Former Graduate Students

Dr. Kai-Yan Michael Ma, PhD University of Illinois 1982. Dr. Ma was a student of the late Professor William McMillan and did part of his PhD Thesis under my supervision. Dr. Ma was a Postdoctoral Research Associate at MIT and he is now an Emeritus Professor of Physics at the Department of Physics of the University of Cincinnati, Cincinnati OH.
Dr. Matthew P. A. Fisher, PhD University of Illinois 1985. Dr. Fisher was a student of Professor A. J. Leggett and did part of his research in Urbana under my supervision. Dr. Fisher was a member of the permanent staff of the IBM Thomas J. Watson Laboratory. Dr. Fisher is now a Professor of Physics of the Physics Department of the University of California at Santa Barbara (Santa Barbara, California, USA).
Dr. Franco Nori, PhD University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, July 1987. Dr. Nori was a Postdoctoral Research Associate at the Institute for Theoretical Physics of the University of California at Santa Barbara. Dr. Nori is a Professor of Physics at the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor MI (USA), and a Chief Scientist and Group Director at the Advanced Science Institute of the RIKEN Laboratories, Japan.
Dr. Avinash Singh, PhD University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, January 1988. Dr. Singh was a Postdoctoral Research Associate at Johns Hopkins University (Baltimore, MD). Dr. Singh is currently a member of the Faculty of the Indian Institute of Technology in Kanpur (India).
Dr. David Withoff, PhD University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, July 1988. Dr. Withoff is presently a member of the staff of Wolfram Research, Champaign IL (USA).
Dr.Cecilia von Reichenbach; PhD Universidad de La Plata (La Plata, Argentina) July 1988. Dr. von Reichenbach is currently a Professor of Physics at Universidad de La Plata (Argentina).
Dr. Leticia Cugliandolo, MSc Universidad de La Plata (La Plata, Argentina) July 1989. Dr. Cugliandolo earned her PhD in 1992 from Universidad de La Plata. She was a Postdoctoral Research Associate at the University of Rome (Rome, Italy). Dr. Cugliandolo is currently a Professor of Physics at the Université Pierre et Marie Curie - Paris VI (France), a member of the Institut Universitáire de France and the Director of the School of Physics in Les Houches (France).
Dr. Joel Cannon; PhD University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, July 1989. Dr. Cannon is currently a Professor of Physics at Washington and Jefferson College, Washington PA (USA).
Dr. Christopher Mudry, PhD University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, July 1994. Dr. Mudry was a Postdoctoral Research Associate at MIT and Harvard University, Cambridge MA (USA). He is now the Head of the Condensed Matter Theory Group of the Paul Scherrer Institute (Villigen, Switzerland).
Dr. Ana María López, PhD University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, July 1994. Formerly a Wolfson Research Fellow at the Department of Physics at Oxford University, (Oxford, England), Dr. López was a senior researcher of the Instituto de Física Balseiro in San Carlos de Bariloche (Río Negro, Argentina). She is currently a Researcher Officer working on Climate Change at the London School of Economics (London, United Kingdom).
Dr.Antonio Castro Neto, PhD University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, July 1994. Dr. Castro Neto was a Postdoctoral Research Associate at the Institute for Theoretical Physics of the University of California at Santa Barbara, and Assistant and Associate Professor of Physics at the University of California, Riverside CA (USA). Dr. Castro Neto is the Director of the Centre for Advanced 2D Materials and the co-director of the Institute for Functional Intelligent Materials of the national university of Singapore. He is a Distinguished Professor at the Physics, Material Science, and Electrical and Computer Engineering Departments of the National University of Singapore.
Dr. Manuel A. Fuentes, PhD University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, July 1995. Dr. Fuentes is currently the director of the International Urban Cooperation Program for Latin America and the Caribbean, a European Union Program based in Brasilia (Brazil).
Dr. Carlos Cassanello, PhD University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, September 1996. Dr. Cassanello was a Postdoctoral Research Associate at the University of Cologne, Germany, at the Sloan Center for Theoretical Neurobiology at UC San Francisco, San Francisco CA (USA), and at the Department of Psychology of the Australian National University (Canberra, Australia). He is currently a postdoctoral fellow at the Bernstein Center for Computational Neuroscience in Berlin (Germany).
Dr. Nancy P. Sandler, PhD University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, August 1998. Dr. Sandler was a Postdoctoral Research Associate at the Laboratoire de Physique Théorique, of the École Normale Supérieure (Paris, France), and at the Department of Physics, Brandeis University (Waltham MA). She is currently a Professor of Physics at the Department of Physics of Ohio University (Athens, OH).
Dr. Congjun Wu was graduate student in my group for two years (2000-2002). He has a PhD in Physics from Stanford University (2005), and was a Postdoctoral Research Associate at the Kavli Institute for Theoretical Physics of the University of California Santa Barbara (2005-2007). Dr. Wu is currently a Professor of Physics at the Department of Physics of the University of California San Diego (La Jolla, California, USA), and at Westlake University (Hangzhou, China).
Dr. Eun-Ah Kim, PhD University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, August 2005. Dr. Kim was a Postdoctoral Research Fellow at the Department of Physics of Stanford University (Stanford, CA). She is now a Professor of Physics at the Department of Physics of Cornell University (Ithaca, New York).
Dr. Michael J. Lawler, PhD University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, July 2006. Dr. Lawler was a Postdoctoral Research Associate at the Department of Physics of the University of Toronto (Toronto, Ontario, Canada). Dr. Lawler is now an Associate Professor of Physics at the Department of Physics of Binghamton University (Binghamton, New York) and an Adjunct Professor of Physics at the Department of Physics of Cornell University (Ithaca, New York).
Dr. Stefanos Papanikolaou, PhD University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, June 2008. Dr. Papanikolaou is currently Group Leader at NOMATEN, Center of Excellence in Multifunctional Materials for Industrial and Medical Applications (Otwock -Swieck, Poland).
Dr. Kai Sun, PhD University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, May 2009. Dr. Sun was a Postdoctoral Fellow of the Joint Quantum Institute of the University of Maryland and of the National Institute of Science and Technology (NIST) in College Park, Maryland from August 2009 through August 2012. He is an Associate Professor of Physics at the Department of Physics of the University of Michigan (Ann Arbor, Michigan, USA) since August 2012.
Dr. Benjamín M. Fregoso, PhD University of Illinois at Urbana Champaign, May 2010. Dr. Fregoso is currently an Assistant Professor at the Department of Physics of Kent State University (Kent, Ohio, USA).
Dr. Benjamin Hsu, PhD University of Illinois at Urbana Champaign, August 2011. Dr. Hsu was a Postdoctoral Research Associate at the Department of Physics of Princeton University (Princeton, New Jersey) from August 2011 through August 2013. He is currently a member of the technical staff at Amazon Web Services Inc. (Seattle, Washington).
Dr. Akbar Jaefari, PhD University of Illinois at Urbana Champaign, August 2012. Dr. Jaefari was a Postdoctoral Research Associate at the Department of Physics of the University of Oklahoma, Norman (Oklahoma), from August 2012 through August 2015. He is currently an Associate Professor of Physics at the University of Western New England (Springfield, Massachusetts).
Dr. Rodrigo Andrés Soto Garrido, PhD University of Illinois at Urbana Champaign, June 2015. Since July 2015 he is an Assistant Professor of Physics at the Universidad Católica de Chile (Santiago de Chile, Chile).
Dr. Xiao Chen, PhD University of Illinois at Urbana Champaign, June 2016. Dr. Chen was a Moore Postdoctoral Research Scholar at the Kavli Institute for Theoretical Physics of the University of California Santa Barbara (Santa Barbara, California). Dr. Chen is currently an Assistant Professor of Physics at Boston College (Boston, Massachusetts).
Dr. Krishna Kumar, PhD University of Illinois at Urbana Champaign, July 2016. Dr. Kumar is currently on the staff of Akuna Capital (Chicago, Illinois).
Dr. Wathid Assawasunthonnet, PhD University of Illinois at Urbana Champaign, July 2016. Dr. Assawasunthonnet is currently a Machine Learning Engineer at Kite.com. (San Francisco California).
Dr. Yizhi You, PhD University of Illinois at Urbana Champaign, June 2017. Dr. You was a Postdoctoral Fellow at the Princeton Center for Theoretical Science, Princeton University (Princeton, New Jersey). In 2021/2022 she was a Marie Curie fellow at the Rudolf Peierls Centre for Theoretical Physics at Oxford University (Oxford, UK). Since August 2022 she is an Assistant Professor of Physics at Northeastern University (Boston, Massachusetts).
Dr. Hart Goldman, PhD University of Illinois at Urbana Champaign, June 2020. Dr. Goldman is currently a Gordon and Betty Moore Postdoctoral Scholar at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (Cambridge, Massachusetts).
Dr. Ramanjit Sohal, PhD University of Illinois at Urbana Champaign, April 2021 Since August 2021 Dr. Sohal is a postdoctoral fellow at the Department of Physics of Princeton University (Princeton, New Jersey).


Last updated 5/26/2023