Physics Faculty

Douglas N. Armstead - Visiting Assistant Professor of Physics
(330) 263-2647 / darmstead@wooster.edu

B.S. Michigan 1996; Ph.D. Maryland, College Park 2002.

Douglas N. Armstead is a visiting assistant professor of physics at The College of Wooster, where he joined the faculty in 2006.

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Shila Garg - Dean of the Faculty and Professor of Physics
(330) 263-2008 / sgarg@wooster.edu

B.S. Madras (India) 1970; M.S. Sussex (U.K.) 1972; Ph.D. Kent (U.K.) 1975.

Shila Garg is dean of the faculty and professor of physics at The College of Wooster. An expert in liquid crystals, light scattering, and optics, Garg has been a member of the faculty since 1987. Her research focuses on dynamic and static properties of nemelic liquid crystals and electrical properties of liquid crystal mixtures.

Garg received her B.S. from the University of Madras in India (1970), her M.S. from the University of Sussex (1972) in the United Kingdom, and her Ph.D. from the University of Kent (1975), also in the United Kingdom.

At Wooster, Garg has served as the chair of the physics and astronomy division of Council on Undergraduate Research (CUR). She has also served as an external reviewer of physics and materials programs at other universities. She has been a frequent reviewer of grants for the National Science Foundation.

A member of the American Physical Society and the International Liquid Crystal Society, Garg has co-authored several papers with Wooster students.

Throughout her career she has been awarded a number of grants to continue her research. In 1993, she received her first Research Experience for Undergraduates (REU) site grant from the National Science Foundation (NSF) and started the research site in physics, which is held every summer at Wooster.

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Donald Jacobs - Victor J. Andrew Professor of Physics
(330) 263-2390 / djacobs@wooster.edu

B.A., M.A. at University of South Florida in 1971, 1972; Ph.D. at University of Colorado in 1976.

Donald Thomas Jacobs is the Victor J. Andrew Professor of Physics and former chair of the department at The College of Wooster. A member of the faculty since 1976, Jacobs has utilized leaves at the University of Maryland and grant support from Research Corporation, Petroleum Research Fund, the National Science Foundation, and the National Aeronautics and Space Administration to establish a research program at Wooster that has experimentally investigated critical phenomena in a variety of liquid-liquid mixtures and analogous systems.

Among the many articles he has had published, "Turbidity determination of the critical exponent eta in the liquid-liquid mixture methanol and cyclohexane," in the Journal of Chemical Physics, and "Self-Organized Criticality in a Bead Pile" in Physical Review E are particularly noteworthy.

A member of the American Physical Society and Sigma Xi, Jacobs is the recipient of the American Physical Society's 2000 Prize for faculty involvement in research at an undergraduate institution. He was also elected Fellow of the American Physical Society in 2003 and served as associate editor of the American Journal of Physics from 2001-2003.

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Susan Lehman - Clare Boothe Luce Assistant Professor of Physics
(330) 263-2214 / slehman@wooster.edu

B.A. Goshen 1993; M.S., Ph.D. North Carolina, Chapel Hill 1996, 1999.

Susan Y. Lehman is the Clare Boothe Luce Assistant Professor of Physics at The College of Wooster, where she joined the faculty in 2003. She specializes in the study of nanoscale optoelectronic materials and has been using several scanning probe techniques, including scanning tunneling microscopy and ballistic electron emission microscopy, to investigate the structure and electronic properties of InGaAs quantum dots. Containing only a few thousand atoms, quantum dots open a window through which we can study fundamental questions of quantum mechanics; they also have many applications ranging from optoelectronic devices such as lasers and infrared detectors to medical applications for imaging and disease treatment.  Her second major research project involves the design of a resonating optical cavity to investigate the semiconductor mirrors grown for vertical cavity diode lasers.

A graduate of Goshen College (1993), Lehman earned her M.S. (1996) and Ph.D. (1999) at the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill.  She received a Board of Governors Fellowship from the University of North Carolina from 1993�]96 and was a post�]doctoral Research Fellow at the National Institute of Standards and Technology in Boulder, Colorado, from 2000 to 2003.

Lehman’s research has been published in a variety of scholarly journals, including the Journal of Crystal Growth and the Journal of Vacuum Science and Technology B: Microelectronics and Nanometer Structures. Lehman is a member of the American Physical Society and the Materials Research Society.

John Lindner - Professor of Physics
(330) 263-2120 / jlindner@wooster.edu

B.S. Vermont 1982; Ph.D. California Institute of Technology 1989.

John Lindner is a professor of physics and chair of the department at The College of Wooster, where he has been a member of the faculty since 1988. His research centers on nonlinear dynamics, including stochastic resonance, cellular automata, and self-organized criticality. His work has been featured on the covers of Nature, Physics Today, Science News, and on the annual calendar of the American Physical Society.

Lindner earned a B.S. from the University of Vermont (1978-82) and a Ph.D. from the California Institute of Technology (1982-88). He has been a member of the American Physical Society since 1989 and a member of The Planetary Society since 1995. He has spent three one-year sabbaticals as a visiting scientist at the Georgia Institute of Technology.

An expert on space flight, time travel, and the concept of chaos, Lindner has written award-winning computer software and is the recipient of a U.S. patent for a noise and coupling tuned signal processor array. He has also climbed Kilimanjaro, Earth's highest freestanding mountain.

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» Profile of Professor Lindner

Todd McAlpine - Visiting Assistant Professor of Physics
(330) 263-2586 / tmcalpine@wooster.edu

B.S., Edinboro University, 2000; M.S., University of Kansas, 2003; Ph.D., University of Kansas, 2006.

Todd C. McAlpine is a visiting assistant professor of physics at The College of Wooster for the 2006-2007 academic year. His graduate work was in the field of semiconductor laser physics. He has various research interests, including optical properties of materials, applied optics, photonics, astronomy, space plasma and solar physics, and physics in history.

McAlpine received his B. S. in Physics from Edinboro University of Pennsylvania (2000) and went on to earn his M.S. (2003) and Ph.D. (2006) in physics from the University of Kansas.

Preliminary results of McAlpine's graduate work were presented at the 2003 Materials Research Society Fall Meeting and published in the Journal of Applied Physics in 2004. He is currently working on writing up the final results for publication in the Journal of Applied Physics or Applied Physics Letters. His professional affiliations include the American Association of Physics Teachers (AAPT), the American Physical Society (APS), Materials Research Society (MRS), and Sigma Pi Sigma, a national physics honor society.

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