People

Katherine Aidala employs creative techniques with the atomic force microscope to study a wide range of nanoscale devices and materials, with applications in solar energy, data storage, and biotechnology.  Her work has been supported by grants from the NSF and she received the Presidential Early Career Award for Scientists and Engineers in 2010.  Beyond the standard physics curriculum, she teaches Gender in Science and Science in the Media, and regularly gives talks on the under-representation of women in science.

Professor Wei Chen works with her undergraduate research students in the context of Materials Chemistry. The research centers around modifying the surface chemistry of natural and artificial materials for industrial and biomedical applications, such as enhancing surface wettability, improving the biocompatibility of implants, and designing microchips for disease detection. The selected projects are contemporary, relevant, and feasible for beginning researchers. The research methodologies are interdisciplinary applying the tools of organic, analytical, physical, and biological chemistry.

Maria Gomez and her student researchers use the principles of thermodynamics, statistical mechanics, and quantum mechanics to study how structure affects proton and oxygen vacancy conduction in fuel cell systems. Their work has been funded by the National Science Foundation, the MERCURY consortium, the Dreyfus Foundation, and the Research Corporation. Gomez enjoys teaching Chemical Principles in General Chemistry, Physical Chemistry, and electives. She and her students also enjoy getting K-6 parent/child teams to tackle interesting scientific ideas through the Passport to Chemistry Adventure outreach program.

Thomas L. Millette is a geographer and geoprocessing specialist with broad research interests in the applications of remote sensing and GIS to environmental monitoring and management. Thomas has applied image processing of satellite data to a wide variety of environmental assessments. Most recently, Millette has developed the Airborne Multispectral Imaging System (AIMS) to develop high-resolution imagery (4.0 cm) to identify forest pests (Asian Longhorned Beetle and Wooly Adelgid), and to conduct thermal ungulate surveys (moose and deer) and habitat analysis. Thomas also collaborates with the Umass Microwave Remote Sensing Laboratory’s airborne radar interferometry research program.

Dylan Shepardson works on mathematical problems that are motivated by applications in other disciplines, like biology, epidemiology, sociology, or archaeology. He is especially interested in new and unusual applications of optimization theory. In most physical, biological, and economic systems, a property is being optimized (like energy or entropy in physical systems, or reproductive success in evolutionary biology), and optimization techniques offer interesting insights into these systems. Shepardson's recent projects include voting theory and its connections to combinatorial geometry, infectious disease modeling, and the problem of using collections of radiocarbon data to estimate dates of the earliest human settlements of Pacific islands.

Motivated by computational challenges arising in robotics, biology and computer aided design, Audrey St. John’s research focuses on building theoretical foundations and developing efficient algorithms for geometric problems. She has received a Faculty Early Career Development (CAREER) award from the National Science Foundation to support her work on autonomous multi-robot formations. St. John also works on activities to broaden participation in computer science and STEM, including creating low-risk hardware experiences through the makerspace and helping to develop MaGE, an inclusive academic peer mentorship program (funded by Google’s CS Capacity program).