HOME / PRESENTATIONS /

Invited

Breaking down classroom walls and setting learning free, at Lecture Breakers Virtual Summer Conference, Tuesday, June 4, 2024

The rapid transition to online teaching necessitated by the coronavirus pandemic has been a good opportunity to rethink my approach to teaching. Moving online laid bare the restrictions imposed by both traditional classrooms and online teaching, and demonstrated that many activities that have traditionally been synchronous and instructor-paced, can be improved by making them asynchronous and self-paced in any teaching modality. What may have...

Read more about Breaking down classroom walls and setting learning free
Flipping your class and never looking back, at AVID at Victoria University, Melbourne, Australia, Wednesday, September 15, 2021:
flipping_avid_vic_u.pdf

Education is more than just transfer of information, yet that is what is mostly done in classrooms -- teachers present material (even though this material might be readily available in printed form) and for students the main purpose of classroom instruction is to take down as many notes as they can. Few students have the ability, motivation, and discipline to synthesize all the information delivered to them. Yet synthesis is perhaps the most important -- and most elusive -- aspect of education. I will show how shifting the focus in classroom learning from delivering information...

Read more about Flipping your class and never looking back
Extreme optics with zero-index metamaterials, at PQE 2020, Snowbird, UT, Tuesday, January 7, 2020:
pqe2020.pdf
Nanotechnology has enabled the development of nanostructured composite materials (metamaterials) with exotic optical properties not found in nature. In the most extreme case, we can create materials which support light waves that propagate with infinite phase velocity, corresponding to a refractive index of zero. We have developed a variety of in-plane metamaterial designs that permit obtaining a refractive index of zero in the optical regime. We will report on some of the exotic physics of zero-index metamaterials, including strong enhancement of nonlinear optical phenomena
Subcellular surgery and nanoneurosurgery, at CLEO-PR 2017 in Singapore, Thursday, August 3, 2017

 

We use femtosecond laser pulses to manipulate sub-cellular structures inside live and fixed cells. Using only a few nanojoules of laser pulse energy, we are able to selectively disrupt individual mitochondria in live bovine capillary epithelial cells, and cleave single actin fibers in the cell cytoskeleton network of fixed human fibro-blast cells. We have also used the technique to micromanipulate the neural network of C. Elegans, a small nematode. Our laser scalpel can snip individual axons without causing any damage to surrounding tissue, allowing us to study the...

Read more about Subcellular surgery and nanoneurosurgery
Less is More: Extreme Optics with Zero Refractive Index, at CLEO/Europe EQEC 2017 (Munich, Germany), Tuesday, June 27, 2017
By simultaneously controlling the electric and magnetic properties of a nanostructured composite material (metamaterial), we can create materials with a refractive index of zero. We present a novel on-chip platform to explore zero-index metamaterials.
Innovating education to educate innovators, at International School on Light Sciences and Technologies, Universidad Internacional Menéndez Pelayo (Santander, Spain), Friday, June 23, 2017:
talk_2710.pdf
Can we teach innovation? Innovation requires whole-brain thinking — right-brain thinking for creativity and imagination, and left-brain thinking for planning and execution. Our current approach to education in science and technology, focuses on the transfer of information, developing mostly right-brain thinking by stressing copying and reproducing existing ideas rather than generating new ones. I will show how shifting the focus in lectures from delivering information to team work and creative thinking greatly improves the learning that takes place in the classroom and promotes independent... Read more about Innovating education to educate innovators
Less is More: Extreme Optics with Zero Refractive Index, at International School on Light Sciences and Technologies, Universidad Internacional Menéndez Pelayo (Santander, Spain), Wednesday, June 21, 2017:
talk_2668.pdf
Nanotechnology has enabled the development of nanostructured composite materials (metamaterials) with exotic optical properties not found in nature. In the most extreme case, we can create materials which support light waves that propagate with infinite phase velocity, corresponding to a refractive index of zero. This zero index can only be achieved by simultaneously controlling the electric and magnetic resonances of the nanostructure. We present an in-plane metamaterial design consisting of silicon pillar arrays, embedded within a polymer matrix and sandwiched between gold layers. Using an... Read more about Less is More: Extreme Optics with Zero Refractive Index
Innovating Education to Educate Innovators: Lessons from Physics Education Research, at 2017 AAAS Annual Meeting (Boston, MA), Friday, February 17, 2017:
talk_2636.pdf
Education research in the sciences began with physicists who sought to improve undergraduate education in that discipline. Physics education research (PER) established standards for evidence that increasingly have been adopted by researchers across the sciences. This presentation will provide an overview of PER, the pedagogical changes that PER has inspired in undergraduate physics courses and programs, and the implications of this work for improving undergraduate education in other disciplines.

Pages