Swarthmore College Department of Physics and Astronomy


Research

Research at Swarthmore, first and foremost, involves our students. At any given time, we have numerous students working on original research, frequently leading to presentations at meetings and publications in the major journals in our fields. We firmly believe that one of the primary benefits of a small liberal arts college like Swarthmore, as opposed to a big research university, is that students have ample opportunity to interact with faculty. There are many aspects of doing science and becoming a scientist that cannot be taught in the classroom.

  • John Boccio

    Quantum mechanics: theory, quantum computing, parallel computing, visualization | more

  • Michael Brown

    Plasma physics, experiment (SSX), magnetic reconnection, solar physics, fusion | more

  • Amy Bug

    Quantum mechanics: theory, probing materials with antimatter, modeling the behavior of adsorbed molecules in porous solids | more

  • David Cohen

    X-ray spectroscopy and modeling of hot stars and laboratory plasmas, radiation-driven stellar winds and stellar X-ray emission | more

  • Peter Collings

    Liquid crystals, light scattering, self-assembly of biologically important molecules, supramolecular chemistry | more

  • Catherine Crouch

    Condensed matter physics (mesoscopics and nanoscale structures, interaction between biomaterials and surfaces), physics education | more

  • Carl Grossman

    Optics, single-molecule imaging, medical physics | more

  • Eric Jensen

    Star formation, binary stars, planet and disk formation, observations of polarization, IR and sub-millimeter emission | more

  • Frank Moscatelli

    Cooling, trapping and guiding atoms, lasers, spectroscopy | more