What (courses/disciplines/values) do you teach?
Currently I am teaching PHYS 130: Wave Motion, Optics and Sound which is a first term introductory physics course for engineering students and PHYS 146: Fluids and Waves which the second term of our first year calculus-based physics stream for science students. My research area is particle physics and I am currently a member of the ATLAS experiment at CERN working on searches for more Higgs bosons which are one of the predictions of something called Supersymmetry which can be thought of as a symmetry between matter (fermions) and force (bosons). However I am moving my research focus over to the IceCube experiment at the South Pole and in particular PINGU experiment which will study the neutrinos and determine which type of neutrino has the largest mass as well as perform searches for neutrinos possibly produced by Dark Matter annihilations.
Why should people learn about it?
Physics is the study of the nature and properties of matter and energy and is the science behind much of the modern world. Our understanding of the physics of electricity and magnetism lead to electrical generators, light bulbs, electric motors etc. that we all use on a daily basis. The discovery of quantum mechanics lead to the development of semi-conductors which power the modern computers driving our current information based economy. Even some of the more esoteric areas of physics, such as special and general relativity which deal with the properties of space and time, are essential to the functioning of the GPS system which lets your mobile phone locate your position to within a few metres. So if you want to understand how the modern world we live it works then you need to learn physics.What are some of its "real-world" applications?
There are a huge number of real-world applications of physics so I'll stick to those in my own area of particle physics which has had many applications in the field of medicine where doctors use radioactive nuclei which produce tiny amounts of anti-matter to detect tumours or even just study how the body interacts with drugs. Even the detectors which they use for this or more advanced X-ray-based techniques have their origins in the particle detectors we used in experiments decades ago. More recently the particle beams we use to study the fundamental nature of matter are being used to treat otherwise inoperable tumours with hadron radiation therapy - although the energy and intensity is a lot lower than the beams we have circulating inside the Large Hadron Collider which have enough energy to melt a ton of copper.
While those are the direct applications of some physics research if you are reading this on a web page then you are also using a piece of spin-off technology: the Worldwide Web. This was invented by particle physicists at CERN in the early 1990's to help with communication between physicists in the large, international collaborations required to build and operate particle detectors. IT turned out to be quite useful for many other applications too and has revolutionized the way we communicate in everyday life.
What's the coolest thing about this subject area?
For me what I enjoy the most is that I get to tackle some of the most fundamental scientific questions there are such as why does an electron have a mass?; why is the universe made of matter and not anti-matter?; what is the nature of the dark matter that makes up a quarter of the universe?; does Supersymmetry (a symmetry between matter and force) exist?; which neutrino has the most mass? etc. These are all questions my current or previous research has sought to address.
However what it probably the coolest thing is that while pursuing these questions I get to work with incredibly talented people from all over the planet who come together to work on amazingly challenging projects and do and learn things which nobody else has ever done or known before. This leads to a variety of tasks and challenges is truly amazing at times. For example as a new member of the IceCube/PINGU collaboration I was at a meeting last year where one of the talks was about planning a tractor-based expedition across Antarctica to deliver detector components and equipment to the South Pole.
You were recently named an FoS Teaching fellow. What does that mean to you and what do you hope to achieve with the fellowship?
My goals for the fellowship are threefold. First I have been working with Prof. Maya Wheelock to flip the first term, introductory physics course for engineers by introducing online videos to introduce and cover some of the material and then we have converted one of the lecture slots to a weekly tutorial session where students can attempt problems online with assistance from TAs and instructors. As part of this I am porting over the course notes I wrote for a similar first year course with the plan that these can eventually replace the textbook we currently use and both save students the ~$200 cost as well as giving them an easily accessible online version in PDF and iBooks formats.
Next I am planning to lead a major overhaul of our undergraduate lab courses for physics program students by incorporating the approach which has already successfully changed the non-calculus introductory physics courses' labs by Dr. Al Meldrum as well as the recent improvements to our second year labs made by Drs. Mark Freeman and Darren Grant. In addition we plan to incorporate some basic programming skills for data analysis and presentation using a web-based, python environment which will provide students some experience in computer programming which is becoming an increasingly important skill for all scientists and will also act as a good introduction for our second year computational physics course.
Finally I have been collaborating with George Peschke in the Department of Mathematical and Statistical Sciences on providing significantly improved maths capabilities for presenting and grading mathematics online and later in the fellowship I plan to hire some student support to work on developing an external plugin for eClass/Moodle to provide a more capable question engine.
You have a long history of service to the Faculty and department in teaching support - what inspires you?
As a grad student, postdoc and junior faculty member I benefited from a lot of support from those around me so it is nice to be in a position where I have a chance to repay the favour. I also enjoy being in a position where I have a chance to learn about the latest and greatest innovations and see how we might be able to use them to improve our own courses and programmes.
What was your favourite learning experience as an undergrad, and how do you incorporate that experience into teaching your students?
My favourite learning experience as an undergrad rather paradoxically was learning what we did not know rather than what we did!As a physics undergrad I was always interested in research but lectures covered what we had known for quite a while and even research talks concentrated on what had just been learnt. It wasn't until I got into my third and final year as an undergrad that I had an instructor who pointed out the gaps in our understanding which inspired me to learn more about what we did not know and eventually lead to a career in trying to plug some of those holes.
Today I try to include that in my courses, even those at the first year level, by linking the physics topics in the course to research whenever possible and particularly to those areas of research where we don't really know the answers. My hope is that this may inspire some of the students in my courses to go out and perhaps find a few of those answers themselves.
What is one thing that people would be surprised to know about you?
As a grad student moving out to work at CERN, in Geneva, Switzerland for a year I actually got mistaken over the phone for Roger Moore the famous actor. He apparently owned a Swiss chalet up in the alps and had just used the moving company that the UK funding agency used for grad students to move some furniture out there. I almost ended up with a key to the place!