The Grid template

Physics Teaching

PHY 101/102 : College Physics

I've been involved in this two-semster general physics class for non majors since I began teaching at UB in 2006. The course covers all of physics including mechanics, heat, waves, and sound in one year and is taken by 800-900 students every year. The large amount of material and large class size pose many challenges. To address these, my colleagues Drs. Luo and Ganapathy and I modernized the teaching approach by including clickers for in class quizzes and Just-in-time-teaching with pre-class readings and quizzes. In 2011 I overhauled some of the in-class demonstration and created video content for these.

PHY 307 : Modern Physics Lab

This lab course, which I have taught since 2008 years, introduces upper division physics majors in teams of two to experiments testing modern physics (mostly quantum mechanics). WE've updated this lab by restructuring and computeriging sd half of the experiments to remove tedious repetitions and computerized large parts of the data acquisition. The gained time is now spent of pre-lab oral quizzes and discussions with the students, and I was able to include 3 new modern physics experiments: Compton Effect, Millikan and Nanoparticle Spectroscopy.

PHY 407/551 : Advanced Physics Lab

This course is team taught by the experimental physics faculty and offers the students the experience to work in a team of two on 2-3 experiments per semester, each for one month. I have been teaching Faraday Rotation and set up an optical trapping experiment.

Biophysics Teaching

PHY 533 : Introduction to Biophysics - Methods

I developed and taught this graduate / undergraduate cross-listed course in spring 2011. It follows the text book by Rob Philipps Physical Biology of the Cell. I combined lecture with student presentations and multi-day lab sessions to cover the essential biophysics techniques and ideas.

PHY 582 : Biophysics Bootcamp

During the summer break 2010, I organized a 10-day biophysics boot camp with morning lecture, afternoon experiments and evening presentations. The time and duration allowed a diverse group of students to participate, and we have good mix of theory and experimental techniques used in Biophysics.

BPH 400 : Biological Physics

BPH400 is a upper division undergraduate class team taught with colleagues from the Departments of Physics and of Biophysics and Physiology. It covers physical principles in biology and the development of physical methods to study biological systems.

BPH 510 : Modeling & Systems Theoretical Biophysics

BPH510 is a graduate class in quantitative biology held together with colleagues from the Department of Biophysics and Physiology, covering diffusion, cable theory, protein folding and forced unfolding.

UB Biophysics Discussion Club

I initiated and run a Biophysics Discussion Club which meets monthly to foster interaction between groups at UB interested in biophysics research and to inform each other about some recently published research.