Physics & Engineering Physics Seminar

John Gustafson, FCRH ’16, and Dan Wines, FCRH ’17, will present, “The Physics Ph.D. Experience at UMBC: A Fordham Alumni Journey.” This talk will present an overview of the physics Ph.D. program at the University of Maryland Baltimore County (UMBC). UMBC is a mid-sized research university located in the Maryland metropolitan area, and the physics department encompasses research in areas of condensed matter, astrophysics, quantum information/optics, and atmospheric physics.

Wines and Gustafson are current Ph.D. candidates set to begin NRC postdoctoral fellowships in 2022. In addition to a department overview and personal accounts of the graduate student experience, they will present their respective computational and experimental research on 2D materials. Wines uses powerful computational resources to obtain the electronic, magnetic, and mechanical properties of 2D materials, with such tools as density functional theory (DFT) and Quantum Monte Carlo (QMC) to discover and engineer new materials for energy applications. Gustafson will speak about light-matter interactions on the sub-picosecond scale. The main thrust of his work involves using an optical-pump THz-probe technique called time-resolved terahertz spectroscopy (TRTS) to study the electronic properties of 2D materials, fully characterizing a material’s photoconductivity. By sharing their Ph.D. journey, they hope to promote the graduate physics program at UMBC and hope to attract future applicants.