Physics & Astronomy Colloquia

Fall 2024 Colloquia

Colloquia are at 3:30 - 4:45 Pacific time.  This semester, most colloquia will be in-person, on-campus in the new building SEC 210.    Some colloquia will be online and streamed via Zoom.  Note that in-person, on-campus colloquia will not be streamed online.  Prof. Oscar Macías is the Colloquium Organizer for Fall 2024.

 
Date Speaker and Title
08/26/2024 No colloquium - First day of instruction
09/02/2024 No colloquium - Labor Day holiday
09/09/2024 SF State Physics & Astronomy Faculty Mini-talks I
Professors Macías, Brewer, Sakari, Coble
09/16/2024 SF State Physics & Astronomy Faculty Mini-talks II
Professors Xu, Man, Barranco, Gonzales
09/23/2024 Dr. Nicholas Rodd (Divisional Fellow, LBNL)
"Echos of the Early Universe in Axion Haloscopes"
09/30/2024 Dr. Ben Indini (Vera Rubin Postdoctoral Fellow, U.C. Santa Cruz)
"From Icy Moons to Giant Planets: Exploring the Deep Structure of Solar System Worlds with Tidal Observations"
10/07/2024 Dr. Michelle Sinapuelas (Asst. Prof., SF State Chemistry & Biochemistry)
"Promoting Student Success in Chemistry"
10/14/2024 Dr. Brianna Lacy (51 Peg b Fellow, U.C. Santa Cruz)
Topic in Exoplanetary Science
10/21/2024 Dr. Raja GuhaTakurta (Professor, U.C. Santa Cruz)
Topic in STEM Outreach
10/28/2024 Dr. Aiming Yan (Asst. Professor, U.C. Santa Cruz)
Topic in Condensed Matter Physics
11/04/2024 Dr. Kim Stanley Robinson (Author)
Topic in Climate Science & Science Fiction. Special time: 1:30-3:00. Co-hosted by Climate HQ.
11/11/2024 No colloquium - Veterans Day holiday
11/18/2024 Dr. Rob Kolasinski (Research Scientist, Sandia National Lab)
Topic in Plasma Physics
11/25/2024 No colloquium - Thanksgiving week-long holiday
12/02/2024 Dr. Raul Briceno (Asst. Professor, U.C. Berkeley)
Topic in Theoretical Particle Physics
12/09/2024 Prof. Joe Barranco and PHYS/ASTR REU students
"What are REU programs? How can I apply?"

 

Fall 2023 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.  Prof. Eileen Gonzales is the Colloquium Organizer for Fall 2023.

 
Date Speaker and Title
08/28/2023 Physics & Astronomy Meet-and-Greet
Patio in front of Thornton Hall
09/04/2023 Labor Day
(No colloquium)
09/11/2023 SF State Physics & Astronomy Faculty Mini-talks I
 
09/18/2023 SF State Physics & Astronomy Faculty Mini-talks II
 
09/25/2023 Dr. Isabel Hawkins (Senior Scientist, Exploratorium)
"The Pleiades Experience: Intercultural Connections and the Science of Ancestral Timekeeping"
10/02/2023 Dr. Kumiko Kotera (Deputy Director, IAP Paris)
"Towards EeV Neutrino Astronomy with GRAND"
10/09/2023 Tatyana Sitnova (Institute of Astronomy of the Russian Academy of Sciences)
"Galactic Archaeology via High-resolution Spectroscopy of Stellar Streams"
10/16/2023 No colloquium
10/23/2023 Dr. Marina Radulaski (Assoc. Professor, U.C. Davis)
"Scalable Quantum Nanophotonics: From Nanofabrication to Quantum Circuit Mapping"
10/30/2023 Dr. Christian Aganze (Postdoc, Stanford U.)
"Galactic Archeology with Low-Mass Stars and Brown Dwarfs: Prospects with Large-Scale Surveys"
11/06/2023 Dr. Jeffrey Silverman (Senior Data Scientist, Mozilla)
"From Astrophysics to Data Science"
11/13/2023 Dr. Ben Lew (Postdoc, BAERI/NASA Ames)
"Monitoring Extrasolar Climate in 4D: Characterizing Brown Dwarf Atmospheres with HST and JWST"
11/20/2023 Thanksgiving Week
(No colloquium)
11/27/2023 Dr. Dmitri Voronin (Asst. Prof., University of South Florida)
"Nano-optical Imaging of 2D Materials and Cells"
12/04/2023 Prof. Joe Barranco, PHYS/ASTR majors Tonya Peshel & Richard Truong
"What are REU programs? How can I apply?"

 

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.  Prof. Maarten Golterman is the Colloquium Organizer for Fall 2022.

 
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"

 

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”
 

 

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
 

 

 

 

 

 

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 2024 Colloquia

Colloquia are Mondays, 3:30-4:45 pm 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.  Prof. Oscar Macías is the Colloquium Organizer for Spring 2024.

 
Date Speaker and Title
01/29/2024 Special Colloquium to Honor the Legacy of Prof. AKM Newaz
3:30-6:30 at Seven Hills Conference Center
02/05/2024 Dr. Brandon Brown (Professor, U. of San Francisco)
"Sharing Our Science: Challenges and Opportunities in Communicating STEM"
02/12/2024 Ellianna Abrahams (PhD Candidate, UC Berkeley)
"Towards Physically-Contextualized Computer Vision through Studies in the Cryosphere"
02/19/2024 Dr. Kimmy Wu (Postdoc, Stanford U.)
"Testing Inflation and Constraining Cosmology with the Oldest Photons"
02/26/2024 Dr. Alexis Kaminski (Asst. Prof., UC Berkeley)
"Turbulent Mixing in the Upper Ocean Transition Layer"
03/04/2024 Dr. Patrick El Khoury (Senior Research Scientist, PNNL)
"Everything You Need to Know about TERS and More"
03/11/2024 Dr. James Sikora (Postdoc, Lowell Observatory)
"Eccentric Hot Jupiters as Dynamic Laboratories"
03/18/2024 Tenley Hutchinson-Smith (PhD Candidate, UC Santa Cruz)
"Challenging the Standard Paradigm of Thorne-Zytkow Object Formation"
03/25/2024 No colloquium (Spring Break)
04/01/2024 No colloquium (Cesar Chavez Day)
04/08/2024 Andrea Antoni (PhD Candidate, UC Berkeley)
"Delayed Explosions of Red Supergiants Following “Failed” Supernovae"
04/15/2024 Dr. Sanjana Curtis (Postdoc, UC Berkeley)
"Heavy Element Nucleosynthesis & Kilonovae from Compact Object Mergers"
04/22/2024 Dr. José Javier Hernández Ayala (Assoc. Prof., Sonoma State U.)
"Why are some hurricanes seasons more active than others? The case of the Atlantic Ocean"
04/29/2024 Dr. Ariane Dekker (Postdoc, KICP Chicago)
"Probing dark matter properties with Milky-Way satellite observations"
05/06/2024 Dr. Rajan Gupta (Senior Research Scientist, Los Alamos)
"Can we ignore anthropogenic climate change?"
05/13/2024 Dr. Rachel Roettenbacher (51 Pegasi b Fellow, University of Michigan)
"Imaging Spotted Stars"
 

 

 

Spring 2023 Colloquia

Colloquia are Mondays, 3:30-4:45 pm Pacific Time.  From Feb. 6 - Mar. 13, colloquia will be on the Blakeslee Room (Thornton Hall, 10th floor).  From Mar. 20 - May 15, colloquia will be in Thornton Hall 411.  Prof. Kim Coble is the colloquium organizer until March 13, and Prof. Jeff Greensite is the colloquium organizer for the remainder of the semester.

 
Date Speaker and Title
02/06/2023 Astronomy & Astrophysics Faculty Candidate #1
Topic: Galaxy formation & evolution
02/13/2023 Astronomy & Astrophysics Faculty Candidate #2
Topic: Exoplanetary science
02/20/2023 Astronomy & Astrophysics Faculty Candidate #3
Topic: Galaxy formation & evolution
02/27/2023 No colloquium
03/06/2023 Astronomy & Astrophysics Faculty Candidate #4
Topic: High energy astrophysics
03/13/2023 No colloquium
03/27/2023 Jessica Heim (PhD candidate, U. Southern Queensland)
"Skyglow, Satellites and Space Junk: Cultural Astronomy & the Transformation of our Night Sky"
04/03/2023 Dr. Megan Bedell (Assoc. Research Scientist, Center for Computational Astrophysics, Flatiron Institute)
"The Search for Other Earths"
04/10/2023 No colloquium
 
04/17/2023 Dr. Soubhik Kumar (Postdoc, U.C. Berkeley & LLNL)
“Cosmic Hotspots as Probes of Ultra-high Energy Particle Physics”
04/24/2023 Asir Khan (PhD candidate, Electrical Engineering, Stanford U.)
“Engineering Chalcogenides and Topological Semimetals for Energy-Efficient Memory and Interconnects”
05/01/2023 No colloquium
05/08/2023 Dr. Aiming Yan (Asst. Prof., U.C. Santa Cruz)
"Tailoring and Manipulating Symmetry in Functional Nanomaterials at the Atomic and Nano-scale"

 

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)