors" |
| 11/12/2018 | Veteran's Day (No colloquium) |
| 11/19/2018 | Thanksgiving Break (No colloquium) |
| 11/26/2018 | Dr. Eric Ayars (Professor, CSU Chico Physics) CANCELLED due to wild fires near Chico |
| 12/03/2018 | Dr. Jessica Lu (Asst. Prof., UC Berkeley Astronomy) "Star Formation in Extreme Environments" |
| 12/10/2018 | Dr. Courtney Dressing (Asst. Prof., UC Berkeley Astronomy) "Exploring Planetary Systems Orbiting Nearby Stars" |
Fall 2017 Colloquia
All colloquia will take place in Thornton Hall Room 411 unless otherwise noted. Colloquia generally start at 4:05 PM with refreshments being served at 3:50.
| Date | Speaker and Title |
| 10/9 | No colloquium |
| 10/16 | Meng Xiao (Stanford) |
| 10/23 | No colloquium |
| 10/30 | Ehsan Kahtami (SJSU) |
| 11/6 | Linda Shore (PASP) |
| 11/13 | Andrew Berkley (D-Wave Systems) |
| 11/20 | No colloquium (fall break) |
| 11/27 | Jairo Velasco (UCSC) |
| 12/4 | Christopher Weber (Santa Clara U) |
Spring 2022 Colloquia
Colloquia will be broadcast over Zoom from 3:30 – 4:45 PM Pacific Time. Professor John Brewer is the Colloquium Organizer for Spring 2022. Zoom link will be emailed to the Dept. of Physics & Astronomy listserv. Others may contact the department for the link.
| Date | Speaker and Title |
|---|---|
| 01/24/2022 | "Special seminar for undergraduate majors: REUs (Research Experience for Undergraduates) and how to apply" |
| 01/31/2022 | Dr. Anne Abramson (Editor, Annual Reviews) "Make Your Own Off-Ramp: Finding Your Way After Grad School" |
| 02/07/2022 | Samuel Cabot (Ph.D. candidate, Yale U.) "Hidden Low-Mass Exoplanet Populations" |
| 02/14/2022 | Dr. Joanna Behrman (Asst. Public Historian, AIP) "When Physics was a Girl's Subject" |
| 02/21/2022 | No colloquium.
|
| 02/28/2022 | Dr. Noemie Globus (Postdoctoral Fellow, U.C. Santa Cruz) "The Chiral Puzzle of Life" |
| 03/07/2022 | Dr. Pedram Hassanzadeh (Asst. Prof., Rice U.) "Fluid dynamics of some types of midlatitude weather extreme events" |
| 03/14/2022 | Dr. Charles Baldner (Research Scientist, Stanford U.) "Listening to the Sun: Twelve Years of Science With NASA's Helioseismic and Magnetic Imager" |
| 03/21/2022 | Spring Break (No colloquium) |
| 03/28/2022 | Dr. Ricardo Toledo-Crow (Dir. Next Generation Environmental Sensor Lab, CUNY "Community Environmental Sensors and Networks in NYC" |
| 04/04/2022 | Dr. Sebastien Philippe (Professor, Princeton U.) "Walking The World Back From the Nuclear Brink: What can Scientists do" |
| 04/11/2022 | Dr. Jenn Rossmann (Professor, Lafayette College) "Modeling Biological Flows: Fluids, Rheology, & Soft Materials" |
| 04/18/2022 | Dr. Leila Kasaei (Postdoctoral Fellow., Rutgers U.) "Helium Ion Microscope (HeIM) for materials and biological sciences" |
| 04/25/2022 | Dr. Matthew Lew (Asst. Professor, Washington U.) "Single-Molecule Orientation Localization Microscopy: Visualizing Molecular Organization at the Nanoscale" |
| 05/02/2022 | Dr. Daryl Preece (Asst. Professor, U.C. Irvine) "A study in biophotonics: Using lasers to study mechano-biology of the brain" |
| 05/09/2022 | Dr. Danqing Wang (Postdoctoral Fellow, U.C. Berkeley) "Emerging Optics from Structured Nanomaterials" |
Spring 2021 Colloquia
Colloquia will be broadcast over Zoom from 3:30 – 4:45 PM Pacific Time. Professor John Brewer is the Colloquium Organizer for Spring 2021. Zoom link will be emailed to the Department of Physics & Astronomy listserv. Others may contact the Dept. for the link.
| Date | Speaker and Title |
|---|---|
| 02/01/2021 | Dr. Elisabeth Newton (Asst. Prof., Dartmouth College) "Observing the evolution of small stars and planets" |
| 02/08/2021 | Dr. Phillip Mannheim (Prof., U. Connecticut) "Is Dark Matter Fact or Fantasy - Clues from the Data" |
| 02/15/2021 | Dr. Clara Sousa-Silva (51 Pegasi b Fellow, Harvard-Smithsonian CfA) "Finding an Alien Biosphere with Computational Chemistry" |
| 02/22/2021 | Dr. Keith Hawkins (Asst. Prof., U. Texas, Austin) "Galactic Archaeology: Piecing Together the History of Our Galaxy" |
| 03/01/2021 | Dr. Aristotle Socrates (Head of Data, TextNow) "From Black Holes to Big Data" |
| 03/08/2021 | Dr. Andrew Mannix (Asst. Prof., Stanford U.) "Atom-Scale Engineering of Synthetic Layered Materials" |
| 03/15/2021 | Dr. Paul Arpin (Asst. Prof., CSU Chico) "Interpreting coherent dynamics in femtosecond spectroscopy" |
| 03/22/2021 | Spring Break (No colloquium) |
| 03/29/2021 | Dr. Frank Narducci (Assoc. Prof., Naval Postgraduate School) "Novel Atom Inteferometers" |
| 04/05/2021 | Dr. Dara Norman (Deputy Dir. of Community Science & Data Center, NOIRLab) "Advancing the Astronomical Inclusion Revolution" |
| 04/12/2021 | Dr. Jonathan McDowell (Group Leader, Harvard-Smithsonian CfA) "A Sky Full of Satellites: The changing orbital population and the impact of megaconstellations" |
| 04/19/2021 | Dr. Aida El-Khadra (Prof., U. Illinois, Urbana-Champaign) "The anomalous magnetic moment of the muon" |
| 04/26/2021 | Dr. Jingyong Ye (Prof., U. Texas, San Antonio) "Development of a unique open-cavity optical sensor for biomedical applications" |
| 04/28/2021 (Special Colloquium, 3:30 - 5:30) | Dr. Kimberly Ennico-Smith (VIPER Mission Deputy Project Scientist, NASA-Ames) "A next great leap in mapping water on the Moon"
|
| 05/03/2021 | Geev Nahal (PhD Candidate, Northwestern U.) "g-2 Measurement of Electron: How what you learn in your physics program is crucial for performing one of the most precise measurements known to man!" |
| 05/10/2021 | Dr. Paolo Turri (Post-doc, U. British Columbia) "Analyzing Adaptive Optics Data: Challenges and Solutions" |
Spring 2020 Colloquia
Colloquia take place in Thornton Hall Room 411 (unless otherwise noted). Colloquia start at 4:05 PM with light refreshments being served at 4:00. Prof. Charli Sakari is the Colloquium Organizer for Spring 2020. Refreshments provided by the SFSU Physics & Astronomy Club. Pizza lunch with students and speakers takes place in Thornton 115 or 123, 12:30-1:30 PM.
| Date | Speaker and Title |
|---|---|
| 01/27/2020 | Dr. Yongshen Gao (Prof., CSU Fresno) "Opportunities for CSU Students to Work at CERN with NSF IRES Grant" |
| 02/03/2020 | Dr. Matthew Shetrone (Deputy Dir., UC Observatories) "Galactic Archaeology: Uncovering the Construction of the Milky Way" |
| 02/06/2020 12:00-1:00 PM Blakeslee Room |
Malena Rice (Ph.D. Candidate, Yale U.) "Mapping the Trans-Neptunian Solar System" |
| 02/10/2020 | Dr. John Realpe (Asst. Dir., LRC Systems) "On Complexity and Cognition" |
| 02/17/2020 | Dr. James Lee (Asst. Prof., Sonoma State U.) "Skyrmions: Magnetism With a Twist" |
| 02/24/2020 | Dr. Enrico Ramirez-Ruiz (Prof., U.C. Santa Cruz) CANCELLED |
| 03/02/2020 | Dr. James Osborne (Postdoc, UCSD) "The Energy Frontier After the Higgs" |
| 03/09/2020 | Dr. Diana Hernandez Juarez Madera (Stanford U.) "Space and Ground Based Measurements of Radiation Belt Precipitation: Extending the Capabilities of Cubesats and Radars" |
| 03/16/2020 | Dr. Nancy Chanover (Prof., New Mexico State U.) CANCELLED because of COVID-19. |
| 03/23/2020 | No colloquium (Spring Break). |
| 03/30/2020 | No colloquium (Cesar Chavez Day). |
| 04/06/2020 | Dr. Kimberly Ennico-Smith (Research Scientist, NASA/Ames) CANCELLED because of COVID-19. |
| 04/13/2020 | Dr. Thomas Blum (Prof., U. Connecticut) CANCELLED because of COVID-19. |
| 04/20/2020 | Ryan Wyatt (Dir. Morrison Planetarium, Cal. Academy of Sciences) CANCELLED because of COVID-19. |
| 04/27/2020 | Dr. Frank Narducci (Assoc. Prof. Naval Postgraduate School) CANCELLED because of COVID-19. |
| 05/04/2020 | Dr. Yvonne Cagle (Astronaut, NASA) CANCELLED because of COVID-19. |
| 05/11/2020 | Dr. Alexandra Liguori (Lecturer, SFSU) CANCELLED because of COVID-19. |
Spring 2019 Colloquia
Colloquia take place in Thornton Hall Room 411 (unless otherwise noted). Colloquia generally start at 4:10 PM with light refreshments being served at 4:00.
| Date | Speaker and Title |
|---|---|
| 01/28/2019 | No colloquium (First Day of Classes!) |
| 02/08/2019 (Friday, Blakeslee Room) | Candidate for Asst. Prof. Observational Astronomy #1 Topic in Extragalactic Astronomy |
| 02/20/2019 (Wednesday, Thornton 411) | Candidate for Asst. Prof. Observational Astronomy #2 Topic in Extragalactic Astronomy |
| 02/25/2019 (Blakeslee Room) | Candidate for Asst. Prof. Observational Astronomy #3 Topic in Exoplanetary Science |
| 03/01/2019 (Friday, Blakeslee Room) | Candidate for Asst. Prof. Observational Astronomy #4 Topic in Exoplanetary Science |
| 03/04/2019 (Blakeslee Room) | Candidate for Asst. Prof. Observational Astronomy #5 Topic in Astrophysical Transients |
| 03/11/2019 (Blakeslee Room) | Candidate for Asst. Prof. Observational Astronomy #6 Topic in Galactic Astronomy |
| 03/18/2019 | Dr. Chris Smallwood (Asst. Prof. Physics, SJSU) "The bright side of flawed material: Coherent spectroscopy of color centers in diamond" |
| 03/25/2019 | No colloquium (Spring Break!) |
| 04/01/2019 | No colloquium (Cesar Chavez Day!) |
| 04/08/2019 | Dr. Daniel Beller (Asst. Prof. Physics, U.C. Merced) "Topological defect loops in liquid crystals far from equilibrium" |
| 04/15/2019 | Dr. Aaron Romanowsky (Assoc. Prof. Astronomy, SJSU "Dark Questions about Extreme Galaxies" |
| 04/22/2019 | Dr. Shuo Sun (Post-doc, Electrical Engineering, Stanford U.) "Quantum nanophotonics: engineering atom-photon interactions on a chip" |
| 04/29/2019 | Dr. Naomi Ginsberg (Assoc. Prof. Chem. & Phys., U.C. Berkeley) "How do emerging light harvesting materials form, transform, and transport energy at the nanoscale?" |
| 05/06/2019 | Dr. Jessica Kirkpatrick (Director of Data Science, KoBold Metals) "Astrophysicist to Data Scientist" |
| 05/13/2019 | Dr. Shamit Kachru (Prof. Physics, Stanford U.) "Black holes and number theory" |
Spring 2018 Colloquia
All colloquia will take place in Thornton Hall Room 411 unless otherwise noted. Colloquia generally start at 4:05 PM with refreshments being served at 3:50.
| Date | Speaker and Title |
|---|---|
| 02/19/2018 | Shoufeng Lan (Postdoctoral Fellow, UC Berkeley) |
| 02/26/2018 | Sui Yang (Postdoctoral Fellow, UC Berkeley) |
| 03/05/2018 | Lei Wang (Associate Professor, UCSF) |
| 03/12/2018 | Linda Strubbe (Postdoc, Univ. British Columbia) |
| 03/26/2018 | Prashanth Jaikumar (Associate Professor, CSU Long Beach) |
| 04/02/2018 | Nicholas Nelson (Assistant Professor, CSU Chico) |
| 04/09/2018 | Katy Tschann-Grimm (Assistant Professor, CSU East Bay) |
| 04/16/2018 | Jeffrey Fung (Sagan Fellow, UC Berkeley) |
| 04/30/2018 | Connie Rockosi (Professor, UC Santa Cruz) |
| 05/14/2018 | Stephen Kane (Associate Professor, UC Riverside) |